The worst haircut...

Who is this?

Read on at Termite Art.

Just discovered...

Dzyd Team Member/At the Movies' Critics Roundupper Matt's Twitter feed...Full of inscrutables like: "Don't touch my belly button! It's too deep."

Dizzies Newsfeeds for November 21

What's the "best remunerated poem in history"? Dizzyhead Rachel sifts through the competing author theories for the Christian verselet "Footprints," with some fascinating excursions into the realm of cryptomnesia...Termite Artist Matt on Lust, Caution (smartly comparing it to Black Book) and...Ruthless People?! (invoking Roger Ebert's definition of "idiots")...Isn't it time you enjoyed an episode of Cavemen?...Best line in a recent e-mail: "I'm on my third Sam Adams in the Pittsburgh airport..."...Josh Glenn has a great slideshow on the possible cinematic influence of Winsor McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend...(For one more film reference and some literary ones, check out this piece by Parkus Grammaticus)...Look at how I persist in neither italicizing nor enquoting names of comic strips...J.G. also takes aim at a very specific fetish found in the oeuvre of certain Boston-based rock legends—including my beloved Modern Lovers:

(Bonus trivia: Did you know that David Lee Roth was from the Beantown area?)

Dizzies Newsfeeds for HALLOWEEN!

Quick links — Dizzyhead Celebrity Talking Head Matt Singer on some childhood webwork, starring your favorite neighborhood arachno-humanoid...Halloween issue of The New-York Ghost is still on (virtual) newsstands...the folks at the admirable PDF literary magazine Essays & Fictions have also included the super-rare debut number of the Ghost in their new (second) issue (got that?)...speaking of Halloween, check out...Thought for memoir: The Internet is good for funny lists—this is the Onion AV Club's take on the most ridiculous monster-movie menaces...Over at I've Been Reading at Lately, Levi's been musing on ghosts and ghost stories (with a bonus: some sporadic lively discussion with Jenny D!)...

Pop culture fever dream

Dizzyhead Dennis Lim talks to Richard Kelly at the Apple Store...Dizzies Team Member (and IFC/Salon celeb) Matt Singer is there! (I think they should become the new Siskel & Ebert.)

Alien art — JR/ML — Dear Diary

"This must be the longest verse anybody's ever written!"

Click to watch Team Dizzies Member Matt's fascinating interview with R. Kelly, on the genesis of Trapped in the Closet, a piece of musical/visual "alien" art.

"I definitely can't call it a song anymore—it's too long!"

* * *

Jumping off the previous post on Jonathan Richman (and Lefty's note): What are the best Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers albums? My list looks something like this:

1. Rockin' and Romance
2. The Modern Lovers
3. Jonathan Sings
4. Modern Lovers 'Live' ("My Little Kookenhaken"!)
5. Modern Lovers 88

After being very immersed in Richmania, I stopped keeping up c. I, Jonathan (1992!). Are there good latter-day JR/ML albums I should know about?

* * *

Dear Diary:
The other day I listened to Marshall Crenshaw's first album and that same day, at the grocery store, I heard...a rebroadcast of an old Casey Kasem show (why would they be playing such a thing?) and right after "Eye of the Tiger" came "Someday, Some Way." [Insert boinggg sound.]

Like this song a lot — Trapped With Matt Singer — The Warwick in the High Castle — It takes a pillage

1. Vote for Gretta and her group Twin Thousands! (Give yourself a treat and listen to "Like You a Lot"—angelic Gretta vocals!)

2. Dizzies Team Member and IFC star Matt Singer introduces another episode of Trapped in the Closet—with R. Kelly himself!

3. Lede of the day:

The pop singer Dionne Warwick and the paranoid, drug-fueled science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick are not often mentioned in the same sentence or even the same chapter.

4. Cheekiest ending:

A replica of a Viking ship believed to have been built in 1042 sailed triumphantly into Dublin after retracing the 1,000-mile path of the fleets of Norsemen who invaded Ireland more than a millennium ago. Over six weeks, the 100-foot ship, which carried some decidedly un-Viking-like equipment — global positioning systems, radar, radio, satellite weather forecasts and life jackets — crossed the waters of northern Europe from Scandinavia, around Scotland and into the Irish Sea. Spectators cheered and the 65 sailors on board blew the horns as the ship drew into the harbor in Dublin, the site of a ninth-century Viking settlement. This time around, there was no pillaging. (AP)

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Tuesday, July 24

Very funny: Over at Termite Art, Team Dizzies member Matt interviews David Wain, Paul Rudd, and Ken Marino at SXSW, talking about The Ten.



And T.D.M. Rob is reading a volume of Proust a year.

Over at the NBCC's Critical Mass, Lindsay Waters makes me blush.

Note to self: Are my library books due today?!

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Tuesday

Friend Leland de la Durantaye's book on Nabokov, Style Is Matter, is out—am excited to get my hands on this....check out the photo on his homepage...Why did he put eggs on his eyes?...Matthew Sharpe reads from Jamestown....This looks like it'll be a fun read: Joyce Carol Oates on this year's The Raw Shark Texts and Remainder, Sebald's Austerlitz (2001), and the Lethem-edited Vintage Book of Amnesia (which came out ages ago)....Speaking of Lethem, has anyone noted how his name invokes Lethe, the river in Greek mythology whose waters cause forgetfulness? I can't remember [rim shot!] if I've seen that anywhere before. [Or no wait, put the rim shot here.]...Also: Dizzyhead Matt goes Kwik-E-Mart krazy!

Paper bag writer

Team Dizzies member Matt declares a moratorium on the phrase "can't act his/her way out of a paper bag" (vis-à-vis a review of the new Fantastic Four movie).

One critical commonplace I've tried to stomp out of my writing over the years is "It's like [another artist/artwork] on [drug]." But I'll use it if I can come up with a funny version. And I just read a description of a sky as "Turner-on-crack," that was pretty good.

Same with "It's like [someone]-meets-[someone]"—I'll use it if I can think of something surprising enough...wait, I did it in this week's Astral Weeks column! (Under review: Kim Stanley Robinson's inconvenient-truth-telling "Science in the Capitol" trilogy.)