Waiting Hours for 3 Minutes in the Criterion Closet (Well, Van)

"The hottest event at this year’s New York Film Festival isn’t a film at all. It’s a van. Parked next to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the mobile version of the Criterion Closet — a tiny space stocked with the prestigious DVDs and Blu-rays of films in the Criterion Collection — attracted a line that wrapped around the block. It was a chance for festivalgoers to enact their own version of the Closet Picks videos, in which celebrities like Bill Hader, Ayo Edebiri and Willem Dafoe visit a product-filled closet in the company’s Manhattan office. They pick out their favorite titles and evangelize about their choices while not so coincidentally on tour promoting their latest projects. (Dafoe’s haul included Luchino Visconti’s 'The Leopard' and the actor’s own 'The Last Temptation of Christ'; Edebiri left with Wes Anderson’s 'Bottle Rocket,' among other titles, and Hader’s selections included the western 'My Darling Clementine.') ..."

NY Times 



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Siti of Unguja (Romance Revolution on Zanzibar) - Siti Muharam (2020)


"... Siti Muharam has the 'Golden Voice' of Zanzibar. Following in the pioneering footsteps of her Great Grand-Mother, Siti Binti Saad was no easy choice for Muharam. With the guidance of this album's Music Director, Matona’s and a tip-off from Andy Jones (film maker that documented and positively influenced the life and death of Bi Kidude ). Muharam's golden timbre has been allowed to soar for the world to hear. On her song is carried the legacy, lyricism and odyssey of the 'Mother of Taarab', her Great Grand-mother, Siti Binti Saad. The production of this album was able to reference Siti Binti Saad’s times and bring in the percussive Kidumbak: style and strip away Taarab’s formal layering to give a feel of the eclecticism of Zanzibar’s swahili street culture that influenced Siti Binti Saad. ..."




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Early computer art by Barbara Nessim (1984)


"Whilst searching for something else entirely I stumbled across these images and was struck by just how beautiful they are. The September 1984 (Vol 9, No 10) issue of BYTE magazine features cover artwork by Barbara Nessim and section pages by Liz Gutowski under direction of Barbara Nessim. Larger versions are at the bottom of this blog post. They were drawn during a residency at Time Life in NYC, simply because that was the easiest way Barbara could gain access to a colour computer with suitable capabilities: a Norpak IPS-2 Videotex (NAPLPS/Telidon) system. This offered 6 drawing modes (arc, rectangle, circle, line, dot and polygon) and 12 colours, of which half were shades of grey, plus black and white. And at a resolution of 256x200. ..."


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Every Falsehood, Exaggeration and Untruth in Trump’s and Harris’s Stump Speeches


"With Election Day fast approaching, former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are accelerating their campaigns in battleground states and honing their closing arguments to sway voters and mobilize support. Two recent speeches by the candidates — Mr. Trump in Las Vegas and Ms. Harris in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. — offer a glimpse at how their approaches and messages differ. Though their speeches in the next month will likely vary — Mr. Trump’s especially, given his habit of ditching prepared remarks for preferred tangents — they are expected to follow the same familiar contours. Here’s a fact-check of their speeches from two rallies in September. ..."
 

NY Times

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What the Supreme Court Can Learn From a 14th-Century Italian City-State

Lorenzetti’s “The Effect of Bad Governance.”

"... The governance of that republic was so fair-minded and so respected that the Sienese people had frescoes made to honor it. The frescoes, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, still can be seen today on the walls of Siena’s city hall, the Palazzo Pubblico. This month, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, an exhibition opens that showcases art Lorenzetti and his peers made during this flourishing moment in their city’s history: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350. But to see Lorenzetti’s frescoes and absorb their civic lesson you must travel to Italy and stand in the room where they are painted. I did so, by accident, many years ago. I have never forgotten. ..."

LitHub 

Met Museum - Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 

Laphams Quarterly: The Renaissance of City-States 

amazon: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350

 Arnolfo Shows the Plan to Enlarge Florence (detail), by Giorgio Vasari, c. 1564. Palazzo Vecchio Museum, Florence.

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'Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black’: Public Enemy’s Daring Album

"The making of Public Enemy’s fourth album, Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black, had hit its stride. Recorded primarily at The Music Palace studios in Long Island, the album found Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Terminator X, the S1Ws, Gary 'G-Wiz' Rinaldo, and the Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk lighting the studio on fire with blazing socio-political commentary and heart-thumping production. Then disaster struck. Parked outside of a Soho studio, longtime Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee was the victim of a robbery. The thieves made off with the bones of every track they’d been working on, bringing an abrupt halt to any progress they’d made. ..."


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Brooklyn Museum at 200 Celebrates Beauty and Art’s Hidden History

The Brooklyn Museum’s reinstalled American Art collection includes, from left, Joseph Stella, “The Virgin”; Emma Amos, “Flower Sniffer”; Kenzo Okada, “Flower Study”; Loïs Mailou Jones, textile design, 1928, reproduced on wallpaper by Flavor Paper.Credit...
 
"At 200 years young, the Brooklyn Museum, the second largest art museum in New York City, has begun celebrating the bicentennial of its founding. And it’s doing so in characteristic fashion — meaning in ways that make traditionalists crazy. It is emphatically re-emphasizing what it has, basically, long been: an institution with the heart and soul of an alternative space enclosed in the body of a traditional museum. And it does so with two large-scale season-opening projects. One is a complete rehang and rethink of its American art galleries, filtering centuries of art from two hemispheres through a post-Black Lives Matter lens. The other, less radical, is a community-based roundup of new work by more than 200 contemporary artists living and working in the borough. Let me wedge in some history here. ..."


Credit...The American (Art) Study in the Brooklyn Museum offers alternate histories, and lenses, on artworks, updated with ongoing interpretation.
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How to Make Poetry Comics

"... A poetry comic is a perfect way to capture the here and now. Where are you? What do you see? What are you thinking about? Make a poetry comic that’s a window into the present moment. Now get up and go for a walk down the block. Be sure to bring your sketchbook. Let the page create a sense of direction. Let your character move horizontally through the panels of the comic as you move through the world. ... It might be a fun exercise to try this with a well-known poem you love. Say, one by William Carlos Williams or Emily Dickinson. Other times, you’ll sketch a wordless comic strip. Can words enhance the pictures? Can they do more than merely repeat what’s happening visually? ..."
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Judge Unseals New Evidence in Federal Election Case Against Trump


"... Those accounts were among new evidence disclosed in a court filing made public on Wednesday in which the special counsel investigating Mr. Trump made his case for why the former president is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Made public by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, the 165-page brief was partly redacted but expansive, adding details to the already extensive record of how Mr. Trump lost the race but attempted nonetheless to cling to power. The brief from the prosecution team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, asserts that there is ample evidence that Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office were those of a desperate losing candidate rather than official acts of a president that would be considered immune from prosecution under a landmark Supreme Court ruling this summer. ..."





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Apples, Clogs and Pottery: Parees Celebrates Asturian Identity

Marat Morik. Faro

"In its seventh year, the Parees Festival continues to enrich Oviedo’s urban landscape, adding three new murals and bringing its collection to a remarkable total of forty works. Local, national, and international artists have left their mark on the city through this contextual muralism festival, each piece echoing the rich cultural fabric of Asturias. Organized by the Oviedo Municipal Foundation of Culture, Parees stands out as one of the few mural festivals that authentically reflects the city’s community, history, and environment—almost as if the walls are narrating the soul of Oviedo. This year’s festival underscores its commitment to Asturian identity by paying tribute to regional symbols such as Faro pottery, the iconic wooden clog (madreña), and the apple, deeply ingrained in local tradition. ..." 


Marat Morik. Faro
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Viennese coffee house culture


"The Viennese coffee house is a typical institution of Vienna that played an important part in shaping Viennese culture. ... The social practices, rituals, and elegance create the very specific atmosphere of the Viennese café. Coffee houses entice with a wide variety of coffee drinks, international newspapers, and pastry creations. Typical for Viennese coffee houses are marble tabletops, Thonet chairs, newspaper tables and interior design details in the style of historicism. ...Unlike some other café traditions around the world, it is completely normal for a customer to linger alone for hours and study the omnipresent newspaper. Along with coffee, the waiter will serve an obligatory glass of cold tap water and during a long stay will often bring additional water unrequested, with the idea to serve the guest with an exemplary sense of attention. ..."
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Murder Ballads by Various

"100 track collection of vintage Murder Ballads, songs that have evolved from British & European Folklore, murders & tragedies to American outlaws & gangsters... featuring Folk, Blues & County icons such as... - Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Willie McTell, Bob Dylan, Brownie McGhee, Burl Ives, Champion Jack Dupree, Charley Patton, Charley Pride, Earl Johnson, Ethel Waters, Johnny Cash, Josh White, Kid Bailey, Lead Belly, Lefty Frizzell, Long 'Cleve' Reed & Little Harvey Hull, Lonnie Donegan & His Skiffle Group, Marty Robbins, Mike Seeger, Mississippi John Hurt, Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Red River Dave McEnery, Roscoe Holcomb, Sippie Wallace, The Louvin Brothers, Woody Guthrie - a sub-genre of the traditional ballads, make up a notable portion of traditional ballads, many of which originated in Scandinavia, England, and lowland Scotland in the premodern era. In those, while the murder is committed, the murderer usually suffers justice at the hands of the victim's family, even if the victim and murderer are related. Perspectives are numerous. ..."

Bandcamp (Audio)

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N.Y.C. Streets Won’t Be Like This Forever (for Better or Worse)

Herald Square in 1986.

"For now, this is the final installment of Street Wars. But to be clear: The battle for space on New York City’s streets is not over. It’s obvious to anyone on New York’s streets — in buses, on foot, on bikes or in cars — that the current situation feels unsustainable. Street-space conflicts are brewing in all parts of the city, and we — and you — should keep an eye on them. Right now, New York has not only the worst traffic in the United States, but also the worst traffic in the world. In addition to being annoying, traffic is an environmental and public health issue. Idling motors contribute to air pollution that is bad for our lungs. ... A delayed fire truck or ambulance can be a matter of life and death. And there are other battles brewing. ..."


The subway in 1979.
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Walter Benjamin Warned Us Against the Illusions of Capitalist Progress

Membership card for the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 

"The German writer Walter Benjamin has become one of the most influential cultural theorists of the last century. Benjamin took his own life in September 1940 to avoid falling into the hands of the Gestapo, but the Nazi regime could not snuff out his extraordinary intellectual legacy. Benjamin’s unorthodox Marxism and ideas about culture and history have inspired several generations of critical thought about the world made by capitalism. His relationships with figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno have also inspired a range of scholarly work, while his description of revolution as an 'emergency brake' saving humanity from the disasters of capitalism resonates more than ever in a time of ecological crisis. ..." 





Galerie Vivienne (1916) photographed by Charles Lansiaux
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Israel Strikes Lebanon Again After Killing Hezbollah Leader


"Israeli airstrikes battered areas near Beirut again on Saturday evening, hours after Hezbollah confirmed that its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed in an Israeli bombing that flattened residential buildings near Lebanon’s capital the night before. The assassination, which Israel said hit the Iranian-backed militia’s underground headquarters, was a stunning escalation of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in a conflict that has gone on for nearly a year. Hezbollah began firing into northern Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with Hamas, which is also supported by Iran, and Israel frequently responded, intensifying its attacks dramatically over the last two weeks, fueling fears of an all-out regional war that could draw in bigger players like Iran. Mr. Nasrallah was a towering figure among anti-Israel forces across the Middle East and beyond, and his death struck a tremendous blow to Hezbollah. He played multiple roles in the lives of the group’s members, serving at once as a religious guide, political strategist and commander in chief. ..."






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Silk Roads


"Not many exhibitions turn the history of the world upside down. The British Museum’s mesmerising Silk Roads does, by showing how Asia, Europe and north Africa shared their cultures more than a millennium ago. Far from developing in isolation, let alone in a 'clash of civilisations', east and west were once mutually connected by epic trade routes known as the Silk Roads that carried China’s precious discovery, silk, across the then-known world. If that sounds dry, the British Museum turns it into a fairytale of magic and beauty, as you follow the merchants’ routes to fabulous oases, desert palaces, synagogues, mosques and burial mounds. You reach the first oasis by clay camel, to be precise a two-humped Bactrian camel of painted ceramic, nearly a metre tall, rearing its head in a bellow you can almost hear. ..."




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A career in three acts: The three movies that define Ingrid Bergman


"When Ingrid Bergman arrived in Hollywood in 1939, she was already a celebrity in her native Sweden. With a radiant, cherubic face and quiet intelligence, the 24-year-old wasn’t exactly a carbon copy of glamorous stars like Bette Davis and Vivian Leigh, who were dominating the box office at the time, but she knew what type of actor she wanted to be. She had been spotted by Hollywood mogul David O Selznick, and although she accepted his invitation to come to the US, she refused to change her name or swap her natural beauty for a studio makeover. Throughout her five-decade career, Bergman remained fiercely independent, even as she was typecast as an unassailable 'good girl' in her movies. When, in the 1950s, she was banished from Hollywood and the United States for her affair with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she pivoted to European cinema, appearing in some of the best movies of her career. ..."



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Runaway Jury - Gary Fleder (2003)


"Runaway Jury is a 2003 American legal thriller film directed by Gary Fleder and starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz. An adaptation of John Grisham's 1996 novel The Runaway Jury, the film pits lawyer Wendell Rohr (Hoffman) against shady jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Hackman), who uses unlawful means to stack the jury with people sympathetic to the defense. Meanwhile, a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game begins when juror Nicholas Easter (Cusack) and his girlfriend Marlee (Weisz) appear to be able to sway the jury to deliver any verdict they want in a trial against a gun manufacturer. ..."




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Mayor Is Defiant as He Is Charged With Bribery and Fraud


"Mayor Eric Adams was defiant on Thursday in the face of five federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, insisting he would stay in office and imploring New Yorkers to hear his defense. The indictment against him, which was unsealed on Thursday morning after a search of the mayor’s official residence, followed an investigation that started in 2021. Prosecutors said the scheme had begun when he was a top elected official in Brooklyn and continued after he became mayor. The investigation focused on whether Mr. Adams, 64, had conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions in exchange for acting on its behalf. ..."







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Was Roy Lichtenstein a Plagiarist?

"Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most famous modern artists from the United States. There is no doubt that his comic book style made him one of the most well-known artists of the last century. However, over the past few weeks and months, the talk around Lichtenstein been more about his appropriation of the work from comic artists and less about his impact on the art world. The reason for that is the release of a new documentary entitled Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation. Though released in November 2022, the documentary has been getting a great deal of media attention in the recent weeks, including The Guardian, CBR, Artnet News and more. Though I’ve long been familiar with the allegations against Lichtenstein, I was curious to see if the documentary provided any new information or at least new arguments in favor or against the artist. ..."

Plagiarism Today

Lichtenstein and the Art of Letters

Roy Lichtenstein: Pioneer Or Plagiarist?

Deconstructing Lichtenstein

YouTube: Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation - OFFICIAL TRAILER, Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation 1:18:34

2012 July: Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, 2013 December: Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Donates Shunk-Kender Photo Trove

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How Does a Baseball Team Lose 120 Games? Every Way You Can Think Of.

The White Sox played the Athletics at Guaranteed Rate Field on Sept. 13.

"In the fourth inning of a ridiculous baseball game — ridiculous even by the standards of the 2024 Chicago White Sox — I wandered out into the stands to meet Beefloaf. Beefloaf sits in Section 108. ... I’d heard about Section 108. I’d been told that, even during this shambolic season, as the White Sox slumped toward the 1962 Mets’ seemingly unbreakable record of 120 losses — a mark they tied on Sunday and, with six games left, seem all but certain to break — throughout all that misery, Beefloaf and his friends kept showing up, sitting in Section 108 to argue and cheer and complain. They represented a small, lonely remnant of a mysterious and dwindling species: the Chicago White Sox superfan. ..."


White Sox fans express their feelings about a season that is in the running for one of the worst in baseball history.
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50 Facts About The Power Broker to Celebrate Its 50th Anniversary

"Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York(Fact #1). The book remains incredibly popular—it’s currently in its 74th printing and has has never been out of print in hardcover or paperback (#2), despite Caro initially believing the naysayers who said no-one would be interested: '…I really did believe what people said, that nobody would read the book. I did believe that.' People not only read it, but praised it: The Power Broker won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the Francis Parkman Prize for American history, and was a finalist for the National Book Award (#3). Every book Caro’s written has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, a perfect six-for-six record (#4). ..."

LitHub

W - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

New-York Historical Society Celebrates The Power Broker at 50

NY Times: Robert Caro Reflects on ‘The Power Broker’ and Its Legacy at 50

Marvel: Who Is Power Broker? (Comics)

amazon

YouTube: Robert Moses: The Power Broker Who Built (and Demolished) New York

Notes from Caro’s interview with Moses associate Sidney Shapiro on display.
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Best Alt.Country Musicians: 9 Essential Artists

Lucinda Williams 

"The musicians who came to define the alt.country boom of the late 80s and 90s believed themselves to be outside of the country music establishment and its ethos of the time. As Lucinda Williams, one of the best alt.country musicians of the era, put it, 'I definitely don’t feel a part of what I call the straighter country music industry of Nashville. I’m definitely not connected with that world. I guess I’m sort of considered an outlaw here, along with Steve Earle.' The term alt.country (sometimes dubbed “insurgent country”) describes a number of musicians who eschewed the pop-infused country music that had begun to take hold in the late 70s and 80s. ... Though its roots reach back to country music icons such as Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson, the most direct relevant forerunners to alt.country are Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers, who were playing a mix of traditional country music and rock from the late 60s. ..."


Gram Parsons
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The Hotel Chelsea’s iconic neon sign heading to auction

"The Chelsea Hotel in New York is auctioning off pieces of its history, including the iconic neon sign that has hung on the outside of the building since 1949. For culture fans with money to spend, there is a chance to own one of the letters are they are set to b sold one-by-one. In any photo of the hallowed hotel, its neon sign proudly proclaims its name. It became an iconic symbol for an establishment that has housed so many icons. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, especially, the Chelsea was home to some of the more influential names in music, literary and cinematic history.  ..."

Far Out (Video)

2010 October: Hotel Chelsea, 2014 January: Arena Hotel Chelsea, 2019 August: The Chelsea Affect - Arthur Miller, 2022 July:  ​‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ Review: Bohemia’s Holdouts, 2022 November: Stop and admire the Chelsea Hotel’s beautiful iron balconies

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Futuristic Dereliction - Alphaxone & Onasander (2024)


"In a meeting of the minds, Alphaxone and Onasander (Mehdi Saleh and Maurizio Landin, respectively) begin Futuristic Dereliction with dramatic pianoforte waves that are eventually joined by a background drone and synthesized beat structures. This first track sets forth the tone of the overall album – desolate post-apocalyptic soundscapes in which echoes of advanced technologies reverberate throughout the ruins. To that point, the second track, titled Time Fracture, employs rapid sequencer runs atop bassy drones. The following pieces, all in the 6-8 minute range, continue to use low frequencies to evoke haunting images of buildings in collapse and the metal-on-metal of failing machinery. Sculpted static, acousmatic sounds, and/or field recordings accentuate the mix. An overall dark airiness permeates the mood. ..."
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Black Sun Press


"The Black Sun Press was an English-language press noted for publishing the early works of many modernist writers including Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, and Eugene Jolas. It enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s, publishing nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus under his Black Manikin Press. American expatriates living in Paris, Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby (American inventor of the modern bra) founded the press to publish their own work in April 1927 as Éditions Narcisse. ... They enjoyed the reception their initial work received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press, following on Harry's obsession on the symbolism of the sun. They published exclusively limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. During the 1920s and 1930s Paris was at the crossroads of many emerging expatriate American writers, collectively called the Lost Generation. ..."



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Here Are Cases of Trump Rivals Who Were Subject to Investigation


"Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies have suggested that his constant threats to prosecute rivals and perceived enemies if he is elected again should not be taken literally. 'His vengeance is going to be by winning and making America great again, not going after his political opponents,' Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, told CNN. But as president, Mr. Trump tried repeatedly to use the powers of the federal government to investigate or penalize those he considered foes. While a few of them had engaged in conduct that made them legitimate targets of inquiry, there was no legal basis for the investigation of many. None were ultimately put behind bars, but they had to fend off criminal investigations, civil suits brought by the Justice Department and other forms of government pressure. The decisions to pursue Mr. Trump’s rivals cannot always be traced back to a direct, formal order from him, but they are consistent with public or private pressure he exerted. Here are some of the more prominent examples from his time in office. ..."



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