You're browing the archives for the month of January 2010

Friday Foto: Flipwalk #46

The flipwalk project is almost over: just (spoiler alert!) two more walks in Lower Manhattan after this one. The forty-sixth walk took place on Independence Day of 2005; I believe I had some time to kill before I went uptown to watch the fireworks from a friend’s father’s river-view apartment. I have no idea why […]

posted 29 January 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

White Lines

Another excerpt from the Andy Warhol Diaries. They must have been watching a videotape: Monday, August 22, 1977 When we got there, everyone was already watching the Wimbledon match between Bjorn Borg and Vitas Gerulaitis. Those last two weren’t there yet, they were having dinner together. The match went on for three hours, and somewhere […]

posted 28 January 2010 in Excerpts. no comments yet

The Wall

Before I traversed eleven time zones to reach China, I didn’t know much about the Great Wall. I had seen it meandering over most of northern China on just about every world map ever, so I knew it was large (and Chinese, I suppose). I knew that contrary to general opinion, you can’t see it […]

posted 25 January 2010 in Archives, Articles, Unpublished. no comments yet

Friday Foto: Slice of Sky

Taken in Plano, Texas, the last week of November 2009.

posted 22 January 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

1988 Countdown #60: Michael Jackson, “Smooth Criminal”

Michael Jackson released seven singles from Thriller, but he made videos for only three of them. (That wasn’t unusual in 1983–MTV’s proof of concept wasn’t yet firmly established.) How much would we treasure videos for the other singles today? A high-concept clip for “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”? A restrained but elegant video set on top […]

posted 21 January 2010 in 1988. 4 comments

Receiving Department, 3 A.M.

Ethan Hawke’s got a new vampire movie, Daybreakers, which looks like one of Hawke’s periodic stabs at doing a smarter version of an action movie. (Those efforts don’t usually pan out the way anyone involved had hoped for.) But it seemed like a good excuse for adding this article to the archives, detailing a late-night […]

posted 11 January 2010 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

Friday Foto: Santa Cruz Sea Lions

What’s a group of sea lions called? Are they a pride? At any rate, this is a whole bunch of them frolicking in the water just off the shore of Santa Cruz, California, on Boxing Day 2009.

posted 8 January 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

1988 Countdown: #61-70 Roundup

In case you’re just joining us: I found some old videotapes of MTV’s year-end countdown of their top 100 videos. From 1988. Naturally, I’m working my way through the tapes, writing about each video (and commercial break). It’s taking longer than originally planned, but I march onward, fueled by the power of mullets and Kevin […]

posted 6 January 2010 in 1988. 4 comments

Banana Republic

Number of Google results for the following phrases: “first banana”–92,500 “second banana”–88,200 “third banana”–39,100 “fourth banana”–4,010 “fifth banana”–1,830 “sixth banana”–292 “seventh banana”–522 “eighth banana”–344 “ninth banana”–9,070 “tenth banana”–264 “eleventh banana”–29 “twelfth banana”–40 “thirteenth banana”–270 “fourteenth banana”–10 “fifteenth banana”–617 “sixteenth banana”–113 “seventeenth banana”–110 “eighteenth banana”–57 “nineteenth banana”–3 “twentieth banana”–53 “twenty-first banana”–3 “twenty-second banana”–0 You have to […]

posted 4 January 2010 in Tasty Bits. 4 comments