The Final Countdown

kim said is going dark for the next week+. In 24 hrs. I'm off to SF then Nevada, where I'll get to test my survival instincts and experience life as they did in ancient times (before the internet).

In advance of Women's Equality Day, Black Table's Lyn Harris wonders why single women aren't rocking the vote in this week's "Incoming."

Troublingly, though, we live in a time when -- word is -- single women are not so inspired to vote at all, which is truly strange considering the choice is between the new guy with the excellent wife and four more years of the Handmaid's Tale.
(Click then scroll down to Thursday for MORE...)

Don't Call It a Comeback

SF to host "world's largest electronic music festival," the Love Parade on October 2.

A Monday Mash-Up

Click on the pic to read this article about groundbreaking design for supermarket chains and other typically institutional-style buildings. (Guardian UK)


The NY Times reviews the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 'Bright Young Things' ("Social Butterflies Grounded by War," NYT)

The Latest Bush Quiz, "The Thirteenth Hundred Days" (New Yorker)

Curiosities and Amusements

L.A.'s Museum of Jurassic Technology reminds me of a Victorian scholar's study. Be sure to stumble up to the tea room on the second floor once your eyes have semi-adjusted to the darkness. The website is pretty fabulous, too.

Read the weather report in Latin. It's very 'Secret History.'

LA Weekly lists the best restaurants with female chefs. ("Women In the Kitchen," LA Weekly)

When is a Da Vinci not a Da Vinci?

A professor takes a crack at 'The Da Vinci Code,' etc. "...every fresco in 'Gladiator' does not in fact need to look as if it had gone through the eruption of Vesuvius..." (from the article "Pop Esoterica!" by Ingrid D. Rowland, The New Republic)

The Restoration romance Stage Beauty, starring Claire Danes, Billy Crudup, and Rupert Everett, opens on September 3. You can watch the trailer here.

An excellent idea: rewrite the Oxford English Dictionary in limerick verse. Read the current entries and submit your own (via Maud Newton).

Watch the trailer for director Wes Anderson's latest, The Life Aquatic which stars the usual suspects (Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Angelica Huston) plus the lovely Cate Blanchett and Willem Dafoe.

Joey, do you want to put the book in the freezer?

Paul Murray's Top 10 Gothic Novels (Guardian UK)

Book Report

Margaret Atwood ('Oryx and Crake', 'Handmaid's Tale') praises Pamuk's 'Snow,' calling it "Essential Reading for Our Times." (NYT)

A 'searingly honest' guide to reviewer-ese (telegraph.co.uk)

Stereogum has linkage to the new Postal Service video, which stars Josh Hartnett and features their remake of the 80's classic "Against All Odds" from the Wicker Park soundtrack.

Encounter, by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

The iTunes' free download today

is Simple Kid's Staring at the Sun.

Having Our Cake and Eating It Too

Sofia Coppola is set to write and direct a Marie Antionette film. Which reminds me, I really want to pitch "Versailles House" to the people who produced Colonial House. (Hollywood Reporter)

Happily Ever After?

Stephanie Zacharek analyzes the latest retellings of the Cinderella story in "Pretenders to the Throne." (Guardian)

Schooled by Jeff Spicoli?

Sleazy high school diploma scam: Check out these excerpts from a workbook used to teach immigrants. ("Can You Name the 53 States?" Smoking Gun)

Southern Gothic

I mentioned author Michelle Richmond in an earlier post and I wanted to write more about her, but I'm slammed right now at work. So, info on her fabulous short story collection is here and you can read my interview with her for the now extinct Fabula Magazine.

Really, I insist: You have to read this.

To Walt Whitman In Heaven
by Betsy Sholl

Things that look good and aren't: high fashion,
Manifest Destiny, limp wires the electrician thinks
are dead till he grabs hold and then, O Infinite--
coursing-through-finite--thank God his spastic dance

is only a shock--one yelp and he shakes
it off. Not so easy for the girl next door
feeling her first kiss begin to fester
as the young man's buddies drive by hooting (more.... Writer's Almanac)

"WHAT changes time's swift motion brings!"

Read the poem "On the Fate of Newspapers" by Isabella Lickbarrow. (Guardian UK)

Stereogum has an mp3 from the forthcoming Elliott Smith album From a Basement on the Hill.

Climb into Fiction Attic, Michelle Richmond's (The Girl in the Fallaway Dress, Dream of the Blue Room) online literary journal.

Movies that have "Don't Worry, Baby" by the Beach Boys in the soundtrack.
Bye Bye, Love (Paul Reiser, 1995)
Good Morning, Vietman (Robin Williams, 1987)
My Girl 2 (not the one with Macauley Culkin, 1994)
Never Been Kissed (elevates the big kiss scene at the end beyond mere cheesiness--and makes the movie worth watching multiple times, 1999)
Weird Science (1985)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez sells the rights for a film adaptation of Love In the Time of Cholera. (Guardian UK) .... Nicole Kidman/Jude Law rumors? I adore Jude, but there are many talented, passionate, and handsome actors of the Latin persuasion who should be considered.

Lost Woolf essay to be published next month. (BBC)

"So, getting back to that Metamorphosis story? It's made up, right?" Jordan Catalano

Looking for a solid recommendation from serious readers? Powells.com lists the top 20 selling books in their Oregon stores. This week's list includes one of my favorites--The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

Highlights from the "Age of Titian" exhibit in Edinburgh ("Venetian Blinders," Guardian UK)

"Shop Til We Drop" is an interesting analysis of the American urge to splurge. (The Wilson Quarterly via Arts and Letters Daily)

Take the McSweeney's quiz and find out if you're another Vietnam.

The "Meaning of Life"

Jeanette Winterson ponders the elusive search for it in her August column and also posts a new short story, "The White Room."

The latest issue of Boldtype is Live.

The Observer profiles Gael Garcia Bernal ("Mexican Rave," Guardian UK), who btw (in the grand tradition of Heath Ledger, Paul Bettany, and Richard Chamberlain) portrays a conflicted priest in El Crimen del Padre Amaro.

How wonderful to be reading an enjoyable, interesting blog and see one's very own blog mentioned. It really made my day. Thank you, Lauren at Cupcake Series.

Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews are fantastic in Brideshead Revisited ('81). The mini series is available from netflix.

The Da Vinci Code is boring. Instead, read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.

Nip/Tuck. The best night time soap EVER. And by ever, I mean since The OC went on hiatus.

Summer reading for the bookish set. (NY Metro)

The Pen Being Mighty

Jonathan Ames pens "a Wodehouse novel for the recovery era." (NYT)

The Guardian reviews Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk's nonfiction collection. (Guardian UK)

"Favorite Books about Elizabeth 1" (Guardian UK)

An illustrated version of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (from Harper's 1853)

It's like some sort of superhero or something

Ultragrrrl dissects the Donnie Darko soundtrack.