Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious - Well Blog - NYTimes.com
I’m willing to test this theory.
We bought a vacuum. Its name is Jill. Seriously, on the side of the box in white cursive beneath the brand and model number is written, ‘Jill.’ Also, she’s hot pink.
Zadie Smith on the rise of the essay | Books | The Guardian
In a new book, David Shields argues for the rough, raw “truthiness” of the essay over fiction. But Smith finds that many of our classic novels can be ascribed the same qualities.
The same thing held for print music magazines, which didn’t come with “back” buttons: stuck on a bus with a copy of one, you’d be a lot more likely to read about the genres and bands you didn’t like. Not just out of boredom, but to have a better idea of what surrounded the stuff you did like — what other people were listening to, or the ways they talked about it, or just what kinds of sub-trends and mediocrities and bad ideas were floating around your preferred genre, and what interesting conclusions might be drawn from them.Not to mention that the way a reader’s eye travels around a page, and past pages that can be stopped at and browsed even if they weren’t the thing that the reader was turning pages to get to, results in an experience that’s very different than the point-and-click-a-headline method for selecting reading material online. That increased opportunity for serendipitous intake is crucial, especially since it allows people to find out about topics — whether they be cultural or political or both or something else entirely — that they wouldn’t necessarily make the effort to seek out on their own.
I’d argue that the Web allows for many “opportunit[ies] for serendipitous intake,” but you know, “intake” may be too generous a word. We’re not really taking it in online. We’re taking. That’s about it.
Still, I am happy to report that Tumblr in particular is doing something excellent for my reading comprehension skills.
It’s like an intellectual-emotional slumb(e)r party around here.
“…most of us will, for instance, read just as much about politicians we can’t vote for (or against) as we will for our actual representatives. Because, well: we want to know what’s going on. The same thing held for print music magazines, which didn’t come with “back” buttons: stuck on a bus with a copy of one, you’d be a lot more likely to read about the genres and bands you didn’t like. Not just out of boredom, but to have a better idea of what surrounded the stuff you did like — what other people were listening to, or the ways they talked about it, or just what kinds of sub-trends and mediocrities and bad ideas were floating around your preferred genre, and what interesting conclusions might be drawn from them.
All this is just an attempt to argue the obvious: that reading a couple interesting things about music you don’t want to hear can be useful and actually even fun. It can even, in the end, make you more efficient at figuring out what you do want to hear — you might wind up with a better perspective on the territory, rather than just a laser focus on acquiring things that are already to your tastes. You might wind up with better ideas and tools for thinking about stuff. Or, yes, maybe you’ll just read a review of something you don’t care for but browse away thinking “oh, that was an interesting idea in there about X.”
Are authentic alternative celebrities scaling back their internet presences?
Great commentary from Hipsterrunoff about the seemingly inane but probably ramificatory [sic] departure of Edward Droste, lead singer of Grizzly Bear, from Twitter.
The Streets - “It’s Too Late”
Original Pirate Material, 2002
I was all but born in London, but when I lived there I often felt anything but English. One of my first loves was a British fellow named Jack. We met at a summer job, and as these things go, our love faded with the season. I went to an American school that he knew of well because it stuck out like a sore thumb. He went to a very reputable boys’ school that I knew well because I almost went to the girls’ equivalent. (Instead, after sitting through grueling placement exam for U.K. secondary school, my family was shipped off to Cyprus. We returned to London when I was in eighth grade, but by then it was apparently too late to switch to the British school system.)
Jack and I used to take walks on Parliament Hill Fields, where Plath and Hughes used to hang out and where I occasionally set cross-country records but more often got schooled by British runners. Jack and I were affectionate but conversationally, we were forever missing each other. It was one of those young, self-conscious relationships where all you talk about is the relationship. We’d sit on a bench at the top of the field. It was always damp. Our hands were always cold. The colder it got the more dismal our chances looked. Looking down in silence on the playground, the track and the empty pool at the bottom of the fields, I’d look for words to help me ingratiate myself with him. While I might sound like a repressed British person, I was really just young. And most of the time all he wanted was a kiss.
But we both loved dancing. We’d go to Buzz Bar, one of few clubs that under-18s could get into with fake IDs, though it wasn’t entirely a club because it closed at 12. My best friend and I would smoke and drink apple-flavored vodka. Jack and my friend’s boyfriend would drink pints. We’d be dancing and singing along to Craig David or Artful Dodger. In that context, we were all British. But eventually, Jack went for some girl at the sister school I almost attended, and I went for a rising star of the basketball team. Jack’s school didn’t even have a basketball team.
When I came to the States for college, the culture shock was dreadful, all the more so because I was neither here nor there, just some waffling half-breed. Around this time, The Streets happened: a quintessential British artist that crossed the pond defiantly himself with apparent success. I’m not an enormous fan of his newer music but this track was comfort food to me when it first came out. Mike Skinner sometimes sounds like a caricature of a British person, or he must do to Americans. But to me, he’s just one of the guys we’d bump into at Buzz Bar who’d chant “Aaaayyyy” and clap if you attempted some bold dance move, then bum you a cigarette or two and probably try to take you home.
And the imagery and tension in the song reminds me of myself and Jack, who were either too young, or too afraid, to celebrate anything other than what we had in common (the radio).
The Pitchfork writers are no less concerned about the purgatory between 5.0 and a 7.9 than anyone else (at least I wasn’t). The number element is a big problem. It turns the whole thing into a record stock market. But what’s the solution?
Did Zach Braff Kill American Music? - Idea of the Day Blog - NYTimes.com
This is commenter #11 on this blog post about a PopMatters essay that got a lot of attention and comments a couple of weeks ago. It shuts down the whole discussion forever.
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - “40 Day Dream”
Wow. Just wow. Going to see these guys tomorrow at MHoW.
Such a rad pic, seemingly by a friend of the musician. Both appear to be teens who still don’t know how great they are, either as photogs or musicians.
So sweet. So THIS is what it’s like growing up with In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Decemberists, CYHSY!
Credit to Jason Gross for tweeting about these kids.
