It sounds cheesy, but I am renewed in spirit today. It's the first day of classes at my job/home/alma mater. In celebration, I'm giving props to the one of the best finds by Gizmodo in a while:




That, my friends, is a cooler capable of holding six bottles of Jagermeister (and other assorted beverages), as well as delivering shots of said liquor through a conveniently-placed spigot.

What I'm wondering is if the bottle fits into a bracket of some sort, or if the cooler could be brought to a location, filled with the shotting liquid of your choice(SoCO & Lime? Red-Headed Slut? Liquid Cocaine?), and dispensed accordingly.

For $120, I might be picking this up regardless.

(via Gizmodo)


More soon.

JS

Cathartic Mini-Symphonies

If you haven't checked it out already, last week Pitchfork counted down their Top 500 tracks of the 2000's and they did a really great job of compiling this list and making it so that you could listen to every track. I took the time to go through every track and wound up getting ten new albums out of it--bands I've known about, bands I didn't know about, and some that I finally took the plunge on after holding out for selfish reasons. Give the whole list as much of a read as you can, but here are the ten albums I picked up:

-Arcade Fire-Funeral
One of those bands I'd heard plenty about but never bothered to check out. I'm glad I did though.

-Girl Talk-Feed The Animals
-Girl Talk-Night Ripper
Girl Talk provides the true definition of what a mash-up should be. Check the Wikipedia page if you don't believe me. This stuff is mind-blowing.

-Mclusky-Mclusky Do Dallas
-Mclusky-The Difference Between Me And You Is That I'm Not On Fire
Besides having me from the get-go with these album titles, once I heard "To Hell With Good Intentions" on Mclusky Do Dallas, I was a believer. This is one of the best uses of Nirvana's influence I've ever heard, although Steve Albini is the producer, so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

-Deerhunter-Microcastle
Really great songwriting here--reminds me of a dense novel. Something I'll need to revisit over and over before I get the full picture.

-Explosions In The Sky-The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
This is an instrumental group from Texas. Any time a band refers to their songs as "cathartic mini-symphonies" I'm interested. And the definition is pretty spot-on. I'm listening to this as I write.

-Death Cab For Cutie-Transatlanticism
I know, I know. Send my late pass to my home address, if you will.

-Interpol-Turn On The Bright Lights
Another one of those bands that I knew of, heard of, but didn't bother to check out. Once again, so glad I did.

-Javelin-Jamz n Jemz
Crazy-ass DJ's from Brooklyn. Coming across their stuff is the challenge, but if you like ridiculous beats from scruffy-looking white guys, this is for you.

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Just a couple of other random thoughts:

-CNN has the POTUS's reading list for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard. That's a lot of fucking reading to do. He might be skimming.

-I couldn't be less interested in all this Where The Wild Things Are talk. But this is some sick fucking graffiti. Great use of the original illustrations.

-Daniel Johnston has a new album coming out and Pitchfork has a leaked track.


More soon.

JS

The Mixed Bag--The Blogging Equivalent of the Thursday Night Dinner When You Forgot To Go Food Shopping

Another day, another ridiculous amount of work to do. My goal is to do my big food porn post I've been planning for weeks now, which will be a bunch of shots of some really nice looking plates of grub. It'll be magical, and it'll be out later this week.

For now though, here's a bunch of links you should check out.

It's the mixed bag, people!

--

-Bill Simmons' new book, "The Book of Basketball," is out on 10/27.

-Tracklist for "The Blueprint 3" is out and the only interesting thing about it is the artwork.

-A New Yorker interview with soon to be ex-New York Times food critic Frank Bruni.

-If you needed a reason to join Twitter, depending on when you were born, this just might push you over the edge.

-At the Dodgers game last night, some woman butchered God Bless America. What makes it worse is that the players didn't even try and hide their reaction to the screeching.

-CC, besides being a monster starting pitcher, seems to do a lot of stuff for the community, which is always great to see. Not sure how I feel about a misspelled (purposely, to be fair) organizational name giving out school supplies to kids.

-Things like this shouldn't bother me, but they do. They really, really do.

-And then there's this. Kim Kardashian would have to do a lot for me not to think she was amazingly hot. This is definitely a good way to start.

-Looks like AT&T might actually be following through on their promise to make improvements to their network. Now if I only had MMS...

--

That's all for now, folks. I'm so busy, I've only looked at the clock three times today--9:15, 11:20, and just now, 12:52. Ridiculous.


More soon.

JS

Of All The Times To Start A Forest Fire

I know, I know. I've said this before:

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been busy.

But this time, I really have been. It's crazy season on campus and blogging during the day is literally not an option, and once I'm finally home, I'm doing everything in my power to finish my latest short story so I can get back on the Whitney wagon.

But I felt bad neglecting this spot, so without further pause, here's a bunch of links that I just took twenty minutes out of my day to read, and you should too:

-In light of yet another Favre waffle, here's a Bill Simmons article from '06 about a trip he and his buddies made to Lambeau.

-A major iPhone 3.0 e-mail/search bug will be fixed in 3.1.

-A donut ice cream sandwich? Sure, why not?

-Kerry Rhodes wrote a piece for Yahoo Sports about Twitter.

-Hugh Ryan has a new piece up on I'm From Driftwood. I've got more news about fellow Bennington-ers, but I don't know if I can put it out there yet. Stay tuned though, because it's big.

-Thinking about questioning the future of music? Depending on where you stand in the argument, this may be some powerful evidence.

-New Ghostface Killah is coming. Here's a sampler.

-Felt 3 is coming. With Aesop Rock producing. Here's the first leaked track.

--

Wish I had more time to spend. I'm that busy.


Beat the heat.

JS

When The Push Pays Off

As you may remember, I recently overcame my Online Literary Journal bias. I decided to throw myself into the 21st century writing game and get my name out there no matter the cost. I just needed to open my eyes to the possibility of mixing technology and writing, two of my biggest loves/obsessions.

Well, it looks like my initial push paid off.

I was informed yesterday that the September issue of Word Riot, which will be available on 9/15, will contain a piece of fiction by yours truly.

Yeah, I know--pretty fucking cool, right?

It's a short (very short) thing called "My Bike Shorts Are Not Yours, Or My Bulge." It's one of the initial Whitney-themed shorts that eventually became the basis for the novel I'm currently hard at work on. "Bike Shorts" was later worked into a separate and distinct chapter. This published version is slightly modified and was even edited again recently.

What's more of a bonus is that the recent edits will probably (definitely) make their way into the book version, so this was a acceptance and a first-class editing job, all at the same time.

So there you have it.

And if you don't know about Word Riot, I would really suggest giving it a look--even before you run over to it on 9/15.

Here's one super good piece (among many) by a close friend of Artificial Night, JR Angelella.

--

That's all for now--super busy at work and I'm going hard on a new short story (entitled Sid Vicious) and a new chapter of Whitney (some Whitney back story) at the same time.


Keep pushing.

JS

One Needs Only A Cast-Iron Skillet To Survive

Another Sunday Review, another poem intro:

Jet
by Tony Hoagland

Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.

--

And now for this week's Sunday Review:

--

-via The New York Times: If you were wondering why tomatoes have been more expensive than usual this summer, Dan Barber might have the explanation. Articles like this are always fascinating to me because they highlight just how little we know about science/the universe/life/our planet. They highlight, despite what we may say or do, just how little control we have.

-via The New York Times: Kurt Andersen takes a look at just how much the idea of "pop culture" has evolved since 1960, and how President Obama may have the biggest effect of all on it.

-via The New York Times: While I don't really consider myself much of a fan of 80's pop culture (see how I did that?), I can respect the impact of John Hughes and what his passing means to some and to the film world at large. A.O. Scott is one of my favorite film critics, and he gives Mr. Hughes his due in this piece.

-via The New York Times: This is a great piece by Jhumpa Lahiri about some realizations she came to about life and food while on vacation on Cape Cod. My favorite sentence in the piece (and probably of the day) is this:

One needs only a cast-iron skillet to survive.

-via The New York Times: The stories of atrocities taking place half a world away in either direction have almost become so commonplace that they fail to inspire any real dialogue or change. But that doesn't mean we should stop telling them. Jeffrey Gettleman is the author of this piece, and in it he brings to light a topic that I, for one, had heard nothing about up until now--the ever-increasing popularity of male-rape in the Congo. It's another tactic in a long line of atrocities used by revolutionary forces to embarrass and submit the population. Sometimes I wonder what's worse--to have these acts committed against you, or to live somewhere that doesn't attract the global attention needed to help stop the people responsible.

-via The New York Times: In this piece, George Vecsey hearkens back to the days of the Thurman Munson/Carlton Fisk rivalry, and explains why Jorge Posada and Jason Varitek are unlikely to ever get caught up in the same type of bad blood.

-via CNN: I saw this and immediately thought of my friend Ryan, who will one day win a Pulitzer for writing about pickles. You heard it here first.

-via CNN: Every day, the urge to jailbreak my iPhone grows inside of me. This article didn't help matters.

-via Gizmodo: If you're like me, and you loved Iron Man, be sure to watch this five minutes of footage from IM2 that leaked after its showing at Comic Con.

-via ESPN: As of late, any time an MLB-related scandal or story breaks, I find myself checking in first with Howard Bryant to get his take. This piece is about this week's David Ortiz/Josh Hamilton revelations, and as usual, they're fair and insightful. One day ESPN will make a next generation lineup for Sports Reporters. I can only hope Bryant gets one of the seats.

-via Lifehacker: This is Lifehacker's list of the five best video players. I'm a VLC guy, myself.

-via Boy Genius Report: I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited about these iTunes 9 rumors, especially the long-awaited visual organization of iPhone/iPod Touch apps. September is shaping up to be a pretty big month for Apple fans.

--

That's all she wrote, folks. This day has been/will be spent hanging out with Bukowski, putting ointment in his eye, reading Updike, working on my latest short story, watching some DVD's I've yet to touch since purchasing them what feels like years ago, and hopefully going to sleep with the Yankees in first by 6.5 games, fresh off a four game sweep of the Sox.

In other words, just your average Sunday.

More soon.

JS

Trailers, Trailers, Trailers

There's a couple (or three) great trailers for upcoming new TV show seasons floating around, and I'm getting tired of looking them up on YouTube/Twitter, so I figured for my sanity and yours, I'd just compile them all here.

-First up, Top Chef Season 6:

Unfortunately, TV.com seems to be the only spot that has this, and for some unknown reason, they won't let me embed the video. Part of me wants to say, "Fuck them," and not give them the traffic, but the clip is too good--looks like Top Chef might be back and ready to rebound from the "Jax Fish House" experiment. And putting it in Las Vegas is smart. It's the new American culinary hot spot, which means lots of great guest judges, and think of all the gambling-themed challenges they'll dream up. And could Jen Z. be any hotter? Anyway, here's the clip.

-Next is Season 2 of Fantasy Factory:



This isn't great television. It's not even as good as Rob & Big was. But there's just something about watching a grown-man act 100% the way most of us, at 16 or 17, said we'd act if we had money when we became an adult. And I'm taking copious notes now so when the E True Hollywood Story of Rob Dyrdek premieres, I won't be caught off-guard.

-Last is Season 2 of Nitro Circus:



I don't even watch Nitro Circus. I just think this trailer is amazing. My two favorite parts? Knoxville's laugh at the 1:11 mark and Bam Margera's answer to the question, "You scared?" at the 1:20 mark. Good song too. I think that's the song I want playing when Danielle and I make our entrance at the wedding reception.


More soon.

JS

Walking Down A Revolutionary Road

What is it about the future that people are so scared of?

Is it because as things change and evolve and eventually end, our mortality comes into focus? Is it the fear of being left behind? Is it the fear of having to become part of a new modus operandi?

Whatever it is, there's no shortage of commentators willing to pontificate on just how evil the future is and how great things "used to be." Things were simpler. Better. Rosier. Of course, pointing out just how shitty and unhappy people were at the time does nothing to decrease the mouth-foaming and boot-stomping.

Yesterday was always the better day--and to prove it, detractors employ a two-part ideology. First, they purposefully underestimate the importance of the innovation by using guarded language--they call it "up and coming," "still developing," "unproven," and so on. Second, they pluck the heart strings of the reader by wistfully referring to what we're giving up by moving ahead with the innovation, and in the process, they completely ignore the positives of what we have now. An example:

Digital music certainly is making some noise as an up and coming trend, but I tell you, I miss the days of buying a nice LP at Tower Records.

Never mind the fact that digital format music--besides already being the norm--is cheap, efficient, readily available, easy to store, and easy to transport, and records were wasteful, easily destroyed, cumbersome, and less cost-efficient. No, no. Ignore that.

The good 'ol days, people.

The good 'ol days.

--

It's that mindset that Richard Corliss brings to his recent TIME article, "Why Netflix Stinks: A Critic's Complaint."

I won't get into his specific points, although this Gizmodo post does, and I agree with the responses, but there's a couple of bigger issues for me that I need to address.

First:

No question, Netflix serves a need.

Here we see the first strike in the technophobes arsenal. A need? Is that what we're calling it? I'll use statistics that Corliss himself provided to answer this one:

Since its start in 1999, [Netflix] has sent more than 2 billion discs to its 10.6 million subscribers.

Sorry, Richard, but 10.6 million subscribers is more than a need. It's 3% of the population, and that's not even taking into account the fact that only 8 out of every 10 own a DVD player.

And the 2 billion discs shipped averages out to 188 per subscriber, which proves this isn't some fad--it's an integrated life choice.

Second:

A Netflix ad has one contented couple purring, "We don't miss the video store at all." Well, I do. Specifically, I miss Kim's Video, a lower-Manhattan movie-rental landmark that housed 55,000 DVDs and cassettes of the vastest and most eccentric variety — until it closed early this year and shipped the whole stash to Sicily.

Like clockwork, there it is--strike two. Poor Kim's Video (that you'd have to actually go to to rent the movie and then return to to bring the movie back and potentially pay a late fee if your schedule didn't allow for two trips). 55,000 DVDs and cassettes (Yeah, sorry. Netflix has 100,000). In lower-Manhattan (this sweetens the deal how?). A movie-rental landmark (to who?). Of the vastest and most--is vastest even a word?

You get my point. I don't want to come off sounding like some cold-hearted the future is now type of Gen Whatever. I understand the sadness that Mr. Corliss is expressing--for that past, for how things used to be, for how the world is a rapidly changing place that will leave you behind if you're not prepared to try and keep up.

What I don't get is how that can be passed off as knock against what the future has to offer--in this case, Netflix.

--

And with that, I'm off to check the mail.

Whatever's next in my queue came today--I think it's "Revolutionary Road."


More soon.

JS

Looking Around, Believing

Not much to the intro of this week's edition of The Sunday Review besides this poem by Gary Soto:

Looking Around, Believing

How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind — white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We're keeping busy —
This way, that way, we're making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.

--

-via The Washington Post: Bill Simmons tweeted about this article this morning and as someone who is guilty (in some ways) of the blogging style that Ian Shapira rips on, I'm making an effort not only to cite everyone from here on out (which I'm pretty sure that I already do), but to start doing more to make sure that my readers are actually reading the articles I post about. So yeah, read them.

-via The New York Times: Really interesting Bits piece by Jenna Wortham about how the Jay-Z song "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)" may have actually helped to increase sales of the program.

-via The New York Times: Another Bits piece also by Jenna Wortham regarding the Track Your Happiness app, designed by Matt Killingsworth, which will be used as part of an experiment to find out what people need to do/experience in order to consider themselves happy.

-via The New York Times: This is an Opinion piece by Maureen Dowd--a food-themed Q&A with Nora Ephron. And I'll admit, I've never read anything by Nora Ephron, but up until now, I've harbored an intense dislike of her for some reason. Luckily, her answers (to, at times, just plain stupid questions) finally gave me some concrete backup.

-via The New York Times: This is a write-up, by Andy Isaacson, of the sixth-annual Sahara International Film Festival. And I'm sure you're wondering: why is this important? Because the Sahara International Film Festival (claims to be) the world's only film festival held in a refugee camp.

-via The New York Times: This is the cover story of this week's Sunday Magazine, and it's a doozy by Michael Pollan. It's called "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch," and it covers, in close detail, the transformation that food television has undergone since Julia Child first invaded American homes in 1963 via her show "The French Chef." And I'm aware that this piece was published today due to the campy-looking Julia Child movie, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, that's out right now, but I implore you to take the time to read this piece (possibly even as a replacement for the movie), and then promptly go into your kitchen and screw up some recipes.

-via Mac Rumors (and about 100 other spots): Amazon is now taking pre-orders for OS X 10.6, better known as Snow Leopard, in all it's various forms. There's no specific date given besides "September."

-via Off The Broiler: If you don't read Jason Perlow's blog, you're missing out. It's a great mix of food and technology, and even if you're not interested in stopping by for the technology side of things, his coverage of restaurants in the tri-state area is really well done. He's a good photographer of food and an every-man to boot, and his coverage of Frank Pepe Pizzeria in New Haven highlights both.

-via The New York Times: Oh, the plight of (Artifically) Big Papi. Just when I thought big-name players being outed as PED users had finally become common enough, so as not to raise our blood pressure too high, Red Sox Nation proves that as usual, it is behind the collective curve. And apologies to you New Englanders--just when you thought The Curse had been lifted, you find out that, due to the actions of Big Papoid and Manny Being Manny While Doing Steroids, the two titles you won are actually just as pimply and tainted as the players who won them. And don't give me that the Yankees had PED users on their Championship squads. Because while this may be the case, at no point did that group EVER include the combination of Ortiz and Manny, quite possibly the most feared 3-4 combination in the last 25 years of the sport (and now we know why). I'll be waiting for the first "You took steroids" chants in Fenway, but I know that since the confines are cramped with hypocrites, if they do come, they will only be leveled at the opposition. Remember--when you point a finger, you've got three pointing back at yourself, motherfuckers.

-via ESPN: Ashley Fiolek, an 18-year-old motocross racer, took first place in Women's Moto X Super X yesterday at the X Games. Why is this important? She's been deaf since birth.

-via Michael Ruhlman: I've blogged in the past about the documentary "Food Inc.," and now Michael Ruhlman has seen it and written a passionate blog post about it.

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That's all for this Sunday, folks. Melky just hit for the cycle (which is a somewhat vacant accomplishment when you take a step back), Danielle is asleep, and I've got work in the morning. Time to go enjoy the rest of this Sunday, since it seems to have finally stopped raining. Hope yours is as good as mine.


More soon.

JS