The Long and Winding Road

The Next in Line is embarrassed to admit a devotion to that wheezing behemoth, American Idol. Mostly, I watch the wrap-ups on YouTube. This season promises no realness queens like Fantasia, but don’t you suspect David Archuleta’s performance of “The Long and Winding Road” this week was inspired by the George Michael version below? Lots [...]

“I am I because my little dog knows me.”

An interesting experiment: to count how many times Gertrude Stein repeats the word I, then compare that tally to other poet-writers of the Twentieth-Century (not counting, of course, the “I” of traditional, novelistic dialogue). I suspect Stein’s self-fortifying I’s could populate a country as large as China, compared to, say, T.S. Eliot’s Lichtenstein-sized plot. (Eliot:”The [...]

Project Oneway

The opening look of Christian’s runway show.
The last few posts have been rather sour and heady, so I thought I’d throw out some candy.
I’m a total Project Runway addict — or “Pwoject Oneway” as I’ve started calling it for no apparent reason — despite not having cable TV. I watch it on the computer (don’t [...]

Funny Xanadu

I didn’t post about this earlier because I didn’t want to seem obsessed (self- or otherwise). But I did notice, following my commentary on Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn’s use of the word “skimmy,” that her most recent dispatch began with a meditation on language:
If fashion strikes people as a separate language, if not a [...]

Bloggeur, c’est moi

More blog doubt. From Lisa Robertson’s amazing poem XEclogue, written in 1999:
Roaring boy #3, rather than submitting to the trial of action, wants deeply to possess an opinion, then having possessed, to distribute it with maximum efficiency. Since the spectacle of luxury pleases him in others, he embarks on a gradual (to the point of [...]

Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’un blog?

For me, the blog is a writing prompt, a daily assignment to make my writerly self presentable. The thought that eyeballs might scour my language compels me to groom it, to keep my writing muscles pumped.
The blog form, as it is casually practiced, is a digest of consumption (look at this wacky YouTube video I [...]

This photo

is terrific, writes Richard.
Courtesy Laura Rauch for The New York Times.

Genius

A friend of The Next in Line declares that the blog needs “more LINDA.” I am pleased to oblige.
From Russia, a trove of important Evangelistiana.
As Bruce Hainley once wrote, “Looks are a kind of intelligence.”

Lustre

No time to post today, but I have to fling some hype at Lustre: A Midwinter Trans-Fest, which I saw last night at P.S. 122. I left floored. Justin Bond’s scrappy troupe is evidence that the anarchic, creative spirit can still survive (barely) in New York. Bond reminds us that interesting things happen on [...]

Skimmy

Cathy Horyn, by far my favorite Times writer, just posted about the aforementioned L’Wren Scott necklace on her Times blog, On the Runway. She also posts a great frontal shot of Kidman’s dress, where you get a gander at the neckline from the front. Does it evoke Madame X hedonism or Anouk Aimee hauteur? I [...]