The Problem with Unity

Paul Krugman, in his latest op-ed column, offers up a rational but untenable solution to the Democratic primary impasse: that Obama should select Clinton as his running mate. Krugman’s proposal isn’t itself convincing. Clinton would bring all her negative baggage to the ticket without, it seems, offering any substantial lift. But the basis of Krugman’s [...]

Like a Prayer

Final Thoughts

Did you watch American Idol last night? I’m sorry. I feel your pain. Michael K at Dlisted feels it more.

How do you write Florent?

In the NYTimes today, a sweet oral history of the soon-to-be-shuttered restaurant Florent, in New York City’s Meatpacking district.
Roy [Lichtenstein] always got exactly the same seat in the back of the restaurant because he came every day, and he brought all the people who worked for him: the studio assistant, the secretary. We thought, after [...]

Idol Hands

In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes suggests that what makes us develop sentimental and erotic attachments to certain photographs is not so much the photograph’s studium — the subject of which the photograph speaks– but the punctum, a mysteriously compelling, often “ill-bred” detail. The punctum “pricks” us with accidental poignance.
Barthes, meet Idol. The Idol finalé of [...]

Figure/Ground

Moma always turns out beautiful websites tied to their exhibitions. What I like about the pop-up site for their Design and the Elastic Mind show is how they manage to balance extreme function and extreme fancy — to the point where the functional information (all that block text) becomes more like a background pattern, while [...]

Reds

Holy moley. While I was hunkered down in Film Forum, trying to decipher revolutionary musings in Godard’s La Chinoise (wannabe Maoists), firebrand Fantasia Barrino (AI’s prodigal daughter, now hennaed and back for a guest spot) was throwing dynamite across the American Idol stage. RedLasso, a Tivo and YouTube mash-up, to the rescue. Somewhere Adorno is [...]

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008

“Rauschenberg says, ‘I called them Combines because people kept objecting— if you said they were paintings, they said they were sculpture; if you said they they were sculpture, they said they were three-dimensional collage: well, this was getting dull, so I called them Combines.’ It suits; and one thing they never are is dull.”*

* James [...]

Suffer no fools

From an interview with Erykah Badu, in the May 2008 Interview:
Evelyn McDonnell: You’re very into eating healthy, so I’m curious: Was the song “Honey” on New Amerykah inspired by honey’s medicinal properties.
Erykah Badu: No. Honey isn’t really that good for you.

Shoes!

Tilda Swinton’s date to the Met’s Costume-Institute-gala-whatever was . . . Justin Bond.

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