It’s my three-year anniversary at Big Other, and I’m feeling nostalgic, so I thought I’d repost this guide that I made a while back for the 266 articles that I’ve posted here. It’s organized by subject, with a minimum of cross-indexing. Also, I’ve bolded what I believe to be my best posts.
Thank you for reading!
A D & Jeremy Talk about Movies:
- #0: Announcing a New Big Other Series: “A D & Jeremy Talk about Movies” — this announced the following posts, a series where I, uh, talked about films with Jeremy M. Davies
- #1: Source Code, Friends, Woody Allen, The Man from London, Sucker Punch, Zardoz, Tron, Willow, and Shoot ‘Em Up
- #2: Source Code, Moon, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
- #3: Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, all films Kenneth Branagh, Sleuth, Joseph Mankiewicz, Thor, and superhero movies (every one)
- #4: Midnight in Paris (and other recent Woody Allens)
- #5: Extra: Ranking Woody Allen
- #6: The Tree of Life
- #7: Extra: Linda’s Voice-Over Narration in Days of Heaven
- #8: X-Men: First Class
Other Cinema:
- A Review of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford — what it says
- A Review of the Relatively New Movie Dogtooth (Kynodontas) — what it says
- Art as Device, and Device (When It Works) as Miracle (or, The Princess Bride vs. Inception) — applying Viktor Shklovsky’s seminal 1920s essay “Art as Device” to genre filmmaking, this also continues my criticism of Inception (see below)
- Arthur Penn’s Night Moves — a tribute to that late director, by way of celebrating his 1975 critique of the detective movie (and one of my favorite films)
- Azazel with tail X-Men First Class — speculation as to where Azazel came from, and what he’s up to
- Barbara Loden & Yoko Ono (& John Lennon & Mike Douglas) — a link to a video clip of the four discussing Barbara Loden’s masterpiece Wanda (1970), plus a performance of the Plastic Ono Band
- Billy Wilder on “The Lubitsch Touch” — Wilder teaches us one of Lubitsch’s lessons in cinematic narrative
- Brevity, part 2: Long Takes — a look at long takes in film
- Brevity, part 3: Long Takes, ctd. (well, they’re long) — more long takes
- Brevity, part 5: Roundhay Garden Scene — some thoughts about the oldest film known (1890)
- Brevity, part 6: Roundhay Garden Scene, ctd. (well, it’s short)
- Brevity, part 7: Slow Motion — a look at slow motion in film
- Brevity, part 8: Long Titles — intrigued by a trend toward long titles I thought I saw around me, I gathered together a list of the longest movie, album, and book titles I could find
- B.S. Johnson’s Final Film: Fat Man on a Beach — a link to that full film, at YouTube
- David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Georgia Coffee Ads — links to all four of the commercials, which form a short narrative
- Do you want to watch a movie that brims with plot twists and turns, where seemingly anything can happen, as characters explore spectacular and colorful sets, planting new ideas in one another’s heads, the whole charade serving perhaps as a metaphor of the cinema as an engine for limitless dreaming? —my initial (and very brief) criticism of Inception
- DIY Geek Cinema — a call for greater critical consideration of fan-made films
- Features — a link to the “Features” section of this blog, where I’ve been embedding feature-length films that are up at YouTube
- From “Doom House” to “Mood House”: How Simple Aesthetic Strategies Can Create Experimental Films: Part 1 | Part 2 — an analysis of the short films “Doom House” and its more experimental successor, “Mood House”
- From Fellini to Obama? — “Am I wrong to say that our culture is insincere, fragmented, juvenile, shallow, ironic, sexist, violent, spectacular?”
- Hail the New Puritan — a look at this experimental dance film directed by Charles Atlas, starring Michael Clark and with music by The Fall
- How Many Cinemas Are There? — an argument that cinema includes more media than is commonly acknowledged; see also its counterpart, Why Do You Need So Many Cinemas?
- In Memory of Maria Schneider — a remembrance of this great actress, who starred in two of my all-time favorite films, Last Tango in Paris (1972) and The Passenger (1975)
- In Memory of Raúl Ruiz — a guest post by Jeremy M. Davies in honor of that great Chilean/European director
- In Memory of William Lubtchansky —a remembrance of the great cinematographer who worked with Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, others
- …It’s Time to Mystify (13 Great Films) — a response (intended more as an addition) to a post by Greg Gerke, about top 10 film lists
- Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies Man: The Dollhouse and the Forbidden Room — a look at some of the spaces in this underrated masterpiece
- Lifeforce—or, Mary Poppins Is a Naked Space Vampire — a reading of that curious 1980s film
- Mark Rappaport’s Blind Dates — a brief look at a photo installation by a masterful filmmaker
- More on Inception: Shot Economy and 1 + 1 = 1 — continuing my critique of Nolan’s movie
- My Favorite New Movies: 2009 | 2010 — I also discuss not-so-favorite new movies
- Samuel Beckett’s Eh Joe – a link to that short film (Beckett’s first work for television), at YouTube
- Schrödinger’s Laura — a reading of Otto Preminger’s noir classic Laura
- Scott Pilgrim vs. Inception for the Future of the Cinematic Imagination — continuing my critique of Nolan’s movie, in contrast with Edgar Wright’s masterful direction of Scott Pilgrim
- Seventeen Ways of Criticizing Inception — a criticism not only of Christopher Nolan’s movie, but of several dominant trends in contemporary Hollywood
- Some Thoughts on Agnès Varda’s “Vagabond” — a structural reading of what on some days is my favorite 1980s film
- “The 20 Greatest Liquid Television Segments” — a list from another site; I linked to it mainly because I was struck by the very dated aesthetic of the works discussed there (as well as by the reminder that MTV once showed exceptional experimental short films)
- The 1970s vs. the 2000s (in Hollywood film, at least) — a comparison of the top-grossing films (box office) of those two decades
- There Will Be 2001 — a reading of There Will Be Blood by way of 2001
- Tom Carvel, Outsider Video Artist — a look at some experimental commercials
- Two-Lane Blacktop — a look at the multi-genre structure of this great early ’70s film
- What, Robert Breer died? Internet, you’re supposed to tell me these things! — a brief tribute to that experimental animator
- What’s So New about New Wave? — a look at how the name of the French New Wave became the name of New Wave music
- “Whose world is this? / The world is yours”—A Requited Journal Film Screening — an announcement
- Why Do You Need So Many Cinemas? — a defense of my argument that cinema should include more media than is commonly (made in How Many Cinemas Are There?)
- YouTube Delivers People — a cute update on Carlotta Fay Schoolman and Richard Serra’s classic
Feature Friday—i.e., feature-length films that I embedded at the site for your enjoyment merriment:
- Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
- Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
- Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964)
- Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
- Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969)
- Eden and After (1970)
- A New Leaf (1971) | related: “A New Leaf” is finally getting a DVD release
- Little Murders (1971)
- The Devils (1971)
- Sleuth (1972)
- The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
- Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
- Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
- Dark Star (1974)
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
- Epileptic Seizure Comparison (1976)
- Je, tu, il, elle (1976)
- Mikey and Nicky (1976)
- Providence (1977)
- Sans soleil (1983)
- The Keep (1983)
- Stop Making Sense (1984)
- Lifeforce (1985)
- Vagabond (1985)
- Swans: A Long Slow Screw (1986)
- Withnail & I (1986)
- Richard Feynman, The Last Journey of a Genius (aka The Quest for Tannu Tuva) (1988)
- Anima Mundi (1992)
- The Baby of Mâcon (1993)
- Wittgenstein (1993)
- Love Letter (1995)
- Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1998)
- Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998)
- Mostly Martha (2001)
- Marooned in Iraq (2002)
- The Room (2003)
- Syndromes and a Century (2006)
Literature:
- ABR reviewed Big Other — “ABR” being American Book Review
- ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN — fondly revisiting one of Steve Katz’s mythologies
- Alternative Values in Small-Press Culture — an argument that the “dominant values” of celebrity, youth, and money (in US culture and small-press culture) should be replaced with community, health, and support
- An Interview with Paul Maliszewski — a link to a group interview I contributed to (Molly Gaudry, too)
- An Interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 — a lengthy interview with the author of the brilliant Three Blondes and Death (1993) (among many other great works)
- Announcing the Summer 2011 Issue of Requited — featuring essays by Viktor Shklovsky, Mark Rappaport, and Steve Katz, plus much more
- A Pan-English Dictionary (for readers of Harry Mathews’s The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium) — collecting all of the invented words in that book, plus a stab at translating a section toward the end of it
- A Paragraph about a Paragraph I Love (Yuriy Tarnawsky’s Three Blondes and Death) — the chapter “Why Is Water So Beautiful?” from the fourth part of that novel
- Azazel with tail X-Men First Class — speculation as to where Azazel came from, and what he’s up to
- Big Other’s 50 Pillars, compiled — a meta-list of the (big) other 50 Pillars lists
- Brevity, part 1: The Malady of Death — how short can the novel get?
- Brevity, Part 4: Journal Titles — a list of every journal title I could find at the time, arranged from longest to shortest
- Brevity, part 8: Long Titles — intrigued by a trend toward long titles I thought I saw around me, I gathered together a list of the longest movie, album, and book titles I could find
- B.S. Johnson’s Final Film: Fat Man on a Beach — a link to that full film, at YouTube
- Eliot’s Nocturnal Hackery (or, Moriarty in a Catsuit) — my first post at Big Other, this is a brief reading of how Sherlock Holmes influenced T.S. Eliot
- Experimental Fiction as Genre and as Principle — pitting experimentation as an established historical genre vs. experimentation as innovative principle
- Group Reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel — a link to a reading group for that novel, led by Scott Esposito, over at Conversational Reading
- How Do You Pronounce That Writer’s Name? — Barthelme, Lethem, Nabokov, Jelinek, more
- It’s beastly, having a Coke with you | It’s mad, too — Frank O’Hara in popular culture
- I am now the nonfiction and reviews editor at the online journal Requited. — it’s true, I am
- Loving David Markson — a remembrance of that late writer, author of the brilliant Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) (among other great works)
- My First Book, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Is Now Available — an announcement
- My Four Favorite New Books of 2009, #1: Mercè Rodoreda’s Death in Spring
- My Four Favorite New Books of 2009, #2: Ulrich Haarbürste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm
- My Four Favorite New Books of 2009, #3: Tracy Daugherty’s Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme
- My Four Favorite New Books of 2009: #4: Jeremy M. Davies’s Rose Alley
- My Four Favorite New Books of 2009, part 5: Other New Books That I Enjoyed in 2009
- Poetry vs. Pop Culture (or, Does Anyone Dance to John Berryman?) — an argument that poetry and the popular culture are not as separate as many people think
- Postmodernist Identity, part 1: IPCRESS, Bond, Austin Powers, and G.I. Joe — a consideration of how those different spy franchises have addressed the postmodernist erasure of the coherent self
- Reading Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds: A Primer — some basic information that might help anyone reading that book (something I strongly encourage)
- Reading Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 — a close reading of Miller’s groundbreaking 1980s graphic novel
- Requited Prerelease — announcing a sound-art event in advance of Requited Journal #6
- Samuel Beckett’s Eh Joe – a link to that short film (Beckett’s first work for television), at YouTube
- Spoken Word Artist Peter Wyngarde — an appreciation of that actor’s unjustly forgotten 1970 album When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head, as well as his performance as General Klytus in Flash Gordon and how he helped inspired the X-Men‘s Hellfire Club
- The Barthelme Problem — a criticism of the tendency in small press/academic literature to overvalue complicated, highly stylized prose
- The cover of Roxane Gay’s Ayiti reminds me of the opening credits for Panic Room — a side-by-side comparison, plus other related works
- The Special Relationship #1 | #2 | #3 — guest posts by Jarred McGinnis, these are reports from a reading and performance series he’s helped organize in London
- This is the book I’m most looking forward to this year — Dalkey Archive’s reprinting of the libretto of Robert Ashley’s opera-for-television Perfect Lives
- Tiny Shocks Revisited (A Continuing Criticism of James Wood’s How Fiction Works) — a response to a criticism of my own criticism
- Tiny Shocks: Uncovering the Reductive Plot of James Wood’s How Fiction Works — I reject Wood’s book’s central argument, and reveal several factual errors he makes
- Uncover Your Tracks: A Preliminary Critique of James Wood’s How Fiction Works — my initial disagreements with Wood’s argument, which for good and ill I wrote before reading his book
- Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work! — a look at some advice that the brilliant comics artist Wally Wood gave other artists, and an attempt to translate that advice to prose writing (which is something I should return to)
- What I learned from Travesty — my take on John Hawkes’s brilliant novel
- What’s So New about the New Sentence? — an investigation into what, if anything, was innovative about one of the essential artistic strategies of Language Poetry
- Why Do We Have Readings? (A Polemic) — a criticism of a persistent phenomenon in the literary culture, in which MFA programs, slam poets, and performance poetry scenes essentially ignore one another, each one claiming to be “the contemporary poetry scene”
- Why Genre Will Prevail, in Peace and Freedom from Fear, and in True Health, through the Purity and Essence of Its Natural Fluids, God Bless You All — a look at genre-hybridity in The Lord of the Rings, and how the orcs learned their military strategy from reading Paradise Lost
- Wittgenstein’s Mistress: An Index — my hope is that this will aid scholarship done on that novel; it also serves as a catalog of Markson’s tremendous erudition
Writing about My Own Writing:
- A Guide to My Writing Here at Big Other — c’mon, I studied with metatextualists
- Amazing Adult Fantasy Release Part & Reading — announcing a reading with Halle Butler, Jeremy M. Davies, Amanda Marbais, and myself
- An Interview with Me at Untoward — a link to Matt Rowan’s interview with me about Amazing Adult Fantasy and Giant Slugs
- Announcing My First Book, Amazing Adult Fantasy — what it says, including links to the publisher and excerpts that are online
- Announcing My First Novel, Giant Slugs — what this, too, says, including links to the publisher and excerpts that are online
- Autocritique — a criticism of my writing here at Big Other
- A Summary of Everything I’ve Written at Big Other — by way of Roman Jakobson
- My First Book, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Is Now Available — an announcement, including ordering information
- My First Novel, Giant Slugs, Is Now Available — another announcement, also including ordering information
Incidentally, if my fiction interests you (or if even the thought of it intrigues you), please check out my personal website, where you’ll find links to my publishers and the stories I’ve published online.
Music and Dance:
- 2010, the Year of the Death of Big Star — a remembrance of that great early 70s power-pop band
- “A Gesture towards Perfection”: Announcing a Full Performance of Robert Ashley’s “Perfect Lives” in Brooklyn — announcing that performance
- Barbara Loden & Yoko Ono (& John Lennon & Mike Douglas) — a link to a video clip of the four discussing Barbara Loden’s masterpiece Wanda (1970), plus a performance of the Plastic Ono Band
- Brevity, part 8: Long Titles — intrigued by a trend toward long titles I thought I saw around me, I gathered together a list of the longest movie, album, and book titles I could find
- Cains and Abels — a link to one of their videos
- Exploring John Cage’s 4’33” — looking at a variety of performances of that classic experimental sound piece
- Gloomy Sunday — a look at different versions of the “Hungarian Suicide Song”
- Hail the New Puritan — a look at Charles Atlas’s mid-80s film, a punk-ballet performance choreographed by Michael Clark, designed by Leigh Bowery, and scored by The Fall
- In Memory of Ari Up — a remembrance of the late lead singer of The Slits
- In Memory of Don Van Vliet, AKA Captain Beefheart — a remembrance of that indefinable and influential musician
- In Memory of Kazuo Ohno — a tribute to the late co-founder of Butoh (a form of contemporary experimental Japanese dance)
- In Memory of Gil Scott-Heron — a tribute to the late poet and hip hop pioneer
- (Keep Feeling) Stephin Merritt — speculation as to how Human League might have inspired the Magnetic Fields
- Looking at Movements, part 1: The Post-Punk Revival — a look at what artists influenced contemporary bands such as Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Killers, and The Strokes
- Looking at Movements, part 2: Post-Punk — what aesthetic principles united Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, Gang of Four, The Raincoats, X-Ray Specs, Wire, Magazine, Pere Ubu, Kleenex (LiLiPUT), Public Image Ltd., The Fall, The Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen, and others?
- Looking at Movements, part 3: No Wave — what aesthetic principles united DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions, Mars, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Bush Tetras, and others?
- Looking at Movements, part 4: New Wave (UK) — what aesthetic principles united The Stranglers, The Jam, The Boomtown Rats, XTC, The Police, The Only Ones, Elvis Costello, and others?
- Looking at Movements, part 5: New Wave (US) — what aesthetic principles united Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, Mink DeVille, Devo, Oingo Boingo, The Cars, The B-52’s, and Klaus Nomi?
- Merry Waitresses — spreading holiday cheer
- My Favorite New Band, Moriarty — an attempt to introduce this wonderful French band to a wider audience
- Notes on Twee, part 1: Music Videos as School Plays — a look at a recurring motif in music videos over the past fifteen years
- Notes on Twee, part 2: The Crash Test Dummies (Those Avant-Garde Harbingers of Mainstream Superheroes, School Plays, and the Willful Embrace of Nostalgia) — a consideration of that band’s avant-garde nature, as well a discussion of how Twee lost its subversiveness and became mainstream
- Oh Death, Up Yours! (R.I.P. Poly Styrene) — a remembrance of the lead singer of seminal punk band X-Ray Spex
- Requited Prerelease — announcing a sound-art event in advance of Requited Journal #6
- R.I.P. Trish Keenan (of Broadcast) — a remembrance; I don’t know her work too well, but I’m rather fond of Broadcast’s third album, and was very sad to hear of her untimely death
- Spoken Word Artist Peter Wyngarde — an appreciation of that actor’s unjustly forgotten 1970 album When Sex Leers Its Inquisitive Head, as well as his performance as General Klytus in Flash Gordon and how he helped inspired the X-Men‘s Hellfire Club
- The Gary Wilson / John Cage / David Tudor Axis — uncovering a link between Cage/Tudor and Wilson
- The Multifaceted Mike Batt — a career survey of this protean English musician
- The Smiths Songs You May Be Missing — Part 1: The Smiths | Part 2: Meat Is Murder | Part 3: Strangeways, Here We Come | Part 4: Hatful of Hollow | Part 5: Miscellaneous Uncollected | Part 6: Charting It All — looking for deep cuts on less listened-to Smiths albums
- Throw Your Hands in the Air (The Dionysian Impulse) (or, Major Lazer vs. Beach House at the 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival) — rereading Nietzsche’s Apollonian/Dionysian split through different bands at the Pitchfork Music Festival
- What’s So New about New Wave? — a look at how the name of the French New Wave became the name of New Wave music
Innovation, Form, and Progress in the Arts (Theory):
- Art as Device, and Device (When It Works) as Miracle (or, The Princess Bride vs. Inception) — this continues my criticism of Inception: “The challenge confronting the artist is how to reinvigorate what so many others have already done.”
- Art as Experience — an argument that art is a way of experiencing the world—that it is an attitude or approach, and not an object or objects
- Art as Inheritance, part 1: That Lingering Smile — a look at how a short story by Victor Hugo influenced German Expressionism, Batman, Mark Twain, Donald Barthelme, J.D. Salinger, William Castle, and others
- Art as Inheritance, part 2: Making New Art Appear as Old Text Disappears (as if by Magic!) — tracing the principle of décollage over the past 100 years
- Art as Inheritance, part 3: Reverse Chronology — a list of works that use that narrative strategy, and some conclusions about them
- Artistic Surface | Artistic Depth — can art be superficial?
- Art’s Morality (A Reading of William H. Gass’s “The Artist and Society”) — a look at how a noted formalist defines the concept
- Can Video Games Be Art? — I try to answer that current debate
- David Foster Wallace, on Television, on Television as the Dominant — reading a claim by DFW through Roman Jakobson’s classic 1930s essay “The Dominant”
- Experimental Fiction as Genre and as Principle — pitting experimentation as an established historical genre vs. experimentation as innovative principle
- Innovation in Art — what is it?
- Innovation’s Altar (or, what’s So New about Innovation?) — I continue my argument that innovation is not the same thing as invention
- “Is Your Villain Appropriate?”—Examining Character Construction in Different Media — a look at how the characteristics of diverse media influence the characters they present
- Living Art Backwards — a look at how effect often precedes cause in our experience of art, this is a companion piece of sorts to We Know Best What’s Nearest (Living Art Backwards)
- Mario Is the New Mickey — an attempt to understand Mickey Mouse’s enduring popularity through Mario’s
- Notes on Twee, part 1: Music Videos as School Plays — a look at a recurring motif in music videos over the past fifteen years
- Notes on Twee, part 2: The Crash Test Dummies — a consideration of that band’s avant-garde nature
- Pop’s Beautiful Blankness — a consideration of why pop music’s frequent shallowness is a good thing
- Postmodernism’s Abundance — a critique of the concept of postmodernism
- Seventeen Ways of Criticizing Inception (AKA, All Knowledge Isn’t Equal) — a look at how we privilege what we already know, and ignore or forget that which we can’t connect to what we don’t already know—and the consequences this has for art-making
- Style as Imitation — how do we learn how to make art?
- The Dominant and the Longue Durée — a reading of Roman Jakobson’s essential formalist notion of “the dominant” through the French Annales School’s long view of historic progress
- The Dominant, ctd. — are artistic movements ever “over”? what happens to their ideas and ideals? a closer look at Jakobson’s dominant, drawing from examples in painting and literature
- Two-Lane Blacktop — a look at the multi-genre nature of this great early 70s film
- Using Viktor Shklovsky — an account of why he’s my favorite literary critic
- We Know Best What’s Nearest (Living Art Backwards) — an argument that artists don’t always know the full extent of their influences, this is a companion piece of sorts to Living Art Backwards
- What Is Experimental Art? — part of me believes this is the best thing I’ve written for this site: it’s an examination of the often-conflated terms “avant-garde,” “experimental,” and “innovative,” and an attempt to redefine and reconcile them
- What Were You Doing in 1979? Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 — various things that were happening that year
- What’s So New about New Wave? — a look at how the name of the French New Wave became the name of New Wave music
- Where Do Our Desires Come From? (Want as Tradition) — do we have full control over our artistic goals?
- Why Genre Will Prevail, in Peace and Freedom from Fear, and in True Health, through the Purity and Essence of Its Natural Fluids, God Bless You All — a look at genre-hybridity in The Lord of the Rings, and how the orcs learned their military strategy from reading Paradise Lost
- Why I Hate the Avant-Garde: Part 1 | Part 2 — a critique of the concept underlying that term, as well as what I consider to be its misuse today
- Why Originality Isn’t All That Important — as viewed through Fiona Apple, Zach Galifianakis, and Kanye West
Memorials:
- 2010, the Year of the Death of Big Star— a remembrance of that great early 70s power-pop band
- Arthur Penn’s Night Moves — a tribute to that late director, by way of celebrating his 1975 critique of the detective movie (and one of my favorite films)
- Godspeed, Jack Horkheimer — a remembrance of the host of Star Hustler (later Star Gazer), a television staple of my youth
- In Memory of Ari Up — a remembrance of the late lead singer of The Slits
- In Memory of Don Van Vliet, AKA Captain Beefheart — a remembrance of that indefinable and influential musician
- In Memory of Gil Scott-Heron — a tribute to the late poet and hip hop pioneer
- In Memory of Kazuo Ohno — a tribute to the late co-founder of Butoh (a form of contemporary experimental Japanese dance)
- In Memory of Maria Schneider — a remembrance of this great actress, who starred in two of my all-time favorite films, Last Tango in Paris (1972) and The Passenger (1975)
- In Memory of Raúl Ruiz — a guest post by Jeremy M. Davies in honor of that great Chilean/European director
- In Memory of William Lubtchansky — a remembrance of the great cinematographer who worked with Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, others
- Loving David Markson — a remembrance of that late writer, author of the brilliant Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) (among other great works)
- Oh Death, Up Yours! (R.I.P. Poly Styrene) — a remembrance of the lead singer of seminal punk band X-Ray Spex
- R.I.P. Trish Keenan (of Broadcast) — a remembrance; I don’t know her work too well, but I’m rather fond of Broadcast’s third album, and was very sad to hear of her untimely death
- What, Robert Breer died? Internet, you’re supposed to tell me these things! — a brief tribute to that experimental animator
Advertising:
- I know I prefer auto ads when they swipe from Antonioni films — a quick look at a Yahoo! auto ad that struck me as similar to a moment in The Passenger
- Looking for Pago Pago — tracking down the origins of a demolished advertisement
- Oh, C’mon, GrubHub! — a follow-up to my first GrubHub post (see below)
- Speaking of ads that reference great art… — uncovering (or inventing) a subtle literary reference in a vodka ad
- That’s Not Exactly What I Want— — is it wise for Taco Bell to use the Flying Lizards’s cover of “Money”?
- The Semiotics of GrubHub – reading that website’s ads’ sexual innuendo
Chicago:
- As Chicago Succumbs — celebrating Chicago’s Snowpocalypse
- Food as Device — reading something Chicago chef Grant Achatz said on Fresh Air through Viktor Shklovsky’s classic 1920s essay “Art as Device”
- Looking for Pago Pago — tracking down the origins of a demolished advertisement
- Marilyn Monroe Comes to Chicago, 23 Skidoo — wondering what that statue is doing in town
Announcements and Repostings:
- Aaron Belz’s Midwestern Jag — announcing that wonderful poet’s Midwestern tour schedule, including a reading at my apartment
- “A Gesture towards Perfection”: Announcing a Full Performance of Robert Ashley’s “Perfect Lives” in Brooklyn — announcing that performance
- Announcing a New Big Other Series: “A D & Jeremy Talk about Movies” — the announcement for that series, plus some information about Jeremy
- Announcing My First Book, Amazing Adult Fantasy — what it says
- Announcing Super R-Type #1 and #2 — announcing two literary events I curated for Chicago’s Green Lantern Gallery
- Announcing the Summer 2011 Issue of Requited — featuring essays by Viktor Shklovsky, Mark Rappaport, and Steve Katz, plus much more
- Belladonna* & Dusie Present: The Summer Reading — an announcement
- Curtis White on Wallace Stevens — an excerpt from that author‘s invaluable The Middle Mind
- Disney vs. Debord — a link to an essay that reads Disneyland through the Situationist International
- I am now the nonfiction and reviews editor at the online journal Requited. — an announcement
- My First Book, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Is Now Available — an announcement
- Prose Event: A Belladonna* Reading and Conversation with Renee Gladman, Danielle Dutton, and Amina Cain — an announcement
- Requited Journal is now publishing reviews — which it is
- Requited Prerelease — announcing a sound-art event in advance of Requited Journal #6
- “The 20 Greatest Liquid Television Segments” — a list from another site; I linked to it mainly because I was struck by the very dated aesthetic of the works discussed there (as well as by the reminder that MTV once showed exceptional experimental short films)
- This Wednesday: FC2 in NYC: Margo Berdeschevsky, Brian Conn, Lance Olsen, & Rob Stephenson — an announcement
- Which Lit Journals Publish Drama? — an open question for a friend
- “Whose world is this? / The world is yours”—A Requited Journal Film Screening — an announcement
- Woody Allen Picks Five Favorite Books — at The Browser
- Yuriy Tarnawsky’s Interview with Steve Tomasula — a link to that interview, in the Paris Review
Misc.
- A Death Star for Curtis — a small present
- Big Other — at long last, a post analyzing Big Other
- Big Other’s New Image — banner-related goofiness
- Even God’s Weighed in on the Death of Osama Bin Laden! — what He said
- Experimental Threads: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 — these are me playing around with the tools and limits of WordPress, as well as random little ideas
- Greg Gerke’s Secret Life — wherein I reveal to the world who Greg Gerke really is…
- In C — music to accompany Tom McCarthy’s C
- Laptops — I felt like telling the world I’d bought a laptop; it led to some discussion of the merits of writing by hand, though
- Who Was Mary Shelley? — pointing out something curious at the Wikipedia, by way of Lorine Niedecker (it’s since been changed)
Happy Anniversary, Adam!
Thanks, John! And thanks for putting up with me for three years!
Happy 3/266!
Thanks!
I’ve read at least half of these. Good stuff. :)
There’s a boner with the “Semiotics of GrubHub” link, btw; it links to another thing.
Thanks for catching that! I put in the proper link.