From the monthly archives:

August 2008

Merlin Mann: What Makes for a Good Blog?

Merlin Mann: What Makes for a Good Blog?
A list of nine best practices. One of the smartest: “Good blogs are the product of attention …

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People Who Live in Malls

People Who Live in Malls
Lisa Selin Davis has a story in Salon about the couple who lived in the Providence Mall (It was covered …

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Design and the Elastic Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Design and the Elastic Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams…

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Now that Brooklyn has been officially sanctioned as “hip” and “literary”—and you’ll excuse me for a second here while I roll on the floor in a spasm of ironic hilarity—it is high time for the bridge-and-tunnel literati to turn its gaze Verrazano Bridge–ward and begin discovering one of that borough’s most intriguing and authentic homegrown talents. Sorrentino’s Bay Ridge deserves to be appreciated alongside Malamud’s Crown Heights, Arthur Miller’s Coney Island, Henry Miller’s and Betty Smith’s Williamsburg, Hamill’s and Auster’s Park Slope, and Lethem’s Boerum Hill. Time to get on that Fourth Avenue local.

Now that Brooklyn has been officially sanctioned as “hip” and “literary”—and you’ll excuse me for a second here while I roll on the floor in …

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This whole scene is cast in an immensely unflattering light in Sorrentino’s roman à clef–ish 1971 novel Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, which might be described as a master class in distinguishing between writers with drinking problems and drinkers with writing problems—think Dawn Powell with an MFA from Brown. An unsparing catalogue of the endless varieties of self-deception, dilettantism, fraudulence, and self-serving malarkey among the marginally talented, it has always seemed to me a seriously bridge-burning sort of book (“Art is the undoing of many a hick … Wait till the folks in Terre Haute see this!” is one of its milder provocations).

This whole scene is cast in an immensely unflattering light in Sorrentino’s roman à clef–ish 1971 novel Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, which might be …

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A Chart-Based Review of Andrew Kuo’s Latest New York ‘Times’ Chart-Based Music Review

A Chart-Based Review of Andrew Kuo’s Latest New York ‘Times’ Chart-Based Music Review

The Jams of Summer 2008 [NYT]

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iPod Vending Machine

iPod Vending Machine

TECH BUZZ – Eagle-eyed blogger Jason Kottke spots an iPod vending machine at a terminal at JFK airport. No, it doesn’t take …

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Library of Dust

Library of Dust

BLDGBLOG tells us about Library of Dust, a book of photographs of an Oregon state psychiatric institution.

Esteemed photographer David Maisel

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