Monday, February 11, 2013
The "What I See" Project
The What I See Project is a global digital art and science study of women’s perception and self-expression. ... There's no agenda, angle or campaign here — just a collection of individual points of view that grows and changes with your participation.
Women from around the world answer "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" More information about the project and how to submit can be found here, here, and here; other featured [and nerve-wracking] questions include "What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?" and "What does happiness mean to you?"
Getting Guns
"There’s this idea that women are more affiliative, more peace loving, more pacifistic, which should then make women as a group gun averse," said one women's studies professor and gun-book-author in this Times article about women and firearms, and yet:
Women’s participation in shooting sports has surged over the last decade, increasing by 51.5 percent for target shooting from 2001 to 2011 ... and by 41.8 percent for hunting, according to the National Sporting Goods Association.
I went to a shooting range once, thinking it'd be exciting, maybe something like the movies, but I was wrong and hated it. I guess I'm glad I went, though. Any more-interesting stories or thoughts?
How the Snickers Bar Changed Over Time
My relationship with Snickers goes back quite a long way. As a freshman at university in England, I used to stroll every day after lunch with my room-mate up the High to a little kiosk set among the shops a few paces down from the Cornmarket. There was a cheerful, rather saintly old lady in there, pinkly powdered and with an immaculate little wig, her eyes magnified by a pair of Edna Everidge-ish glasses. And from her we would each buy a Marathon bar and stroll back down the High to drink Nescafé in our rooms in college.
That was after I broke off with Toffee Crisp, which I took up with after breaking up with Crunchie bars, which had displaced my first, childish infatuation, the Milky Bar. This was a general progression in sophistication. The Milky Bar was "white chocolate", which means basically the fatty parts plus sugar. The Crunchie had a golden center of honeycomb sugar. (My chemistry teacher at school showed us how to make this in the lab: melt some sugar, add sodium bicarbonate and—hey presto!—the whole thing would froth up explosively and then cool into a solid honeycombed structure). The Crunchie added the solid parts of real chocolate to the mix of fat and sugar. Toffee Crisp—and I must say I have some regrets about ending this relationship—was essentially Rice Krispie treats with a coat of chocolate, representing a first foray beyond sugar and fat. The Marathon bar took me one step further, into the world of peanuts. Also, the TV advertisements were flavored with a touch of dry, adult humor, usually showing some would-be sportif nerd running tirelessly through the woods under the stimulus of Peanut Power! READ MORE
Saxy Valentine's Jams from Moneyworth
Moneyworth (a.k.a Meaghan Garvey, a.k.a the beautiful monster behind this Etsy shop) just posted this mix of smooth jazz R&B covers, and it is, uhhh... really something else. An "Ignition (Remix)" remix starts us off, followed by some Usher, Brandy, etc. — only their voices are replaced by horns. (Don't tell Rihanna, but "Take a Bow" is even more heartbreaking as grocery store music.) Here's last year's non-smooth jazz edition in case you're not into hot sax.
Lipa Schmeltzer, the Hasidic Jew Who Makes Hilarious, Magic Music Videos
It's worth mentioning how I first heard about Lipa Schmeltzer—from my grandparents. They'd just flown back to Melbourne from a visit to New York, where they’d attended a wedding made by the Flatbush contingent of my extended family. The groom, my second cousin, was my age, and the wedding was a particularly extravagant affair. My grandparents were raving about how 1. the event featured a bar made entirely of ice, and 2. someone called Lipa Schmeltzer had performed for the guests. "He had a song all about diets!" exclaimed my grandfather. "How did it go, Nechama?" he asked my grandmother, both of them laughing. That was a number of years ago; the couple who were married now have three children. Schmeltzer didn’t cross my mind again until about a year ago, when I clicked the link to one of his music videos, "Hang Up The Phone," on YouTube that a friend had posted, possibly ironically, on Facebook.
Lipa Schmeltzer is a straight-up Hasidic Jew. He's in his mid-30s. His English is bizarrely accented, typical of Jews from New Square, a Yiddish-speaking community founded in the 1950s by Hungarian Hasidim up in Rockland County, New York. He has short, curly peyos and favors goofy eyeglasses, often switching between multiple pairs within the same music video—a Hasidic costume change, if you will. (I've always joked about how glasses are where very Orthodox Jewish men can really go nuts.) He's married with children. He tweets, mostly to thank people for picking him up from the airport, or to show a picture of him on skis, or of him at a shiva visit ("shiva call at the Schnitzler's"). Unlike the success story of Jewish-Reggae crossover star Matisyahu, I cannot imagine Schmeltzer ever having a shard of appeal outside the world of Jewish music. And yet he's the best thing to happen to popular Jewish music in a long time. READ MORE
Ask an Archivist
Although the buzz around Bey these days is about her lip synching prowess and Superbowl hijinks, this An Archivist is far more interested in the recent revelations about her sleek, sexy, state of the art, undoubtedly bootylicious archives.
If only we’d seen this ad a couple of years ago, we might now be worrying about how to digitally migrate all that Destiny’s Child concert footage and what metadata was most appropriate for Blue Ivy’s latest Instagram.
That got us thinking, here at World Archives HQ, about other dream archives jobs out there. I mean, the perkiest perk of working in an archives is that you generally do get to peek into some records that ordinary, mortal non-archivists never dream of. Granted, you can never gab about them because professional codes of ethics/illegality/donor restrictions/basic moral compass/ blah blah blah, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be super cool to get the inside scoop on some outré rocker or perverse royal.
So here, in no particular order, are some pretty sweet gigs — although to be clear, I don’t think any are actually hiring.
1. Bruce Springsteen: The Boss has an archive.
Undoubtedly filled with authentic* records** of his earthy, strong heartland rock.
*Archival Pun!
**Double pun and I wasn’t even TRYING!
2. The Grateful Dead.
Their archive made all kinds of news, and if I knew more about this band, other than that “Ripple” makes me weep and that Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream is the disgusting exception that proves the universally acknowledged truth of B&J’s deliciousness, I would make some kind of wise crack here. READ MORE
“I was like, What?” Sullivan told me. He recalled complaining to the captain, “If we let every person go because their mother didn’t think they committed a crime, there would be no point in arresting anyone.” But he was told that Polio had ordered the release, and that he was “to obey that order.”
The New Yorker on the sad and disturbing past of Amy Bishop. For further reading, check out Wired's "What Made This University Researcher Snap?" | February 11, 2013
Emergency Engagement Rings
One of each, please.
"Letter to a Lost Friend"
There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened
between us, like ostyt, which can be used
for a cup of tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room,
and return, it is too cool; or perekhotet,
which is to want something so much over months
and even years that when you get it, you have lost
the desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky,
“It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.”
What is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face
and sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left
the station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights
at the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men,
who looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young READ MORE
Interview With a Whale
As part of our ongoing series of conversations with animals on policy and population control issues, we recently sat down with Whale, a humpback whale currently based off the coast of Alaska.
Us: Hi, Whale.
Whale: Long time no talk, huh? It's been...twenty years?
Us: I know! I'm sorry. I grew up.
Whale: It's okay. This is what happens. Being a whale, particularly being, you know, more of a metaphor for childish wonder and exploration, I'm used to it. 30 Rock! That movie with Jeff Daniels. It's like being the Velveteen Rabbit, or something. What brought you back?
Us: The baby had a stomach bug, so I found a bunch of David Attenborough wildlife documentaries on Netflix Instant, and we loaded them up, and I held her on my lap to watch them, and she went nuts for you. She kept bouncing and pointing and saying "cha cha cha cha," and then she wriggled off me to peek behind the television to see if she could touch you.
Whale: Oh, that's so nice. That's really nice to hear. I don't know what it is, exactly; we're not soft or furry, and, honestly, I have a lot of gross-looking growths over my whole body. READ MORE
Dates and Dates
JDate owes me a husband. I’ve paid them more than a thousand dollars, not to mention at least two hundred hours of dating time–this doesn’t include prep time of pedicures, waxing and therapy. If dating were tax deductible I could write off half my life. Ergo, I must meet someone on JDate.
I was the guy you went out with when the guy you really cared about had broken your heart.
I vaguely recalled something about my school’s ‘No Fraternization’ policy, but agreed to pay a visit to my twenty-two-year-old Russian-Greek student’s home.
It's Valentine's week; get ready! Haha. Narratively kicks things off with seven rousing tales of dating in New York City, the warmest and most loving city of all. Enjoy!
If you replace all of these with "a necromancer?" it's almost as funny, but not quite. | February 11, 2013
James Blake's "Retrograde" Video
This was definitely a little less terrifying when it was just a BBC Radio 1 stream, but I guess that's how it goes. (Not recommended if you're still sweaty from a recent, all-consuming nightmare.) As of today, "Retrograde" is available on iTunes in the UK for £0.99. Blake's second album, Overgrown, is due out April 8.
The Grammys, Briefly
If you skipped last night's Grammy Awards and want to catch up on the outfits, here's a red-carpet gallery from HuffPo and another from The Cut, where they're focusing on the "Biggest Violators of the Grammys' No-Nipple Rule." Meanwhile, CNN has a two-minute video montage of the show itself, and a full list of the winners can be found here. Carly Rae was robbed.
The Week of February 4 - 8
In case you missed it...
- Interviews about living in Antarctica and traveling alone through Southeast Asia.
- "Welcome to the Prince Edward Islands."
- The contents of Jane Marie's makeup bag.
- The ladylike pie.
- How to dress more like a sandwich.
- The first of the First Pages of Fake Lifetime Movies.
- Kira Goldenberg's Dog Shadow.
- "The Mother of Dragons Looks Into Day School Options."
- And Relationshits.
Stay warm/dry/intact!