change arrangements on your face

"I imagine you've seen quite a few bananafish in your day"

This day last year it was Updike. Today it's Salinger. Who will be next to go? America waits in suspense as its contemporary literary canon dwindles. I'm just kidding. Salinger's not really in the canon. But say what you will about Salinger, I discovered his books at a crucial age, and I guess you could say the eccentric, melodramatic members of the Glass family were sort of like fall-back role models for me; I found their idiosyncrasies comforting and attractive and wildly interesting, and I wanted to be like them, I wanted to emulate them, and I did. So I can't help but think that I have some Salinger in me, that his characters embedded themselves in my developing adolescent psyche, their quirky uncertainties forever to mingle in my subconscious, and in this way I suppose I owe some of myself to Salinger. Not that he would have cared.

Edit: Last night on Talk of the Nation, Sam Tanenhaus credited Salinger with discovering the voice of the Adolescent American in Catcher. He said a bunch of other complimentary things as well, and I thought that was very nice of him.

Things I miss:

like mollusks that eat wood

"So: a guy who hates diving meets a guy bored by the Byzantine Empire. Naturally, an academic buddy movie ensues in which two men find that the path to happiness lies in diving and studying the Byzantines. And, along the way, they create an entire new field: Underwater Archaeology."

[This American Life]

Self-made man

I've been in love with this picture ever since I saw it in a semi-recent tabloid as part of the retrospective Charlie Sheen: Always Been Fucked, or something like that. Fucked or not, this is brilliant.

T-bone steak, cheese eggs, and Welch's Grape

"Forget the telly, we just go to the crib and watch a movie in the jacuzzi, smoke L's while you do me."

Everything in that sentence is just so appealing. I like to think I wouldn't go for it, but I probably would. This track is always so tight, even if it is played or whatever. I think the key is to understand that Biggie is not the guy trying to generically creep on chicks at the bar, but the subtle, solid underdog who sneaks up behind you after the other dude has already paid for your drink, politely asks about your interests, and then smokes you up and lets you watch tv in his hot tub.

Today's Extremely Helpful Thing

A very short space of time through very short times of space

Edinburgh's been cold, windy, and naggingly wet since I arrived back. There was a moment yesterday when the sun was at such an angle that it shone directly through the window over my desk into the opposite corner of my bedroom. The window created a sort of subtle magnifying glass effect, and the light was very warm, and I stepped into it and just sort of let my neck rest against the warmth, and it felt very nice, to be momentarily bathed in such incubating yellowness.

I'm amazed at how fast I've fallen into seclusion--I expected whatever anti-social demon that resides within me during these dreary and uncertain months to wait at least a couple weeks after my return before taking on its full, consumptive form. The positive side is that I've been more productive than I have in years, turning to and exploiting whatever school work that lingers as an excuse to avoid human interaction. Of course, there's only so much work to be done; never did I think I'd see the day I'd find myself worrying about running out of homework. Luckily, books can be very long, and a degree in literature technically requires one to read quite a few of them. In any case, I don't think the months are necessarily the only dreary, uncertain ones around here.

So if I haven't been hanging out with people, you inquire, what have I been doing? I'll tell you! Reading Ulysses, predominantly. A chapter here, a chapter there. Ha; I wish. More like, one fifth of a chapter here, another seventh there. It's not that it's impenetrable like they say (it's actually much less frightening than I initially expected), but it certainly is dense, and it is effort, and while I can sail easily from some passages to the next, others just tire me out. Of course, I'm at that tedious beginning stage of any epic, when you've yet to be reeled in emotionally or whatever. So I'm just going to shut the fuck up about all of this until I'm not this bored/so frequently confused by the shift in narrative all the time.

I also read an essay critiquing James' Daisy Miller in light of some theory involving "Cowboy Feminism," a phrase apparently coined by Maureen Dowd (who I've actually found, with the aid of Google image search, to be surprisingly attractive/cool-looking in comparison with the person I always envisioned to be Maureen Dowd. She was even wearing red cowboy boots in one photo, which I definitely support, even if they might be a result of her adopting her aforementioned catchprase a bit too literally..) in like the '90s or something, and I just want to make something quite clear: while I freakin' love cowboys, I fucking hate feminists, especially ones who conclude fifteen page literary essays with cheesy lyrics about where all the cowboys may have gone (answer: we are the cowboys? they've all turned into feminists? I don't know), and I think it's shitty that there has been even an attempt to try to taint an image so fucking rad as that of the American cowboy's with something as lame (and hello! dated! what is this, 1978?) as feminism. This is all a joke; I'm actually pretty sure that under scrutiny I'd probably test positive for feminism myself; this is all very shameful.

Foresee myself switching to Tumblr in a matter of days. Had no idea Truffaut directed the Fahrenheit 451 film. Also, had not idea that's how Fahrenheit was spelled, or that it was even a proper noun.

But this time it's different, darlin' you'll see

These ladies make me want to start putting effort into dressing again, instead of just relying on the androgynous uniformity of men's attire lest I have to get out of bed any earlier than the last possible minute. They're amazingly chic.

[The Sartorialist]

Gabriel Orozco, Cats and Watermelons (1992)

1/1/10

Scorsese Friday Leftovers

"I don't believe that someone should devote himself to morbid self-attention; I believe that someone should become a person, like other people." -Travis Bickle

"What does that mean?"

(Raging Bull, 1980)

Facebook Authoritarian

Consider the Lobster

flickr.com/yellowcoat

City of Dreadful Night

"Right—frugal brainwashed Obamabots, then? Not so, fast, our reporter cautions: “Paradoxically, they are also more cynical about public institutions and, arguably, about life, embracing the European notion that success is more about luck than effort.” Good Lord—it’s worse than we feared; the recession’s bred a generation of Europeans on our own shores! If nothing else, that explains the disturbing weakness among today’s youth for crappy club music."

[Chris Lehmann, on a budding generation--The Awl]

McGurty

"Everybody gets pitchforks"

"The possibility of gay abandonment"

Very much still alive. Details to come on the nature of my whereabouts or whatever, but probably post my journey back to the Burgh, aka Monday. For now, something I just can't contain a minute longer lest I might explode: my megacrush on Rachel Maddow, but only when she wears the sexy blue glasses she wore on Letterman the other night. I'm talkin' to you, Rachel Maddow.