Definitely, the ante continues to get upped in the vulgarity sweepstakes.
Richard Kelly in an interview with GQ
We went to see Wallace Shawn introduce a screening of Southland Tales at Metrograph, because watching Southland Tales on the Fourth of July is a household tradition over here and hearing people involved in its production talk about the film is of great interest to me. The above interview with Kelly, loosely on the occasion of the film's 20th anniversary, came out the day before the screening. America 250/Southland Tales 20 feels a bit auspicious, though some of the GQ piece's claims of clairvoyance are a bit overblown. (The cars in the movie don't look that much like cyber trucks.)
There are two screenings of Southland Tales happening in the coming week at BAM. What I'm saying is the film seems to be having a moment. I cannot say that it is "comprehensible" and many readers will probably find it frustrating to watch, but I do think it is a fascinating and useful artifact for thinking about 21st-century America. If nothing else, in a time where it feels a lot of US cinema is deeply risk-averse it's nice to watch a filmmaker really swing for the fences (even if sometimes he misses).
Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.
I assumed that I must have included lines from the movie in past newsletters because of my annual viewing of it, but apparently not. Sarah Michelle Gellar says the line above, and gets a lot of the most iconic lines of dialogue in this movie, including:
I'm fucking a very large and important man.
But the New York Times said God is dead.
I know this will happen eventually, at least somewhat—that he will someday have to understand how cruel and corrupt and stupid everything can be—but right now, while his brain is still setting like custard, I don’t want the bad vibes around him.
"Vibes miasma", Anna Swartz for her newsletter End Times Parenting
Submitted by Kelsey.
But we all know the sun's the only show in town.
Suntitled, Hannah Black
Read in the reading room at the Black Zine Fair on Saturday.
I think of Temporal as Frankenstein's monster, in the flattering sense: assembled from excellent parts, animated by improbable effort, and smarter than many of the people alarmed by it.
"A Couple Million Lines of Haskell: Production Enginteering at Mercury", Ian Duncan for the Haskell blog
Submitted by Robin last week but I missed it.
Accidents are my favorite strategy.
This Year: 365 Songs Annotated, John Darnielle
Another banger read while catching up on this book of days:
There are countless songs in notebooks that never got there: things originating in a stray phrase or image that couldn't sew enough clothes around themselves to make a suit.
This increase is modest—roughly the cost of a corporate slop bowl in Manhattan, or two-and-a-half espresso drinks at your local third wave café—but it will make a world of difference to us as a publication.
Email from the New York Review of Architecture regarding a subscription price increase
Submitted by Natalie.
It’s an exhaustive five-step exfoliation system that rids the landscape of empire-clogging impurities like schools, old people, gardens, gas stations, young women, café and gaming centers, tea kettles, pets, mosques, cookbooks, best friends, bottles of wine, bridges, bakeries, jewelry boxes.
"Model", Heather Havrilesky in her newsletter ASK MOLLY
Encountered via Today in Tabs, thanks Rusty.
Shanty float with foot contingent wearing bankruptcy barrels for a Great Depression themed parade entry
Caption on an image on the Wikipedia entry for bankruptcy barrel
Submitted by Natalie.
working in technology right now is great, the most PT Barnum motherfuckers you ever saw are all like, we have invented a time machine, and now 78% of all discourse is required by law to include endless hours of strokey-beard waffling about the endless political and social and economic implications of time travel and the deep impacts on our whole society and how we all must take time travel very seriously and shovel all our money into the time machine furnaces or we will be stranded in some terribly unfashionable decade with no snacks or friends and we’re all so busy worrying about that we’ve somehow failed to realise that there is no fucking time machine
Submitted by Keith, who proposed some punctuation amendments to properly qualify it as a sentence but I don't think that is really necessary.
When I reached a former longtime senior FBI official to ask whether he’d ever seen personally branded liquor bottles distributed by a previous FBI director, he burst out laughing.
"Kash Patel's Personalized Bourbon Stash", Sarah Fitzpatrick for The Atlantic
The same servers that summon servants to your door are used to surveil the people of Gaza; the same newspaper that brings details of the war to our eyes and ears also perpetuates a story that the greatest hardship of war is the price of gas at the pump.
"Into the gap", Mandy Brown for her blog A Working Library
He looks like a fighting game character whose finishing move is getting a divorce.
Writing like this, to no one in particular, isn’t science but attempted necromancy.
"An unpersuasive guide for how to resist temptation online", Matt Pearce in his newsletter
I'm something of a shark film aficionado.
Vijith, in conversation
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