from Letters of Note
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via JAMES FREY http://bigjimindustries.com/wordpress/index.php/2012/08/eb-white-gets-pissed/
Mitt Romney, Comedian: Actual Examples
“He must use humor, for three reasons. One is that wit breaks through and sharpens all points. Another is that it is natural to him. Before the voting in Iowa, he wryly told a friend that the caucuses were like the LaBrea Tar Pits: ‘No one comes out the way they went in.’ On a conference call recently, he asked a question of his staff. No one answered. Mr. Romney waited. ‘Bueller? Bueller?” he said, in a perfect imitation of Ben Stein.'”
—He’s also good with birther jokes! Anyway, Peggy Noonan picks up another cheerleading check.
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See more posts by Alex Balk
via The Awl http://www.theawl.com/2012/08/mitt-romney-comedian-actual-examples
Man killed by bear in Alaska was a San Diego photographer
Richard White, 49, who was mauled to death Friday, was the first person to die in a bear attack in the history of Denali National Park, authorities say. Photos of the bear that mauled him were found in his camera.
A man killed by a grizzly bear in Alaska’s Denali National Park last week was identified Sunday as a 49-year-old San Diego photographer, who had been taking pictures of the animal for at least seven to eight minutes before the attack, park officials said.
via L.A. Times – California | Local News http://da.feedsportal.com/c/34336/f/625246/s/22c22942/l/0L0Slatimes0N0Cnews0Clocal0Cla0Eme0E0A8270Ebear0Eattack0E20A120A8270H0A0H25845330Bstory0Dtrack0Frss/ia1.htm
IAC Agrees to Acquire About for $300 Million
Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp has agreed to buy the About Group from The New York Times Company for $300 million in cash.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/times-to-sell-about-group-to-iacinteractive-for-300-million/
Wow
CNN just released a new presidential poll showing a tight 2 point margin for President Obama going into the Republican convention. I’d say the even bigger story is down in the details. This is the first poll that CNN has released with “likely voters” — just like Fox’s most recent poll did. If you look at the number for registered voters it’s a 9 point Obama margin.
What that means is that President Obama has actually gained a bit of ground (obviously within the margin of error) on last week’s eye-popping poll showing him with a 7 point lead over Mitt Romney. But it also shows that turnout and propensity to vote are going to be the whole game going into November.
Likely voter screens almost always provide some GOP edge. But 7 points is an extremely large one for a presidential contest.
via Talking Points Memo http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/08/wow_13.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Talking-Points-Memo+%28Talking+Points+Memo%3A+by+Joshua+Micah+Marshall%29
Focus’ new Oscar focus: Gus Van Sant’s ‘Promised Land’
Moving Gus Van Sant’s issue drama “Promised Land†into this year’s Oscars season raises some interesting questions for Focus Features.
via L.A. Times – Entertainment News http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-mn-oscars-gus-van-sant-promised-land-20120824,0,7007465.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fentertainment+%28Entertainment+News%29
Memo to Marty Scorsese: Why In God’s Name Are You Still Interested In Making Silence?
After reading the statement that Martin Scorsese‘s representatives released in response to the lawsuit that’s been filed against him  by Cecchi Gori Pictures over a project called Silence, I think I can save both sides a bundle in lawyer’s fees and, ultimately, production costs.
Both sides of this legal battle should ask themselves a pertinent question: Do you actually think that this movie, if it’s ever made, will actually put asses in seats?
Hear me out.  Scorsese is one of my favorite filmmakers, and given his obsession with religion, I’m confident he’d make a compelling adaptation of  Silence, an acclaimed 1966  Shusaku Endo novel about a Jesuit investigating whether his mentor committed apostasy — renounced his beliefs — at  a time when Christians were faced with the prospect of being hung upside down over a pit and slowly bled to death if they refused.
The Christians are essentially coerced into renouncing their faith by stepping on fumie,crudely carved wooden images of Jesus Christ.
Heard enough? Look, movies about the strength of one’s beliefs and God’s relationship with humanity can be powerful. One of the aspects of Prometheus that I particularly loved was how Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof explored those very deep concepts in their sci-fi blockbuster earlier this summer.
Silence doesn’t sound powerful to me, though. It sounds like a ponderous slog that covers territory Scorsese already traversed in The Last Temptation of Christ. More importantly, Silence , just by virtue of its subject matter, has the markings of a small, boutique film. That’s not the kind of film Scorsese, one of our greatest living directors, should making in his golden years. I want him doing David Lean-size big-picture stuff like The Wolf of Wall Street, and, I suspect, so do his handlers.
According to Deadline, Cecchi Gori Pictures claims in its lawsuit that it invested more than $750,000 to develop Silence into a feature film based on contracts and assurances that it would be Scorsese’s next project.
Scorsese initally agreed in 1990 to co-produce and direct Silence after he completed Kundun (1997). But the lawsuit alleges Scorsese and Sikelia arranged to postpone starting on Silence so the director could make The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and Hugo (2011).
When Cecchi Gori learned that Scorsese was going to shoot The Wolf of Wall Street instead of Silence, the company claimed breach of contract.
Scorsese’s responded to the suit today with the following statement:
“It is shocking to us that the lawyers for Cecchi Gori Pictures would file a suit pursuing such absurd claims considering the amicable working relationship existing between Martin Scorsese and the principals of Cecchi Gori Pictures.The claims asserted are completely contradicted by, inconsistent with, and contrary to the express terms of an agreement entered into by the parties last year.”
The statement added: “The lawsuit filing on the eve of Mr. Scorsese starting another picture has all the earmarks of a media stunt.”
Given that the amount of Cecchi Gori’s investment isn’t even $1 million — a paltry sum in moviemaking terms — there should be a compromise here that enables Cecchi Gori’s principals to walk away without feeling like they got burned and for Scorsese to make the movies he wants to make, when he wants to make them. I just hope that Silence isn’t one of them.
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via Movieline http://movieline.com/2012/08/24/martin-scorsese-silence-lawsuit-response/
Sex, lies, and Park Slope
You may have read Amy Sohn’s piece in The Awl last month about Park Slope’s sexynaughty parents.
When “Girls” hit this spring, I was shocked by how true the show rang to my life — not my old life as a post-collegiate single girl but my new one, as a married, monogamous, home-owning mother. My generation of moms isn’t getting shocking HPV news (we’re so old we’ve cleared it), or having anal sex with near-strangers, or smoking crack in Bushwick. But we’re masturbating excessively, cheating on good people, doing coke in newly price-inflated townhouses, and sexting compulsively — though rarely with our partners. Our children now school-aged, our marriages entering their second decade, we are avoiding the big questions — Should I quit my job? Have another child? Divorce? — by behaving like a bunch of crazy twentysomething hipsters. Call us the Regressives.
Jake Dobkin interviewed Sohn about the piece and her new book for Gothamist. Well, he attempted to anyway.
Can I suggest that maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong group of people? I mean, if everyone around you is throwing back Xanax and raw-dogging it just to FEEL SOMETHING and then having unplanned kids because they’re too stupid to use birth control, is it possible it’s not Park Slope’s fault, and rather, it might be hanging around with really immature people?
(via @djacobs)
Tags: Amy Sohn  books  interviews  Jake Dobkin  NYC
via kottke.org http://kottke.org/12/08/sex-lies-and-park-slope
The Unpublished Manuscripts Of Aaron Sorkin
Imagine that an intern on HBO’s hit show “The Newsroom” discovers a cache of unpublished pages while sifting through Aaron Sorkin’s desk drawers in search of a cease-and-desist form letter. Who knew that the man behind “The West Wing” and “The Social Network” had such wells of passion for classic Russian novels—and prescription drug literature?
Big Mouse and Small Mouse!
A Children’s Story by Aaron Sorkin
There was a little house on a little hill that belonged to Little Mouse. One day Big Mouse rode right up that hill on a big bulldozer and knocked down Little Mouse’s house.
“Why are you knocking down my house?” asked Little Mouse.
“Your house?” said Big Mouse.
“My house,” said Little Mouse. “Why are you knocking it down?”
“So this is your house?” said Big Mouse.
“You’re driving a bulldozer and half of my house is knocked down,” said Little Mouse.
“Half knocked down or half built? It’s all about perception,” replied Big Mouse.
“I’m calling the cops,” said Little Mouse.
“Do people really do that?” asked Big Mouse.
“Do what?” asked Little Mouse.
“Call the cops. I thought they only did that on TV,” said Big Mouse.
Little Mouse ignored this and went into his house and looked around for his Blackberry. He looked and looked and looked, but half of his house was knocked down! He couldn’t find it!
“Do the cops even come to this neighborhood? I mean, when you call?” asked Big Mouse, following Little Mouse around his half-collapsed (or half-built) house.
“I wouldn’t— I mean, I haven’t—” said Little Mouse.
“Seems more effective just to keep a gun in your sock drawer,” said Big Mouse.
“I don’t believe in—” replied Little Mouse.
“You don’t believe that guns exist?” said Big Mouse.
“Don’t do that,” said Little Mouse. “Don’t purposefully—”
“Which is it?” asked Big Mouse.
“I don’t believe that it’s right to pack heat, or to drive a giant bulldozer around, knocking people’s houses down, for that matter,” said Little Mouse, his voice growing louder. “Big Mice like you blame Little Mice like me for everything from high taxes to the moral degradation of our country to the sorry state of the economy, turning a blind eye to reckless Wall Street bigwigs who can’t tell a credit default swap from a wart on their… How dare you?! You’re the ones tearing everything down! How dare you?!”
At this, Big Mouse felt ashamed of himself, so ashamed that he pulled a semi-automatic from his bulldozer and pointed it at Little Mouse’s head.
“Guns do exist, homes,” said Big Mouse.
“I’m willing to retract at least part of what I just said,” said Little Mouse.
Before Big Mouse could shoot his gun, which would probably be racist now that he’s addressed someone as “homes,” sirens were heard. Cops on the way, even in this neighborhood. (This is a fantasy, in other words.) Big Mouse ran, looking slightly deranged. Little Mouse cried a big, salty tear, and said, “America has changed. It has really, really changed.”
Then he got into his little bed, to rest his weary head. “And not for the better, either,” he said.
The End.
Crime and Punishment
Reimagined by Aaron Sorkin
Raskolnikov stirred his martini and sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose between his strong fingers. He was so frazzled by the old woman—or maybe she was his age, she should wear her hair down and meditate more. His handsome face looked weary and moist, but refined. Why must St. Petersburg smell so bad? The room was packed with preening radicals, casting suspicious glances at each other. They’re sick inside, he thought. Hypocrites. No better than the Tsar. They were probably thinking the same thing about him. Or thinking that he was thinking that they were thinking the same thing about him. Neurotic idiots!
At last he turned to Sonia, looking straight into her beautiful face, although her nose was a little too pointy. That had always bothered him. And she went to Vanderbilt. Is that really a good school? She didn’t speak, but color rushed to her face. Her unabashed passion for him disgusted him, but then he thought of the really good medicinal pot she kept in her bedside table at home, next to her Bible. The madness of it, not having his own stash! Plus, all the suffering of humanity! His hands shook, his eyes glittered. All at once he grabbed her purse, fumbling for a cigarette. Damn big tobacco. Just one!
Zoloft Side Effects
Written by Aaron Sorkin
All medicines may cause side effects, but many people have minor side effects or they pretend they don’t have side effects because they don’t want their favorite prescription dope to be taken off the market (and by “the market” I mean the legalized corporate drug market, which is every bit as corrupt as illegal drug trafficking, in case you were wondering; Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline may as well be run by a Colombian guerilla group, for all of the unethical tactics they engage in). Anyway. Check with your doctor if any of these side effects persist or become bothersome when using Zoloft (although I wouldn’t necessarily trust anyone who was indoctrinated—see, the word says it all—by the stodgy precepts of traditional, institutional medicine, which is essentially an old boy’s club bankrolled by big pharma and therefore openly hostile to a more flexible, whole-body approach to wellness). So: Tightness In Chest (Beyond the usual level), Bizarre Behavior (When not drinking to excess or under tons of stress), Swirling-Room-Feeling (Like when Cheney said that stuff about bombing Iran), Trouble Sleeping (That just means you have a conscience), Confusion (Not while watching Fox News), Severe Ringing In Ears (And your cell phone is off, for sure this time), Unusual or Severe Mental or Mood Changes (Unless you just read something ill-conceived by that smug guy from that online magazine that only halfwits read), Worsening of Depression (Although, with the state of the world today, I’d be worried if you weren’t more depressed).
“Bossman”
Performed by Katy Perry
Lyrics by Aaron Sorkin
Sometimes I think I’m the girl you always wanted
Champion of facts, mortal enemy of speculation
Other times I think that I work for you
And I have to do whatever you want me to.
What did you say?
I don’t know, even though you repeated yourself.
What is this meeting about?
I can’t tell. You knocked me off my feet, so why do I feel like hell?
Oh baby, this sexual tension, it never goes without mention, no no.
Oh baby, your condescension, it triggers my apprehension. Sometimes I don’t know!
Take the high moral ground, and I’ll go even higher.
Let’s take on obese children and Holocaust deniers.
Oh baby, you know I can’t hide
I’ve got to live my life as if I am alive!
Apple Blossom Heating Instructions
Written by Aaron Sorkin
CONVENTIONAL OVEN: HEAT FROM FROZEN Preheat oven to 400ish, whatever you feel. Why should I care? Remove apple blossoms from wrapping, while averting your gaze sheepishly. They look so frozen. Are they supposed to look this frozen? Place on a baking sheet in the moral center of the oven. Yes, the moral center. Define that? It’s a hyperbole. Or a metaphor or an idiom or something. Did you really go to Harvard? Heat 15 to 20 minutes or until their soft, vulnerable interiors ooze all over the place and make a huge, embarrassing scene.
ALTERNATIVE/MICROWAVE OVEN: Give one of them an arrogant tic, like a nervous habit of looking at his watch. Make the cute one slightly stupid, or at least twitchy and hysterical. Place in a microwave safe fishbowl, like a crowded, hip bar or a big, open office or maybe the Oval office. Agitate their molecules for several minutes, until they shout, flail their arms around, pound their hands on the table, cite the Constitution, weep and tear their hair, rend their clothing, wail to the gods for mercy, and then go back to flashing each other furtive glances to the strains of Coldplay, just like none of that other stuff ever happened.
Oven temperatures may vary. Nothing is baked by committee. These are only guidelines, and I don’t feel qualified to… I have no idea what day it is. Go away.
A contributor to the New York Times Magazine, Heather Havrilesky was Salon.com’s TV critic for seven years and cocreated Suck.com’s Filler before that. She’s the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness. She has dispensed misguided advice at the rabbit blog since 2001. Photo by s_bukley, via Shutterstock.com.
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See more posts by Heather Havrilesky
via The Awl http://www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-unpublished-manuscripts-of-aaron-sorkin
Jan Brewer Is Proud That 99.9% of Gun Owners Don’t Shoot People [Politics]
Jan Brewer, Arizona governor and Glendale Community College’s most famous radiologic technologist certificate recipient, is actually The Worst. I know I’ve said that about a lot of people — Paul Ryan, Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Walker, Texas Ranger — but Brewer has gone above and beyond to show America again and again that she’s truly a terrible human being. Her most recent bit of virtuoso assholery? A New York Times Magazine interview wherein she defends her push to allow more Arizonans to carry concealed weapons that ran — awkwardly — on the same morning a gunman opened fire on civilians outside of the Empire State Building and the morning after 19 people were shot in Chicago, 13 of them within a single half hour.
The Andrew Goldman interview is noteworthy for its ballsiness. He asks the Arizona governor about her tacky, shouty confrontation with Barak Obama on an airport tarmac last year, her nakedly racist immigration policy, and her son’s incarceration for sexually assaulting a woman in the 1980’s (Brewer’s son is institutionalized, and during her governorship, she’s advocated to preserve state spending on mental health care facilities, but to cut state funding for organizations that assist rape victims). But the real meat of the profile is here —
You have been strongly against gun regulation. In light of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting outside Tucson and massacres in Colorado and Wisconsin, have you revised your position?
Not in regards to regulation. Those things would have happened whether guns were regulated or not. These madmen are going to find some way, somehow to create whatever it is they want to create.You signed a law that entitles people to carry concealed guns in bars as long as they don’t drink. I wouldn’t trust myself in a bar with access to a gun.
I think a bartender knows who’s drinking and who isn’t.But a bartender wouldn’t know who’s carrying a concealed weapon.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people that are gun owners are very responsible.
Wow, what an asshole. To follow that line of reasoning, we should probably get rid of the driver’s license requirement, speed limits, and center lines on roads because 99.9% of drivers are responsible about what side they’re supposed to drive on and when they should pass. Let’s also get rid of prescription requirements for addictive drugs like Xanax and Valium, because 99.9% of people who use them do so responsibly.
I’m sure that thought — that only 0.1% of gun owners are irresponsible fire-into-a-crowd types — is incredibly comforting to the victims of the Aurora shooting, or the Empire State Building shooting, or the families of people who died when that guy shot Gabrielle Giffords. It also must be comforting for the hundreds of families in Chicago — in mostly poor, Black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican neighborhoods — who are currently dealing loss or permanent injury of a loved one thanks to gun violence.
In Jan Brewer’s defense, she had no way of knowing that the Times piece would run on the same day as a mass shooting. But I’m sure she’s not bothered by it. After all, if everyone around the Empire State Building had concealed guns, they too could have fired into the crowd in pursuit of the random assailant, thus preventing more gun violence. See how that works?
[NYT]
via Jezebel http://jezebel.com/5937624/jan-brewer-is-proud-that-999-of-gun-owners-dont-shoot-people