Archive for June, 2008

Did the movies totally fuck us?

Much of the TGW crowd is partnered up, and, I imagine, complete in some read-the-Sunday-Times-over-breakfast way. I live next door to two married couples and it is true: their grass is greener. Yet for the tiny sliver of uncoupled Whatsiters – what will become of us? Will we find love? And how – how, will […]

Pure puzzling fun

I used to live in London in a neighborhood called Wood Green. I lived off Lordship Lane, a major thoroughfare. Many years before I lived there, a company called Universal Publications Ltd. thrived at 581 Lordship Lane by producing the latest in party games. In a pre-TV world, people were hungry for new ways of […]

Thursday playlist: Miyazaki summer

Note to readers: a bit of confusion this morning – so you get to enjoy the rhetorical post below and the intended playlist here – Bonus Thursday! Summer is like living in a Hayao Miyazaki film. Billowing clouds, sky that fades from blue to purple to red to white gold, green leaves flickering in every shade, […]

Thursday playlist: what now? edition

So, someone dropped the ball on today’s playlist. (Yes, it was me. And, yes, apparently Thursdays fall apart when Dave’s not around to keep them going…) But, because Thursdays have been ever-changing, ranging from (initially) regular posting slots to short reviews to open threads to (most recently) playlists, I was wondering… Should we keep up […]

What we talk about when we talk about love

Aside from those more obvious considerations…which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting […]

Gear

A White Bear wrote a few months ago about getting into a bizarre conversation with a random guy at the Russian Baths about why guys are into “gear.” AWB recounts discussing this question with me at the baths, where I “was helpfully explaining something about a masculine desire for control and mastery, possibly out of […]

Up in our backyard

Back when Farrell and I first moved into our house, our backyard was a cement slab that we used as a space for constructing scaffolding for other projects, but we knew someday that it would be a place where we would want to hang out and enjoy summertime. There was a bathroom on the back […]

Some terrific, radiant, humble book

I am reading a book about a human who falls in love with a vampire. It is summer novel, wonderfully trashy with page after page of “should I?” or “shouldn’t I?” plucked like petals in endless dilemmas. The vampire is cold and beautiful. The girl is soft and spunky. Their relationship somehow transcends triteness under […]

Sin qua non

Hello again. The Other James here, long-time lurker, occasional commenter, and second-time contributor, presenting another fun playlist for your Thursday enjoyment. So. “Sin Qua Non,” huh. Without which, nothing? Yep. This playlist came to me pretty quickly. I recently received my MA in Art History and Criticism and began looking for a job. Good times, […]

On lurking

Among my internet time-wasters are a small handful of photo-heavy blogs maintained by total strangers. I follow a couple of them on a daily basis, and others I check in on every other week or so. Almost all of the bloggers are friends and link to one another’s websites, so it’s easy to navigate from […]