Now here’s an advertising mechanism for newspapers that we should support. The Newspaper Picture festivalat Film Forum is an amazing act of collective werd-nerd nostalgia that, I hope, is more wistful and celebratory than creepy and necrophilic. I caught a double feature on Sunday that included what may now be my favorite movie of all time, Park Row, the story of hard-charging, fair-minded idealistic reporters who escape the sensationalist cloud of their yellow journalism publisher and strike out to start their own scrappy new rag (printed on butcher paper, at first) in an already saturated New York newspaper market.
This great video is worth all the attention its getting on the internet this week:
Of course, this is highly reminiscent of the Futurama Episode “Anthology of Interest” wherein Fry queries to the what-if machine: what if life were more like a video game?
Nope, still too nice to blog. Just sticking around long enough to help soundtrack your very springy, nearly summery, photosynthelicious, totally recharging day-before-official spring Friday. These two tracks sum it up quite nicely:
Cults – “Go Outside”
Doesn’t that just make you want to call out of work today? “I’ve got a case of the Holy-shit-I-just-remembered-there’s-an-outside-s!”
She and Him – “In the Sun”
Just try to remember the winter after listening to that song, and watching the adorable video. Ice falling from the sky? Such a ludicrous concept. Next you’ll be telling me you used to have to cover your hands and head with woven wool before even leaving the house.
Inverted Soapbox heartily endorses you going outside today, if you are in the New York City area or some similar area where sunshine is abundant and kind. If you are, say, in Minnesota or somewhere where the winter winds still whip, please continue your indoor blogging. I will read it when the sun explodes.
I am only human, occasionally less than, with as many frailties as anyone else, like when I have to hit backspace and retype several times to spell “occasionally” correctly, chastised all the while by the red line of death that shakes its dotted finger in disapproving judgment. So it is with humble honor that I come to you today to to beg for your indulgence and allow me this one day (or maybe two) to bask in the glow of a new material possession, that possession being a new MacBook, something I for the first time in my life actually targeted with budgeting acumen and achieved the goal of purchase just as the last vital signs from my poor overworked hand-me-down Dell were blipping into oblivion. Suffer me this slight boost of self-esteem that comes in placing value in something physical and material, my small repentance for spending many years lost in the knuckle-dragging sloth of the Windows desktop computer age, or the purgatory of borrowing my roommates left-behind computers as they tackle southeast asia, elephants, burning bodies and all. And understand my wonderment at the difference between three-finger, two-finger and four-finger touch pad scrolling that is enough to push forward visions of an impending purely tactile computer interface, some few generations beyond the iPad.
As roommate Nathan said in an email, as writers, the one expense we can probably justify is a sweet writing machine, even, as he said, if it does cost WAY more than all the money we have in the world and all of our possessions combined. That thought is comforting in the way it indicates the relative lack of other cumbersome material possessions, and absolutely terrifying when I think of how clumsy and careless I have historically been with things, leading my brain to chastise me several times over the years “THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T HAVE NICE THINGS!” as my hands wipe off a spilled cup of water from the keyboard, or whathaveyou.
So, dear internet, if you have suffered me so far, you’ll understand why I’m dedicating this week’s Friday Happy to the song “Light From Your Mac” by The Rakes, as performed in this video from some sort of German TV show from July.
It also includes the great line: “Don’t show me the fucking futon.” Last note: it is amazing to think of the productivity lost due to slow loading times, the amount of idle finger tapping you do when waiting for a simple page to fade into view, the frustrated grrrrs you spew when coping with the satellite delay between finger typing and response time in a word document. I think basking in the glow for one day is justified for streamlining efficiency reasons alone. That’s it, I’m done for the day, and you can send me to futon if you want.
Sincerely,
Inverted Soapbox
RELATED: Completely unnecessary plug for this Inverted Soapbox classic about meeting Justin Long at a showing of Slumdog in Soho last year.
Happy 10s!! It seems only appropriate to ring in the new decade with a nod to one of the most tragically underappreciated parts of the aughts, Arrested Development, and a fat reference to those halcyon days of two decades ago, and a little movie that played a part in many a bored Saturday, Teen Witch.
So enjoy Alia Shawkat, aka Maeby Fumke (her?) recreating the 80s-cheesalicious top-that “rap” scene:
Vodpod videos no longer available.
watch the original here, which, as Flavorpill points out, stars Robyn Lively, older half-sister of Blake Lively. It’s a promo for fashion designer Rachel
top this
Antonoff. The internet is great because we get things like this without even asking. Just look at how funky they are.
Happy new year! We will continue to hold out hope for the Arrested Development movie sometime this decade. If not, at least 20 years from now we’ll get to watch some retro-style recreation of classic banana stand banter.
Billy Bragg and Florence of Florence and the Machine covering probably the greatest Christmas song of all time, “Fairytale of New York,” by The Pogues. Happy Christmas to all you out there in bored internet land today, whomever you are reading this post out of circumstance or clutter.
Did Weird Al ever take on The Pixies at any point during his illustrious (not being sarcastic) career? Was there ever a “Where is my Mime?” or a “Caribou: Canadian Love Song”? or at least a “I Bleed (Hemophilia part 1)”? I don’t have any recollection of any parodies, nor does Pazz and Jop contributor Jeff Vrabel, who has met and interviewed Al, Weird on more than one occasion, but maybe we missed one.
Regardless, (most of) the Pixies and Weird Al finally joined absurdist, irreverent forces this week at a benefit for Baby Winston Bertrand at LA’s Echo Park. Why is this cool? Two things:
1) The Pixies are, and always have been, awesomefaced.
2) Weird Al is somehow a cooler celebrity now than he was at any time since his FAT days.
thanks to Jeff Vrabel for the link. Vrabel also posits that the absence of Kim Deal in the above video is no doubt to their 1993 beef over Al’s proposed Breeders parody “Wallyball.”
Inverted Soapbox 