Tweets
- Lana del Ray Weekend Update sketch = a courageous defense of mediocrity.
- Which would basically render snl obsolete.
- For all the bullshit Kickstarter projects out there, you would think we could get bill hader and Kristin wiig their own thing.
- My thoughts on I Just Want My Pants Back for @capitalnewyork
http://t.co/BZBgrelY - Prison Studies would make an okay band name. They could tour with Panopticon.
Hating On NY: Hulk and That Thing From Cloverfield
My disappontment with Summer blockbusters mounts. Though Iron Man was pretty good, The Incredible Hulk is a gamma-ray-saturated turd. Whoever made the decision to keep all of the exposition under the opening credits is clearly an asshole. Though an asshole in his own right, Ed Norton’s complaints about the film’s final cut seem warranted. At this point, can’t we just take it for granted that CGI is awesome and that the Hulk will look like a Hulk would really look if Hulks were real and we don’t have to spend all of this time destroying Manhattan (which is the new “Black Guy in a Horror Film” — whenever it shows up you know it’s a goner for sure) and maybe we can get just the smallest peek at what the central relationship (ostensibly between Banner and an incongruously dim-witted molecular biologist) looked like before our protagonist got all Hulked? Once we know the Hulk looks good, do we have to keep seeing him look good in the same way over and over?
Cloverfield had the right idea. Since CGI creatures who do nothing but scream and break things get boring after about 20 minutes, keep it under wraps as long as possible and then just end the movie once we see pretty much everything the creature can do – like dropping horrifying, giant parasites off of its skin. Nathan Lee of The Village Voice writes that Cloverfield is about the destruction of post-9/11 neo-yuppiedom, but it’s also about the consummate New York fear of bed bugs. True, no story at all, much less exposition, but at least it knows what it is.
Last Night’s Panicky Teacher Dream
Last night I dreamt about showing up to class all prepared to teach The Big Sleep, while all of my students had read Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives. I just finished teaching the former novel last week, while the latter (along with Nazi Literature in the Americas) has been at the top of my “to read” list for about six months. Orals reading has made the prospects of tackling a 600+ page novel daunting, but today I started it anyway.
Swelter
At last night’s Bushwick roof party/show it was cool enough for a jacket. At this afternoon’s Fort Greene roof party/show it will be too hot for clothing. I blame Michael Crichton, though the awfulness of the Andromeda Strain mini-series (which knocks Sphere out of the top slot on my list of worst Crichton adaptations) almost makes me pity him.
Writer of No
I’m already in a summer slump, not writing, despite having not that much writing to write. Stuck in the last 75 pages of a massive novel but not feeling like finishing, and so putting the rest of my reading on hold while I chip away. Still, it’s nice not to work.