SilverJacket

Solomon's Slump

Wow. Awkward.

There are so many things wrong with this interview.

First of all, it's way too meta. Instead of drawing a profile, more than anything it accentuates the interview process, which happened to be characterized by extremely poor rapport. From "None of your business." to "Is that a question?" to "You're done."

(I have to wonder if Solomon was trying to echo the dynamic that inspired this week's choice of subject to begin with.)

I think there may have been lack of good material too. Why did they print the stuff about Tony Snow? How is Wallace's parents' divorce and his brother's death 40 years ago relevant? Maybe if he had offered insightful answers to those questions, but... he misses his brother sometimes, and his dad in proud of him. Groundbreaking.

And then there's: Solomon: "Are you friends with Bill O’Reilly, the station’s emblematic conservative personality?" Wallace: "I don’t see him. He’s in New York. I am in Washington." LAME.

It's pretty much filler after "You weren't in the room."

(I'm also reminded of Ali G's painful interview with Wallace's father's colleague, Andy Rooney, which ends after two and a half minutes of grammar corrections with "I don't want to do this anymore.")

Ali G to AARP

Yesterday Language Log wrote about Ali G's interview with Noam Chomsky, which is now on YouTube, so I sent the video link to my friend Sara.

Before leaving work the following IM chat took place:

Sara: that made me laugh real hard.
me: i love ali g
Sara: how can you not love ali g?
me: if part of your head is missing
Sara: oh right that makes sense..it made me laugh especially because for the longest time i thought that oral sex was just phone sex...and then that whole cunnilingual thing.
Sara: hey did you have a good birthday?
me: was ok [I turned 28 on April 14]
Sara: are you sad because you are an old man now?
me: yes
me: but ive always wanted to be a member of the aarp
Sara: dont worry i think youll age well
me: i hope to grow out of my awkward stage
me: into the hotness
Sara: oh i think you are coming along just fine matt. but yeh.
me: thanks
Sara: no problem

OK, pretty regular IM chat, ya? But half an hour later I get home and what do I find in the mail? An erroneously delivered issue of AARP magazine.

Ha ha, very funny Dr. Jung.

Mindfuck

[Click to enlarge.]

Um, guys, last I checked, you were there to officiate the NCAA title game, not ponder the nature of infinity.

The Mannequin Within Us All

What happens when you lock a woman in a tiny room with a mannequin for 11 days? This:

Mom never fully recovered from this experiment. Neither did Mandy. (She disappeared in 1998; the last time I saw her she was modeling a dress made of pretzels for my friend Yvonne in an art show. (My mannequin, not my mom.))

Full transcript, plus outtakes, after the jump.

Bossy Boots

I have discovered what may be the Best Thing Ever. It's a 2002 episode of the BBC's Look Around You dedicated to the brain. Take out your copy books, as you will learn things such as the following:

"The brain is basically a wrinkled bag of skin, filled with warm water, veins, and thought muscles. Think of it as a kind of modified heart, only with a mind, or brain."

Watch it. 

Frozen Dinner

Last night PBS broadcast an episode of NOVA titled "Deadly Ascent." The NOVA crew climbed Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska with a team of researchers and mountaineers to figure out why our bodies break down at high altitudes and low temperatures.

The team carried lots of extra food in their packs, because a storm could pin them down for days. To make matters more volatile, the team included one Dr. Howard Donner. I could see it in their eyes: no one wanted to run out of munchies in the wilderness with a Donner.

Of course, their fears may have been unfounded. Last week a pair of archeologists revealed that they could find no evidence of cannibalism among the Donner Party. Using electron microscopes and DNA tests, they analyzed thousands of bone fragments at the Alder Creek campsite where the Donners spend 4 winter months in 1846-1847, but, alas, none of the bones belonged to people. The undramatic findings do not bode well for the archeologists' negotiations with CBS regarding the upcoming series CSI:Alder Creek.

Even without people eating people, the NOVA episode contains some level of adventure. But my favorite Denali account remains Art Davidson's autobiographical tale of the peak's first winter ascent. Even the book's title gives me the chills: Minus 148 Degrees. (That's with windchill, but still...)

[I feel somewhat odd categorizing a post about the Donner Party under "Travel" and "Food and Drink," but what's done is done.]

DOOL Fools

So last Friday night I was chillin up in Hollywood, you know, just hangin out at the Days of Our Lives 40th Anniversary Party, as I do every year. Cause I watch a lot of soaps and I'm tight with that whole crew. And Ali Sweeney was all, "So glad you could make it, Matt!" and I was all, "No problem, hon."

Okay, I was there, but I had no idea who the stars were. A college friend who works on the show invited me as her guest, and she had to explain to me whom I was meeting. I'm sure soap stars don't take well to "Nice to meet you. So what do you do?" You have to be very delicate with their egos. The most interesting person I talked to was a woman who had bid ten thousand dollars to be an extra on a Days episode. I believe she hangs an ornament on a tree in the background of a scene.

An "a-ha" Moment

MTV is finally playing the Nine Inch Nails video for "Only." (It's been on NIN's website since July.) And boy is it Mactastic!

But seriously, do the VMA's have an award for best use of iTunes and the desktop accessory lineup of Spencer Gifts in a metal/industrial video?

Imagine "Take on Me", but instead of comic book panels you have one of those pin grid thingies that takes an impression of your hand. (Apparently it's called a "pinpression." Who knew?) You can hear Trent thinking, "Help! I was at the mall and somehow I got trapped in a pinpression! Let me out! Must! Get! 80's chick!"

Shut up. He's still more goth than you.

More on the making of the video here and here. (It's mostly CGI.) The director, David Fincher, is of course known for directing the films Fight Club and Alien3 and the video for Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl."

And in case you haven't heard, Fincher and Reznor are currently developing a musical based on Fight Club. So badass.

Dept. of Overachieving

CNN video montage quote of the day: In Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina left "cars rearranged into piles as if a child had put them there." Maybe they should have specified which child they were thinking about. (Or did they mean this one?)

Diamonds are Harder than Iron(y)

The latest Kanye West video, for his song "Diamonds (From Sierra Leone)," has played pretty heavily on TV of late, and it confused me, until now. You see, the song is truly a tribute to himself and his record label, Roc-A-Fella Records. The chorus goes "diamonds are forever" because the Rocafella associates rep their label by putting their hands together to form a diamond-shaped gap in the middle. (Thus the lyrics "Throw your diamonds in the sky if you feel the vibe," echoing Big Poppa's "Throw your hands in the air if you's a true player.") Why diamonds? Conspicuous Consumption Rules Everything Around Them.

Now why would a self-congratulatory song about a label that glorifies the diamond trade have "From Sierra Leone" in the title? Seems an afterthought to me, as there is no mention of conflict diamonds at all in the lyrics. And why would the video dramatically portray children slaving away in African diamond mines, possibly indicting members of the Roca fam for their fashion choices? Seems an arrestingly self-ravaging afterthought, actually. Has irony reached a new apogee?

It's as though Kanye produced the song, then heard about the diamond situation in Africa, and suddenly felt bad about the whole affair. Not bad enough to change the song, mind you, just bad enough to wrap what he had in a public service message and put it out there. I never bothered to research my suspicion, but yesterday Kelefa Sanneh confirmed it in the Times:

After he had recorded "Diamonds," he learned about the conditions of diamond workers in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. He went back and retitled the track "Diamonds (From Sierra Leone)," and flew to Prague to shoot an apocalyptic video (with conflict diamonds a central, if mysterious, plot point).

But to Kanye's half-hearted credit:

Then the images in the video didn't match the lyrics, so Mr. West recorded a new version of the track, with a verse from Jay-Z; now the popular remix doesn't match the music in the video. A few days ago, Mr. West said he still wasn't sure which version would wind up on the album.