fun

Arts & Entertainment

Alyssa Rosenberg: “Beyoncé Knowles-Carter”

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Alyssa Rosenberg: “At The Grammys, Beyoncé And Jay-Z Made The Case For Marriage That Conservatives Can’t (via ThinkProgress)”:

And in my favorite recent example, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay-Z got on the Grammy stage last night and did what conservatives have been dying for someone to do for ages: they made marriage look fun, and sexy, and a source of mutual professional fulfillment. As Caitlin White wrote in her review of Beyoncé’s self-titled album: “She claims female pleasure as pure and grown, something dominant that can coexist with monogamy and marriage and her own status as an artist.”
[…] “Drunk In Love” is raunchy, fun and even silly. “Why can’t I keep my fingers off it, baby? I want you,” Beyoncé sings. She teases her partner, who both in the real-life creation of the song and its narrative, is her husband Jay-Z, “Can’t keep your eyes off my fatty, daddy, I want you.” It’s a song about flirting, about going out and partying, about having fantastic, adventuresome, totally enthralling sex–with your spouse. That’s a far, far better argument for marriage than the pseudo-scientific case for holding onto your oxytocin by not having sex before you say your vows on the grounds that such conservation efforts will make your first time better.

“Drunk in Love” is performed over a trap beat usually reserved for aggressive, sizzurp slurred raps about marijuana, murder, money and misogyny. The single is a send-up of those drug induced fantasies where something very real to the Carters is described with a bounce back beat and emphasized malapropisms like “dranking”, “breastesses” and “surfbort”.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber

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Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” “I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,” she said.’

via James Thurber: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” : The New Yorker.

Always loved reading this story in school.

‘Race-Themed’ Newspaper headlines

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Alyssa Rosenberg comments on the ‘Race-Themed’ USA Today Headline:

USA Today found itself the subject of the news this weekend thanks to an unfortunate headline on a story about the weekend movie box office. “’Holiday’ Nearly Beat ‘Thor’ as Race-Themed Films Soar,” read the tagline on a story about The Best Man Holiday, the follow-up to the 1999 movie The Best Man. In a marketplace where African-American audiences are dramatically underserved, it’s amazing that analysts are still surprised when romantic comedies and family dramas with African-American casts perform well.

But even more telling was the idea, implicit in the headline if not in the piece itself, that a movie with a non-white cast must necessarily have race as its primary subject. By extension, the suggestion is that the lives of people of color are inflected first, and perhaps only, by race, rather than by gender, sexual orientation, class, love, ambition, jealousy, rage, or even pure, manic-pixie spontaneity. And the idea that culture about characters of color is necessarily about race also creates the assumption that stories about white characters are inherently deracinated. Some white people, like Jews, are exempt from this, and the recent spike in Boston movies has put more Irish-American characters and Irish-American humor to the fore. But for the most part, the experiences of white characters are treated like they’re neutral, rather than representative of their whole race, or revealing in some ways of the pathologies and problems of various subsets of white America.

what she said.

Book authors should look to rappers for inspiration

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Authors should publish like Luda

Authors should publish like Luda

Book authors need to learn the hustle:

But not everyone agrees. Emily Gould complainsthat “When ebooks and pbooks are bundled, the ebooks are sold at a loss. That’s authors’, publishers’ and, associatively, non-AMZN retailers’ loss” and “frustrating we have to keep explaining that ebook production is not free. digital objects are not made by elves.”

Do it like rappers:

Self Publish or and go to Amazon and find alternate ways to promote or partner. The point is sell more, publish for less.

Do it like some other rappers:

Go to smaller imprints that demand less money for promotion.

Do it like other rappers:

Start your own imprint and get a partnership with an imprint which reduces their take on profits.

Do it like all those rappers do:

diversify your promotions and offerings. (say blog somewhere?)

In addition: trademark your sh*t, and protect your intellectual property. Or just realize you won’t make money and be ok with that.

Conan O’Brien Interviews Statistician Nate Silver

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Since Nate Silver has announced his move from the New York Times to Disney aka ESPN and ABC I wanted to post an interview with Silver that wasn’t of the antagonistic “aren’t you lucky” or the self involved media claiming “the real winner of the election was Nate Silver” sort. Conan O’brien did a good job of that when he talked with Silver during his “Serious Jibber Jabber” web series.

Statistician Nate Silver – Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O'Brien – CONAN on TBS – YouTube.

Nate Silver and other (even right wing) statisticians/modelers who use sound methodologies and helped those of us who paid attention have some empirical cocoon to avoid the hysteria willingly wrapped around every sound bite, non scandal or spin in long American Presidential election seasons.