Where The Wild Things Are write up in NY Times

New York Times Magazine published a detailed and lengthy article that follows the creation of the film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are (out Oct. 16), directed by Spike Jonze. My favorite bit, in regards to Jonze's rapport with children and his tendency to wear skater shoes:

Catherine Keener, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Being John Malkovich and who plays a divorced mother in Where the Wild Things Are, told me that her 10-year-old son, Clyde, once asked her why Jonze didn’t live with his parents; apparently Clyde didn’t realize that Jonze was an adult.

I'd also refer you to the music video Jonze produced earlier this year for the UNKLE track "Heaven".

(via ManBabies)

Judge Sonia Sotomayor~r~r~r

NYT: "President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court, officials said Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at the White House."

She'd be the third woman on the bench and the first Latina. As of late she was involved in the Connecticut case over reverse discrimination when no blacks made it past New Haven's firefighter promotion test and the department scrapped the test. Check out her Wikipedia page. As of right now there are nine citations about her possible nomination to the Court.

Dave Chappelle

"Every comic wants to be a musician. Every musician thinks they're funny. It's a very strange relationship that we have. Some musicians are funny. Some comedians can play. I'll give you an example: Mos Def, funny guy; Jamie Foxx, good singer and piano player. So you never know, you never know what kind of talent a person has. I'm mediocre at both, but I've managed to talk my way into a fortune!"

from Dave Chappelle's Block Party, 2005

Zach Galifianakis Between Two Ferns with Natalie Portman

I have never seen a celebrity this uncomfortable in my life...

Real Time with Sarah Silverman

This is the first frank interview with Sarah Silverman I've seen. She talks about her finances and the economy, The Great Schlep, her show, divas, the Playboy Mansion, and the art of being a comedian.

Adam Carolla on Communication

Q: "How did you get your psychological understanding of people?"

A: "This entire planet is filled with human beings. More people spend time figuring out how to communicate with their dogs than with people. We spend no time trying to figuring out people and how they work and what motivates them, but they will decide whether you have a happy satisfied life or a shit life. And at some point on some level I realized I should start studying people. Because if I figure out how people work then I can figure out how to get money from them, how I can get sex from them, how... and I'm not talking about manipulating them or getting them to do shit they don't want to do, I just mean understand people.

Q: "When did you realize that though?"

A: "I don't think I ever really consciously did it but it was always in the back of my mind. I studied people, I wanted to know why they did stuff and what motivated them to do the things they did do or didn't do and then how could I prevent it from happening again to me or somebody else. And so it always became a sort of quiet hobby of mine that I was going to study people and try to understand how best to deal with those people.

I'm a person, I don't want to get beat up, I don't want to get fired, I don't want to get divorced, I don't want to get 'fill in the blank'. You don't want your kids to hate you: figure out how to be a decent dad. You want your boss to give you a raise. When someone is throwing a party you want to get invited. How does it all work?"

(via Thursday's podcast)

The Adam Carolla Podcast

Adam Carolla, longtime Loveline co-host, actor/comedian and recently-dethroned successor to Howard Stern's radio show is now producing a free daily podcast. You can grab the RSS feed here and the iTunes subscription link here. He launched the podcast just last week and it has already reached well over one million downloads.

Each show averages an hour long and covers any topic on the host's or guest's mind. I've listened to four shows so far and it's consistently funny and enjoyable. This week comedian extraordinaire David Alan Grier (aka DAG) and Leo Laporte (host of the This Week in Tech podcast) are scheduled to appear. So why not tune in, it's fucking FREE!

"Tesla, they say, is dead."

Last year the radio program Studio 360 twice ran a show devoted to famed inventor Nikola Tesla and the spirit of invention. Tesla created many things in his life, the most important and well known being alternating current, over which he battled his nemesis inventor Thomas Edison.

An introduction to Tesla with Samantha Hunt:


Three pieces about Tesla's life, written and performed by Mike Daisey:




The (very good) film The Prestige featured Tesla as a character played by David Bowie, and even had a scene featuring Tesla's rumored attempts at the wireless transmission of power. The man was as much a potent myth-maker as an inventor. At the end of the program (you can hear it at the 9 minute mark in this segment) there is a small eulogy for Tesla written by Louis Adamič and read over the radio in 1943 by the mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia:

Now, this extraordinary man is dead. Or so they say. The papers on Friday published obituaries and editorials summarizing his life and work, and they told of his personal habits and eccentricities. Tesla, they say, is dead. But Tesla is not really dead! The real, the important part of Tesla lives in his achievement, which is great, almost beyond calculation, an integral part of our civilization, of our daily lives, of our current war effort. Why mourn Tesla? His life is a triumph! A triumph of all the people of the world!

Conan O'Brien ♥ Martha Stewart

From Time.com's top ten Conan O'Brien moments. They include Triumph at the Star Wars opening, Conan in Houston at 3 AM, picking apples with Mr. T, the Walker, Texas Ranger lever, trying to meet Forss Fagerstrom and a lovely bit with Andy Richter. But they left out the Stewart vs. Colbert vs. Conan fight, for shame!

Last night was Conan O'Brien's last time on Late Night as he prepares to take over Jay Leno's Tonight Show in LA.

John Hodgman on cat vomit and owl consumption

Last month "famous minor celebrity" John Hodgman, resident of Brooklyn, answered questions in a three part series for readers of the New York Times blog City Room. All questions had to be about life in New York but covered as varied topics as cat vomit, hobo spices, minor celebrity spottings, mole-men, Liza Minnelli, Cylons, how to cook an owl and the length of a rod:

A fourth of a chain, or roughly 11 cubits. 10 units in New York, for obvious reasons.

Also...

Q: What is the New York equivalent of the Southern expression "Bless your heart"?

A: (EXPLETIVE) you, you (EXPLETIVE-ING) (EXPLETIVE)

Here is part one, part two, and the inordinately long part three.

The Great Hobo Wars

This Ken Burns effect-laden video is almost painful to watch, but the audio is taken from probably the funniest part of John Hodgman's audiobook version of The Areas of My Expertise (audiobook link/paperback link). His new book More Information Than You Require is out now with an audiobook version TBD. Hodgman was interviewed on last Sunday's This Week in Tech by Leo Laporte, hear it here (the interview starts at about the one hour mark and lasts 30 minutes). In the interview he talks about filming the Apple "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" commercials with Justin Long, his books, Yale University and The Daily Show.

(via kottke.org)

Homer Simpson

"You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, then move on."

George Carlin, 1937 - 2008

It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

George Carlin passed away yesterday at the age of 71. When asked what he would want on his tombstone he said "Gee, he was just here a minute ago."

I've followed George since my childhood so this came as a bit of a shock. He had just as much an influence on me politically as Tim Russert and spoke his mind on so many subjects I care about I wouldn't be able to list them all here.

The clip is from his unbelievable 2005 performance Life Is Worth Losing. He recently performed a new stand up It's Bad For Ya for HBO this March, and was just honored with the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor four days before his death. You can hear an interview he did on Fresh Air back in 2004 here. Browse more reports of his death here.

Lara Logan on The Daily Show

CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan talked to Jon Stewart a couple of days ago about reporting from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the public's apathy towards the conflicts.

"I was asked once 'Do you feel responsible for the American public having a bad view, a negative view of the war in Iraq?' and I looked at the reporter and I said, 'Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier, what does that look like? Who in America knows what that looks like? Because I know what that looks like, and I feel responsible for the fact that no one else does.'"

Lewis Black on NPR

Lewis Black was on NPR's Talk of the Nation (a call-in show) a week ago and I just got around to listening to it. It's an incredible interview, listen to it here.

Black was on to promote his new book Me Of Little Faith so he spends most of the time riffing on religion. He gets heckled by a guy unfamiliar with his work, talks about the death of his brother, drops tons of anecdotes and of course his classic pissy humor. He gets asked his opinion on Scientology and, this is the best line, says "They're insane! There's no ifs ands or buts, they're crazy, they're lunatics. All you gotta do is go to Wikipedia and read what they believe - how the world started. Wow. They make all other organized religions look like... science."

Tim Russert Dead at 58

Tim Russert, bulwark of political moderation, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and host of Meet the Press died today of a heart attack at the age of 58. As we were recently reminded by Terry McAuliffe he is outlived by even his father. Read about his passing at Google News, Politico or NPR.

"I'm not fearing any man!"

Today is the anniversary of what is known as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I've been to the mountaintop" speech, delivered on this date in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He was assassinated the following day.

You can listen to the speech, watch a segment and read the text here.

Next to his "I have a dream" speech this is one of my favorites. I'm not a person of faith but King's breadth and depth in religious allusion in this speech makes one humble. In it he spoke of the sanitation worker's strike he was there to support, the overcoming of injustice through history, and the war in Vietnam. He spoke of the progress made by the Civil Rights Movement, the political and economic tools that could be used to further the movement, and an attempt made on his life by a crazed woman who stabbed him with a knife. His exposition on this last point is the best, skip to about 4/5 the way through the audio player to hear it.

This speech is incredibly ominous. Not only does thunder roll in the background, but King declared at the end:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! So I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man!

They say he was so overcome at the end they had to help him to his seat. NPR covered this anniversary today and interviewed Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles who attended the speech. He would say to young people who have had less exposure to King that "we're not going to get to the place where we can say, 'Dr. King's dream has been realized. Now we can go to the beach.' That's not going to happen."

...

On this topic something reached the news recently about a personal manuscript written by Abraham Lincoln in 1864, shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. It was a reply to a letter sent from an abolitionist schoolteacher on behalf of 195 boys and girls from Concord, Massachusetts asking him to "free all the little slave children." In his reply he wrote "Please tell these little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it."