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You can't make any decisions because you don't know what you want. And you don't know what you want because you don't know who you are. And you don't know who you are because you're allowed to be anyone you want.

car i saw on the upper east side today.

us and jeremy shockey.

again.

us and coco.

us and ice-t.

Lapowinsa: Look, we not want to seem patronizing - after all, it's your duffel cloth - but we been in Mannahatta long time. And, sure, it seem dazzling and sophisticated at first. But living here? (He makes a skeptical face.) It not everything it cracked up to be.

Peter Minuit: (worried) Why? Is there a scourge? Warlike neighbors?

Lapowinsa: Not "scourge" per se. (Pinches fingers philosophically.) More like cultural pathology.

Peter Minuit: I don't follow.

Lapowinsa: You know, little things: like how people only interested in "what you hunt," not "who you are"; the relentless sarcasm; Fashion Week - oh, and how everyone always talking about Greenmarket! Seriously, it's just produce! It make you feel like social pariah because you don't like rainbow chard.

Calkanicha interjects.

Lapowinsa: Chief say chard thing even worse in Brooklyn.

-"Mannahatta" by Yoni Brenner, The New Yorker

'cause you know me, jon stewart...i'm old school, i don't be pullin' out.

man in black: morning.

jacob: mornin'.

man in black: mind if i join you?

jacob: [shaking his head] please. want some fish?

man in black: thank you. i just ate.

[the man in black sits down not far away.]

jacob: i take it you're here 'cause of the ship.

man in black: i am. how did they find the island?

jacob: you'll have to ask 'em when they get here.

man in black: i don't have to ask. you brought them here. still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?

jacob: you are wrong.

man in black: am i? they come. they fight. they destroy. they corrupt. it always ends the same.

jacob: it only ends once. anything that happens before that is just progress.

[the man in black stares at his compatriot.]

man in black: do you have any idea how badly i wanna kill you?

jacob: yes.

man in black: one of these days, sooner or later...i'm going to find a loophole, my friend.

jacob: well, when you do, i'll be right here.

man in black: always nice talking to you, jacob.

jacob: nice talking to you, too.

[the man in black stands up and walks away. planted just near and towering above the beach spot where jacob has made his breakfast is the four-toed statue of taweret.]

- lost, season 5 episode 16

damon lindelof and carlton cuse, this is what i'm talking about. crazy mythology and the man in black and finally, some answers.

and another 20 minutes left!

"If I were to serve openly as a homosexual, nothing would be the same. Slaughtering terrorists just wouldn't feel special. It would be, like, Yeah, so today I detonated a bunker filled with snipers, and then I texted my boyfriend, and I agreed that we should only use cerulean for an accent wall. Big whoop. But now, when I have to be more coded and paranoid, every time I strap on my body armor and hoist my M16 I can think, Hey, Mr. Jihad, how about a brunch date with my rocket launcher? I'm not an openly gay soldier; I'm a secret gay soldier, and that makes me fierce! I'm Project Gunway!"

-"Don't Ask Me" by Paul Rudnick, The New Yorker

recently there's been a good deal of press regarding terry richardson's alleged...umm...uncouth behavior toward the young models he frequently photographs.

i am a huge fan of richardson's photography and have been loving his blog as of late, so it's just kind of disappointing to know that he's quite possibly a dirty, old man...albeit a supremely talented one.

trailers are the problem.

i somehow managed not to see a trailer for the hurt locker, either on television or in a theater. after my parents saw the movie and loved it, and it won best picture at the oscars, i ordered the hurt locker on demand.

it was a really freakin' good movie. believable acting. a realistic and eye-opening portrayal of a war i lived through (am living through?). fantastic, gritty cinematography. and an edge-of-your-seat plot that wasn't hokey or gratuitous. the hurt locker is a war movie for people who don't like war movies.

but now, watching the trailer, the movie i saw and loved is pretty hard to find. instead, there's suspenseful background music (i'm pretty sure there was almost no music in the film; the suspense of the action itself was more than enough) and a one-dimensional plot (a southern-sounding white guy who diffuses bombs).

also to be considered is the psychological process of habituation: "the psychological process in humans and animals in which there is a decrease in psychological response and behavioral response to a stimulus after repeated exposure to that stimulus over a duration of time" (wikipedia). 

(warning: i am about to describe some imagery that is included in the trailer. if you consider this a spoiler, be forewarned.) there is a bit near the end of the hurt locker trailer that shows a member of U.S. forces (sgt. james) pulling several feet of red wire up from dust and rubble. he follows the red wire, which leads not to one, but five bombs, spread out 360 degrees around him. it's a threatening and unexpected image which pulled me a bit further to the edge of my seat.

but for anyone who's seen the trailer, habituation has kicked in. you know what's coming as soon as sgt. james' hands grip the red wire, and it's impossible for that image to have the same psychological and physiological effects the second time around.

trailers compile the one-dimensional bits of plot, character and dialogue and then play the most easy-to-read music underneath (e.g., low thumping for suspense, swelling violins for unrequited love, et cetera). nuance just doesn't read in two and a half minutes.

go here to watch logorama, the oscar winner for best animated short.

it is pretty cool. and depressingly terrifying.

i used to download a lot of free, illegal music. first from napster, then from kazaa and then from limewire. however, when limewire began infecting my computer with viruses, i stopped.

since that time (perhaps 2-3 years ago), i have, for the most part, obtained my music legally. well, kinda. a lot of it comes from friends. and however they acquire music...well, that's a bit of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy (the only one about which i feel morally decent).

the point of all this is that i recently bought 2 albums from amazon: felt 3 by slug and murs and the soundtrack to crazy heart. and neither of these albums came in a plastic jewel case. both were packaged in cheap-o, crappy cardboard.

i look at this as a chicken-or-the-egg situation. on the one hand, the music industry isn't doing so hot. and i would assume these cardboard cases cost a lot less to manufacture than the shiny, plastic jewel cases. on the other hand, these cardboard cases give me just another reason not to purchase music.

when i know i could get what i'm buying for free (and the packaging is cheap and adds nothing to the product), i'm getting ripped off and i know it.

this is hilarious. splitsies?

the new zappos commercials are fantastic. especially because i love puppets. and zappos.

terry richardson with spike jonze.

i want terry richardson's life.

i watched a lot of mitch hedberg today. it made me start thinking.

mitch hedberg, janis joplin, bradley nowell, jimi hendrix, jean-michael basquiat, elliott smith, kurt cobain, john belushi, dj am, keith haring, heath ledger, chris farley, river phoenix, dash snow, justin pierce, vincent van gogh, mark rothko, nick drake, jim morrison.

just a few of the many brilliant artists who died too young from drugs, suicide or (possibly) a combination of both. what one must ask, though, is how much of what they created artistically could have been done without the aid of drugs, depression or (possibly) both.

above is a photograph of campers and counselors from the 1960s-1970s at hidden valley camp, the summer camp i attended for 4 years. unfortunately, the hvc website doesn't specify the exact date of the photo. 

several things stand out:

1. the camp was far more diverse back in the day than from 1997-2000 when i attended.

2. the camp was just as wonderfully hippie dippy from 1997-2000 as it was back in the day.

3. i have always suspected that hvc highly resembled the fictitious camp firewood from wet hot american summer. this photo confirms my suspicions. 

10.

it is so important to me that things are, simply, right.

today i read a blog post (from a well-read blog) that discussed the movie "an education," but wrote of it as "the education."

also today, i sat with a well-spoken person who referred to an acronym as an anagram.

though perhaps my constant lower-case writing bothers others, these sorts of things bother me to no end.

"when i was in college, i used to get wicked hammered. my nickname was puke. i would chug a fifth of soco. sneak into a frat party. polish off a few people's empties. some brewskies. some jello shots. do some body shots off myself. pass out. wake up the next morning. boot. rally. more soco. head to class. probably would've gotten expelled if i'd let it affect my grades, but i aced all my courses. they called me ace. it was totally awesome. got straight b's. they called me buzz."

-andy bernard

jeff bridges and terry richardson. the dude abides.

shoes.

food.

not maggie. but looks a whole lot like her.

"i think i'm the only person in the history of the world to wake up hungover and not even drink the night before."

- anonymous

speaking of final seasons, here's another that need not worry about the cursed series finale: michael and michael have issues. comedy central has cancelled the show after one season (or at least that's what michael ian black tweeted earlier today).

while m.m.h.i. was no stella, it was still a lovely little show to accompany a joint.

(p.s. michael showalter - i know you live in brooklyn. i love you. find me!)

as the final season of lost continues on its merry way (now 1/3 of the way finished), i'm realizing more and more that it is nearly impossible to create a final season of any beloved television show that will satisfy both viewers and creators alike.

seinfeld couldn't do it. they left off with the predictable let's-bring-everyone-back-for-one-final-hurrah device. not only was the episode boring, it was highly unfunny.

the sopranos couldn't do it. though i, personally, enjoyed the ending, i understand the overall audience anger at david chase. as the audience, we devote time, energy and real human emotion toward these fictional characters. we want a real human ending, not an ellipsis.

arrested development didn't have to do it. i guess that's what happens when you're a self-referential, absurd and intelligent sitcom...you get cancelled after 3 seasons instead.

curb your enthusiasm hasn't done it yet. i have faith that larry david won't let me down.

30 rock and the office also haven't done it yet. i can't say i have the same faith in nbc as i do in mr. david.

i guess what it comes down to is that, at this point, i'm pretty relieved that lost is ending. i'm resigned to the fact that no, i won't be getting many answers. and yes, i probably have wasted a good deal of the past 5 years theorizing, reading lostpedia and allowing damon lindelof to "engage in vigorous intercourse with the squishy contents of [my] skull."

calla lily.

"Eschatology (lit. 'study of the last') is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world."

-wikipedia

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

-stewart brand

all my life, white and liked.

inspired by the idea of the 6 word memoir, i will begin sharing some of my own.

still not sure where i'm headed.

looking at the world slightly skewed.

don't like change. yet remarkably adaptable.

"I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."

-matt stone

damien hirst. lsd.

what happens after i die?

i've never even watched growing pains, but andrew koenig's suicide is making me particularly sad.

also, i'm having trouble taking the best picture oscar nominations seriously. 10 is too many. and i just don't understand how up in the air can be nominated but crazy heart isn't.

i'm on a horse.

guide to curling...still boring.

i wrote the following essay on december 17, 2007, for a class entitled "problems in philosophy."

In contemporary philosophy, the problem of identity considers several questions: What makes a person unique? What is essential to a personality and what makes two personalities different? How does a person persist through time? How much change can a person survive? Under what conditions do we have the same person and under what conditions are you the same person from the past?

Examining the question of the persistence of identity over time, we can use the following open-ended statement to help understand the essence of personal identity: Person P at time 1 is identical to Person P* at time 2, if and only if… Contemporary philosophers have finished this statement in various ways. In my paper, I will be examining the spatiotemporal continuity theory, the psychological continuity theory, and how both can lead to the problem of fission/duplication. I will then discuss the three accounts that can be used to examine the problem of fission/duplication: the co-location account, the bi-location account, and the best-candidate account.

First, some important vocabulary must be defined. The problem of identity considers what makes a person numerically similar over time. This must be defined separately from what makes a person qualitatively similar (or different) over time. At age three, I enjoyed listening to classical music. Today, at age twenty-one, I enjoy listening to rock music. I am, therefore, a qualitatively different person. Numerically, however, I am still the same person. To explain this, examine the simple equation: 2+2 = 4. In this equation, 2+2 and 4 stand for the same thing. In the same vein, Jenny at age three and Jenny at age twenty-one stand for the same thing; I am the same being now as I was then, though I have gone through drastic qualitative differences (i.e. my height, weight, and musical preferences have all changed). Like in the 2+2 = 4 equation, Jenny at age 3 = Jenny at age 21.

I will now discuss the two theories used to explain personal identity. The first explanation of personal identity is the spatiotemporal continuity theory. The spatiotemporal continuity theory explains personal identity as a function of spatiotemporal continuity. For example, imagine witnessing a baseball being thrown from pitcher to catcher. You can document the baseball, in terms of space and time, at every moment from when it leaves the pitchers hand to when it reaches the catcher’s glove. This is proof that the baseball that the pitcher threw is the same baseball that the catcher caught. The same goes for personal identity. Theodore Sider summarizes the spatiotemporal continuity theory as follows: “persons are numerically identical if and only if they are spatiotemporally continuous via a series of persons” (Sider 13). That is, if we can follow a person continuously through space and time from time 1 to time 2 (as we did the baseball), that person at time 1 must be numerically identical to that person at time 2.

The philosopher John Locke disagreed with the spatiotemporal continuity theory and used the thought experiment of the prince and the cobbler to demonstrate the opposing psychological continuity theory. The prince and the cobbler thought experiment is as follows. Imagine a prince and a cobbler who each wish to try out life as the other person. One day their entire psychologies get swapped: the psychology of the cobbler is housed within the body of the prince, and the psychology of the prince is housed within the body of the cobbler. According to the spatiotemporal continuity theory, the person in the prince’s body is still the prince and the person in the cobbler’s body is still the cobbler; the theory takes no notice of the psychology within each body. Locke claims that this is implausible, using the following thought experiment.

Imagine that several weeks ago (before the prince/cobbler switch occurred), the prince committed a horrible crime. Now, several weeks later (post-switch), the police go searching for the perpetrator. They determine that it was the prince who committed the crime and arrest the person who appears to be the prince. However, this person whose body is that of the prince, has the entire psychology of the cobbler and has no memory of committing any crime. Meanwhile, the person who appears to be the cobbler (but whose psychology is actually that of the prince and does have a memory of committing the crime) is thrilled to have gotten away punishment-free. Locke states that the only person who should be arrested and punished for a crime is the person who commits the crime (and would, therefore, have memories of committing the crime). Thus, the person with the cobbler’s body should have been arrested even though that is not the body who committed the crime; the psychology and memories of the person inside the body are what matters. Thus, the psychological continuity theory must be used to explain personal identity in place of the spatiotemporal continuity theory.

The psychological continuity theory is formally defined in the following way: “A past person is numerically identical to the future person, if any, who has that past person’s memories, character traits, and so on—whether or not the future and past persons are spatiotemporally continuous with each other” (Sider 15). However, Locke’s theory of psychological continuity was questioned by the philosopher Bernard Williams. Williams used the following thought experiment to lead to the duplication problem. Williams’ thought experiment is as follows.

Suppose a man, Charles, is alive today. Scientists are able to rewire his brain so that his entire psychology is that of Guy Fawkes, a man who died in the year 1606. According to Locke and the psychological continuity theory, Charles is now Guy Fawkes. Now suppose there is another man, Robert, who is also alive today. Scientists rewire his brain in the same way as Charles, and now Robert also has the entire psychology of Guy Fawkes. According to Locke and the psychological continuity theory, Robert is now Guy Fawkes as well. Using a simple transitive property, we see that if Charles = Guy Fawkes and Robert = Guy Fawkes, it must be that Charles = Robert. However, this situation does not make sense; Charles and Robert can not be the same person, as they are two distinct people. Charles and Robert may be qualitatively identical (that is, they have the same memories and characteristics as each other, and as Guy Fawkes) but they are numerically distinct and have been since birth.

This thought experiment, Williams claims, illustrates the duplication problem of the psychological continuity theory: “What happens when psychological continuity is duplicated?” (Sider 16). Because the duplication problem rendered the psychological continuity theory implausible, Williams accepted the spatiotemporal continuity theory as the definition for person identity. However, the duplication problem poses a problem for the spatiotemporal continuity theory as well.

Before explaining the duplication problem in terms of the spatiotemporal continuity theory, we must again examine the theory itself. We said before that the spatiotemporal continuity theory assumes a person is identical to himself between time 1 and time 2 if that person can be followed continuously through space and time between time 1 and time 2. However, suppose this person loses a leg or an arm. This person is now taking up a significantly less amount of space, effectively causing a “spatiotemporal discontinuity” (Sider 16). But we can agree that they are still the same person. Thus, we must define a sufficient spatiotemporal continuity (that is, a minimum amount of spatiotemporal continuity that would be required to assume that a person is numerically identical to himself between time 1 and time 2) in order to allow for cases like this.

The following situation is proposed to define a sufficient spatiotemporal continuity. Imagine you have cancer in the left half of your body, including the left hemisphere of your brain. Doctors can get the cancer out of your body by separating your body into two halves and discarding the entire left half, including the left hemisphere of your brain. The doctors will give you an entire fake left half of your body, and the right hemisphere of your brain will adapt and begin taking over most left-hemisphere functions. All in all, you will be cancer-free and you will, we can agree, be the same person. This must then be our sufficient spatiotemporal continuity: a minimum of half of your body must stay spatiotemporally continuous.

Now let’s look at the duplication problem in terms of the spatiotemporal continuity theory. Going back to the previous cancer scenario, imagine that the doctors actually find cancer in both halves of your body, including both hemispheres of your brain. They can do an amazing operation where your body and brain are split in half (the right hemisphere of your brain stays with the right side of your body and the left hemisphere of your brain stays with the left side of your body). Both sides are operated on to try and rid them of cancer. The operation goes better than expected, and both halves of your body are cleared of cancer. Two people now exist, each with half of your body and one hemisphere of your brain. According to our definition of sufficient spatiotemporal continuity, only half your body and one hemisphere of your brain are needed to deem you identical to your former self. Thus, there now exists two identical people who have come from one person (to whom they are also identical). How can this be possible?

This example demonstrates the same duplication problem as before: how can two distinct people be identical? What, then, can be done to solve this problem of duplication? There are three accounts which attempt to explain and solve the duplication problem: co-location, bi-location, and a third best candidate account.

All three accounts are based on the same premise we discussed earlier: the body and brain of person A are split in half, into persons B and C. The co-location account states that before the operation, there were actually two people located inside of person A. The operation succeeds in separating the two people, B and C. This account seems rather implausible; there is nothing to make it appear as though there are two people located inside of person A. Harold Noonan describes this implausibility as “an undeniable datum of common sense that in this case there is only one person present before the brain transplant, whereas the [co-location] analysis…entails that this is not so” (Noonan). Noonan, however, states that he does not see this “undeniable datum of common sense” as completely undeniable. Though the co-location account may seem to easily solve the duplication problem, its implausibility does not make it a viable option.

The bi-location account of the problem of duplication states that after the operation, person A is bi-located: person A wakes up as both person B and person C. Person A now experiences consciousness from two distinct spatiotemporal locations. The bi-location account is similar to the idea of time-travel, where a person is also experiencing consciousness from two distinct spatiotemporal locations. The major problem with the bi-location account is the implausibility of consciousness having two distinct spatiotemporal locations at a single moment; this account does not seem plausible.

The other major problem with the bi-location account is that it does not seem to truly solve the duplication problem. If A wakes up as both B and C, we can say that A = B and A = C. As we’ve seen previously, this implies that B = C. Thus, we are back at the duplication problem: how can these two numerically distinct people (B and C) be one and the same person? They can not, and we are back where we began. Or, imagine that person B is asleep at some future point in time, and person C is awake at the same future point in time. This would mean that A = asleep and A = awake. As is obvious, this is paradoxical and implausible; one can not be both asleep and awake at the same time. Thus, the bi-location account also does not seem to solve the problem of duplication.

The best-candidate view, then, is to assume that person A goes out of existence when there are multiple candidates for the future identity of A. Thus, person A stops existing after the brain/body split, and persons B and C are now two distinct people. The best-candidate account centers itself around the non-branching view: that “personal identity is nonbranching continuity” (Sider 18). That is, personal identity is stable when a single person at one time is continuous (spatiotemporally or psychologically) with a single person at a past time. In the situation we are examining, this is no longer true; we now have two people at one time who are continuous with a single person from the past. Thus, the two current people (B and C) are no longer identical to the original person (A).

The best-candidate view may seem implausible because of its implication that a double success equals a failure, but this does not cause any true implausibility in the account. Lets go back to the cancer operation discussed previously: you (person A) have cancer in both halves of your body, the two halves are split (B and C), and the doctors operate on each half. If the best-candidate view is to be accepted, you must now hope that only one half of you survives the operation. If only one half survives, you will still be in existence; if both halves survive, you will no longer be in existence (according to the non-branching view). How, then, could two successful operations result in the end of existence of the original person?

While this question may make the best-candidate view seem paradoxical, it is, in fact, the most reasonable account of the duplication problem. The best-candidate view does not seem to contain any implausibility involving common sense or the transitive property (as the co-location and bi-location accounts do). Most importantly, the best-candidate account ensures that we will not encounter the duplication problem; there now exists two people (B and C) who may be qualitatively identical but are surely not numerically identical.

As I have discussed, the duplication problem is problematic for both the spatiotemporal continuity theory and the psychological continuity theory. The duplication problem allows for two numerically distinct people to be proven identical to both each other and a single past person. The co-location, bi-location, and best-candidate accounts attempt to solve the duplication problem. While all three have both costs and benefits, it is the best-candidate account which gives the most plausible solution to the duplication problem with the fewest costs.

"I have never not been perplexed by a piece of mail. Anything that's addressed to me that's not junk mail I just stare at with a quizzical look on my face. What the fuck could this possibly be?"

-aaron karo

"Maybe somebody did it and didn't take credit for it. Maybe it was already done and didn't need doing in the first place. I have no idea who did it, what they did, or how they did it so well. And you know what? Jimmy crack corn and I don't care."

-george costanza

"Will you walk to the train and smoke a cigarette with me?"

more gawker haiku. i gotta start doing my own.

Golfer Tiger Woods

We don't want apologies

Just your wife's number

---

Shut up James Cameron

Shut the fuck up James Cameron

Shut up James Cameron

---

Can you do haiku?

Syllable counting is hard

When you wear mittens

i love haiku. and i love gawker. and when gawker does haiku contests, i love haiku and gawker both just a little bit more.

my favorites from this week's "news haiku" contest:

Four eight fifteen six-

teen twenty-three forty-two

I still don't get it

---

O Olympic Games

Hours of downhill thrills on

Bob Costas's face

---

There should be a sport

Falling on your ass on skates

I could win the bronze

my cell phone broke yesterday and my ipod broke today. i(phone) think it's a sign.

4 8 15 16 23 42

well, i am officially on the chatroulette viral bandwagon, and let me just say that it is a creepy, fascinating, addictive and strange look into the human condition in the year 2010. 

we now know that the creator of the site is a 17 year old from moscow who has never been to the united states. which tech company will offer him a six figure salary is yet to be determined (my bets are on facebook).

anyways, i read about chatroulette in new york magazine on my flight to wisconsin 2 days ago. i had heard some murmurs of the site on twitter this past week but had not bothered to look into it. the new york magazine article was captivating, and i simultaneously wanted to log on immediately (damn you delta, where is your in-flight wifi? wow, that would certainly be taking chatroulette to another level...but i digress) and stay as far away from the pedophiles, flashers and other freaks who would even consider using this site.

so i compromised. within the mindful gaze of boyfriend and his roommate, we all ventured into the world of chatroulette.

within the past 48 hours, i have seen:

2 prepubescent boys holding an ak-47

a large sack of weed

a penis

many people who do not speak english

too many young girls

a guy playing a guitar

many people staring blankly at me, while i stared blankly back at them

a lot of waving as way of greeting

several groups of twenty-somethings drinking beer (which happens to be the same thing that we were doing)

currently, boyfriend and roommate are intently "nexting" people while i sit on the couch writing. and i still don't quite know what to make out of any of this.

What do you hate most about living in New York?

Hipsters pretending to be cool, but really they're just arrogant. There's no need for arrogance. Everyone's just trying to get through the day. Relax, everybody.

-judah friedlander

i have 2 comments about the snow, and then i hope to never remark on the weather within the confines of this blog again:

1. go buy a warm hat

2. grow a pair

"Please, everyone, for the love of God: Stop changing your Facebook profile pictures to your famous 'doppelgänger.' It's revealing some uncomfortable truths about our friendship.

All Facebook memes are essentially narcissistic—which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. It's when the narcissism merges with the oversharing and the need for validation and approval that I start seriously considering taking myself off Facebook. I don't want to play every time someone asks for my first memory of them. I don't need to know 25 things I didn't know about you—there is a reason, undoubtedly, that these are things you heretofore kept secret. Or which Little Miss character you are. And even though it was ostensibly to raise awareness for breast cancer, I didn't need to know the color of the bra you were wearing.

Still, most of those memes are essentially harmless. The Doppelgänger meme, though, has been revealing a little too much about my Facebook friends' psychology since it started last week. It's a delicate, awkward dance, right? If your friend replaces her profile picture with Kate Hudson, are you supposed to tell her that she doesn't resemble her? At all? No, right? Awkward! But a fake 'OMG you do look so much like her!' is just as awkward. There is no right answer, just as there is no right answer to the question of who your Doppelgänger is. Unless you turn it into a big joke—hey, look, I think I look like Al Bundy! Oh yes, ha ha ha, you are a funny person."

-gawker

"I don't ask for a lot, sweet world. Enough food and water to keep me going. A warm place to lay my head at night. And for the hit 1986 movie 'Rad' to be officially re-released on Blu-Ray Disc. (Seriously. 'Helltrack' and a young Lori Loughlin in crystal-clear high definition? Yes, please and thank you!)"

-J. E. Skeets

love me some muppets.

wah wah wah, that's all i hear.

the questions that have preoccupied my mind since starting to watch lost:

seasons 1, 2, 3: will they get off the island?

seasons 4: will they get on the island?

season 5: what year is it?

season 6: what the hell is going on?

holy shit it's happening. beginning of the end. go.

24 hours.

elliott smith. by patrick moberg.

Dear Mr. Herbert,

I'll try to tell you what my attitude is to the stage and screen rights of The Catcher in the Rye. I've sung this tune quite a few times, so if my heart doesn't seem to be in it, try to be tolerant...Firstly, it is possible that one day the rights will be sold. Since there's an ever-looming possibility that I won't die rich, I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won't have to see the results of the transaction. I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade "scenes" - only a fool would deny that - but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator's voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons - in a word, his thoughts. He can't legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights. There are many of his thoughts, of course, that could be labored into dialogue - or into some sort of stream-of-consciousness loud-speaker device - but labored is exactly the right word. What he thinks and does so naturally in his solitude in the novel, on the stage could at best only be pseudo-simulated, if there is such a word (and I hope not). Not to mention, God help us all, the immeasurably risky business of using actors. Have you ever seen a child actress sitting crosslegged on a bed and looking right? I'm sure not. And Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biassed opinion is essentially unactable. A Sensitive, Intelligent, Talented Young Actor in a Reversible Coat wouldn't be nearly enough. It would take someone with X to bring it off, and no very young man even if he has X quite knows what to do with it. And, I might add, I don't think any director can tell him.

I'll stop there. I'm afraid I can only tell you, to end with, that I feel very firm about all this, if you haven't already guessed.

Thank you, though, for your friendly and highly readable letter. My mail from producers has mostly been hell.

Sincerely,

J. D. Salinger

sitting at the table next to us at dinner tonight: curb your enthusiasm's marty funkhouser.

catfish sounds like just one of the many intricate movies, that i want to watch right now, at sundance this year.

sundance 2011 - i'm there.

"Nev, a 24-year-old New York-based photographer, has no idea what he's in for when Abby, an eight-year-old girl from rural Michigan, contacts him on MySpace, seeking permission to paint one of his photographs. When he receives her remarkable painting, Nev begins a friendship and correspondence with Abby's family. But things really get interesting when he develops a cyber-romance with Abby's attractive older sister, Megan, a musician and model. Prompted by some startling revelations about Megan, Nev and his buddies embark on a road trip in search of the truth.

Catfish centers on a riveting mystery that is completely a product of our times, where social networking, mobile devices, an electronic communication so often replace face-to-face personal contact. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's grounded documentary is a remarkable and powerful story of grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue."

-sundance.com

"British street artist Banksy has been creating attention-getting stenciled graffiti for years. Over the past decade, as his artistic profile has risen, Banksy's identity has remained almost totally secret. And yet, here he is with a film in the Sundance Film Festival. Exit Through the Gift Shop is...well, we're not yet sure exactly what it is. Billed as a 'pseudo-documentary' and described by Banksy as 'The story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed,' the film might show Banksy at work and reveal something about the artist. Then again, it might not.

Rhys Ifans narrates the film, which was directed (according to a statement from the filmmakers) by Terry Guetta, who 'set out to record this secretive world in thrilling detail. For more than eight years he traveled with a backpack through Europe and America. After he met a British street artist known only as Banksy, things took a bizarre turn.'"

-slashfilm.com

exit through the gift shop.

tracy morgan and terry richardson.

movies that should be boycotted immediately:

1. dear john

2. valentine's day

liz lemon: cross promotional. deal mechanics. revenue streams. jargon. synergy.

jack donaghy: that's the best presentation i've ever seen.

-30 rock

the beatles in 1957. george harrison is 14, john lennon is 16 and paul mccartney is 15.

"if you buy a woman chocolate, i can assure that you will get a blow job."

-millionaire matchmaker, patti stanger

in my apartment right now: 4 computers, 3 televisions, 3 video game consoles, 2 ipods, 2 cell phones, 1 alarm clock, me.

"Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V. Conceptually, the diagnosis is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging. All of the variants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue."

-Jerald J. Block, M.D., Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction