If you’re shy and cynical, or perhaps one or the other, or if you just like good, strange fiction, pick up Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by our good friend Rob Shearman. It’s a treasure trove of horror and sentiment, joy and bitterness.
George Clooney’s Mustache alternately made me shudder and smirk with cruel delight, The Hidden Story had me weeping in the middle of a crowded airport, Crumble made my heart ache deep into the night, and Sweet Nothings had me laughing for days.
It’s a book I recommend unreservedly to all my lovely Valentines!
(That means you.) <3
Saul Williams is my favorite poet, though it seems to trivialize his work, to call him just a poet. I find his work too harsh for any sort of casual listening, and he talks about a lot of things that I couldn’t possibly pretend to understand, but I empathize with that basic feeling…
“I try to never watch. It takes me so long to get over it and I’m always so downcast. I find it really distressing,” he says. “Maybe when I’m very old, I’ll sit down and watch my earlier work. But it will just depress the hell out of me. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. It’s not like I’m some weirdo. You just see how far short it falls from where you might have imagined you were heading. I have a perfectly average skewed perception of myself. We often don’t know what we’re like. I hope that’s the case because otherwise I’ll kill myself.” He chuckles.
“When a movie is called ’searingly honest,’ it’s almost invariably grim and demonstrates how bad things can get. Richard Curtis (the director) likes to try to make a searingly honest movie that tells you how good things can be.”LA Times interview with Bill Nighy
Pirate Radio isn’t really a film about music, though the soundtrack is exquisitely chosen and ever present; it’s a film about people who love music… It’s about how perfect life can be when you let it take you where it will, and it’s replete with that joyous creative harmony, that amazing synergy of people coming together for a common cause. It’s really a lovely film.
It’s true that his science wasn’t always all that well-founded, and it’s true that he was a bit of a sensationalist — but he made his work accessible and personally relevant to anyone who took the time to listen, and that in itself was laudable.
When I was in grade school, more than anything I wanted to get into Cornell and attend one of his classes. It sounds ridiculous now, but just believing that I could achieve anything I wanted, if only I worked hard enough, made all the difference. He made it seem possible that even someone as average as I could do great things.
Sagan taught an entire generation to think big thoughts, to believe that humanity could someday be greater than it is now; that we are capable of more, if only we strive. Say what you may about the man himself, it’s hard to fault his message.
Silent films have the tendency to turn up in the strangest places! This isn’t quite as impressive as the complete cut of The Passion of Joan of Arc that turned up in the closet of a Norwegian mental hospital, but it’s still fairly unique…
A fellow recently discovered he’d bought a previously unknown Chaplin short on Ebay for $5… It’s probably more likely that it’s not actually a Chaplin short, but a propaganda piece made with his clips, as there doesn’t seem to be a record of this film.
That said, if it is a real Chaplin short, his estate should be able to authenticate it, which will make it worth a small fortune. As is, it’s previously unseen Chaplin footage, which is the sort of thing that makes film people squeal with delight.
"Now you come up here—that is the thing to do. I, also have Scotch whisky, certain lemons, & hot water, & struggle with the same every night."
~Mark Twain
