Jimmy Chen—
Designer Nick Tassone (alias bee combs) makes posters for films based off Stephen King novels, all of which I really like. They are conceptually gratifying and an unfortunate anomaly in the movie poster business; that these are from a school project make it that much more impressive.
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“The Situation”
Mike Sorrentino
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino calls himself “The Situation” because his abdominal muscles, per his perception of them, are so extreme in their contour and firmness, that it has become, well, a situation. To refer to oneself in not just the third-person, but as an incident, is freaking awesome. I was immediately drawn to Mike very early on in the show because of his difficulty with women. Despite the hot tubs, Korbel, body lotion, and other courting paraphernalia, he never quite scored. Here, a neurotic man under a sheath of muscle. In the season finale, he makes out with roommate Snooki — a sad letdown to a season full of potential snatch, in which two scratched hearts (he was quickly rejected by Sammi after a brief window of interest) mend each other with the wet gauze of tongues. I was actually subdued by their awkward, tentative compassion, as it was very sad.
Ask the Scientist
[via New Yorker excerpt of Playboy Interview with James Cameron.]
PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine’s hotness?
CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, “She’s got to have tits,” even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na’vi, aren’t placental mammals.
What the fuck is cheese?
In Dave Chappelle’s “what the fuck is juice?” joke, poor black people limited to sub-quality “purple drink” have no idea about the concept of juice as derived from an actual fruit. The racial implications of Chappelle’s humor are too complex for me to get into, and not what this post is about, so let’s just say I find the joke profound. In D.F. Wallace’s “This is Water” speech, wherein fish, asking “what is water?” take for granted the most essential constituent of their existence, Wallace ends by telling us “this is water,” meaning, we are the fish, and that cognizance of the things around us, which leads to positive/proactive thinking, is our responsibility. (Of course, one thinks about the last decision he made, an act which deserves reticence.) And so, dear writerly people, at this juncture I ask you what the fuck is cheese?
Cheese, that which is cliche, corny, sentimental, and all other vague no-nos subject to interpretation. “Saint Judas” by James Wright, one of my favorite poems, tip toes on cheesiness with lines which I’ve strike-thoughed:
Glowing tutorial
Faster Times contributors banner
I’m always struck by how all the contributors at The Faster Times are glowing. Sometimes I feel people think we at HTMLGIANT also want our contributors to glow, but that we don’t have the photoshop skillz. I say NO! — we do have the photoshop skillz, we just never got around to doing a “mass glow” for our contributors.
Glowing is pictorial lubrication, and augments the experience of looking at a bio pic. For writers who want to glow, what follows is a photoshop tutorial on how to make that happen.
Jimmy Chen—
Jean-Paul Sartre deserves photoshop corrective eye surgery. Being and Nothingness can now finally feel normal, without the half-gaze of genius ripping your mind apart.
