Ryeberg!

Q: How cool is it that this exists? A: Pretty cool.

Ryeberg.com invites smart, distinguished people to select and write about YouTube videos (or videos from any other video-hosting site). Each of these individual pieces becomes a “curated video.”

curated video = video clip/s + written text

Ryeberg curated videos are short personal essays or stories, but with an important difference: They always include video clips, either as a starting point, or as lyrical counterpoint to the text.

One of those distinguished people is none other than Mary Gaitskill, who has written on four clips so far, one of which is Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” video, which was the essay that inspired my friend Meehan to alert me to this site’s existence in the first place. Another one is “Sarah Palin at the Republican Convention,” wherein Gaitskill discerns an analog between Palin and the “false Maria” of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Other, non-Gaitskill contributors to Ryeberg include –

Alana Wilcox – “Knuckles and Narrative” (an essay on boxing, with a video of a guy teaching a little kid to box)

Peter Lynch – “The Nobody in All of Us” (on Warhol and Scorceses’s The King of Comedy)

Alexandra Shimo – “What Nazis Watched Over Dinner” (exactly what it says)

Catherine Bush – “Not Ghost but Trance” (about the limits of what’s writable; also, Merce Cunningham)

Technology / 7 Comments
July 10th, 2009 / 11:37 am

Your favorite bitter literary characters on Omegle

sickmanWhoever said Omegle is the Internet-chat version of truckstop-bathroom sex didn’t think to throw ‘great literature’ at it to, you know, maybe class it up a bit. Well, I thought it, and I threw it, and I somehow still feel dirty, ashamed, and full of regret. I feel like I’ve ruined something.

I give you the underground man chatting on Omegle, followed by Molloy chatting on Omegle.

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Technology / 82 Comments
July 10th, 2009 / 12:30 am

Oh wait, how about an interview with Blake Butler

As if you didn’t know, Blake Butler is on the road with the Dollar Store tour that Featherproof put together. The following interview was conducted over TXT Msg, and I dunno, it might not be worth your time, but I liked hearing about the road hijinx a lot.  READ MORE >

Web Hype / 12 Comments
July 9th, 2009 / 8:09 pm

The Nasty Bits

litagent I hate thinking or talking about the business side of writing, but Jason Rice just sent me this link to a conversation in which Jonathan Evison and Jason Rice are sussing out the Getting An Agent And Making A Living Problem. That’s all I am going to say about that.

PS: People in the Broolyn region should come to an art opening tonight at Melville House. Jim Osman has some really interesting wall sculptures up and we’re going to have wine and snacks and look at them.

Uncategorized / 7 Comments
July 9th, 2009 / 4:12 pm

Ocho 25

Uncategorized / 10 Comments
July 9th, 2009 / 11:55 am

HOW DO YOU EDIT SOMETHING

what are your editing methods. and how many times do you usually edit something. is it better to edit something when you are angry. do you ever print shit up really small and then look at it. have you ever printed up something then sat int the woods with it. how do you know you are not ruining something. does anyone else like champagne mango as much as this kid does. (“this kid” is me). have you ever looked back on an earlier version and been like, “hell naw, this was better.” do you ever just add more sentences by looking at random words that have occurred in the piece and then rearranging them. does editing prove that there is no standard english. can anyone but the writer edit a piece of writing. how do you get the diamond sword in zelda. and how many people will feel this post is dumb and then try to compensate for their own low self esteem by demeaning it or those who comment on it. questions.

Uncategorized / 100 Comments
July 9th, 2009 / 12:10 am

Thrash Version of Dopesmoker

This, thanks to a generous reader, is(was) the band Sleep. If any of these guys read The Giant, I hope they try to contact me. I love them.

This, thanks to Htmgiant reader Sasha, is(was) the band Sleep. What I would do to smoke with any one of them. Or all of them.

I have no weed. I like the video (after the jump)- the “Thrash Version of Dopesmoker”. I do like the original version of Dopesmoker better. But art that inspires art, appropriates it, smokes it, humps it, mocks it, loves it, picks its nose– maybe it doesn’t quite make it as special of a thing as the original– but it can still be of interest in its own right. (See threads on Flannery O’Connor and Tim Gautreaux and read about Salinger suing people.) Also, after the jump, are the lyrics to Dopesmoker, or some of them. (And granted, I will listen to the original waay more than the thrash version.)  My husband sent the lyrics via email. I have not fact checked them. Is it possible he transcribed them himself, whilst listening to Dopesmoker, over and over again? I don’t know. (I think it could be so- I need to teach him about lyricsmania and all those other sites.) I haven’t seen him in days. Hm. READ MORE >

Excerpts / 29 Comments
July 8th, 2009 / 9:15 pm

I’ll tell you what you can do with your review, buddy

debottonAlain de Botton, sardonic author of How Proust Can Change Your Life and, more recently, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, positively flipped his shit when the NYT Book Review made some unglowing remarks about his latest book. The line “I will hate you until the day I die” was used. Take that, brainless critic! We need more hate in publishing, far as I’m concerned. Who wants to take a Louisville Slugger to James Frey? Anyone?

Author News / 33 Comments
July 8th, 2009 / 1:48 pm

The Petabyte

I’m not suggesting that you don’t know what a Petabyte is, only that I came across ‘their’ flyer and felt like posting it. Okay just click for more. READ MORE >

Technology / 6 Comments
July 8th, 2009 / 1:18 pm

Lost & Found: Stories From New York – A Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Anthology

When I got back from Gainesville, there was a big fact package from Open City waiting for me. I felt like I had won a prize. Inside were three books: Flight Patterns: A Century of Stories About Flying; and a galley of Rachel Sherman’s debut novel, Living Room (dropping this October); and Lost & Found, the second Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood anthology, which clocks a thoroughly impressive gut-busting 853 pages. (The first anthology, you might recall, was Before & After, in 2002). Just a few of the names included: Sam Lipsyte, Jonathan Ames, Charles D’Ambrosio, Phillip Lopate, Daniel Nester, Mickey Z., Iris Smyles, and several dozen others. As Beller explains in his introduction (apropos the question- why does NYC produce so much writing about itself?), “The essential ingredient is density. The density is the drug.” I’ll cheers that one. Anyway, for those of you who actually live here, I thought you might want to know that there’s  a reading for the Beller book tonight in Washington Square Park. Details after the jump (and more on the Sherman and Flight books at some point in the nearish future).

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Presses / 2 Comments
July 8th, 2009 / 12:50 pm