we say "shapah!"

Our man Werner Herzog reads Curious George in a tone that only the German filmmaker can muster:

hats off to @jeremyryancarr for this tasty tidbit

Sycamore Review: Winter 2010 featuring Zach Falcon

ZACH FALCON was born and raised in Alaska. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Quiddity, the 2009 Bridport Prize Anthology, and the Bear Deluxe Magazine. He lives in Iowa City where he is working on a novel.

Author Michael Pollan says:

The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow more of it and plant more of it. The potato, by gratifying our desire for control, control over nature so that we can feed ourselves has gotten itself out of South America and expanded its range far beyond where it was 500 years ago. And the apple, by gratifying our desire for sweetness begins in the forests of Kazakhstan and is now the universal fruit. These are great winners in the dance of domestication.

The five months of furious short-story writing in 1923-24 had left him with a stake of $7,000. In Great Neck, that would only cover two and a half months of expenses. How could he stretch the $7,000 to gain the time to finish Gatsby? Earlier, as he was struggling to save, a friend wrote from France to suggest that Fitzgerald join the many Americans living well in Europe on the strong American dollar. The friend wrote that it cost one-tenth as much to live in Europe: he had just finished “a meal fit for a king, washed down with champagne, for the absurd sum of sixty-one cents.” Fitzgerald thought, based on the friend’s recommendation, living expenses on the off-season Riviera would be low enough to let him finish Gatsby without any short-story interruptions.

Thanks to Jason Kottke for posting on such good stuff. Cheers.

Spike Jonze worked with Lance Bangs on this new documentary about Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where The Wild Things Are, which is in post-production having been directed by Jonze. Click on the image to see the trailer for the documentary.

Errol Morris is arguably one of the great filmmakers of all time. I especially hold Vernon, Florida as one of the pinnacles of documentary filmmaking. I watch it at least once a year, twice this year.

Morris holds a discussion about lying on his hosted NYT blog, specifically on Genesis 37:29-34 regarding the story of Joseph.

Now, some pals of mine wondered why he chose to use the story of Joseph. It’s difficult to say. There are surely many stories that would have been fit for his purpose, detached from any sort of potentially touchy, dogmatic ties.

Personally, I think it’s interesting he chose the story he did. Having grown up in a fundamentalist environment, these stories are quite familiar to me and I see what value he was trying to bring though using it as his example.

However, I wouldn’t have chosen it. Instead, I would have chosen from a massive assortment of films and novels, stories that aren’t so charged with a belief system, opening the value of his thoughts up to more people without alienating them.

This point, alone, makes for an interesting debate.

Thus, it is only for our speculation.

Regardless, it’s an interesting meditation on lying and worth the time I spent reading it.

Tangent: In this age of seemingly infinite access to information, it goes without saying that it is easier than ever to be manipulated. Especially while we don’t exercise our *discerning* muscles. Teaching a child to be discerning may be the single greatest challenge of them all in this context.

For example, if collectively we only just agreed that the world is round, there would still be sites up all over the Web saying it’s flat.

Just sayin’.

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I received one of the most beautiful SMS’s ever today. Is that how we say SMS in the plural?

Doesn’t really matter. Case in point: “I received one of the most beautiful SMS’s ever today.”

It was from my father, who’s never cared much about his spelling, only about the message:

Cheers, Pop.

Happy Birthday, by the way.

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