I'm not slacking off. Honest. I had an actual ephemera-related blog post ready to go this morning. I was prepared to hit the "Publish" button in Blogger. But then one final thought crossed my mind. I did a little bit of research and ... BAM! I realized there was a plot hole in my post big enough to sail the Titanic through. Even bigger than the plot hole that nobody was in the room to hear Charles Foster Kane utter the word "Rosebud."
So that post is back in the shop for repairs. In the meantime...
Some #fridayreads suggestions
Here is another wide-ranging collection of suggestions for your upcoming leisure-reading time. Enjoy!
- The Village Voice: "Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master's Master" by Scott Foundas (Warning: Contains some F-bombs and spoilers.1)
- Smithsonian.com: "The Accidental History of the @ Symbol" by William F. Allman
- Out of Print: An Interview with Paul Bacon (famed designer of dust jackets)
- Mother Jones: "My Summer at an Indian Call Center" by Andrew Marantz
- Esquire: "My Outsourced Life" by A.J. Jacobs (a classic from 2005)
- The New York Times: "All the News That’s Fit to Print Out" by Jonathan Dee (a 2007 look at Wikipedia)
- Chicago Tribune: "Field Museum anthropologist unlocks mystery of ancient Maya blue" by William Mullen
- The New York Times: "My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead" by Chuck Klosterman
Footnote
1. Here is my favorite excerpt from Foundas' article about Paul Thomas Anderson:
"...Anderson likens his research process to a digressive Internet search that begins one place and ends up somewhere wholly unrelated, 'like when you get on YouTube looking for a sports clip and now, three hours later, you're watching some old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.' One of his Web finds was The Aberree, a Scientology-themed newsletter published from 1954 to 1965 by a Phoenix couple, Alphia and Agnes Hart, who were among Hubbard's early adopters. ('The most certain thing about Scientology is that no one can be certain what this "Science of Certainty" will come up with next,' reads the opening line of the first issue, leading off a discussion of the nascent church's efforts to legalize itself as a religion.)That's right, Paul Thomas Anderson and I are kindred spirits — Web surfers and ephemeraologists!
"'It really was the best possible way to time-travel, reading these newsletters,' he says, 'and to kind of get a sense of not just Hubbard, but the people who were really interested in the beginnings of this movement, because they were very, very hungry to treat themselves and get better, and they were open to anything. They were so incredibly optimistic.'"
I am also pleased to see this article note that Anderson intends to plow forward right into his next movie, which is planned to be an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" starring Robert Downey Jr. As an aside to an aside, I would also note that Robert Downey Sr. has already appeared in an Anderson film. He was the unamused owner of the record studio who got into an argument with Dirk and Reed in "Boogie Nights."
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