A pound of obscure |
Pause, rewind, replay. Digital scrap found by writer Lloyd Shepherd (The English Monster, The Poisoned Island) |
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NotesMy daughter’s taking RS GCSE tomorrow. Should I show her this?
(Source: astrodidact, via mattfractionblog)
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Notes The Oxford English Dictionary is currently soliciting public help in tracking down "a mysterious, possibly pornographic, 19th-century book from which a number of its quotations are derived."Meanderings of Memory by Nightlark, from which 51 words in the OED are thought to be sourced, is nowhere to be foundWould you like to join our team of intrepid researchers? We post select OED Appeals on Tumblr each Sunday and you can find the full archive of appeals on the OED site.
(Source: millionsmillions)
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"There were several factors contributing to this outburst, but part of it was the appearance of residual shreds of feeling, artifacts from a time when sights and sounds and Leonardo–the Baz Luhrmann trifecta–went straight into the viscera. (You had better hope you don’t spend your teen years taking in total garbage, because that’s formative garbage.) When I read San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle opine recently that Romeo Juliet was “too contemptible even to be called a desecration,” I know that he never lay in virginal bed with headphones and discman, listened to Thom Yorke utter the eternal invitation “I’ll be waiting, with a gun and a pack of sandwiches,” and just felt so much."
A lovely essay on teenage influences.
The Millions : You Can’t Repeat the Past, Old Sport: On Leo, Baz, Gatsby, and Me
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John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey and many other eccentric creatures of the legal (and not-so-legal) professions, had his first dramatic work broadcast on this day in 1957 - on the Third Programme, of course. It was a radio play called ‘The Dock Brief’ and the cast included David Kossoff (left) as Fowle and Michael Hordern as Morgenhall. The production won a Prix Italia. The pic is a production still from the TV version, made a few months later with the same cast.
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European Stereotypes, by country (via Stereotyping in Europe)
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"We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines."
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Two Dutch guys having simulated contractions. Eye-opening. (by Pluumke)
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The video of that extraordinary Soderbergh keynote, State of Cinema: Steven Soderbergh (by San Francisco Film Society)
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Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award Shortlist Readings @ Foyles
Come and hear me reading from The English Monster, together with some Real Proper Writers: Kerry Hudson, Ros Barber and Patrick Flanery. It’s free, but you need to book.
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Notes"When I was coming up, making an independent film and trying to reach an audience I thought was like, trying to hit a thrown baseball. This is like trying to hit a thrown baseball – but with another thrown baseball. That’s why I’m spending so much time talking to you about the business and the money, because this is the force that is pushing cinema out of mainstream movies. I’ve been in meetings where I can feel it slipping away, where I can feel that the ideas I’m tossing out, they’re too scary or too weird, and I can feel the thing. I can tell: It’s not going to happen, I’m not going to be able to convince them to do this the way I think it should be done. I want to jump up on the table and scream, “Do you know how lucky we are to be doing this? Do you understand that the only way to repay that karmic debt is to make something good, is to make something ambitious, something beautiful, something memorable?” But I didn’t do that. I just sat there, and I smiled."There’s so much amazing stuff in Steven Soderbergh’s State Of Cinema Talk that I could have picked pretty much anything he said. Go and read it if you care about any artform that has a commercial spine - not just movies.
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IMG_5024 http://flic.kr/p/eeN6t3
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Sally Field c. 1960s.
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They’re here.
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