MDM Broadcast - 2024

Wonder who will do the math on how much Vivek spent, per vote, in Iowa. Saw he spent 12mil in 3rd quarter - which would be close to $1.5k, per vote.

Wonder if that is a record-breaking, per-vote expenditure in a losing effort.

Perot-ian!

I taped this 8 second news clip on VHS of a UFO sighting caught on camera (somewhere) in 1989. This was channel 3, out of Hartford, CT. Maybe fair to say this has never appeared on the internet. 😂 (Before the days of rewinding live TV!)

Not sure about gantlet vs. gauntlet, but everything else here via Ezra Klein = 👍.

My uninformed assumption is that mainstream cultural acceptability of popular behavior that might be harmful in the long run has a lousy historical track record, and we've probably never encountered a phenomena as powerful and pervasive as the algorithmic lure to document everything.

Loved how the We Are The World doc on Netflix can be seen as a fraught corporate team-building exercise where the only way to get the creative department to cross the rope bridge successfully is for someone to lean-in and beg Stevie Wonder to stop singing in Swahili.

What would James Lipton think? 🤔 Love this clip from Inside the Bad Actors Studio.

Listened to this fun intvw with Carl Weathers this morning. This afternoon, he’s gone!

stone cold jane austen from the top rope!!

Hard to believe "American Fiction" is Cord Jefferson's first film as a director. So glad this film exists and that a few more people will see it in advance of the Academy Awards.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Fiction_(film)

20190226 - five yrs ago, today

"Helms closed the gap by tying Galifianakis to his party's presidential nominee George McGovern and with the late-campaign slogan "Jesse Helms: He's One of Us," which some perceived as a reference to Galifianakis's Greek heritage."

Fun to come across one of my all-time favorite snapshots (of a fireball over the Tetons in October '72) at Meteor Crater in Arizona last week, only to find the archived NYT piece about its making, where the Bakers mention they also had a movie camera at Jackson Lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball

And sure enough, the footage is on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFFXSgTON98

Part 1:
Was also surprised by this instagrammable "picture window" (of a kind) at the Meteor Crater visitor center, and how it framed a northwesterly view, back toward the giant San Francisco peaks that mark the northern-edge of Flagstaff.

I felt pretty sure that in the foreground of the view, after zooming-in, I'd be able to distinguish the slopes of Roden Crater, the art installation that James Turrell has been building for more than 40 years, and has yet to open to the public.

While standing there, I assumed that the rightmost dusty cone in the distance was Roden Crater, and that this was as close as I'd get to visiting, so why not take a quick pic? But as I was looking through this bricked frame, I remembered how Turrell's own work has provided a frame for the sky itself, and specifically for sunlight, in all of its variations, to be contemplatively registered in ways both familiar and astonishing.

I was looking through a frame for the location of an artist's work that has everything to do with putting a frame around a particular view. All that doubling, doubling-back.

Regrettably, I missed Turrell's exhibitions in 2013, and hadn't visited one of his installations until two days after this picture, when we were able to snag the last remaining parking space near Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum as the opening pitch for a San Francisco Giants' spring training home game was being thrown against the Chicago Cubs (SF lost, 8 to 4) a long foul ball away.

The night before, I'd re-read this great NYT-mag profile of Turrell and loved how, when he made some money as a young artist, he flew around the West, trying to find a place where he could envision a large-scale work.

"Each evening, he would land the plane wherever he happened to be, unfurling a bedroll to sleep beneath its wing."

Part 2:
In Scottsdale, we walked into Turrell's sky space at the museum (named "Knight Rise") and seeing that it was time for the first pitch for a Saturday ballgame, the sun was high, the light was brash, and it all lacked the dusty subtleties of dawn or dusk. But through Turrell's patented sleight-of-hand, the sky was suddenly close, tactile, and changing. It felt like we'd been purposefully transported from one window to another, each beneath the Arizona sky.

Apparently in an effort to forestall the issues that come with the fact that his life's work is still incomplete (at age 80), Turrell has partnered with Arizona State to collaborate with the University's programming, and recent footage from that is now on YouTube, and definitely worth seeing, below.

And sure enough, after zooming-in, the cinder cones viewable from the bricked view in Part 1 are a few foul-balls west (to the left, up the 3rd-base side) and a little bit south of Roden Crater, which, from what I can tell, is in the center of the frame, but invisible, just over the crest of the horizon in the distance.

Wil S. Hylton's 2013 piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/magazine/how-james-turrell-knocked-the-art-world-off-its-feet.html

Wil S. Hylton updated his piece in 2021 for Smithsonian, here:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/james-turrell-visionary-artwork-arizona-desert-180977452/

https://scottsdalepublicart.org/work/knight-rise/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell

Tar+! 😂

Heckuva whipsaw in the first paragraph here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

Nearly Every Right, Okay

Happy spring to all who celebrate by firing-up the Belgian VPN.

After taking Zyrtec for allergies last week, I had a dream where someone was waxing poetic about the nature of photography, and they said a phrase that struck me, and in the context of the conversation, it was clear they were quoting someone.

They said: “It's the perspicacious, rapacious nature of the bellows…”

(using "bellows" to refer to pre-1940s camera tech is pretty extraordinary, btw)

In the dream, I replied, “Churchill?” and they said, “indeed!” which confirmed (to me, in dreamworld) that Churchill said something astute about photography at one point.

When I woke-up, I immediately wrote down & googled the quote, and was bummed to discover it wasn't a quote of Churchill's at all. It was just a dream. (I also had to refamiliarize myself with the definition of "perspicacious." I should do crosswords more often.)

Today, after telling a friend I'd taken Zyrtec for seasonal allergies, he mentioned that people who take it often have wild, vivid dreams, that there's something about Cetirizine that allows for a different kind of dreaming.

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/nation-world/betterhelp-therapy-class-action-settlement-refund/507-b4ef5e0f-c722-4562-95e9-c3cdd7738d1a

Zappa knew.

20 years ago, today. Fun that this pic has been used on wikipedia for nearly that long, too.

"Elsewhere embodiment takes its revenge, beginning with “Cursed,” a series of small raggedy sheets of various metals, some toxic, that are each stamped with one of the grandiose, grammatically challenged tweets Donald J. Trump began issuing soon after taking office as the country’s 45th president. Hung in a line near the lobby, these curse tablets descend to a poisonous heap on the floor."

thank you, jenny holzer

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/arts/design/jenny-holzer-guggenheim-art-signage.html

Richard Linklater has been doing some great press for his latest project.

Making Digital Analog Again

I always enjoy the Olympic Trials, probably more than the Games themselves, because the stakes seem higher -- in so many cases, you either make the Olympics or you've topped-out of the sport and are headed for a regular job. Just making the trials is such an accomplishment for most athletes; it really seems to boil down to one last shot. The finish of the women's 800m last night was incredible - top 2 spots auto-made the final (tonight at 10:30 est) plus there's something about seeing all that great weather at Hayward Field live & in prime time. 👍🏻

on-view through July 27...

https://jeankentagauthier.com/en/expositions/presentation/156/words-and-pictures#oeuv-1

Idaho libraries now out-Southing the South.

While watching Reel Rock 14, had the urge to see a list of who'd set the previous speed records up the Nose on El Capitan, and when I moused over "Brad Gobright" who is featured in the RR doc about the Nose speed record, was shocked to see the expected tense change on the mouseover, from "is" to "was". https://reelrocktour.com/products/reel-rock-14 Absolutely ridiculous time-lapse here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdOzbM_7GMI

One of the great benefits of cameras everywhere all-the-time is being able to see a singular event that happened once on the planet from two radically different perspectives.

This gif, from Tristan Greszko's short-film about the (then) record-setting speed ascent of the Nose on El Capitan in 2017 by Brad Gobright and Jim Reynolds, contrasted with a real-time YouTube vid taken by one of the two climbers bivouacked against the wall.

Tristan's time-lapse: https://vimeo.com/264661267

Climber's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG4ubEPPN7U

The beetle appeared right after I told the kids that Lennon & McCartney loved Elvis.

Never realized that James Meredith, who integrated Ole Miss in '62 (thx to JFK sending 30k troops) was a Republican who later supported both David Duke and Ross Barnett.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Meredith

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ole_Miss_riot_of_1962

Surprised to see what’s happening on the design/architecture front in NW Arkansas particularly with Marlon Blackwell’s work at Thaden School. https://www.archdaily.com/office/marlon-blackwell-architects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_Blackwell

Tip of the cap to the supporter at the Villages (deep in enemy territory!) with this extraordinary sign.

Joshua Dudley Greer has a wide and wonderful edit from his Atlanta-based "Makeshift City" project that's worth looking at. Will be a book via Gost in April 2025. (Best on a big screen.) https://www.jdudleygreer.com/makeshift-city/

A colleague from years back has written a book on self-hosting that looks worth it, if that's your thing:

"I wrote this book after having realized the power and potential of self-hosting. I used the method it describes to provide a robust data haven for myself and my family."

https://selfhostbook.com/

I've recently returned to a trio of films by Trân Anh Hùng that I haven't seen since the 90s, and each film is packed with such visual intensity that is quintessentially cinematic, which feels rare in today's movies made for small screens, where so much visual detail is rendered or dithered or erased and re-written by software.

Hung went to film school in Paris, which may explain his attention to detail and the degree to which he luxuriates over the surfaces of Ho Chi Minh city, but it's the little things that he gets so right; where to put the camera, how to let the camera tell a story as impactful as the plot itself, and how to move the camera through a series of simple movements to gain a greater understanding of who these characters are.

I never studied film, but I'm seeing examples like this less and less as movies have transitioned away from a business of art into a business of content, the goal of which is to win the second-by-second battle to capture and keep your attention from glancing down at the glaring notifications of your phone.

“…as soon as the content doesn’t have a sensationalistic hook, you switch immediately…”

- Federico Fellini, on the TV remote control

Just a reminder to all parents out there that it’s never too early to start the delicate, often-uncomfortable conversation with your child about when to adopt the Dvorak keyboard layout.

https://www.dfw.state.or.us/news/2024/10_Oct/101724.asp

DFW FTW 🙌🏻

Not just any old painting...

"your bones already asterisks, / your chipmunk glance a schwa."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_central_vowel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Young_(poet)

Finally got around to playing this Donovan 45 with a fidget spinner and a receipt

When active, dedicated music fans lean back and allow an algo to push them content, the supertech version of payola takes over, and feeds listeners fake artists playing fake music to pad Spotify's very real profits.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

(Time for tech to solve another problem tech created, eh? 🙈)

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Mood-Machine/Liz-Pelly/9781668083505

I made a Chrome Extension called "Their Name Is Alive" for ascertaining at-a-glance the "alive status" of actors in a film, or musicians on an album.

It's in the Chrome Web Store and is also installable via github.

Fun to recognize these two posters in the production design of Haynes’ “I’m Not There” during a rewatch.

I’ve heard three instances of people saying “bi-opic” instead of “bio-pic” in reference to the new Dylan film.