from The New York Times

An Italian Antihero’s Time to Shine

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

ROME — By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended. Caravaggio, who somehow found time to paint when he wasn’t brawling, scandalizing pooh-bahs, chasing women (and men), murdering a tennis opponent with a dagger to the groin, fleeing police assassins or getting his face mutilated by one of his many enemies, has bumped him from his perch.

That’s according to an art historian at the University of Toronto, Philip Sohm. He has studied the number of writings (books, catalogs and scholarly papers) on both of them during the last 50 years. Mr. Sohm has found that Caravaggio has gradually, if unevenly, overtaken Michelangelo.

He has charts to prove it.

The change, most obvious since the mid-1980s, doesn’t exactly mean Michelangelo has dropped down the memory hole. To judge from the throngs still jamming the Sistine Chapel and lining up outside the Accademia in Florence to check out “David,” his popularity hasn’t dwindled much.

But, charts or no charts, Mr. Sohm has touched on something. Caravaggiomania, as he calls it, implies not just that art history doctoral students may finally be struggling to think up anything fresh to say about Michelangelo. It suggests that the whole classical tradition in which Michelangelo was steeped is becoming ever more foreign and therefore seemingly less germane, even to many educated people. His otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric, which, for postwar generations, now belongs with the poetry of Alexander Pope or plays by Corneille as admirable but culturally remote splendors.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from ABC News & Chef Nobu

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[ click to play the CodeOrgan ]

from the NY Daily News

Indie bookstore set to launch literary journal

BY Elizabeth Lazarowitz

Who says print is dead?

Brooklyn’s growing literary landscape will get a new addition in a few weeks when Cobble Hill indie bookstore BookCourt launches its own journal.

“It seemed like a natural step, with all of the great ideas that flow through this establishment,” said Zach Zook, the Court St. store’s general manager and the journal’s executive editor.

The twice-yearly publication, dubbed “Cousin Corrine’s Reminder,” will feature more than 150 pages of fiction and photography from local and international artists and authors, as well as a graphics section curated by Brooklyn comic book author Dean Haspiel.

“You’ll be seeing essays and pictures, and then you’ll come to the literary equivalent of the Sunday comics,” Haspiel said.

The journal is the first publication of Zook’s independent book imprint, Cousin Corrine, named for a relative who bequeathed the seed money for the store to his parents, Mary Gannett and Henry Zook. Zach Zook is also hoping to publish first-run fiction paperbacks, pocket-sized photo books and maybe even a children’s line.

For the first edition, Haspiel teamed with “Motherless Brooklyn” writer Jonathan Lethem on a piece that chronicles Lethem’s daily walk to work along Nevins St.

Controversial author James Frey is contributing what he describes as “this weird little dictionary” of Hollywood jobs, which offers a biting commentary on the entertainment industry.

Frey said he wanted to give back to BookCourt for its support, even after the 2006 controversy over the truth of bits of his best-selling memoir “A Million Little Pieces” and his resulting feud with Oprah Winfrey. Plus, he said, he’s a fan of independent bookstores.

“They’re an important part of literary culture,” Frey said. “It’s the same reason I don’t want all the diners in New York to go away and be replaced by McDonald’s.”

[ click to continue reading at NYDailNews.com ]

from The Sag Harbor Express

BookHampton Closes Amagansett Store

After two years of business in Amagansett Square, BookHampton may have closed its Amagansett location, but its Sag Harbor store, pictured here with manager Sarah Doherty and Barry Lisee, is still going strong. Hampton owner Charline Spektor this week announced the independent bookstore would close the location, citing economics and “the surprising lack of foot-traffic in Amagansett.”

“East Hampton is a thriving store and they were too close together,” Spektor said on Tuesday. She added in addition to the East Hampton branch of BookHampton, both the Sag Harbor and Southampton locations continue to operate successfully.

BookHampton at Amagansett Square was originally conceived as a store to focus on children, keeping in character with Amagansett’s family-centric community, although the location maintained a collection of other genres of literature as well as DVDs, merchandise and CDs. Spektor said on Tuesday all three remaining BookHampton locations, in particular Sag Harbor, continue to operate with full children’s sections.

[ click to continue reading at SagHarborOnline.com ]

from The LA Times

Wily dodges point to single culprit in high-profile Los Angeles heists

Thefts that depend on role playing and charm point to a single burglar being the likely suspect in heists of jewelry and cash from sports teams, a salsa band and a sugar baron in town for the Oscars.

By Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton

For the “Rico Suave” bandit, the weapons of choice are charm, disguise and the power of persuasion.

In August, the man slicked back his hair and pretended to be a member of a salsa band playing the Greek Theatre. He talked a clerk at the Wilshire Grand hotel into giving him the keys to the band’s room and made off with $9,000. On his way out, he gave the clerk the band’s CD.

A few weeks later, he donned a Chivas soccer jersey and hugged members of the Mexican team as they left another downtown L.A. hotel, the Marriott, on a team bus. Then, posing as a member of the team’s entourage, he persuaded a hotel clerk to give him the team’s room keys, making off with $10,000.

Now, detectives are investigating whether the bandit has made his biggest score yet, at the Four Seasons Hotel on Oscar weekend.

[ click to continue reading at The LA Times ]

from Salon.com

RIP: The novel

A book that defends plagiarism, champions faked memoirs and declares fiction dead has the literary world up in arms

By Laura Miller

iStockphoto/Allkindza

David Shields’ new book, “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” is, depending upon whom you ask, a condemnation of the novel, a celebration of the sort of remixing and collage writing that often gets slammed as plagiarism, an indictment of plot, or a defense of memoirists who fabricate. Given his infatuation with playful writing (although a playfulness so earnestly willed seems an oxymoron), Shields shouldn’t be dismayed to learn that tracking responses to “Reality Hunger” across the Web is significantly more stimulating than the book itself. When you throw that many bombs, you can expect to choke on the smoke.

[ click to continue reading at Salon ]

from The Wrap

Variety Drops Chief Film and Theater Critics

Updated: Todd McCarthy and David Rooney are cut as the trade moves to trim costs

By Daniel Frankel and Sharon Waxman

The evisceration of Variety continues.

On Monday, the trade let go chief film critic Todd McCarthy and chief theater critic David Rooney. Longtime film critic Derek Elley also was cut, as was features editor/indie film reporter Sharon Swart, along with several copy and design desk employees.

In a memo to Variety staff, the trade’s group editor, Tim Gray, said all three critics have been asked to work as freelancers for the moribund trade.

However, McCarthy told TheWrap he has made no such arrangement, at least not yet.

“It’s sad,” McCarthy said. “It’s the end of something. You can say it’s the end, or you can say it’s the end of the way it’s always been done.”

Reaction from the film community was characterized by shock and dismay, with Roger Ebert tweeting, “Variety fires Todd McCarthy and I cancel my subscription. He was my reason to read the paper. RIP, schmucks.”

Still, in his memo, Gray insisted, “Today’s changes won’t be noticed by readers. Our goal is the same: To maintain, or improve, our quality coverage.

[ click to continue reading at The Wrap ]

from The Coolhunter

[ click to continue reading at TheCoolhunter.net ]

from Papermag

“Your History Is Not Our History” Opens at Haunch of Venison

By Elizabeth Thompson

Installing “Your History is Not Our History: New York in the 1980s” at Haunch of Venison gallery felt like Christmas morning for artist Richard Phillips, who organized the show with artist David Salle. “The crates came and it was was like opening present after present after present,” Phillips said at the show’s opening Friday night, as guests including Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Jeffrey Deitch, Jerry Saltz, Cynthia Rowley, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and James Frey, took in Prince’s and Salle’s re-telling of the ’80s art world in New York City, a time period during which they believe artists’ work is often mis-remembered as being oppositional of one another and representative of exclusive critical positions.

Instead, via pieces by Salle, Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, and Eric Fischl among other luminaries from the ’80s, “Your History is Not Our History,” highlights the shared attributes of works from the time period, in this case, the sound rejection of authority and a sense of radicalism Phillips said was palpable at gallery shows.

[ click to continue reading at Papermag.com ]

from The New York Times

Former Book Designer Says Good Riddance to Print

craigmod.com

Craig Mod discusses a series of book “interfaces” that could make the transition from print to digital.

A recent blog post by Craig Mod, a self-titled computer programmer, book designer and book publisher, offers a thoughtful and distinctive perspective on the move of books from paper to interactive devices like Apple’s iPad.

Mr. Mod summarizes his argument in the subtitle of his post: “Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.”

Mr. Mod divides content broadly into two categories: content where the form is important, such as poetry or text with graphics, and content where form is divorced from layout, which he says applies to most novels and non-fiction.

This kind of thinking makes a key point: instead of arguing about pixels versus paper, as many book lovers tend to do, it is more useful to focus on whether the technology is a good match for the content.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from The San Jose Mercury News

Teen shoots his own testicles

Times-Herald staff report

A Vallejo teenager allegedly shot himself in the testicles Thursday afternoon, police said.

Police said the 17-year-old, whose name is being withheld because he’s a minor, walked into Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center at about 5:45 p.m. with a gunshot wound.

The gun is still outstanding, police said, and the teen has not been cooperative.

[ click to read at SJMerc.com ]

from The LA Times

Book tour? More like a safari

With publisher publicity departments backing away from traditional author tours, writers are left to their own devices (and strangers’ couches).

By Carolyn Kellogg, March 7, 2010

A cat peeing in an author’s bag? A writer waking up to discover that a complete stranger has left him four jars of delicious homemade preserves? Such things are not traditionally part of book promotion. But they happened to Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga, an Austin, Texas-based couple who celebrated the simultaneous release of their debut books this fall by jumping in their car for an 8,500-mile, 27-day, do-it-yourself tour.

They didn’t have much choice. As the business of publishing changes, book tours increasingly look like bad risks. “In 99.9% of cases,” says Peter Miller, director of publicity at Bloomsbury USA, “you can’t justify the costs through regular book sales.”

Which is why when McSweeney’s published Cotter’s first novel, “Fever Chart,” and La Ganga’s prose poetry memoir, “Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints,” came out with Red Hen Press, neither publisher was able to provide more than moral support.

La Ganga, 41, a cake decorator, and Cotter, 45, a rare book dealer, relied on many kindnesses: Relatives bought them new tires, and friends gave them Starbucks and McDonald’s gift cards. They spent only one night in a motel, staying instead with family and friends and in the crash pads they found on couchsurfing.com. The benefits: shared meals, new connections and (mostly) friendly pets.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from The Star-Ledger

Acrobatic thieves hit N.J. Best Buy avoiding cameras, motion sensors, alarms in daring heist

By Ryan Hutchins/For The Star-Ledger

March 04, 2010, 4:42PM

SOUTH BRUNSWICK — They never touched the floor — that would have set off an alarm.

They didn’t appear on store security cameras. They cut a hole in the roof and came in at a spot where the cameras were obscured by advertising banners.

And they left with some $26,000 in laptop computers, departing the same way they came in — down a 3-inch gas pipe that runs from the roof to the ground outside the store.

Police believe that’s how some brazen bandits managed to swipe 20 Apple notebooks early this morning at a Best Buy on Route 1 in South Brunswick without detection.

“High level of sophistication,” said Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman. “They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out.”

[ click to continue reading at The Star-Ledger ]

from The LA Times

Andreas Gursky makes a long-distance connection

The German artist’s large-scale satellite images make up ‘Oceans’ in the newly expanded Gagosian Gallery.

Andreas Gursky, above, is “original and innovative,” gallery owner Larry Gagosian says. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

By Suzanne Muchnic

If your knowledge of Andreas Gursky’s enormous photographs is limited to meticulously detailed, vividly colored long shots of offices, factories and a 99 Cents Only store, you are in for a surprise.

And if you think Larry Gagosian’s elegant Beverly Hills gallery is a showcase with relatively little floor space, you’d better look again.

The German artist is inaugurating a major enlargement of the gallery with “Oceans,” a new body of work based on satellite images. In his exhibition that opened Thursday night with an invitational preview, six photographs of deep blue water fringed by continents and dotted with islands hang in the new 3,030-square-foot space. Nine earlier works fill the original main gallery and a smaller room upstairs.

“Andreas Gursky is a new relationship for our gallery,” Gagosian says. “He’s one of the most original and innovative living artists, and the timing seemed right with the expansion of our gallery in Beverly Hills.”

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

[ click to read more Godzilla Haiku ]

courtesy of E-MAILS FROM AN ASSHOLE

From Me to **********@***********.org:

Hey,

I saw your ad looking for concealable/disguised weapons. I have several fine-crafted items you may be interested in. Respond if you are interested and I will send you pictures and prices.

Thanks,

Mike

From Jeff ****** to Me:

I am. lets see what you got.

From Me to Jeff ******:

Jeff,

Here you go:

Looks like a normal spoon, right?

Wrong. It is actually a deadly 2.5″ half-smooth, half-serrated knife with tactical grip. One minute you are enjoying a bowl of cereal, and the next you are fighting off attackers with this deadly and disguised weapon.

I am asking $50 for the blade. Let me know if you want to stop by and take a look at it.

Mike

From Jeff ****** to Me:

that is stupid as hell and looks like crap. unless you have anything better to offer, dont waste my time.

From Me to Jeff ******:

Jeff,

I am sorry you feel that way about the spoon blade. I do have some other weapons that I think you will feel differently about.

Mike

From Jeff ****** to Me:

fine. but if it is another knife duct taped to a spoon then you can fuck off.

From Me to Jeff ******:

Jeff,

Thank you for re-considering. Here are three quality disguised weapons that I think you will love:

At first glance, this looks like a normal party cup. However, if you look close enough, you will see that it is really a fully automatic Glock 18C. You will be able to pour your enemies a nice warm cup of lead with this fine purchase. Asking $900 for the gun/cup combo.

Still thirsty for justice? Try this badass M16A2 disguised as a 24-pack of soda. The box has two finely crafted holes on each side to allow for any kind of optics (not included) that you wish to attach. This weapon is only for sale if you have a Class III permit.

This cleverly disguised weapon may look like a tissue box, but is actually a Benelli M3 12 gauge shotgun disguised as a tissue box. The ultra-soft quilted tissues serve as a comfortable grip on the pump-action shotgun. Also, if you find yourself sneezing during the heat of combat, you will have a handy tissue box ready for action. Asking $1500 for the weapon. Additional tissue boxes are an extra $5 per box.

Let me know if you want any of these items.

Thanks,

Mike

From Jeff ****** to Me:

youre a fucking dumbass, shitbrained, asswipe, retarded dipshit. you prob walk around with that shit too you dumb mother fucker. I hope you get hit by a car. fuck off, eat shit, and die.

[ click to continue reading at E-mails From An Asshole ]

from The Wall Street Journal

A Game of Tag Breaks Out Between London’s Graffiti Elite

Slight Brings Robbo Out of Retirement; Cobbler Won’t Let Rival Tread on Him

By GABRIELE STEINHAUSER

LONDON—In the predawn hours of Christmas morning, a 40-year-old shoe repairman who goes by the name Robbo squeezed his 6-foot-8-inch frame into a wet suit, tossed some spray cans into a plastic bag, and crossed Regent’s Canal on a red-and-blue air mattress.

Robbo, one of the lost pioneers of London’s 1980s graffiti scene, was emerging from a long retirement. He had a mission: to settle a score with the world-famous street artist Banksy, who, Robbo believes, had attacked his legacy.

The battle centers on a wall under a bridge on the canal in London’s Camden district. In the fall of 1985—just 15 years old but already a major player in London’s graffiti scene—Robbo announced his presence on that wall with eight tall block letters: ROBBO INC.

The work, written in orange, red and black on a yellow background, had been in good shape for nearly 25 years and was considered a local icon, surviving long after Robbo himself vanished from the scene 16 years ago.

But recently, Robbo’s work was dramatically altered by an unlikely rival: Banksy, the stealthy Bristol-born artist who has made a lucrative art of graffiti. The work of Banksy—who, like Robbo, doesn’t disclose his name—sells for big money and is widely merchandised. His first film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is due out in U.K. theaters this month.

In early December, Banksy did a series of four pieces along the Regent’s Canal’s walls. Inexplicably, one of them incorporated Robbo’s piece into Banksy’s own work, painting over half the Robbo original in the process. The resulting work, in Banksy’s typical stencil technique, shows a black-and-white workman applying colorful wallpaper that is, in essence, the remnants of Robbo’s piece.

[ click to continue reading at WSJ.com ]

from USA Today via AZCentral

Free porn on ‘tube sites’ puts dent in industry

by Jon Swartz - Mar. 2, 2010 08:45 AM
USA Today

SAN FRANCISCO — The adult-entertainment industry is in a tailspin, shattering the notion that it is one of the few recession-proof industries.

The slump is especially stinging because technology — which helped adult-entertainment enterprises reap riches through innovations such as video streaming, webcameras and online payments — is contributing to the misery.

DVDs and online pay sites, which make up the majority of porn-related sales, are in a free fall largely because of the rise of so-called tube sites.

Knockoffs of video-sharing site YouTube, the sites serve up snippets of free porn that is often pirated. (Google’s YouTube has done its best to bar explicit content.)

[ click to continue reading at AZCentral.com

from AP via Google News

Pet bull attacks, kills his owner in eastern Pa.

(AP) – 1 day ago

WERNERSVILLE, Pa. — Authorities say an eastern Pennsylvania man was killed when he was attacked by a bull he kept as a pet.

The Berks County coroner’s office says 52-year-old Ricky Weinhold died Saturday after being attacked by the bull on a farm where he leased barn space in Wernersville. That’s about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Chief Deputy Coroner Charles E. Sweitzer Jr. says Weinhold’s injuries appear to have been inflicted by a bull’s head and hooves.

Deputy Coroner Terri Straka says the man was injured previously by one of his bulls.

[ click to read at Google News ]