isn't top 10 greatest of all time a little redundant?

The Top 10 Greatest Super Villain Costumes of All Time

Via Pop Candy

shopping cart pusher or maybe someone groovy

I was just telling someone the other day that I think I walk more here in Los Angeles than I did in New York. Yes, you read that right. I may not clock as many actual miles - the subway was never close enough - but I can walk from my home in Los Feliz to more frequent destinations here than I ever could in Brooklyn. So my neighborhood walking score of 77 (a C+!) seems plain wrong.

In a stunning twist, my old 3rd Avenue home address in Gowanus also scored a 77, but my Gramercy Park work address scored an impressive 98! My current work address on the outskirts of downtown scored an 80, so clearly the index does not factor in whether you'd actually be comfortable walking in that neighborhood.

RIP

Salon ditches Audiofile and outrage ensues. Well, a bunch of comments anyway.

hey, it's glass!

Is Kansas City's Bloch Building the best American museum structure of the past 20 years?

just stash 'em in the leg cupboard

“However you’re built, be mindful of the rule that if you get your boobs out, put your legs away and vice versa.” - Victoria Beckham waxes wise

I might welcome the sabre-tooth tiger

However, I think I have discovered the root of my malaise. I am suffering from weekend woman syndrome.

there is a chance the human will expect the zombie

I've been in a really bad mood, but it's nothing a zombie infection simulation couldn't clear up. Or maybe just a zombie infection.

Via Metafilter

manners: the final and perfect flower of noble character

LAist plans to provide a lovely little overview of each of LA's 172 known designated communities. They have begun with Little Armenia. (I am withholding my rant about the neighbors of Armenian descent that were exploding fireworks outside my window last night at midnight - July 9th - and not for the first time. You, gentlemen, are giving Armenians a bad name.)

52 books in 52 weeks

18. Remainder by Tom McCarthy

This is an odd novel that plays much with your mind and little with your heart. It's full of imagination and atmosphere and suspense, but I never particularly cared about the narrator.

19. All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

Fantastic! Jones reminds me of Alice Munro in his depth and pacing. I wish there were more published writers describing the African-American experience with such literary flair and mastery.

20. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

I missed the characters in this book immediately upon finishing it. Yet more proof that Lionel Shriver tells a great story. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Read We Need to Talk About Kevin.

sunday short stack

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." - Mitch Ratcliffe

• More "geek quotes" like the one above can be found here.
• Also from Neatorama, a clip of a four-year-old calling 911 with a math emergency.
• Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times believes celebrity reality shows pick up where Fitzgerald left off. I would so watch Hey Zelda.
• Metroblogging LA looks at how bloggers have taken on the City Council in the aftermath of the Griffith Park fire.
• The Proust Archive looks at one of my favorite topics: apocalypse.
• Why didn't folks try harder to save Coney Island?
• It's been too long since I've posted anything about David Mitchell.
• 10 Mind-Boggling Psychiatric Treatments
• OnBeing is a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better.
• Underwater tigers!

cuts like a knife

This month's issue of American Photo features rock stars on the other side of the camera. Above, Bryan Adams feels so right.

Via Idolator

complete with climax

Ed's description of the NJ/NY fireworks battle of 2007 made me nostalgic for my past Brooklyn Fourths*, even the one where I almost fainted on the Promenade from some weird combination of dehydration, vertigo, and claustrophobia. And maybe a hangover.

Until I observed last night’s series of fireworks displays across the East River, I had not encountered political fireworks in the literal sense. It seems that the Jersey authorities were extremely pissed off after Battery Park was closed to the public. So from Jersey’s side of the Hudson, the Jersey boys proceeded to offer as momentous a show as public money could offer — minutes before the Macy’s display had begun. Their fireworks, which declared with every burst that Jersey was as much a part of the July 4th celebrations as the big boys, were designed to be seen across a considerable expanse of water. At first, the assembled throngs on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade appreciated this. And I had to smile and empathize over the Jersey effrontery. Yes, it was a case of flagrant dick wars. But it was the kind of symbolic penis measurement that reminds everyone that there’s more to life than deep pockets. All of us ducked beneath umbrellas, buffeting a downpour that lifted shortly before Macy’s 9:20 PM start time. But the minute that Macy’s began launching jellyfish low-risers and smiley-shaped explosives into the sky, the crowd quickly turned on these apparent Jersey upstarts, becoming deeply vociferous about how “we” — meaning New York — had showed the folks in Jersey. Yet, “we” entailed Brooklyn and Queens for the most part. There was something deeply allegorical about all of this: private money vs. public money, proletariat vs. bourgeoisie, New York vs. New Jersey. And I soon began to understand that East Coast provincial lines were more ridiculous than I ever imagined. But it was still a good show. And I’m not just referring to the fireworks.

*(I just remembered how my cousins, my brother, and I were terrified by a scrawled note in my aunt and uncle's basement that was there when they bought the house: "Years have passed since the Fourth." Cue dramatic organ music.)

Image via MidManhattan.com

that isn't writing - it's typing

Andrew Gallix on the virtues of writing slowly:

In Plato's famous dialogue, Socrates argues that the eponymous Ion and his fellow rhapsodes (the slam artists of Ancient Greece) are possessed by the gods whenever they tread the boards. According to this tradition, the artist, in the throes of creation, is under the influence -- be it of the Muses, drugs, alcohol, a dream vision or some other variant of divine inspiration. Ionic Man does not speak: he is spoken through (or played upon like Coleridge's Aeolian harp), hence the cult of "spontaneous prose" in its various guises. The work of art comes as easily as leaves to a tree, appearing fully-formed in a blinding flash of inspiration or in an accretive, free-associative manner as if under dictation. In both cases, logorrhoea beckons.

The Surrealists' experiments with automatic writing belong to this school. So do the numerous penis-extension tall tales of binge typing. A driven Kerouac composed On the Road in a three-week, benzedrine-fuelled session after fashioning a scroll manuscript which allowed the all-important free flow of words to go unimpeded. Capote's famous quip - "That isn't writing; it's typing" - unwittingly captured the histrionic quality of Kerouac's feat. This is action writing that transforms a sedate, sedentary, haemorrhoid-inducing activity into a heroic performance.

Another prime instance of Ionic braggadocio is the legend according to which Georges Simenon once locked himself in a glass cage to toss off a novel in three days and three nights while spectators gawked. This planned publicity stunt never actually occurred, but it may well have inspired Will Self who, back in 2000, wrote a novella in a London art gallery during a two-week residency: the words were projected live on to a plasma screen behind the desk where he sat. These experiments, and others like National Novel Writing Month, are all interesting enough, but perhaps the time has come to ditch literary hothousing in favour of the Platonics' "precious little" aesthetics.

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Bad memories, begone!

monday! short stack

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'" - Isaac Asimov

In a crazy turn of events, the Sunday Short Stack appears here on a Monday. What could be next?

• A coffee table that transforms into a couch?
• A Kwik-E-Mart come to life in Burbank?
• A house made entirely of mosaic tiles?
• A reality TV version of Ugly Betty?
• A magic Portuguese barn full of classic sports cars?
• Lying babies?
• A funny Woody Allen?
• An indie rock cookbook?
• The Supreme Court rules in favor of segregation?