because if it's on the internet, it must be true

Shaolin monks in China have taken serious offense to a rumor they got their asses kicked by a ninja.

China's Shaolin Temple has demanded a public apology from an Internet user who claimed a Japanese ninja beat its kung fu-practising monks in a showdown, a lawyer said Friday.

An open letter from the temple posted on the Internet on Thursday denied the fight ever took place and called on the person who posted the claim under the name "Five minutes every day" to apologize to the temple's martial arts masters.

Monks from the temple, nestled in the Songshan Mountains of central China's Henan province, said they will consider legal action if he or she doesn't make a public apology.

its unshorn and expensively sunglassed head

I gave Entourage a two-disc chance to prove itself off my Netflix queue, and I had never experienced such a sense of exclusion from a television series. There seemed to be no place for me - or women in general, unless as a way for the boys to relate to one another in their competition for her. Adrian Grenier's recent rumored romance with Paris Hilton seemed perfectly fitting, if not an outright bid for publicity. It was especially odd to watch scenes of the city in which I live and feel like it was completely alien to me. Also, I was bored. Tom Wolfe, however, is a bit more inspired:

Clad in milquetoast shirtsleeves, combat-style Bermudas, and the unshowered film of day-old hangovers, the young men go about their Hollywood business with the same haughty unconcern that pervades their overslept lives. These are the new crusaders of cool. They are perpetually late to meet with representation, to accept graft, to sign hedge-fund-sized checks, and to slip into bed with stargazing young actresses. They are late to everything except success, their laissez-faire nonchalance a testament to the fuck-off patois of a generation. These insolent pop pilgrims provide a window into the machismo-fueled fantasy world of meteoric laziness. They are a scruffy gaggle of would-be pizza boys reluctantly poised to plant their half-finished Betsy Ross into the terra firma of the aught decade.

Crusaders of cool? Insolent pop pilgrims? Ahem. Wolfe and I do agree on one point:

But there is hope in this moxie wasteland of moviemakers. Johnny Drama draws not my ire. Here is the bravado-laden torch of the past, its fire fueled by protein shakes and casting off the nearly forgotten aroma of desire. His ginseng-toned body twisting and gyrating with anxiety and self-doubt, he's a New Age Neal Cassady, passed up here for a Lifetime movie, there for a Hallmark Channel special—the Houghton Mifflin and HarperCollins of the television world. Johnny Drama is no mere muzzled bus driver, however. He is a symbol of irony, that word now recognized only by the literati. Played by Kevin Dillon, Sancho Panza to real-life brother Matt, this role oozes the true Hollywood pathos of silver-screen heartbreak. If watch Entourage you must, then watch it for Drama.

I'm free to do what I want any old time

I'm sure every blogger hopes that if they are unable for some reason to keep up their normal posting pace, people will notice. In many cases, this is probably unlikely, but on the off chance you've been wondering why my posts of late have been, frankly, so lame, I will now explain.

I've been working a job for the past two years that did serve a purpose at one time - I was able to complete my dissertation and I made a few lovely friends - however that time had come and gone. I was languishing in complete boredom and lack of productivity and no one even seemed to notice. This state of affairs was not helped by the fact that when my student loans kicked in, my once comfortable salary had become insufficient. I applied to similar jobs. I applied to jobs in slightly different fields. I had no luck, including one harrowing episode in which the Getty broke my heart. All the while, I was convincing myself and others that a life of teaching and writing would never work out. No, no, no, I would say, it won't work out. If I can't pay my bills with a steady administrator's paycheck, how on earth will I make it freestyle?

Well, apparently, as with many aspects of my life, I was completely wrong. My last day at that job was Friday. The details are still being ironed out, but it appears that with little change to my financial situation, I will be engaged in nothing but occupations that please me with more than twice as much free time - to publish my dissertation, to return to fiction (finally!), to pursue several pleasurable get-rich quick schemes, to feed any and all creative urges, and to hopefully breathe new life into this blog and the other one. As someone who needs to always know what's going to happen next and plan for it extensively, this has not been an easy decision to make. I'm sure there are many challenges ahead, but as Pema Chodron describes it, I will lean into the sharp points. With grace, if possible. With humor, if not.

In other words, I am now available for imaginative projects, literary and otherwise, so please keep me in mind.

tiger leap

I love to fantasize about picking up and moving to some urban center (preferably European) that has a buzz around it and then seeing what happens with my life. So I thoroughly enjoyed this inside look at Europe's coolest cities. I even have a new favorite - Tallinn, Estonia (pictured above).

the people that nobody else wanted

Not long after the demise of his baby CBGB, Hilly Kristal has also left the building.

Hilly Kristal, who founded CBGB, the Bowery bar that became the cradle of punk and art-rock in New York in the 1970s and served as the inspiration for musician-friendly rock dives throughout the world, died in Manhattan on Tuesday. He was 75...

From its opening in late 1973, when Mr. Kristal, a lover of acoustic music, gave the club its name, an abbreviation of the kinds of music he originally intended to feature there — country, bluegrass and blues — until a dispute with its landlord forced the club to close last October, CBGB presented thousands of bands within its eternally crumbling, flyer-encrusted walls.

Most famously, it served as the incubator for the diverse underground scene of New York in the 1970s and early ’80s, with acts like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, Talking Heads and Sonic Youth playing some of their earliest and most important concerts there, at a time when there were few outlets in the city for innovative rock music.

“There was no real venue in 1973 for people like us,” Ms. Smith said today. “We didn’t fit into the cabarets or the folk clubs. Hilly wanted the people that nobody else wanted. He wanted us.

everywhere like such as

Miss Teen South Carolina's coach: "OK, if you don't understand the question, just start with 'I personally believe' and work in South Africa and Iraq somehow, and you'll be golden."

the centers concept

William Fulton on which -izing Los Angeles is up to:

True, the density of L.A.'s population is increasing, especially downtown, in the Mid-Wilshire district and in Hollywood. But carving out a few thousand condos in old downtown buildings is hardly proof that L.A. is "Manhattanizing." If anything, the city overall is "Pasadena-izing" -- becoming more of a collection of centers around which new housing (condos and apartments) and commercial spaces are being built.

determined to meet the Lord or the Devil

How have I not heard of this film?

Pennebaker’s camera captures them strolling about the fields and then focuses on Rip Torn, who removes a hammer from a backpack, strides over to Mailer and hits him on the head twice, announcing: “You are supposed to die, Mr. Kingsley. You must die, not Mailer. I don’t want to kill Mailer, but I must kill Kingsley in the picture.” Shocked, Mailer wrestles him to the ground, and they roll down the hill in an ugly tussle, Mailer biting Torn’s ear as Mailer’s wife and children scream. Finally separated, the two bloodied men walk at a wary distance from each other, Mailer hurling curses, Torn explaining calmly: “When — when is an assassination ever planned? It’s done, it’s done.” The sequence ends with Torn calling Mailer “a fraud” and pointing a finger at the camera, taunting, “Hoo hoo!”

beneath the music from a farther room

There should be more poetry-music mash-ups like this one of TS Eliot & Portishead (via 3qd).

tarantula hair

Nectarine: The Poor Man's Peach

52 books in 52 weeks

21. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

It's rare to find a book so heavy with science as well as abstract poetics. A little less of both and I think I might have enjoyed this exploration of a region and a family even more.

22. The Big Girls by Susanna Moore

There was something kind of...trashy about this look inside a woman's prison, but I read it with delight.


23. The Interloper by Antoine Wilson

I can't remember the last time I read a novel in one sitting, but I could not put Wilson's novel down. It was suspenseful and funny and troubling and sensational. I loved it.


24. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

I couldn't find a place to belong or relate inside this rural boy's tale, but the story's most striking effect was the realization that our American existence and identity has changed drastically in the past 50 years.

celebrity is a mask that eats into the face

If you liked Women in Art, you'll love Women in Film:

Via Neatorama

sunday short stack

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of." - Burt Bacharach

• Buy my friend's jewelry!
• I think this video inspired Jack White to name his new baby Henry Lee.
• Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings of All Time
• Antony Moore chronicles five days in the life of a newly published writer (via Counterbalance).
• 52 Influential Photos
• Craving a smoke? Read a book instead.
• I wonder if I can understand Deleuze any better when he talks.
• The Guardian has cocktails to refresh your muse.
• The Man Booker longlist is out.
• Countin' down the R&B classics with your mom...
• Ben Stiller on Freaks and Geeks

bibilomu-u-u-u-las!

In Venezuela's mountain villages, instead of libraries, they have book mules and wireless modems under the banana plants.

a stable for idols

Camille Paglia provides yet more evidence that religion is increasingly the center around which the future of the humanities will revolve.

To fully appreciate world art, one must learn how to respond to religious expression in all its forms. Art began as religion in prehistory. It does not require belief to be moved by a sacred shrine, icon, or scripture. Hence art lovers, even when as citizens they stoutly defend democratic institutions against religious intrusion, should always speak with respect of religion. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.

Progressives must start recognizing the spiritual poverty of contemporary secular humanism and reexamine the way that liberalism too often now automatically defines human aspiration and human happiness in reductively economic terms. If conservatives are serious about educational standards, they must support the teaching of art history in primary school—which means conservatives have to get over their phobia about the nude, which has been a symbol of Western art and Western individualism and freedom since the Greeks invented democracy. Without compromise, we are heading for a soulless future. But when set against the vast historical panorama, religion and art—whether in marriage or divorce—can reinvigorate American culture.

Via 3qd