by Tim Flach
Chair Family
Stone Stairs by me
1AM Huron by me
2AM Huron by me
Beastie Boys & Madonna
?uestlove remembers MCA, The Beastie Boys and their ‘95 tour.
Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, 1964
From the Getty Museum:
Most of Winogrand’s best pictures-let us say all of his best pictures-involve luck of a different order than that kind of minimal, survivor’s luck on which any human achievement depends.
-John Szarkowski in Winogrand: Figments from the Real World
Call it luck, call it circumstance, but when Garry Winogrand set out to photograph, his colleagues observed that surprising things would happen.
Winogrand noticed this odd couple in a parked convertible one night as he wandered Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. The man with the bandaged nose glances at his angry-looking female passenger. She seems to be ignoring him. The blurred motion of cars rushing past them underscores how fleeting this moment is.
Winogrand’s photograph captures Hollywood’s unique combination of glamour and seediness. It specifically calls to mind the dark narratives of film noir-the detective movies of the 1940s and ’50s that featured tough guys and femmes fatales. The narrative here is ambiguous, prompting questions as to why this man’s nose is bandaged and whether the couple is arguing.
(via bbook)
But she and her furry friends
Took down the queen bee and her men.
And that’s how the story goes,
The story of the beast with those four dirty paws.
— Of Monsters & Men, “Dirty Paws”
“My name is Roger Sterling…”
Breaking down video behavior within StumbleUpon, videos viewed between two to three minutes found a spike in sharing out to social media, whereas videos viewed beyond four minutes see direct shares increase by five times. Longer, arguably more involved, content may drive viewers to more intimate sharing routes.
Oil on canvas by Gregory Thielker.
GT calling attention to the way we see, perceive, distort and represent our world.
Mad Men Bites: Signal 30
Thoughts and insight from around the web on Mad Men “Signal 30.”
“Wreckage is a big part of the hour… and most of the carnage comes out of failed attempts by Pete, Lane and Ken to be more than they are by building bridges from one world to another.” - Alan Sepinwall
“… just because Don’s doing so much better than Pete and Lane at the moment doesn’t mean his newlywed bliss will last. We’ve seen Roger and Jane, and now Pete and Trudy. As Ken’s story reminds us, all it can take is the removal of one bolt for a bridge between worlds to collapse.” - Alan Sepinwall
” Just one week (in real-world time; two in story time) after an examination of violence against women in a patriarchal culture, the show (somewhat cheekily) offered an examination of violence against men in that same culture. In the patriarchy, women get marginalized and objectified and men get emasculated.” - T&L
“References to death abound. Cars spin out and slice off limbs, Don doodles a noose in his notebook during a dull meeting, Ken and Pete recreate a shot straight from Hitchcock’s Rope while they talk about how a man could fit inside the giant stereo… Mad Men is one to show a gun in the first act and then never make reference to it again, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if somebody blew his or her brains out before the end of this season.” - Grantland
“Moved beyond words, Lane planted one on her, arguably the most American thing he’s ever done.” - EW
“…Then there was Pete punching himself in the nose in A Little Kiss, walking straight into his pillar, and then Roger offering to “take it outside” with Pete in the same episode. So, yes, the bizarre and strangely awesome fight was set up well in advance.” - IndieWire
“Only problem with inviting Don Draper to your party is the fact that Don Draper will be at your party. When a leaky faucet explodes into a geyser in the kitchen, alpha male farmboy Don shows up pampered city boy Pete with his rudimentary plumbing skills.” - Rolling Stone
Other notes:
- Costume Director Janie Bryant putting on fireworks with the gents’ sportcoat selection at the Campbell house.
- I loved the details of the Campbell dinner: falf-drunk, sweaty with hair sticking to their foreheads, sleeves rolled up, ties loosened and phenomenal background sound work of late summer cicadas. Felt like late July to me.
- Pete is, if nothing else, an etiquette machine. Pete suffers through the summer heat draped in pastels, fully buttoned-up, jacket and tie on.
- Pete’s driving characteristic has always been his ambition. His quest to be “king” has been behind his greatest plays and worst falls. This episode contains the latter. Ambition has left him bruised and beaten, alienated from Don, inside an increasingly hollow marriage and less fulfilled than ever.
- Chasing a high school graduate is particularly galling but this is the guy who forced himself on the neighbor’s au pair.
- Mad Men is ostensibly a period show but certain lines scream out to our contemporary moment…
- “Time seems to be moving faster.” With fast changes in technology, culture and global politics, who doesn’t feel like the post-2000 years have been like a runaway train? A Matt Weiner signature line.
- In my Season Five predictions post, I mentioned the University of Texas sniper as a possible historical mention. Called it.
- U-Texas sniper comes hot on the heels of the Chicagoland nurse murders and continues to reinforce the idea of the big, bad, changing world, what Cormac McCarthy called “the dismal tide,” hanging over our characters. Those unavoidable public events that poke holes in the happy facade of our characters are becoming more and more regular.
- Lane Pryce beat down Pete Campbell but on some level he was fighting off his father, his former PPL masters and what’s surely a lifelong pattern of passive deference. If only your Chocolate Bunny could see you now, Laney.
- Don and Megan Draper reminding us all of the long-gone benefits of front row bench seats.
The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington.
—On Individual Mandates via The New Republic
Most actors are cast to fill in a character from the inside out, building an individual based on the personal. But Eastwood himself is a form. An absent presence whose persona is filled primarily by the film’s themes and ideas.
—On Clint Eastwood via Roger Ebert
