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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

The problem with video art has always been… TV, right? Because they could never talk in video art, was the problem–if they talked, if they said things, it’d just be TV, basically. So you’d be at MOMA, or at the Whitney Biennial, looking at the art, and then there’d be a dark room in the corner with a TV in it, and what could be better than TV that was also art? So you’d quietly make your way over there and… well, it was never, ever as good as TV, it turned out, because they weren’t allowed to talk.

Here is a piece of video art that solves the ancient problem of no-talking–by using online comments (including Gawker comments) as its text. I’m not sure what to make of it in the end, but I think it beats TV. By Ryan Saylor and Renata Espinosa, via postposterous.posterous.com, this video premiered the other day at Monkeytown in Williamsburg.

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Speaking of videos of Russia… longtime readers of this blog will recall my Russian traffic updates from the past year, which began with the car-based assassination attempt on the president of Ingushetia and then went on to a video of the presidential motorcade whizzing through the streets of Moscow, as well as the sort of real-time updates readers of this blog used to rely on until Tumblr declined to sign me to an endorsement contract and I went on strike. Anyway, I finally condensed all my traffic observations into a hard-hitting article for the New Yorker, which appeared last week. It’s not online, unfortunately, but they made a pretty cool video based on it, which is above.

This is some video. Whoever did the captioning on it did an admirable job of contextual translation. In fact the guys never say “fire” or “look out” anything so specific–they just say “fuck,” “whore,” “cock,” and “bitch” with slightly different intonations, some of which mean “This is a pretty cool fire” and some of which mean “Turn this car around or we will all die right here.”

There are many YouTube geniuses, but this guy really has something. He drives around with a camera on his dashboard and takes in the situation on the roads in the Russian city of Tver. In this video, “The Migalov Bridge,” from May 13, 2010, he drives over said bridge. The caption says: “The reconstruction of the Migalov Bridge was completed on May 13, 2010. It is now fully open to traffic in both directions.”

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event tonight

nplusonemag:

Elif Batuman (author of the best-selling [for real. -ed.] book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them) and Eli Evans (author of, among other things, “Tiger, Alone”) will be reading this evening (Friday) at BookCourt in Brooklyn. Both of them live in California, and Eli in fact lives in a barn, so this is not something you’ll see every day. Come by if you can.

Sounds awesome, I’m there.

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there was always something fishy about the Longmeadow dominance of Massachusetts lacrosse

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/nyregion/16theft.html?hpw

William John Scott is a freshman at Drew University. He studies political science. He plays defense on the lacrosse team. He describes himself on Facebook as a night person who likes to party.

But federal prosecutors say he is something else: a busy archives thief who stole famous letters written by a founder of the United Methodist Church and world leaders, including Abraham Lincoln and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.

Mr. Scott pilfered the letters while working part time at the university archives, the prosecutors said. He sold some of them for thousands of dollars, and left others sitting in a dresser drawer, where F.B.I. agents found them after executing a search warrant of his dorm room on Saturday. (On Facebook, Mr. Scott says he likes to keep the room “not a complete mess.”)

Mr. Scott was arrested on Sunday as the bus bringing his lacrosse team back from spring break rolled into Drew’s campus in Madison, N.J.

“He looked utterly surprised, like we were,” said Tyler Morse, a junior on the team who saw Mr. Scott escorted off the bus by the university’s head of public safety, into the car of F.B.I. agents.

On Monday, he was still wearing a blue hoodie when he was led handcuffed into United States District Court in Newark for a bail hearing. He was charged with one count of knowingly stealing an object of cultural heritage from a museum. He faces as much as 10 years in prison, if convicted.

Looking down as he was brought into the courtroom of Magistrate Madeline Cox Arleo, he twice replied, “Yes, ma’am,” when asked if he understood his rights and if he had retained a lawyer. The judge authorized an unsecured $50,000 bond, on the condition that he surrender his passport and agree to be supervised by pretrial services while remaining in the custody of his parents, who live in Longmeadow, Mass.

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I get it, T. Mercer, I really do. Last year I received a Kindle as a gift from my heroic and technologically savvy Webman (who has over the years carried several suitcases containing the works of our great historical graphomaniacs to and from the Stanford library on my behalf); today I, too, am loath to carry around any book with a thickness greater than 0.36 inches—or to wait five days to read a book that God clearly intended for me to receive instantaneously at 4AM in the bath, when I really need it.

But listen, T. Mercer, have you really considered all the angles? For example: whereas a new release on Kindle costs $9.99, The Possessed now sets you back only $9.00! $9.00! What will $9.00 get you these days? An eight-piece bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken? A five-pack of Gillette Mach replacement razors? A quarter of a tank of gasoline? A regular or Kindle edition of Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang? No! None of the above! But it does get you The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them: a remarkably lightweight paperback with not only front and back cover art by Roz Chast—Roz Chast!—but also a clearly marked list price of $15.00.

Classy readers! With International Women’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Lent either just around the corner or already upon us, think of what a great gift The Possessed would make for that special someone on whom you wish to appear to have lavished $15.00!

Elif weighs in on Kindle controversy, here. (via nplusonemag)

Elif’s book in danger of slipping from Amazon top 100. Buy now before it’s too late!

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Khod’-or-kov-sky

I wrote a long article on the jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, here. Since this happened people have had occasion to ask me how to pronounce it. As with most Russian names, however you pronounce it is really just fine. It’s not like people don’t know who you mean. And trying to indicate pronunciation always ends badly–for example when the Times Magazine published their otherwise informative article on Khodorkovsky, they actually gave an incorrect pronunciation. Anyway, to make a long story short, just stress the first syllable, keep your o’s flat, and try to roll the r as best you can.

On the front page of the Times right now, two out of the top three stories in “Business” and “Technology” are the same. At what point do they merge the sections? (Apologies to anyone who has already pointed this out.) (That should clearly be one of...

On the front page of the Times right now, two out of the top three stories in “Business” and “Technology” are the same. At what point do they merge the sections? (Apologies to anyone who has already pointed this out.) (That should clearly be one of those internet acronyms: ATAWHAPTO.) (Apologies to anyone who has already invented and in fact copyrighted this acronym.)

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