{"id":5526,"date":"2010-08-10T19:38:45","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T23:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=5526"},"modified":"2010-08-10T19:41:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T23:41:50","slug":"update-or-downdate-whatever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-or-downdate-whatever","title":{"rendered":"Update. Or Downdate. Whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m sorry I haven’t written. I’m usually good for a What It Is<\/em> post every Monday morning, and I was trying to go with a movie review every Tuesday. But I didn’t watch any movies last week, and I found myself flat-out uninterested in writing anything about What I’m Happy About or What I’m Sad About.<\/p>\n

I don’t feel depressed, just uninterested in writing. Maybe the act of composing this post will work that out a little. There are other things I’m interested in writing, some of which I can’t share just yet, some that would just take a ton of time and work to write. But I feel like I’m running short on time just now. I’m a bit ahead of the game on the September and October issues at work, but then my big conference is looming, and that always fills me with anxiety.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what to share with you, my non-existent public. I’m quite immersed in that Andy Warhol book<\/a>\"\" by Bob Colacello, for reasons I can’t quite put into words. I’m fascinated by the intersection of art, fashion, business and celebrity that Warhol in that era (1971 until his death) represents, but I’m also compelled by the workaday-ness of Colacello’s experiences. Everything \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the Concordes to Paris, the nights at Studio 54, the conversations with Liza \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is part of the work. And yet the surface of the work was playfulness.<\/p>\n

Only those closest to him knew how determined and thorough this project was, because Andy deliberately made everything he did seem effortless \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and meaningless. He liked to turn everything, including himself, into a party joke, partially to hide his true intentions, partially because it was the only way he could deal with life. He expected us to get the joke and simultaneously to take it seriously. It was noting more or less than he expected of himself. We were all walking a tightrope, and Andy’s rope was thinnest and highest of all. “If I think about things too much,” he told me many times, “I’ll have a nervous breakdown.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I watched Greenberg<\/a>, the new flick by Noah Baumbach, last night. During my drive down to Flemington today to meet a potential advertiser, I realized that four of the pieces of narrative art I’ve enjoyed most this year are Greenberg<\/em>, Wilson<\/a>\"\", Louie<\/a> and The Ask<\/a>\"\". It’s like I’ve assembled a Mount Rushmore of Mid-Life Misanthropy.<\/p>\n

And I still have 5 months till I turn 40, a birthday that I steadfastly refuse to believe is a significant marker in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sorry I haven’t written. I’m usually good for a What It Is post every Monday morning, and I was trying to go with a movie review every Tuesday. But I didn’t watch any movies last week, and I found myself flat-out uninterested in writing anything about What I’m Happy About or What I’m Sad … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Update. Or Downdate. Whatever”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1r8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4299,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/even-0-fers-get-the-blues","url_meta":{"origin":5526,"position":0},"title":"Even 0-fers Get the Blues","author":"Gil","date":"August 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Sam Anderson's \"I never liked you\" review of the new Thomas Pynchon novel (a book I'm uninterested in reading), which is based in the wonderful world of 1970, this week's 0-fer is . . . Tom Robbins! I've never read a word of any of Robbins' novels,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1594202249","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3071,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-121508","url_meta":{"origin":5526,"position":1},"title":"What It Is: 12\/15\/08","author":"Gil","date":"December 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Judenhass, a comic book meditation on the Holocaust by Dave Sim. \"Flies on the Ceiling,\" the featured story in the first issue of Love & Rockets I ever bought. More Montaigne. Also, finished Plutarch's first two Lives (Theseus & Romulus). What I'm listening to: A mix I'm\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2975,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-5-2008","url_meta":{"origin":5526,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 5, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"December 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Everybody's working for the weekend! Now make with some links! Just click \"more\"! Spam filters are like the Communist blacklists in the 1950s? Around two years ago, a company once e-mailed me at my day job with an announcement about how they had helped Pfizer develop the active ingredient in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1106,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/this-week-in-unrequired-reading","url_meta":{"origin":5526,"position":3},"title":"This week in Unrequired Reading","author":"Gil","date":"September 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Stories that have been sitting in my RSS feed this week: Tim Cavanaugh of Reason magazine muses on the 40th anniversary of Star Trek: And finally, [Star Trek is] a story of a powerful belief in what the franchise represents: the right of individuals, through machinery, weaponry, or barehanded intelligence,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3214,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/writing-on-buildings","url_meta":{"origin":5526,"position":4},"title":"Writing on Buildings","author":"Gil","date":"January 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Just because the NYTimes' architecture critic lives on another planet (lemme tell you, Nicolai: the problem with starchitecture is not that it failed to focus on public housing), that doesn't mean there isn't good writing about architecture in other newspapers. Dwell's blog offers up a bunch of them!","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15162,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-480-nicholas-delbanco","url_meta":{"origin":5526,"position":5},"title":"Episode 480 – Nicholas Delbanco","author":"Gil","date":"April 5, 2022","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 480: Nicholas Delbanco \"As you grow older, you become an amalgam of so many separate influences and so many voices that you tried to learn how to copy that you become in effect your own original, rather than a slavish adept.\" Author & MFA teacher Nicholas Delbanco\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/delbanco2022comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/delbanco2022comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/delbanco2022comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/delbanco2022comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/delbanco2022comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5526"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5533,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5526\/revisions\/5533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}