{"id":5799,"date":"2010-12-13T07:24:03","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T11:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=5799"},"modified":"2010-12-13T07:24:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T11:24:05","slug":"what-it-is-121310","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-121310","title":{"rendered":"What It Is: 12\/13\/10"},"content":{"rendered":"

What I’m reading:<\/em> I sorta defaulted into reading Black Swan Green<\/a>\"\", by David Mitchell. I was feeling kinda meh one evening this week, and it was on my Kindle, and I thought, “What the heck?” I’m enjoying it, but I’m waiting for the bizarre structural trick that characterizes Mitchell’s novels. Since this one seems to be a novel about his childhood and his stammering problem, it’s possible there’s no pomo wackiness to it. I don’t want to look it up to find out, preferring to let the book unfold itsowndamnself.<\/p>\n

What I’m listening to:<\/em> Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1<\/a>\"\", We Are Born<\/a>\"\", The Lady Killer<\/a>\"\", and the Monocle Weekly<\/a> (from Helsinki!)<\/p>\n

What I’m watching:<\/em> More In Treatment<\/em> (almost done with season 1), and Ric Burns’ American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol<\/a>. It wasn’t as good as Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture<\/a>\"\", which I caught on PBS a year or two ago. There were a few problems with Burns’ doc: it grinds to a halt when it covers Warhol’s filmmaking (much as Warhol’s films were exercises in inertia), it has to mess with timelines for its segment on “casualties of the Factory,” it overemphasizes Edie Sedgwick and her death, and it spends about 15 minutes (of a total of 4 hours) on the post-shooting Warhol. After reading Bob Colacello’s book on the post-1968 era, Holy Terror<\/a>\"\", I think that phase of his career is immensely interesting, but Burns gives it pretty short shrift. That other doc I mentioned also does a better job of showing Warhol’s relation to his family, and the sheer weirdness of his mother living with him in NYC for 20 years. Anyway, the first half of Burns’ doc is pretty good, but I felt that it lost its way from about 1965 on.<\/p>\n

What I’m drinking:<\/em> Nyquil. Not for recreational purposes.<\/p>\n

What Rufus & Otis are up to:<\/em> Posing for Christmas pictures.<\/p>\n

Where I’m going:<\/em> Nowhere!<\/p>\n

What I’m happy about:<\/em> An old pal got in touch with me for general shooting of the breeze on Friday. It was great to just catch up with her.<\/p>\n

What I’m sad about:<\/em> The way this year’s just whirled by.<\/p>\n

What I’m worried about:<\/em> Getting most of my year-end 500-page issue done by Friday.<\/p>\n

What I’m pondering:<\/em> Whether I’ll finally get around to writing that “favorite books of the decade” post that I delayed since January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I’m reading: I sorta defaulted into reading Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell. I was feeling kinda meh one evening this week, and it was on my Kindle, and I thought, “What the heck?” I’m enjoying it, but I’m waiting for the bizarre structural trick that characterizes Mitchell’s novels. Since this one seems to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “What It Is: 12\/13\/10”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[1],"tags":[334,1211],"class_list":["post-5799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andy-warhol","tag-edie-sedgwick"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1vx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":864,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mind-reading","url_meta":{"origin":5799,"position":0},"title":"Mind reading","author":"Gil","date":"March 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Whew! I found a reading for my wedding on Sunday! Being all literary and such, it was pretty difficult for me to come up with something good (I'll post it sometime after the wedding). In my neurotic way, I felt pressure to come up with a Really Good Reading. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2528,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-sept-26-2008","url_meta":{"origin":5799,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Sept. 26, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"September 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Unrequired Reading is off this week! All you get is this: Come back next week!","rel":"","context":"In \"zoidberg\"","block_context":{"text":"zoidberg","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/zoidberg"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3176,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/meta-unrequired-reading","url_meta":{"origin":5799,"position":2},"title":"Meta-Unrequired Reading","author":"Gil","date":"January 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Jason Kottke offers up his favorite posts of 2008. I only discovered his site recently, and realized it's like my Unrequired Reading section, but every day of the week. So I suck.","rel":"","context":"In \"kottke\"","block_context":{"text":"kottke","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/kottke"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4876,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-jan-22-2010","url_meta":{"origin":5799,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Jan. 22, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"January 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"No Unrequired Reading for you this week! That's due less to my malaise, and more to my laptop being in the shop. It suffered the hinge-break that first-generation MacBook Air models are prone to (\"so take \/ this broken hinge . . .\"). Apple is replacing the monitor and hinge\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5814,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-24-2010","url_meta":{"origin":5799,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 24, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"December 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"No Unrequired Reading for you this week, dear readers! I'm on vacation! I'll have an extra-special edition for you next week, to close out 2010! Okay, okay. Just to give you something, here's the 3-D Yule Log.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2237,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-aug-15-2008","url_meta":{"origin":5799,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Aug. 15, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"August 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It's time for an all-architecture edition of Unrequired Reading! So if you don't care about this stuff, go visit the Unrequired Reading archives instead! Frank Gehry tries to justify his work. * * * Rem Koolhaas tries to justify his work. * * * Is Zaha Hadid's work past the\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799","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=5799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5800,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799\/revisions\/5800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}