{"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":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-121310","title":{"rendered":"What It Is: 12\/13\/10"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>What I&#8217;m reading:<\/em> I sorta defaulted into reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0812974018?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0812974018\">Black Swan Green<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0812974018\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, by David Mitchell. I was feeling kinda meh one evening this week, and it was on my Kindle, and I thought, &#8220;What the heck?&#8221; I&#8217;m enjoying it, but I&#8217;m waiting for the bizarre structural trick that characterizes Mitchell&#8217;s novels. Since this one seems to be a novel about his childhood and his stammering problem, it&#8217;s possible there&#8217;s no pomo wackiness to it. I don&#8217;t want to look it up to find out, preferring to let the book unfold itsowndamnself.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m listening to:<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B0000027F8?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B0000027F8\">Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B0000027F8\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B003MWHVLY?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B003MWHVLY\">We Are Born<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B003MWHVLY\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B0041WLBEC?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B0041WLBEC\">The Lady Killer<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B0041WLBEC\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monocle.com\/The-Monocle-Weekly\/\" target=\"_blank\">Monocle Weekly<\/a> (from Helsinki!)<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m watching:<\/em> More <em>In Treatment<\/em> (almost done with season 1), and Ric Burns&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/americanmasters\/episodes\/andy-warhol\/a-documentary-film\/44\/\" target=\"_blank\">American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol<\/a>. It wasn&#8217;t as good as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B000087EY4?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B000087EY4\">Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B000087EY4\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, which I caught on PBS a year or two ago. There were a few problems with Burns&#8217; doc: it grinds to a halt when it covers Warhol&#8217;s filmmaking (much as Warhol&#8217;s films were exercises in inertia), it has to mess with timelines for its segment on &#8220;casualties of the Factory,&#8221; 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&#8217;s book on the post-1968 era, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0815410085?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=virtualmemories-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0815410085\">Holy Terror<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0815410085\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, 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&#8217;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&#8217; doc is pretty good, but I felt that it lost its way from about 1965 on.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m drinking:<\/em> Nyquil. Not for recreational purposes.<\/p>\n<p><em>What Rufus &amp; Otis are up to:<\/em> Posing for Christmas pictures.<\/p>\n<p><em>Where I&#8217;m going:<\/em> Nowhere!<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;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<p><em>What I&#8217;m sad about:<\/em> The way this year&#8217;s just whirled by.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m worried about:<\/em> Getting most of my year-end 500-page issue done by Friday.<\/p>\n<p><em>What I&#8217;m pondering:<\/em> Whether I&#8217;ll finally get around to writing that &#8220;favorite books of the decade&#8221; post that I delayed since January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What I&#8217;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, &#8220;What the heck?&#8221; I&#8217;m enjoying it, but I&#8217;m waiting for the bizarre structural trick that characterizes Mitchell&#8217;s novels. Since this one seems to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-121310\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What It Is: 12\/13\/10&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[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_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1vx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5800,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799\/revisions\/5800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}