Last night at the Hollywood Theatre, the 48-Hour Film Project presented the best selections from this year’s competitions. It’s been awhile since I attended such an event, and the quality on display was very impressive. If you’re not familiar, the contest is pretty self-explanatory: Entrants are given 48 hours to make a film incorporating three […]
Jacob Schraer
Posted inBooks
Jonathan Franzen’s Only Popular Cause He’s A Man
Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Freedom comes out next week and it’s garnered a startling amount of press for a novel, and now a feud! So excited. The problem is mostly centered around his appearance on the cover of Time. It’s the first time a living author has appeared on the magazine’s cover in a decade. […]
Posted inTV
Mad Men Monday
From the wilderness of the internet I offer you a Newsweek article about the changing cultural attitudes towards women in the ’60s and how Mad Men portrays them. And at Visual Thesaurus, Ben Zimmer talks about the period accuracy of some phrases from last episode, including “Get over it.” Episode 5 – The Diddler Chrysanthemum […]
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Get Paid For Your Writing For Once!
Hey Blogtown! Some of you have got to be writers. Bear Deluxe Magazine is accepting submissions for their annual Doug Fir Fiction contest. Author Jim Lynch is the judge and the entry fee is only $15 (I know). They want stories “relating to a sense of place or the natural world, interpreted as broadly or […]
Posted inBooks
Mad Men Monday
Alison Hallett just wants Don to notice her too. The title of this week’s episode—The Rejected—confused me at first, but when I thought about it, Ken, Allison, and Tom (Trudy’s father) really pushed the plot forward. They set examples for other characters to follow, ignore, or take advantage of. Am I required to say that, […]
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Book News Fun
It’s not just a dream anymore. Bookslut makes itself known in Portland. Organizes reading. Take that, internet. Ebooks may be outselling hardbacks (on Amazon.com, is this really a big deal?) but libraries are flourishing by renting more DVDs then Netflix. Drinking and writing. Kingsley Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Dorothy Parker—they just make drinking seem classier don’t […]
Posted inTV
Mad Men – The Good News
For those of you waiting for the DVD to watch season four, to those of you watching the next day on iTunes or a pirate TV site, you can always head down to McMenamins Backstage Bar at 3702 SE Hawthorne Boulevard (behind the Bagdad Theater) to catch screenings at 10 p.m. They also have a […]
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Poor Claudia‘s Sunday Release
Poor Claudia, one of Portland’s budding independent lit mags, is moving beyond biannual issues and releasing three chapbooks by local poets. James Gendron, Joseph Main, and Emily Kendal Frey have all appeared in Poor Claudia‘s pages and will be celebrating the release of their work with an afternoon reading this Sunday at Powell’s on Hawthorne. […]
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Mad Men Extra Credit Reading
Eff whatever you’re doing right now and waste some work hours with these fascinating reads from around the interwebs from people who know more about Mad Men than me. Stick around, the best links are at the bottom. Advertising Age has a nice piece about their appearance in “Public Relations,” the first episode of the […]
Posted inTV
Mad Men Gets Underway, Everyone’s Fucked
Wow. That was a train wreck of an episode—for the characters that is, not the show. Last week I had a feeling this would be a triumphant season but it doesn’t look like Matt Weiner is going to let up on the bleakness. After the Curb Your Enthusiasm levels of anxiety this episode elicited in […]
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Nerding Out For Style Guides OR Yahoo! Tries Its Hand At Cultural Relevence
I have a strange love for style guides, comparable to my love of office supplies or cookware. The Elements of Style, Sin and Syntax, these are essential texts for anyone who writes an article, a story, a letter, but not necessarily a blog post. So now the editors of Yahoo!, led by Chris Barr, have […]
Posted inBooks
Bolaño Boom
Roberto Bolaño’s Posthumous Story Collection The Return
Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous story collection The Return.