Really digging HBO/Todd Haynes’ miniseries adaptation of Mildred Pierce—I’m kind of ashamed to say that I’ve never seen the Joan Crawford original, but I did read the book years ago, which implanted in me a lifelong obsession with fried chicken and waffles that was only consummated a few years ago at a visit to Roscoe’s in Hollywood. But how sick would it be if the series was exactly the same, stylistically, but THIS was the theme song?
"And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." - H.G.
This is all you really need to know about me.
But you can reach me at eattothebeat AT gmail DOT com. Or ask me a question, I'll tell you no lies.
Or check out my archive.
Click on the links below if you really want to know more.
• Couple of things about me.
• Older stuff you might like
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Facebook photos are never private
I don’t really write about tech stuff here, but this is such a glaringly obvious privacy hole in Facebook and it’s been around for months, if not years, without being addressed—or even really noticed.
Basically, any photo on Facebook, seemingly regardless of privacy settings, can be direct-linked to and viewed by anyone, Facebook account or not, as long as somebody with access to the photo right- or control-clicks on the picture and selects “Copy Image Address” or whatever the equivalent is in their browser. The resulting URL can be viewed by anyone.
I don’t know why this is—I have no background in any of the relevant technical stuff—and I know that the same results can basically be had by anyone who knows how to do a screen grab. Still, isn’t it weird that Facebook stores all its photos in must be totally unprotected directories? (Again, I have no idea if that even makes sense in a technical context, but you get the idea.)
Has anyone else noticed this? Is there a reason for it?
For all that YouTube comments seem to bring out the worst, dumbest and most depraved in humanity, there are always gems like this that open a little window on some stranger’s life—little fragments of personal history, memories or family lore that would otherwise be lost. This is a comment on this video, of Jimmy Durante’s TV show sign-off, which was always “And goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”
“In 1993, members of the International Masculine Dude Brotherhood began collating lists of their favourite movies [4]. As the project gained scope, the organization begin storing the lists online under a domain name they already owned, imdb.com [Link]. In 1994, the organization formally changed its name to the Internet Movie Database [5].”
Travels in Siberia
I really enjoyed Ian Frazier’s series of articles on traveling through Siberia he wrote in the last couple of years for The New Yorker (only the abstracts seem to be online, but they’re worth looking for). I had hoped that the scope of the project meant there was a book in the works, and I was really happy to see that hope fulfilled when I noticed it on the racks at City Lights bookstore when I was in San Francisco last month. The book is a smorgasbord of Russian delights; stories and legends of Siberian history, beautiful details of Frazier’s several journeys across the cold, mosquito-ridden steppes, amusing scientific arcana. Here are some favourite passages.
On the sage Ch’ang ch’un’s journey to meet the Genghis Khan, after being summoned by the Mongol leader:
Ch’ang ch’un and his companions went across much of Asia. Maybe they were in southern Siberia part of the way, maybe not. The disciples kept a diary; here is a sample: “There was a stony river, more than fifty li long, the banks of which were about a hundred feet high. The water in the river was clear and cold, and bubbled like sonorous jade.” (One of the best river descriptions ever: bubbled like sonorous jade.) Crossing hot deserts in the cool of the night, they feared being charmed by goblins.
On holdouts against the reformation of the Orthodox church, with its minor changes to liturgy and ritual that included stuff like crossing oneself with three fingers instead of two:
In 1978, a team of Soviet geologists prospecting by helicopter for iron ore happened to see garden rows on a mountainside in remote taiga 150 miles from the nearest village. Upon investigation, they found a family of five Old Believers who had seen no other humans for forty years. As the geologists and the family talked, someone mentioned Nikon, the patriarch of Moscow who had instituted the reforms more than three hundred years before; at his name, the family spat and crossed themselves defiantly with two fingers.
On life under Tsarist exile:
Did any exiles or prisoners ever escape? A reader cannot help hoping that somehow some did. The historian S. V. Maksimov, in his Sibir’ i Katorga (Siberia and Prison), tells the story of a prisoner named Tumanov who, during a display of gymnastics before the regional governor, leaped from the top of a human pyramid and landed outside the prison palisades and got away. The escapee left behind part of his costume, a flax beard, which the prison commander was forced to wear until his dying day.
On the anarchist Bakunin’s own escape:
His old friend Herzen, who like many people had assumed Bakunin was permanently buried in Asiatic exile, was understandably surprised when the long-lost anarchist popped up in London. According to one account, “after a stormy, moist embrace [Bakunin’s] first words to Herzen were, ‘Can one get oysters here?’ ”
On tigers:
Back then tigers could be seen even on the outskirts of Vladivostok, where they sometimes made forays to kill and carry off dogs. Arsenyev describes how tigers in the forest sometimes bellowed like red deer to attract the deer during mating season; the tiger’s imitation betrayed itself only at the end of the bellow, when it trailed off into a purr.
One of the best things I heard this year, or indeed, in a long time, was Marc Maron’s interview with comedian Mike DeStefano, who has apparently just died of a heart attack. I don’t really have anything personally to add except to say that the interview, which you can listen to here, was deeply moving, deeply human, concerned life and death and now feels very, very poignant. You should listen to it.
I love how a publication’s “other stuff to read” link lists can read like an accounting of its readership’s anxieties and desires.
Hello, I must be going
In August of last year, for reasons that were not obvious to me at the time, I wrote two essays about writing for a living and posted them to this blog. The first, “Writing about restaurants,” was about food writing and the second, “Writing about movies,” a couple weeks later, was about my life as a film critic. After this week, I won’t be doing either of those things professionally, at least for a while.
I changed the name of this here blog. Sign of some other big changes to come—life changes and stuff. More soon.
What is this ad I’m always seeing on YouTube and what does it mean? “Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav and Franz Kafka burnt books”? “Roger Kamenetz burnt books”? A book by Roger Kamenetz about book burning that cites the examples of Franz Kafka (sure) and the not-nearly-as-famous Rabbi Nachman? What is this? Why is it appended to stuff like video game footage? Is it from the same people who advertise that Jewish magazine “Tablet” on every single page on the web? What is this? What is going on?
