Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

My favorite living artist, after Johns. Robert Gober opens at MoMA: sober, haunting and genuinely affecting One of the most powerful and puzzling US artists of the 1980s finally receives a retrospective worthy of his intimate work http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/03/robert-gober-moma-retrospective-review-sculpture-art

Not too bad a selection, as these things go. The 10 best works of erotic artArt has always been intrinsically linked to expression, passion and sensuality, but across the centuries, there have been surprisingly few unambiguous depictions of the carnal act in its naked glory. Here, Jonathan Jones chooses his favourite 10 erotic pieces Jonathan Jones The Observer, Saturday 27 September 2014 The British Museum Katsukawa Shun’ei (attributed to) Ten scenes of lovemaking, a scroll painting (Edo period, 1795-1810) British Museum Japanese Shunga art is explicit about sex in a way western artists never found easy before the 20th century. Free from any Christian iden…

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/19/ten-best-collective-nouns

http://rolfgross.dreamhosters.com/Greece-Web/Crete/Crete.htm Some gorgeous archeological porn. (Not literally; for that see Pompeii.)

'Exploitation' page from a well researched cult-film web site: http://sepnet.com/rcramer/exploit.htm

Perhaps some here may find this as interesting as I did.... http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s

Nice interview. http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/how-stephen-king-teaches-writing/379870/?single_page=true]

Nice choices: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10620356/The-15-best-comedy-books-of-all-time.html Makes me realize I got my forum posting style, such as it is, in great part from Tristram Shandy, probably my favorite novel along with Nabokov's Pale Fire ("lads and youths"! ).

Great bunch of Ethel Merman stories and quotes: http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?thread=907797#

A friend visiting the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney just posted this pic of 'Michael Jackson & Bubbles' to her Facebook page: ...the which prompts me to realize (at last, years after seeing the thing in person myself) that it is a sly allusion to Leonardo's very sly indeed 'Lady with a Stoat'... ...in the drolly observed resemblance between the face of the critter and that of its owner. Likewise the similar placement of the hands.

Whence my 'Location' label here. THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE By H*NRY J*M*S [From A Christmas Garland, Max Beerbohm] It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left it. But just where the deuce had he left it? The consciousness of dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon," between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality somewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, against a good number of "t…

In case you ever need to find your way out of Innsmouth in a hurry... Text: The Shadow over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft.

Great Terry Gross 'Fresh Air' interview with John Waters about his new book: http://m.wfae.org/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F#mobile/57780

http://m.nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/killer-heels-brooklyn-museum-article-1.1926910

NSFS -- Not Safe For Suckrates! I write and perform poetry about my small penis because men like me shouldn't be ashamed http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/i-write-and-perform-poetry-about-my-small-penis-because-men-like-me-shouldnt-be-ashamed-9719264.html

Bound to make an appropriate gift on one occasion or another... http://www.amazon.com/Field-Venomous-Animals-Poisonous-Plants/dp/039593608X

On recently perusing the fascinating work The Necronomicon Files, by Daniel Harms and J. Wisdom Gonce III, I was intrigued to read that: I became curious to learn more about Lovecraft's sources for this story, and the occult tradition that spawned those sources. What do these incantations really mean? In what context were they originally used? And to what extent does the story of Charles Dexter Ward adhere to older ideas about necromancy? In fact, Lovecraft used two incantations in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward that came from a single page in Waite's Levi compendium, The Mysteries of Magic. — Daniel Harms and J. Wisdom Gonce III, The Necronomicon Files (Boston, MA: We…

Stephen King: on alcoholism and returning to the Shining More than 30 years after Stephen King first terrified readers with The Shining, he's written a sequel, drawing on his alcoholism and a near-death experience. He talks about being a drunk father and why the Twilight series is just 'tweenager porn' http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/21/stephen-king-shining-sequel-interview

I enjoy artistic performances of various kinds but I have never gone "Hollywood" so to speak. Symphony, a good vocal, a nice play, even a very good movie can catch my attention but I do not seek those venues out, they have to come to me or be thrust upon me. I find myself more and more wondering who various artists are. A name is mentioned and I have no idea who it might be. I have never watched the Emmys or the Oscars and have no intention of starting now BUT I also do not wish to remain totally ignorant of possible good talent that may be about. Therefore, I am sure that what I need is a knowledgeable 30 year old who can provide me with current information and gu…

In a 1963 Paris Review interview, S. J. Perelman declared that the “comic writer is a cat on a hot tin roof. His invitation to perform is liable to wear out at any moment; he must quickly and constantly amuse in a short span, and the first smothered yawn is a signal to get lost.” Influenced not only by noted humorists Ring Lardner and Robert Benchley but also by the novelist James Joyce, Perelman easily surpassed his own definition by matching an erudite wit with allusions to Greek and Roman antiquity, pulp novelists, show-biz esoterica, and other arcana. Contributing nearly three hundred pieces to the magazine between 1930 and 1979, he also spent several years in Hollywo…

I don't own an e-reader as such, but suspected as much just from reading on laptop screen and iPhone vs. paper. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb-less-kindles-paper-study-plot-ereader-digitisation

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/22/mpaa-love-is-strange-r-rated-gay-romance-no-sex

The text: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43591/43591-h/43591-h.htm (Sorry! ) Thayer: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Wheelock_Thayer

That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case. While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon. It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and ther…