14 Giants

Monuments of Distinction Since 1900 - preview #1

Behold! Some crappy screenshots from the book in progress, Monuments of Distinction Since 1900. Some of these photographs you may have seen before, but I guarantee that the book contains many photos you haven’t seen. And yes, I’m in the book too (in fact, the photos of me are very out of [...]

Miles of Margaret

Solaris

I watched Solaris last night, the 2002 film adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1921 novel. (I had been meaning to for a long time, but never got around to it.) Although not exactly faithful to all of the subtleties and themes of Lem’s novel, I still enjoyed it. A lot. Steven Soderbergh has [...]

Stuff white people like

If you remember that it’s only satire, it doesn’t seem so wrong. I’m speaking, of course, about Stuff White People Like. Originally a website, it’s now available in book form too. I own this book. It makes me laugh. Hard. Still, how come this guy (who only launched his website in January) already has a six-figure book deal? [...]

The dumbest generation

Do you believe the children are our future? Check out The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlin, and the corresponding writeup in the Los Angeles TImes: Increasingly disconnected from the “adult” world of tradition, culture, history, context and the ability to sit down for more than five minutes with a book, today’s digital generation is becoming insulated in [...]

A better-than-average Friday night

I went to the George Michael concert with my fake ex-wife Ronda. (That’s my cell phone pic above.) It’s perhaps fitting that the tour is called “25 Live” because, as she says, she waited 25 years for this night. And it did not disappoint. I was stunned at how good of a show this was. [...]

Frank-ly, my dear

I recently acquired the 50th anniversary version of Robert Frank’s collection of photos entitled The Americans. It’s very cool. This reissue is part of a project that Steidl publishers have undertaken in cooperation with Frank himself (who is supervising everything) to reprint many of his old works as special editions. For this [...]

Robertson Davies had a man-crush?

(photo: Harry Palmer) Appears so! From the new book, Robertson Davies: A Portrait in Mosaic, which arrived in my mailbox: Every boy I have known has had [a homosexual spell], some lasting a short time and some longer (my own was a week during which I was blinded by a lad who played Maria in Twelfth [...]