* You bastards who are going to SPX this year will have dibs on the debut of ACME Novelty Library #20. Choke on it.
* I have not made a secret of my enthusiasm for Stephen Frears’s upcoming film of Posy Simmonds’s graphic novel Tamara Drewe, but wouldja believe that until I saw the new trailer below I hadn’t even noticed that the guy who played Evil Christopher Hitchens in Speed Racer was in it? Something must have been distracting me; I’ve no clue what it could be.
Yep, totally at a loss.
* The Missus and I have done a decent amount of biking near our suburban home recently, and the trip to the bike path usually involves coming or going along a very busy stretch of thoroughfare. This has made us hyper-aware of the difficulty, if not outright danger, posed to non-car travelers along such roads, whether bikers or pedestrians. That’s why this Matthew Yglesias post on ergonomic crosswalks and the need to psychologically recalibrate our conception of who owns the roadway brought a big smile to my face.
* The Economist profiles Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget. I still haven’t read the damn thing, but as I’ve said before, a cursory flipthrough delivered at least one mental paradigm shift for me, so it’s on the list. (Via Marc Hogan.)
* So too is Greg Milner’s Perfecting Sound Forever, if Milner’s interview with Matthew Perpetua is any indication. Fascinating stuff about the making of the sound of recorded music, from Steely Dan to Steve Albini, Mutt Lange to James Murphy.
* Sexy gothy vampirey stuff generally isn’t my thing–True Blood is sexy, gothy, and vampirey, but rarely all at once–but I stumbled across this piece called “The Turning” by Randis courtesy of my pal Lontra Phoenix and found it to be pretty hot stuff.
* The “deal with it” meme has reached its zenith. Shit, memes in general have reached their zenith. (Via Douglas E. Sherwood.)
* Rest in peace, Glenn Shadix. My wife and I have spent years, literally years, wondering aloud why Glenn Shadix in general and Otho from Beetlejuice in particular aren’t iconic. “I was one of New York’s leading experts in the paranormal…till the bottom dropped out in ’72.”
* Finally, take the time to soak in the despair of “Instructions for visiting the American Wilderness” by Thomas Blair over at the Awl. If you’ve ever had the suspicion that abandoned, for-sale, uncompleted exurban architecture and infrastructure are the telltale black buboes on the American body politic, this is basically “bring out your dead.” (Via Maura Johnston.)