Wilco, Nick Lowe and Mavis Staples rehearsing The Band’s “The Weight” backstage at the Civic Opera House. And here’s the song from Scorsese’s The Last Waltz.
After six years of design development with MIT Media lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and the non-profit organization he founded, One Laptop Per Child, fuseproject launches the XO-3 tablet. Their previous efforts gave more than 2.4 million children in 25 countries access to laptops.
“We was afraid you disappeared but nah, baby you magic.”
“You’re my child with the child from Destiny’s Child.”
Jay-Z made a song for his baby daughter called “Glory”— featuring young Blue Ivy herself.
(Source: laceuptrebor, via recallnumbers)
WOW. I never realized how much this song sounds like Enya. Both really into beaches, relaxing, etc. In other Ernest Greene-related news, I’m relieved to hear that the new season of Portlandia is available online.
Beyonce & Jay-Z rented out the entire floor of Lenox Hill Hospital for the birth of their daughter this morning, whose name, according to Goopy, is BLUE. Blue Ivy Carter. A bit excessive. And to think, last week, the Carters were just another couple having dinner in Carroll Gardens.
“The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.”
— “The Future has an Ancient Heart,” from the always lovely Sugar on Stephen Elliott’s Daily Rumpus.
Married People Having Dinner
It seems like Colonie is the place to be on a Friday evening in Brooklyn Heights. Recommended: some combination of oysters, crostini, scallops and champagne. Yum. Observations about the MPHD:
Married Man: Honey, What are you thinking? (looking longingly into Married Woman’s eyes, and also the crostini)
Married Woman: Well, um, how much butter is in this food… (while heartily enjoying said food)
Married Man: Oh.
Topics covered: spousal concern, caloric intake.
As a soon-to-be-married person, I wholeheartedly participated in the Friday evening MPHD club. Topics covered at my table: married folk stuff like television (Portlandia, Parks & Recreation), how the food tastes (good), etc. A post-dinner drink at Brooklyn Social confirms that this is likely not a place where married people go on Friday nights, though I could very well be mistaken. A post-drink viewing of Portlandia confirms that this is absolutely what I would rather be doing.
Mexico now has the world’s tallest suspension bridge. The Baluarte, which stands at 1,322-feet in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, was inaugurated yesterday by President Felipe Calderon. The bridge, which has achieved a Guinness world record (congrats, Bridge, but be careful! Don’t get addicted like Ashrita Furman!), is tall enough for the Eiffel Tower to fit underneath it. For other reference, that’s basically taller than two hundred basketball players stacked on top of each other. TWO HUNDRED. Or, for those below the 6’7” average, it’s more like 237! “This project will unite the people of northern Mexico as never before,” the President said. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera is reporting that critics believe it will serve as a superhighway for drug traffickers. (via GlobalPost)
A 36-year-old drunk Denver woman “leaned against an iconic Clyfford Still painting worth more than $30 million last week, punched it, slid down it and urinated on herself, according to a criminal case against Carmen Lucette Tisch,” reports the Denver Post. The damage to Still’s Painting — “1957-J-No. 2.” — is estimated at $10,000 which, incidentally is the price of a very nice bottle of wine. Something tells me this lady wasn’t drinking vino, though. In any case, people certainly have different reactions to abstract expressionism but this is a pretty, hmm, original way to criticize art. I wonder though, was her urination inspired by Still’s light yellow stroke in the lower-right hand corner? Poor Clyff. I guess sometimes art and alcohol aren’t the best pairing after all.
![thedailywhat:
To Serve And Protect During Business Hours of the Day: Despite being declared America’s Most Dangerous City by Forbes magazine for having the highest violent-crime rate in the country, Detroit will no longer make its police department precincts and districts available to the public after 4 PM due to budget cuts.
The Detroit Police Department announced yesterday that all eight precinct and district stations will shut down for the day at 4 PM, reopening at 8 AM the following morning.
In addition, many positions, including vehicle and building maintenance, law enforcement information network operation, and other “desk jobs” will be cut in order to move officers from the precincts to the streets.
“I think it’s going to work,” said Detroit police Cmdr. Steve Dolunt. “I think it’ll get the officers more involved [with citizens].”
Some 100 officers will be laid off in order to allow the department to receive federal grant money. There are 3,000 officers currently on the payroll.
Replacing public access will be “virtual precincts” — online tools the department says will help citizens get the help they need. “This is insanity. This is preposterous,” said Minister Malik Shabazz, a community activist.
“I think the public really rely on them a lot,” said Joseph Stokes Jr., who lost a son to gun violence in Detroit. “They have nowhere else to go to, they have nowhere else to turn to, especially when something happens to them.”
[freep / tribune.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxccfp923d1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
To Serve And Protect During Business Hours of the Day: Despite being declared America’s Most Dangerous City by Forbes magazine for having the highest violent-crime rate in the country, Detroit will no longer make its police department precincts and districts available to the public after 4 PM due to budget cuts.
The Detroit Police Department announced yesterday that all eight precinct and district stations will shut down for the day at 4 PM, reopening at 8 AM the following morning.
In addition, many positions, including vehicle and building maintenance, law enforcement information network operation, and other “desk jobs” will be cut in order to move officers from the precincts to the streets.
“I think it’s going to work,” said Detroit police Cmdr. Steve Dolunt. “I think it’ll get the officers more involved [with citizens].”
Some 100 officers will be laid off in order to allow the department to receive federal grant money. There are 3,000 officers currently on the payroll.
Replacing public access will be “virtual precincts” — online tools the department says will help citizens get the help they need. “This is insanity. This is preposterous,” said Minister Malik Shabazz, a community activist.
“I think the public really rely on them a lot,” said Joseph Stokes Jr., who lost a son to gun violence in Detroit. “They have nowhere else to go to, they have nowhere else to turn to, especially when something happens to them.”
(Source: thedailywhat)
“The first night you spend in the hospital, alone, having just learned that you’re seriously ill and may die and that from now on, that’s your reality. What happens then, he said, is on the order of all-out war, a complete collapse, a total metamorphosis.”
— from Emmanuel Carrère’s sober, inspiring Lives Other Than My Own. Inspiring because it pushes you to be better, to want to be better, to be the kind of person who knows where they are. I’ve not quite finished it but it’s already one of my favorite books this year. A brief review on NPR here.
“For all its considerable delights, Southern California always seems faintly on the cusp of an apocalypse. There are palm trees, year-round gardens and splendid weather — it was 81 degrees and sunny on Sunday — but there are also mudslides, gang shootings, wildfires and earthquakes.”
— “Cars Are Set on Fire, and Los Angeles Is Set on Edge,” NYT
Things to do more of in 2012
- Run (NYC half-marathon and beyond)
- Read (as always)
- Write (ditto)
- Make jokes
- Cook at home
- Give kisses
- Plan for my wedding in September
Happy New Year.
“You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don’t hate anything.”
— Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
