Many folks probably saw this coming but it's still sad none the less. I was reminded of the entropy that snares us all the other night during the academy's tribute to John Huston. Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwold, et. al looked a bit worse for wear.

The years tend to do that not to mention the booze and drugs. RIP Corey

All of which may be the reason the phrase ‘fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow’ is as strange to me as cuneiform. The drifting ritual, and the early training (which is why the light in the hall is on, and the door open, wider) of listening for catastrophe in the night, means that I have always taken an age to get to sleep. Sometimes this tips over into insomnia. Not a chance of drifting. Just the mind growing increasingly frantic with thoughts lining up round the block to get their moment in the sun of night-time fretfulness. This is more like my Methedrine phase. I enjoyed hyperconsciousness then (until, as with the ether, the thoughts turned bad). These days I’m much more on the side of oblivion. It goes in phases, and if I had a scientific interest in it, I’d be fascinated by the transformation of the world in the early hours to the place of uncertainty and woe that it actually is. The veil of coping shreds as the hours go by and all the disasters and horrid failures that can undoubtedly occur, and indeed are crowded, stage left, simply waiting for their moment, make themselves known to you. People have always asked which is the reality, sleep or wakefulness, but no one ever dares suggest that the horrors of half-past three in the morning are indeed as likely to happen as not, and are at least as possible as they are impossible- Bookslut.

"To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.”

“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”

-Rebecca West

Drift from mustardcuffins on Vimeo.

In a French housing project in 1995, one young girl named Laurence was going through it: The abusive step-father, substance abuse, eviction, next stop homelessness, the works. She wrote this rather strange punk rock performer named Iggy Pop telling him all about it. Punk rock life being what it is, it took Iggy awhile, but this is what he wrote back -which she recieved right before she became an ward of the state

dear laurence,

thankyou for your gorgeous and charming letter, you brighten up my dim life. i read the whole ****ing thing, dear. of course, i'd love to see you in your black dress and your white socks too. but most of all i want to see you take a deep breath and do whatever you must to survive and find something to be that you can love. you're obviously a bright ****ing chick, w/ a big heart too and i want to wish you a (belated) HAPPY HAPPY 21st b'day and happy spirit. i was very miserable and fighting hard on my 21st b'day, too. people booed me on the stage, and i was staying in someone else's house and i was scared. it's been a long road since then, but pressure never ends in this life. 'perforation problems' by the way means to me also the holes that will always exist in any story we try to make of our lives. so hang on, my love, and grow big and strong and take your hits and keep going.

all my love to a really beautiful girl. that's you laurence.

iggy pop

                             (from Letters of Note)

“You get the reward of distraction — you don’t think about the outside world, and you’re faced with solvable problems, and if they’re not solvable, you don’t die because of it. I get to live with very beautiful women and very witty men and they have costumes, and the sets are beautiful. It’s a very pleasant way to waste your life.”  Who else? Woody Allen.

Davidson's photographs remind us that people's personal lives are mostly tedious. Everybody has dirty plates and families. Privacy protects us. Behind closed doors we shine our shoes and our personalities; we rest and then resume playing the roles of interesting people. We hide our worst selves, and our dullest: we would rather have people see us as bad than boring.

                          the photographs of Bruce Davidson

Christmas is a holiday with flaws. The build-up is extensive, costly, and aesthetically gauche, and the hype never fully pays off. Christmas Eve is all chills and anticipation and Christmas morning is a flat rejoinder to the excitement, like pressing on a soap bubble and watching it pop. We can never enjoy life as much as we'd like to, because it's more important to find what's wrong with our lives and fix it than to take it as it comes.- Alex Carnavale

Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go–but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do.  It was like she was too tense.  Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time.  Woolworth’s wasn’t the same as school.  When she used to come home from school she felt good and was ready to start working on the music.  But now she felt she was always tired.  At home she just ate supper and slept and then ate breakfast and went off to the store again.  A song she had started in her private notebook two months before was still not finished.  And she wanted to stay in the inside room but she didn’t now how.  It was like the inside room was locked somewhere away from her.  A very hard thing to understand.

 There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

- Raymond Chandler

"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

What if every star started disappearing from the Mediaverse? One by one..

Excellent shot from Noah Baumbach's new film Greenburg. Maybe it is age, but I always thought Ben Stiller has a side to him that is at once dark and haunted.

He should explore it more but Hollywood does not let many comedic actors run with it.

       Hamm: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?

       Nagg: I didn’t know.

       Hamm: What? What didn’t you know?

       Nagg: That it’d be you.

                       Rita Hayworth, they made you so beautiful..

                                        Fear Eats the Soul    

                                                 Just Dance

What movie is this still from?

          What?! They could only name ten??

 Most Overpaid Actors
1. Will Ferrell
2. Ewan McGregor
3. Billy Bob Thorton
4. Eddie Murphy
5. Ice Cube
6. Tom Cruise
7. Drew Barrymore
8. Leonardo DiCaprio
9. Samuel L. Jackson
10. Jim Carrey

For many men there is so much grief/And my mind is proud but it aches with rage/And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die/Strangers on this road we are on.”  Dave Davies