NothingeverhappenstoyouOssie

Hawksmoor

Damning from NH at the Royal Academy’s corner devoted to the architect: 

For it is astonishing that ye Government… wou’d not enter into this… opportunity to Rebuild London ye most August Towne in ye world, … they ought for the Publick good to have Guided it into a Regular and commodious form, and not have suffrd it to Run into an ugly inconvenient self destroying unweidly Monster… 

Nicholas Hawksmoor, in a letter to Dr George Clarke, 17 February 1715

Alastair Campbell

This short essay from the ‘hard man’ AC is thoughtful and illuminating, until we get to the anecdote about Blair worrying about AC’s religion - such an odd comment to make. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01fjykb/The_Essay_The_Case_for_Doubt_Alastair_Campbell/

Daniel Kitson, Jennifer Egan

Three things happened to me yesterday:

I read up on the Raspberry Pi,

I finished Egan’s Goon Squad,

I saw Dan Kitson’s new (unfinished) show in Forest Hill.

I’m just going to throw those out there, Kitsonesque, without worrying about whether they’ll stick. Suffice to say, if you’ve experienced the first two of those things (recommended), you can imagine what a delight DK was. 

Wet, Dry, Moist, Damp

When an air carrier provides less than an entire aircraft crew, the wet lease occasionally is also sometimes referred to as a damp lease, especially in the UK. A wet lease without crew is occasionally referred to as a “moist lease”.^[1]

A bit of a stretch? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_lease

Wet, Dry, Moist, Damp

When an air carrier provides less than an entire aircraft crew, the wet lease occasionally is also sometimes referred to as a damp lease, especially in the UK. A wet lease without crew is occasionally referred to as a “moist lease”.^[1]

A bit of a stretch? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_lease

DFW, Maria Bustillos

“Trying to come up with the theme of a story and then articulate it is HARD. It’s also COOL and WORTHWHILE. Kennedy, for once, states the case really well: “Trying to sum up the point of a story in our own words is merely one way to make ourselves better aware of whatever we may have understood vaguely and tentatively.”

Essential reading. Quote above from the Harry Ransom Center, Texas, thanks to Bustillos (quoted below) in the Awl.

http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/inside-david-foster-wallaces-private-self-help-library

It can be argued, in fact, that getting rid of the whole idea of special gifts, of the exceptional, and of genius, is the most powerful current running through all of Wallace’s work.

Matthew Broderick, Honda

Poe, Vincent Price