Can't explain why it was such a tiring week: maybe it's just a tiring point in the semester? Anyway, I'm knackered, and am going to take the evening completely off for phenomenal laziness that may or may not involve novel-reading and a couple episodes of the (non-appealing) new season of Fringe.
On Tuesday I went to a lovely event - my long-ago tenth-grade English teacher Charlotte Pierce-Baker, now a professor at Vanderbilt, was at Columbia to speak about her distressing and moving memoir, This Fragile Life: A Mother's Story of a Bipolar Son. Haven't read it yet, but will do so soon.
Will Wiles on being published by Amazon's new literary fiction imprint (same publisher that's bringing out my novel in the spring).
Two takes: Phil Dyess-Nugent and James Parker on Neil Young's new memoir.
Richard Marshall interviews Paul Fry on various matters to do with theory and literature (good list of reading recommendations at the end!).
Check out Tough Mudder pics!
Light reading around the edges: Jami Attenberg's The Middlesteins (and here's a bonus link) and Invisible Murder, the second installment in an excellent Danish crime series.
Showing posts with label Phil Nugent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phil Nugent. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2012
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Closing tabs
Z-z-z. (Via GeekPress.)
Ed Park's "Two Laptops: A Short Story"!
Phil Dyess-Nugent on Gore Vidal. (Also recommended: Inigo Thomas's 2007 LRB piece on the last installment of Vidal's memoirs; Marcie Frank's How to Be an Intellectual in an Age of TV.)
Elaine Scarry on literature and empathy.
I'm currently slightly under the weather with dental woes. It is not a particularly interesting backstory; my teeth are otherwise pretty good, but I had a root canal about 10 years ago, and at my annual check-up in May, the dentist asked on the basis of the x-ray whether I'd been having any trouble with it. The answer then was no, but a week ago I had some swelling and redness/soreness; yesterday I had an appointment with the endodontist that I imagined would be purely brief and diagnostic (I thought I would book whatever treatment was likely to be necessary for perhaps mid-September), but instead I found myself in the chair for an arduous and really fairly unpleasant 90 minutes of excavation! Walked out slightly reeling, with face still half-numb from the anesthesia. Am taking a couple days off from exercise, and will continue to be careful over the weekend not to put undue stress on the immune system; apparently they don't give antibiotics for this as a default, only if it gets infected. I have a follow-up next week for the rest of the work to be done, assuming it's healing properly, and am strongly hoping that it won't be as major as yesterday's appointment! The co-pay was $400, but it would have been over $2,000 if my insurance didn't cover it, so I can consider myself fortunate that the Columbia dental plan has improved considerably in recent years....
Ed Park's "Two Laptops: A Short Story"!
Phil Dyess-Nugent on Gore Vidal. (Also recommended: Inigo Thomas's 2007 LRB piece on the last installment of Vidal's memoirs; Marcie Frank's How to Be an Intellectual in an Age of TV.)
Elaine Scarry on literature and empathy.
I'm currently slightly under the weather with dental woes. It is not a particularly interesting backstory; my teeth are otherwise pretty good, but I had a root canal about 10 years ago, and at my annual check-up in May, the dentist asked on the basis of the x-ray whether I'd been having any trouble with it. The answer then was no, but a week ago I had some swelling and redness/soreness; yesterday I had an appointment with the endodontist that I imagined would be purely brief and diagnostic (I thought I would book whatever treatment was likely to be necessary for perhaps mid-September), but instead I found myself in the chair for an arduous and really fairly unpleasant 90 minutes of excavation! Walked out slightly reeling, with face still half-numb from the anesthesia. Am taking a couple days off from exercise, and will continue to be careful over the weekend not to put undue stress on the immune system; apparently they don't give antibiotics for this as a default, only if it gets infected. I have a follow-up next week for the rest of the work to be done, assuming it's healing properly, and am strongly hoping that it won't be as major as yesterday's appointment! The co-pay was $400, but it would have been over $2,000 if my insurance didn't cover it, so I can consider myself fortunate that the Columbia dental plan has improved considerably in recent years....
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Friday, January 07, 2011
Linkage
Not literary in any particular sense, but do read this piece by Michael Ogg on what it means to depend on home health care aides when sidelined by a permanent disability (via Jane Gross).
A. L. Kennedy on why the worst part of writing is waiting.
Phil Nugent on the trials and tribulations of Winter Wipeout!
Finally, I got a nice piece of news the other day from my friend Helen Hill's mother Becky. Helen's last film, "The Florestine Dresses," has been completed by her husband Paul, and will premiere at the Indie Grits Film Festival at the Nickleodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina on April 13-17, 2011. I will definitely be there for the premiere, and will do what I can to help gather a large group of Helen's friends for the occasion.
(There was an exhibit of the dresses themselves a few years ago; alas, I missed it, though I remember seeing the dresses not long after Helen had first found them - there were more than a hundred of them! - in trash bags on the street and rescued them and begun to investigate the story of their creation.)
A. L. Kennedy on why the worst part of writing is waiting.
Phil Nugent on the trials and tribulations of Winter Wipeout!
Finally, I got a nice piece of news the other day from my friend Helen Hill's mother Becky. Helen's last film, "The Florestine Dresses," has been completed by her husband Paul, and will premiere at the Indie Grits Film Festival at the Nickleodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina on April 13-17, 2011. I will definitely be there for the premiere, and will do what I can to help gather a large group of Helen's friends for the occasion.
(There was an exhibit of the dresses themselves a few years ago; alas, I missed it, though I remember seeing the dresses not long after Helen had first found them - there were more than a hundred of them! - in trash bags on the street and rescued them and begun to investigate the story of their creation.)
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Scratch and crow
Phil Nugent on the inclusion of one of Helen Hill's short films in the National Film Registry.
(Here's where you can get a DVD that includes many of Helen's films, including two of my personal favorites: "Madam Winger Makes a Film" [2001] and "Mouseholes" [1999].)
Kudos to Dan Streible and many others for making this happen.
(Here's where you can get a DVD that includes many of Helen's films, including two of my personal favorites: "Madam Winger Makes a Film" [2001] and "Mouseholes" [1999].)
Kudos to Dan Streible and many others for making this happen.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Moby Ovary
Phil Nugent's Screengrab obituary for Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009.
Also, via Torie Atkinson, a song that I know well because of a great mix tape made for me in the late 80s or early 90s by my dear friend Paul: "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape"!
Also, via Torie Atkinson, a song that I know well because of a great mix tape made for me in the late 80s or early 90s by my dear friend Paul: "I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape"!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Screengrab
Phil Nugent's best of 2008. Arghhhh, I should see more movies, this list puts me to shame!
(And I forgot to mention Encounters at the End of the World on my list, too!)
Another pretty amazing though perhaps less immediately useful end-of-year commentary: the annual jane dark's sugarhigh! single of the year countdown...
(And I forgot to mention Encounters at the End of the World on my list, too!)
Another pretty amazing though perhaps less immediately useful end-of-year commentary: the annual jane dark's sugarhigh! single of the year countdown...
Sunday, November 09, 2008
The look and feel of the seventies
Phil Nugent on life lived through the movies:
Watching movies on late night TV is one of my two big hobbies, one of the things that settle and restore my soul. The other is standing by the barbed wire fence that separates our front yard from what had been the cattle field before we stopped raising cattle, and watching the road on the far side. It's a long way away. The road bracketing the field forms an upside-down "L" that I can watch cars move along. Not constantly; maybe not even all that often. The waiting is part of the excitement. Wait long enough, and you'll see a tiny car moving along, heading for the crossroads. If the car turns right, it'll head down the upper length of the inverted L, towards the turnoff that might lead it down the driveway to our house. If that happens, my heart will almost stop--maybe it's the Manson family, busted out of jail and on their way to let us know what they think of all the smart remarks my mother and I made watching Helter Skelter together. Because there's a big old barn blocking my line of sight, if the car keeps driving I won't see it; the car will disappear behind the barn, and then I have to gulp and wait, wait, to see if eventually the car will come tearing down out driveway, delivering certain doom.
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