Boons to the Spirit
Project Runiverse, Season 1
Episode 2: The designers must create a habitat for the emotional robots from Episode 1. Emphasis on shape, color, and economy of design. Vogue takes the cake again for its spherical, blue and green design, which utilizes only particles currently extant to achieve its color (though an artificial light source is required). Another contestant receives some praise for its mock-up (below) but loses points due to the costly requirement of blanketing the universe in (what we now know as) Astroturf.
Episode 3: Accoutrements. Contestants are charged with imagining a habitat-habitat; a place to place the place the emotional robots will live. Vogue designs a gigantic body of water in which to float the habitat and several clones but loses to an unnamed designer who is now known to be responsible for the Flaming Ball concept, solving the artificial light source problem from Episode 2 and establishing itself as Vogue’s most threatening competitor.
Episode 4: Contestants create furry robots out of scraps from Episode 1.Vogue wins again.
Episode 5: Contestants create swimmy robots out of scraps from Episodes 1, 3 and 4. Vogue loses; ratings soar.
Episode 6: Contestants behind the scenes. We spend some time with each of them, learning about their personal lives, fears, trials, tribulations. Vogue is not younger (because time has no beginning) but is more youthful than the others, with a can-do spirit and an infectious optimism. Its competitor, perhaps in an attempt to define itself against bubbly Vogue, comes off as doubtful, pessimistic, and cynical. “Emotional robots with intelligence and creativity will dumb everything down,” he laments. “This is design, not drama.”
Episode 7: Contestants must create opposing forces, to be called “positive” and “negative.” Vogue and ____ are in a dead heat as even the judges have trouble deciding between Vogue’s polarized water molecule design and ______’s proton-electron idea. Ultimately they declare a tie and keep both for the last round of the competition.
“Heaven is a Place on Earth,” a last hanger-on, enjoys a small triumph with its meta-approach to the problem, defining Vogue as positive (“because everyone feels Yes when Vogue is around”) and ______ as negative (“because everyone feels No,” etc). HIAPOE loses anyway, leaving only Vogue and ______.
Vogue and _____ have a fight outside the studio that night. It is caught on camera. ______ definitely started it, attacking Vogue and screaming “You fucking ugly-ass bitch so two-faced you could be positive AND negative!” Audience polls reveal an overwhelming sense of “No” anytime _______ says or does anything. Judges, it is later revealed, feel sorry for ______ .
Episode 8: Ultimate show-down. Vogue and ______ are competing to create the very fabric of the universe they have worked so hard to design over the past weeks. Their raw materials are exactly the same and in fact they design particle sets so wildly similar they are indistinguishable, save for the tiny logos each designer has stamped on its work. Judges turn the final decision over to the audience, per show bible dictates. The audience chooses the designer whose personality makes them feel “Yes.”
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A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
This is a recording from 1959 of Flannery O’Connor herself reading A Good Man is Hard to Find at Vanderbilt University.
Probably one of the coolest things in the world right now. Also, it’s included in the special features of John Huston’s film version of Wise Blood, recently released in the Criterion Collection.
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Writing is stupid
Me, to self: “What would be a really cool thing to happen next in this story? That’s what you should write! You’re the boss, after all!”
Self, to me: “I’m pretty open to whatever.”
Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” off Nevermind (1991)
From Cobain’s 1994 Rolling Stone interview:
I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it [smiles]. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band — or at least in a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.“Teen Spirit” was such a clichéd riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or “Louie, Louie.” When I came up with the guitar part, Krist looked at me and said, “That is so ridiculous.” I made the band play it for an hour and a half.
20 years old. Dang. (But I’m with Kurt: “Drain You” is a better song.”)
(Source: apillowbook)
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L’Hippocampe (The Seahorse) (1934) - Jean Painlevé
Saw this at the Tate Modern today. At some point before I started recording, the voice-over suggests that seahorses should have arms and legs because they’re the only marine animals that look like they’re walking around upright, like bipeds. Love.
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