Blowhard, Esq. writes:
- A woman goes for a run, a dude smiles at her twice. Here’s her reaction.
- An Indian woman sees a white girl wearing a sari incorrectly. Here’s her reaction.
- Ugh, so super sad. The fact that blacks, Hispanics, and other colorful minorities carry on despite such gross underrepresentation is an inspiration to us all.
- You mean it wasn’t Eden before The White Man befouled it?
- The decline of The New Republic continues. “Endure countless awkward encounters”? “Exceedingly uncomfortable conversational extraction”? Is she fuckin’ serious? OTOH, that article is actually heartening. The average UR post is better than that bullshit.
- The story of Hollywood in ten films, one from each decade. What would your list look like? The Buster Keaton short, ONE WEEK, is available on YouTube.
- Matt Forney discovers B.R. Myers’s great A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose.
- Flavorwire is upset with Chuck Palahniuk’s opinions about the feminization of the publishing industry. Funny how the writer doesn’t bother to cite a single counterexample.
- Why are magazine covers and movie posters so terrible?
- A new folk hero is born. I predict Olympic skeet shooting will become one of the fastest growing sports over the next decade.
- An intro to softcore filmmaker Radley Metzger.
- Olga Kurylenko gets ready to take care of business. (NSFW)
- Cool time lapse of European mobility over the last 2,000 years.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
The busy-busy graphic design seems to be related to a climate of status striving and competitiveness. Clamoring louder and louder than the competition to attraction the viewer’s attention. A response to norm of dog-eat-dog rather than reining-it-in.
That style was a minimum during the Great Compression of ~ 1920 to 1980, not even very noticeable during the ’80s. Then look back at Victorian / Gilded Age advertising and graphic design — holy shit, what are we supposed to be looking at?
Something similar is going on with pretentious literary prose, for similar reasons. Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Kerouac, and Mailer all took a plainspoken approach, while today’s length, complexity, and fussiness are more like Victorian and turn-of-the-century novels.
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(And I’m making as many typos as possible to counter-act the trend toward perfectionism…)
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The running woman (first link) is perfectly programmed.
“Sexual assault is a crime of violence and control, not desire.”
Wrong. This is a big feminist lie so they can say “it doesn’t matter what I wear.” Sorry, reality intrudes. It matters a great deal what you wear. Everybody used to understand that.
“I have been taught for most of my life that women ask for it through their every action. I have been taught that if I am assaulted, no one will believe me.”
Has she? Taught by whom, exactly? What she’s been “taught” is that this is what she’s been taught, but she’s never actually been taught this. In reality, she and everyone else has been taught precisely the opposite of this. But when “teaching” always begins by setting up a false strawman, then this is what you get. People believing what they are told they have been told.
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I just wanted to comment on the second link. I found her reaction to be very interesting. This wasn’t some rant against “cultural appropriation,” but a legitimate cri de coeur that there is important stuff going on in India and these lefty white women with their saris and yoga mats are entirely ignorant of that.
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Why are there two films from the ’30s on the movie list? I didn’t read it close enough to detect an explanation. I do love the ’30s, though…
Happy to see ONE WEEK on there; might be my favorite Keaton.
The ’20s seems like a pretty arbitrary starting point. But then everyone wants to avoid mentioning Griffith…
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Whoops, my mistake, I thought it was one per decade but I was wrong.
He mentions Griffith’s “spectacle” and then scurries right past to Keaton.
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I think it’s tough to argue that the ’10s wasn’t the start of “Hollywood.” But let’s not be nitpickers.
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“Smiled at her twice”: Smiled at her once, parked his bike, ran to catch up with her, and then paced her unnecessarily for 3/4 of a mile. FTFY.
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She also admits, “I don’t think I was ever in real danger.” But still, all men are probably predators deep down and let’s link to rape stats.
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I thought the same thing as Fauna-runner boy did a bit more than smile twice. Game/Red Pill would supply the reason runner chick was so revolted and freaked out. Runner boy never tried to make conversation or hit on her or engage her at all. He just lurked along next to or behind her, saying nothing, waiting for her to do the heavy lifting in her own seduction. That’s sad beta behavior. Really runner chick was angry and disgusted but she’s probably a nice middle class liberal so she sublimates such unpleasant feelings into the currently fashionable narrative of rape culture. I yield to no one in my contempt for feminism but I can’t say I blame runner chick for being annoyed.
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