All The News That's Fit To Link

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Recently, as a cost-cutting measure, Emily and I have been considering scaling back our daily subscription to The New York Times to Sundays only. I'm not sure if it's because of that dim prospect or because the paper has just been extra good lately, but this week I have taken an extraordinary amount of enjoyment from reading the Times every morning. Today's was particularly genius. Here are some highlights:

Claudy Jongstra (Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

A review and a slideshow on Fashioning Felt, the new fabric design exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt. It looks great, I hope to see it next time we're there. Coco Howard should be in this show.

Kenneth Paul Block

At Parsons there was a professor I particularly hated by the name of Hively. He was an asshole to everyone and he was full of shit, but he was right about one thing: I remember him saying that when you get a little older you read the obituaries with great interest. Today was a blockbuster in that department, with remembrances of renowned fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block and Manhattan Doll Surgeon Irving D. Chais.


A review of Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Another good reason to be in Philly right now.

Kate Gilmore (American, b. 1975).
Still from Blood from a Stone, 2009.

Ken Johnson reviews a new show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that looks (maybe a little suprisingly) good: Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video.


There's a good article about shucking oysters at Hood Canal, with a slideshow. That's an hour and a half from my house, so suck it, everyone in New York.


The Nam June Paik archives go to the Smithsonian: "Clunky black-and-white television sets and 1960s record players; early video projectors and decades-old Polaroid cameras – things that were long ago relegated to the electronic graveyard – are precious and priceless in the world created by the artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006)."


There's a review of the new film about Miss Indigo Blue's Academy of Burlesque in Seattle, A Wink and a Smile . It's a little lukewarm, but hey, as WWWWD quotes, "Don't pay attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches."
[–Andy Warhol]


From David Brooks' op-ed: "Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he’d translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator’s original." Interesting.


And finally, a bunch of stuff about the Kentucky Derby.

Kentucky Derby favorite I Want Revenge, left
(John Sommers II/Reuters)

I don't think we're canceling that subscription quite yet.