Meanwhile #155
It looks to me as if your propellers are going to have to be fixed.
— Lock up your browsers, I’ve redesigned my website! I’ve been wanting to have dedicated sections for my book and film work for a while, and I think my new approach works pretty well. Have a look, tell all your friends, etc.
— Rather excited to receive the 1969 Penrose Annual for father’s day, adding to my collection (and further burdening my already-groaning bookshelves). These things are wonderful – imagine the design blogosphere, but before the internet. Richard Weston has lots of good pics of this one and other volumes.
— Filmmaker Adam McDaniel is raising funds for his documentary retrospective of legendary poster illustrator Richard Amsell.
— “In my experience of writing, you generally start out with some overall idea that you can see fairly clearly, as if you were standing on a dock and looking at a ship on the ocean. At first you can see the entire ship, but then as you begin work you’re in the boiler room and you can’t see the ship anymore. All you can see are the pipes and the grease and the fittings of the boiler room and, you have to assume, the ship’s exterior. What you really want in an editor is someone who’s still on the dock, who can say, Hi, I’m looking at your ship, and it’s missing a bow, the front mast is crooked, and it looks to me as if your propellers are going to have to be fixed.” Love this Michael Crichton quote on the art of the editor.
— Okay so who wants to fly me to NYC so I can visit Poster House’s current exhibition, Made in Japan: 20th-Century Poster Art? Hmm? Who?
— Always a delight scrolling through John Self’s excellent Bookalikes thread.
— “I feel hollowed out by loss but I don’t feel the need to refill that hollow place. Initially, there’s a temptation to drink too much or smoke too much or work too much to try to fill the space with something else. But then you realise that empty spaces can be good. Miles Davis’s trumpet, Jacqueline du Pré’s cello would be nothing without the emptiness inside, carefully carved out by someone.” Really rather lovely outlook on loss from Mark Rylance (which rather wonderfully comes moments after revealing his favourite One Direction member).
— Oh sure the film and the book are very nice and all, but you’ve never really experienced 2001: A Space Odyssey until you’ve read the Howard Johnsons Children's Menu version.
— Favourite new useless fact: the reason all those The Fast and the Furious films have ridiculous titles is because Roger Corman retained the right to make numerical sequels to his 1954 film of the same name. So now you know.
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