U N L A Y R D

nprfreshair: Bill Hader — who is leaving Saturday Night Live...

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:13:06 -0400

Bill Hader — who is leaving Saturday Night Live after eight years this weekend — on his audition for the show:

I remember getting in the elevator for my audition and there was a guy next to me who had a backpack full of props and wigs and things, and I went, ‘Oh, my God, that guy is so prepared, I have nothing, I have no props.’ And that was Andy Samberg. And Andy Samberg said he was looking at me going, ‘Oh, that guy has no props. He doesn’t need props.’ And that was the first time we met, was in that elevator.

newyorker: A slide show of vintage New Yorker ads that evoke...

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:07:04 -0400

newyorker:

A slide show of vintage New Yorker ads that evoke the gin-fuelled Gatsby era of “flaming youth” and Prohibition, flapper culture and cabarets: http://nyr.kr/ZLAFeg

ilovecharts: Graphing Our Emotions: Toy Story 3

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:05:59 -0400

ilovecharts:

Graphing Our Emotions: Toy Story 3

When someone says that they don't like Disney

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:00:32 -0400

whatshouldwecallme:

As soon as I get home from work/school:

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:33:05 -0400

whatshouldwecallme:

timeshaiku: A haiku from the article: ‘Life After Life,’ by...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:45:58 -0400

timeshaiku:

A haiku from the article: ‘Life After Life,’ by Kate Atkinson

nprfreshair: David Sedaris tells Terry Gross about his public...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:51:16 -0400

nprfreshair:

David Sedaris tells Terry Gross about his public persona versus his private one, the person who appears in his diaries:

There’s the you that you present to the world and then there’s, you know, of course the real one and, if you’re lucky, there’s not a huge difference between those two people and I guess in my diary I’m not afraid to be boring. It’s not my job to entertain anyone in my diary.

Image via WMagazine

timeshaiku: A haiku from the article: Strolling in Paris, With...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:04:27 -0400

timeshaiku:

A haiku from the article: Strolling in Paris, With Menus in Mind

"If you are really a wit, remember that in conversation its true office consists more in finding it..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:04:43 -0400

“If you are really a wit, remember that in conversation its true office consists more in finding it in others, than showing off a great deal of it yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with himself is sure to be pleased with you.”

- The Art of Conversation, 1866. (via explore-blog)

explore-blog: From the Who-Knew department: In the 1940s and...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:56:28 -0400

explore-blog:

From the Who-Knew department: In the 1940s and 1950s, Langston Hughes collected advertisements for “rent parties” in Harlem, wherein hosts would open up their apartments for a night and offer live music, dancing, and socializing in exchange for a cover fee – like vintage AirBnb for entertainment.

Also a little-known Hughes treasure: His illustrated 1954 children’s book on jazz history.

artlog: Young freight train hoppers and squatters...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:07:49 -0500

artlog:

Young freight train hoppers and squatters criss-crossing the USA.

Every time I wake up from a nap

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 23:56:14 -0500

whatshouldwecallme:

bookmania: Call for book donations, New York Public Library,...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 08:27:06 -0500

bookmania:

Call for book donations, New York Public Library, 1918 (via teachingliteracy//booklover)

"Life is a gentleman’s agreement to grin and paint your face gay so others will feel they are silly..."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:26:30 -0500

“Life is a gentleman’s agreement to grin and paint your face gay so others will feel they are silly to be unhappy, and try to catch the contagion of joy, while inside so many are dying of bitterness and unfulfillment.”

- Revisiting the journals of Sylvia Plath, who took her life 50 years ago today. (via explore-blog)

"You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to..."

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:53:39 -0500

“You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object, one thing, to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.”

- Thomas Edison, born on this day in 1847, on the secrets of success (via explore-blog)

scribnerbooks: An action shot goes a long way.

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:18:39 -0500

scribnerbooks:

An action shot goes a long way.

"I take comfort in the fact that there are two human moments that seem to be doled out equally and..."

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:52:56 -0500

“

I take comfort in the fact that there are two human moments that seem to be doled out equally and democratically within the human condition—and that there is no satisfying ultimate explanation for either. One is coincidence, the other is déja vu. It doesn’t matter if you’re Queen Elizabeth, one of the thirty-three miners rescued in Chile, a South Korean housewife or a migrant herder in Zimbabwe—in the span of 365 days you will pretty much have two déja vus as well as one coincidence that makes you stop and say, “Wow, that was a coincidence.”

The thing about coincidence is that when you imagine the umpteen trillions of coincidences that can happen at any given moment, the fact is, that in practice, coincidences almost never do occur. Coincidences are actually so rare that when they do occur they are, in fact memorable. This suggests to me that the universe is designed to ward off coincidence whenever possible—the universe hates coincidence—I don’t know why—it just seems to be true. So when a coincidence happens, that coincidence had to work awfully hard to escape the system. There’s a message there. What is it? Look. Look harder. Mathematicians perhaps have a theorem for this, and if they do, it might, by default be a theorem for something larger than what they think it is.

What’s both eerie and interesting to me about déja vus is that they occur almost like metronomes throughout our lives, about one every six months, a poetic timekeeping device that, at the very least, reminds us we are alive. I can safely assume that my thirteen year old niece, Stephen Hawking and someone working in a Beijing luggage-making factory each experience two déja vus a year. Not one. Not three. Two.

The underlying biodynamics of déja vus is probably ascribable to some sort of tingling neurons in a certain part of the brain, yet this doesn’t tell us why they exist. They seem to me to be a signal from larger point of view that wants to remind us that our lives are distinct, that they have meaning, and that they occur throughout a span of time. We are important, and what makes us valuable to the universe is our sentience and our curse and blessing of perpetual self-awareness.

”

- Douglas Coupland on the science behind why you’ll experience exactly two déja vus each year (via explore-blog)

"If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will..."

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:10:33 -0500

“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”

- David Foster Wallace (via explore-blog)

nprfreshair: It’s the end of the first week of 2013. Now dance...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:13:48 -0500

nprfreshair:

It’s the end of the first week of 2013. Now dance like nobody’s watching.

— Heidi

Video via hellogiggles

explore-blog: Benjamin Franklin’s famous list of thirteen...

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 04:09:28 -0500

explore-blog:

Benjamin Franklin’s famous list of thirteen virtues, as it appears in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin wrote the list in 1726, at the age of 20.