700 Arts and Entertainment
"In his 1999 Letter to Artists, John Paul II wrote that “beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty.” There is “an ethic, even a ‘spirituality’ of artistic service which contributes [to] the life and renewal of a people,” because “every genuine art form, in its own way, is a path to the inmost reality of man and of the world."— Bishop Robert E. Barron (Exploring Catholic Theology: Essays on God, Liturgy, and Evangelization)
Another crucial bit of advice for would-be film critics, cribbed from elsewhere: BE INTERESTED IN STUFF OTHER THAN MOVIES.
Learn about art and music, world cuisine, quantum physics, baseball history, whatever interests you. Travel. Meet people. Play chess, poker, Frisbee golf, Scrabble, anything. Read old books. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Movies can be a jumping-off point for learning about all kinds of things, but you also need to bring to them a world of experience in order to get out of them everything they have to offer, to have perspective on them, to having something to say about them.
Nobody gains perspective in a vacuum, or only by watching movies. You have to live and grow as a person. As with watching movies, reading and writing, you can’t rush this. It takes time.
—Deacon Steven D. Greydanus.
“Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.”
― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
720 Architecture:
The desire to own a home of one’s own has been a part of human nature ever since that fateful moment, millions of years ago, when our earliest ancestors climbed down out of their trees and moved into their very first caves. It was a major moment in history, and its glory was dimmed only slightly by the fact that their furniture did not arrive for another 250,000 years.-Dave Barry, Homes and Other Black Holes
Hunt was no stranger to grand undertakings, no dilettante in the realm of Gilded Age extravagance, and his reputation was known far beyond US shores. He was the first American to enroll in and graduate from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His studies there enabled him to work on the renovations of that city’s Louvre Museum. Back in the United States, he eventually cofounded the American Institute of Architects, and his eye would influence many of the most evocative and enduring structures of the time, from private homes to urban designs: The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The great hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The plan for Columbia University. He was an incomparable talent who practiced his art at a time when numerous patrons were lining up to pay top dollar for it. He had created some of the most elaborate and admired homes on the East Coast. If architectural excess were a religion, Hunt was surely its patron saint, placing the most ornate of roofs over the heads of the city’s elite from cradle to crypt.
-Denise Kiernan, The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home
My house is roughly the size of a tree stump—a big and tall tree stump, like a giant sequoia that you could drive your car through and then drink hot cocoa on the other side like a tourist, but still a stump of a house, which is why I am afraid of fire. Think about it: A small fire erupts in the living room, which is also the kitchen and dining room, which is also the bedroom and bathroom. It has detonated out of the heater due to some small “oops” in the machinery that causes the tiniest flicker of a flame to brush into the smallest psssst of a gas leak. Almost instantly, the fire is massive, a monster devouring the rafters and side walls, collapsing the roof, exploding the canned goods, and buckling the floorboards. In a matter of seconds, my dog and I are left with nowhere to run because there is no other room but this single, highly combustible, highly condensed space the size of a Yule log.
Fire was nothing I’d considered while building my house—not while I was reading about wood grain, kiln-dried lumber, or sustainable forest products; and not while I was hefting great lengths of four-hundred-year-old cedar onto and off my car or even while I was pulling wood out of a pile labeled “Firewood.” It never entered my mind as I installed the wood cabinets, the oak toilet seat, and the old fir door, or while I picked sawdust out of my hair and lovingly sanded the smoky smell off the cedar floorboards that had survived someone else’s house fire.
-Dee Williams, The Big Tiny
730 Sculpture, ceramics, & metalwork
For potters, opening a kiln is like witnessing magic. There’s a moment when you can do no more than bask in the glittering, gleaming light of the pots on the top shelf, reflective with amazing glaze. After a good firing, we reveal the pieces in the kiln one by one, slowly, contemplating the subtleties and calling our friends over to take a look. As ceramic artists, we live for this moment. As humans, we’re filled with joy when we create something beautiful. On the other hand, a bad firing can ruin your day. The attempt to create something beautiful can seem a waste of time and effort when we fail. It leads to negativity as we question our competence, react with disgust, and use unprintable language to describe the results.
-Gabriel Kline,; John Britt, Amazing Glaze: Techniques, Recipes, Finishing, and Firing
"The eye that gathers impressions is no longer the eye that sees a depiction on a surface; it becomes a hand, the ray of light becomes a finger, and the imagination becomes a form of immediate touching."
—Johann Gottfried Herder, Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion's Creative Dream
740 Knitting/Crafts and other hobbies
Hey, Scrappy! How lucky are we to be among the few, the proud, the scrapbookers? I truly believe that scrapbooking is the most powerful and meaningful hobby on the face of the earth. And it's fun, too! I mean, who doesn't love playing with colorful, inspiring products and pairing them with photos of and stories about our favorite people, places, and things? But even scrapbookers can sometimes hit a lull. We get overwhelmed with ideas, stories, photos, and (of course) patterned paper. But we don't have to sit in the swamp of despair. Sometimes all we need is a lifeline in the form of some advice or inspiration. And that is what this short book is intended to provide: A helping hand and dose of wisdom when you're feeling blah, bored, or boring.-Tracy Banks, Profiles in Scrapbooking: Inspiration, Wisdom, and Advice for Your Memory-Keeping Journey .
“It isn't the shape of the designs or the points or the batting, it's the love you sew into your quilt that is your true legacy.”
― Lisa Boyer, Stash Envy: And Other Quilting Confessions And Adventures
“I am a writer who does not enjoy writing. I can find innumerable ways to avoid it. But, to rip off Dorothy Parker, nothing else—nothing—gives me the same thrill as having written. I’m the same way with knitting. The process is fine, mind you, and keeps my hands busy. But nothing else—nothing—gives me the rush that I get from finishing something.
"The parallels between writing and knitting go even further. Like writing, knitting has a finite number of raw ingredients. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. Those letters can combine to give you David Foster Wallace or freshman composition papers. There are only two basic stitches: the knit and the purl. Those stitches can add up to a gorgeously complicated sweater or a pastel pink toilet paper cozy. The difference is in the mind that shapes them.”
― Adrienne Martini, Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously
“If you were ever dumped after knitting a guy a sweater, consider the possibility that the problem was with the sweater, not you. The recipient probably took one look at the thing, imagined a lifetime of having to pretend to like (and wear) this sweater and others of its like, and saw no choice but to flee into the night”
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“Maybe, just maybe, those six balls are a scarf and hat that get tucked away for years and long after I’m gone someone pulls them out and says, “Remember how Grammy was with all the wool? Remember how she knit all the time?” fingering the soft wool and pondering who I was and what I did while I was here.”
― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot Unravels the Mysteries of Swatching, Stashing, Ribbing & Rolling to Free Your Inner Knitter
What is Crafting?
Crafting includes a whole host of activities associated with skillful attempts at making useful things with your hands and resulting in stocking stuffers, grab bag items and painted rocks. Some crafts have been practiced for centuries. These crafts were created using skills passed down from generation to generation and were motivated by necessity, such as baskets and pottery or artistic expression such as more baskets and more poetry. Today, there is a much more leisurely attitude toward crafting and virtually anyone without a job and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters.
-Amy Sedaris, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People Hardcover – November 2, 2010
“ My dad takes most of the pictures in our family, and he makes scrapbooks. This means he gets to figure out what's important for us to remember... I guess my mom could make a scrapbook, but she doesn't. And I could do it and so could my brothers, but then we would need extra pictures. Plus we're just kids and we don't have time for that. I know the scrapbooks we'd make would be different from Dad's. But the person who does the work gets to write the history. ”
― Holly Goldberg Sloan, Short
740 Graphic arts
"I had a few good professors in my painting and drawing classes, but all my graphic design classes tried to teach us how to use Photoshop and Illistrator by showing the class demonstration video clips. You know, exactly like the kind you can watch for free on Youtube, except these video clips cost me thousands of dollars to watch. I felt like I paid a lot of money to learn martial arts, only to show up to find the instructor is fat, sluggish, and cowardly, and he tries to overcome that by trying to teach us how to fight by showing us Chuck Norris movies. (Fact: Chuck Norris could teach me how to fight without even bothering to show up to class)."
— Jarod Kintz (Gosh, I probably shouldn't publish this.)
741 Drawing & drawings
Comics are inherently visual, like cinema or animation, but they’re also intimate, making a one-to-one connection with the reader as do novels or poetry. Comics have in their history early glyphs and alphabets that communicate through pictures.
Comics may be closer to runes than to movies. Some historians believe that even some cave paintings were meant to be read in sequence. Or maybe comics are more like puppets—in both, we look at fake versions of people, whether made up of foam and cloth or made up of drawings. They don’t move like real people; in comics they don’t move at all.
Or maybe comics are like theater, the boxes and panels reflecting the proscenium and the stage. Or maybe comics are a lot like music, the rhythm of the panels and pages reflecting the beats and measures in a song, and the directness of the drawings hitting our emotions like melody.
Or ultimately comics are most like comics, and every artist will bring his or her talents, drives, and eccentricities to it. Which is why we study them: to see what others have done, and to mimic and learn as we develop our own voice to tell our own story.
Tom Hart, The Art of the Graphic Memoir (2018)
745 Decorative Art and Design
If I were placed in the cockpit of a modern jet airliner, my inability to perform well would neither surprise nor bother me. But why should I have trouble with doors and light switches, water faucets and stoves? “Doors?” I can hear the reader saying. “You have trouble opening doors?” Yes. I push doors that are meant to be pulled, pull doors that should be pushed, and walk into doors that neither pull nor push, but slide. Moreover, I see others having the same troubles—unnecessary troubles. My problems with doors have become so well known that confusing doors are often called “Norman doors.” Imagine becoming famous for doors that don’t work right. I’m pretty sure that’s not what my parents planned for me. (Put “Norman doors” into your favorite search engine—be sure to include the quote marks: it makes for fascinating reading.)
Donald A Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (2013)
747 Interior decoration
“It is true that all men are created in the image of God, but Christians are supposed to be conscious of that fact, and being conscious of it should recognize the importance of living artistically, aesthetically, and creatively, as creative creatures of the Creator. If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for us. Food cannot take care of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems, but the feeling of being loved and cared for, the actual comfort of the beauty and flavour of food, the increase of blood sugar and physical well-being, help one to go on during the next hours better equipped to meet the problems.
― Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking
748 Glass
GLASS IS WONDERFUL. When declared with feeling, this statement expresses the intense passion that I feel for my craft. It is, however, a woefully inadequate way to start a book about glass art techniques; it expresses neither the joy and opportunities for creative expression and satisfaction that can be gained from creating glass art, nor the time, effort, and commitment that we must give to learn techniques, develop designs, and create a unique piece. The challenge is always there: When we start and when we finish, glass is hard and stiff. It’s only when we are working with glass that we can cut it, melt it, shape it, arrange it, and manipulate it. Many times, it’s an unforgiving material. Yet the beauty in glass has captured hearts and hands for thousands of years. While glass art techniques were once trade secrets, jealously kept within families, today the materials, tools, and training are easily within reach of almost anyone interested in learning the craft. We can create pieces that are extraordinarily useful or simply decorative, of almost any size. Glass, I believe, has something for everyone.
-Cecilia Cohen, The Glass Artist's Studio Handbook (Studio Handbook Series)
750 Art: Painting
“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
Developing your voice can be a lifetime journey, a continual process of discovery and reinvention. As you get older, your values and drives may change and you may learn new techniques—and all this affects your voice and the work you create. Everyone’s progress will be different, and there is always a bit of trial and error involved. If you create work that doesn’t feel authentic, that’s also an important realization—and helps eliminate what you shouldn’t be doing.
-Lisa Congdon, Art, Inc.
“We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colors as the only correct ones. Children sometimes think that stars must be star-shaped, though naturally they are not. The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass green, are not very different from these children. They get indignant if they see other colors in a picture, but if we try to forget all we have heard about green grass and blue skies, and look at the world as if we had just arrived from another planet on a voyage of discovery and were seeing it for the first time, we may find that things are apt to have the most surprising colors.”
― Ernst Gombrich
“There is no line between fine art and illustration; there is no high or low art; there is only art, and it comes in many forms.” ”
― James Gurney, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist
“I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.”
― Irving Stone, Lust for Life
752 Colors:
“Years later the Romantic poet John Keats would complain that on that fateful day Newton had “destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to prismatic colors.” But color—like sound and scent—is just an invention of the human mind responding to waves and particles that are moving in particular patterns through the universe—and poets should not thank nature but themselves for the beauty and the rainbows they see around them.”― Victoria Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“Colors, therefore, should be understood as subjective cultural creations: you could no more meaningfully secure a precise universal definition for all the known shades than you could plot the coordinates of a dream.”
― Kassia St. Clair, The Secret Lives of Color
The Gatherers saw her travels in her eyes, for wherever she went, they absorbed colors. She drank in the forest’s full spectrum—green pheasant feathers, wild purple lilacs, red fur of lurkdashers, and dandelions both sun yellow and wisp white. When she appeared among the grumbling, half-awake workers in the morning, her eyes glinted emerald, ringed with red, remnants of the sunrise. Sometimes they reflected that light late into the afternoon.
― Jeffrey Overstreet, Auralia's Colors
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds
A particular fad for a colour began taking hold of Paris in the second half of 1857, and reached London the following year. The colour was mauve, the French name for the common mallow plant.
New colours had been discovered by chance since ancient times, and some magnificent myths had evolved. A sheep dog belonging to Hercules, while walking along a beach in Tyre, bit into a mollusk which turned his mouth the colour of coagulated blood. This became known as Royal or Tyrian purple. It brought prosperity to Tyre around 1500 BC, and for centuries remained the most exl=clusive animal dye money could buy. It was colour of high achievement and ostentatious wealth, and came to symbolize sovereignty and the highest offices of the legal system. Within Jewish practice, the dye was used on the fringes of prayer shawls; in the army, the wearing of purple woolen strips was used to denote rank. Purple was also the colour of Cleopatra’s barge, and Julius Caesar decreed that the colour should be worn only by the emperor and his household.
-Simon Garfield, Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World (2002)
Television: I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
-Orson Welles
760 Printmaking & prints
770 Photography:
“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”― Ansel Adams
The name Kim Anderson is synonymous throughout the world with photographs of children that lovingly reflect the world of adults. These delicate images lead the viewer back into his or her own past and conjure up the wonderful moments of becoming a grown-up. The children’s delicate faces, large eyes and natural demeanors capture our attention, stimulate our imagination and lets us once again take part in those unforgettable moments of childhood. Through these photographs, we discover the joy and tenderness that can only be conveyed by children.
-Kim Anderson, Endless Dreams
If there’s so much beauty and diversity in one country, what about the rest of the world? I wondered. I realized that the wonderful women of our planet need much more attention, and that true beauty is more than what we so often see in the media. In that moment, I started to dream again, and found the strength to break from my comfort zone, quit my job, and go back to photography. I started to travel, take photos and, little by little, I regained my self-confidence.
-Mihaela Noroc, The Atlas of Beauty
This mix of photography and writing caused HONY to grow even faster. This book is the result of nearly three years of work. I walked several thousand miles to find these portraits. I stopped over ten thousand people on the street. It was exhausting work but I enjoyed every minute of it. The people in these pages are very dear to me. By allowing me to take their photo, each one of them helped me to realize my dream. And I am so thankful for their participation.
― Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York
777 Film:
Movie Making: The rise of original, risk-taking television is directly tied to the decline of original, risk-taking filmmaking and the dawn of the franchise age of film—one in which studios no longer coddle creative talent, release movies of every type for everyone, or pride themselves for taking risks on quality and new ideas. Instead, movie studios now exist primarily for the purpose of building and supporting branded franchises that continue in sequels, toys, and theme-park attractions.
― Ben Fritz, The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies
While most of us are uncomfortable judging, say, Japanese calligraphy or a Wagnerian opera based on our limited exposure to those art forms, we are all experts on Hollywood simply by virtue of having seen hundreds or thousands of movies in our lifetimes. Few moviegoers have qualms comparing and contrasting The English Patient with, say, Scary Movie. But from inside Hollywood, what you see is an imperfect system that contains vast armies of smart, usually young people in their twenties and thirties, working tremendously hard to make mainly mediocre movies. Why? Because moviemaking looks deceptively easy, but is, in fact, very, very hard. It’s a highly collaborative endeavor with dozens and often hundreds of people involved. Perfecting your craft to work in tandem with other craftsmen can and does take many years. That’s why even great fiction writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker were never better than mediocre screenwriters.
-Michael Lent, Breakfast with Sharks
As a child, movies were a humongous part of my life. I wore out my Star Wars VHS tapes so badly that no amount of “tracking” could fix the little bouncy white lines at the bottom of the TV. But it wasn’t until that warm day in the summer of ’02 that I had an epiphany.
Movies were made by artists.
Directors.
Writers.
Actors.
Editors.
Cinematographers.
Movies were shot and cut together by someone.
A composer wrote music to seamlessly blend with it.
Someone arranged lights and objects within a shot to create visual synergy.
I have a perfect memory of returning home that day and bounding toward our apartment while saying to my mother, “I want to do that! I want to make a movie like that.”
After seeing Signs in theaters five times, I became fascinated with filmmaking. I didn’t just watch movies anymore, I studied them. The shot structure, the moment where a character reaches their arc, how a clever editor can heighten the tension with just the right cut. Everything! I lived and breathed movies.
Chris Stuckmann, The Film Buff's Bucket List: The 50 Movies of the 2000s to See Before You Die
Movie (Script) writing: So, when you create a story, keep the character’s conflict at the forefront of your screenplay’s starting point. In other words, don’t obsess over a point you want to make or a theme, as Lajos Egri states in his popular book The Art of Dramatic Writing. He insists that the writer should start with a premise, such as “Love Conquers All” or “Foolishness Leads to Poverty.” The problem with the premise as a starting point is that you will inevitably create contrived situations and characters to make your theme become a story. But it usually ends up being phony or heavy handed. You’re hitting your audience with a premise that’s obviously not based on reality but on a point you want to make. A much better place to start is observing (or stealing) from real life. Collect anecdotes. You will want to observe real people around you and, more important, their problems, their situations, their conflicts. Pay close attention to the people who cause those problems. In movies, we call these problem-givers the antagonists. You should study both the antagonists and the protagonists like a scientist. You don’t make judgments. You don’t want them to be tools of your theme. So become like an objective scientist and research the human behavior of your characters so they can be as real as possible.- Mardik Martin
-Sherry Ellis, Now Write! Screenwriting (Now Write! Writing Guide Series
I think that’s because writing a screenplay is part art and part science. The art part of screenwriting comes naturally to me. The story. The characters. The action. But the science of screenwriting — the transitions, the parentheticals, the sluglines, all those tools the screenwriter uses to communicate the vision he has in his head — that part doesn’t come naturally to me. For many years I didn’t know how to use those elements. I knew what they were, of course, but I didn’t feel I had mastered them. Sometimes I would envision a scene in my head and wonder, “How do I explain this? How do I put this scene on the page so other people will see the same scene that I see?”
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A screenplay is like a map to a story. If you don’t do it right, it won’t tell the story you intended. Imagine writing a song. If you don’t put the notes on the musical chart the way professional musicians are used to seeing them, they’re not going to play the song you heard in your head and you’re not going to be happy when you hear it. If you give a script to a studio that isn’t written using standard Hollywood format, it may be a good idea, with good dialogue and action, but it doesn’t come across the way you intended.
-Christopher Riley, The Hollywood Standard,
Movie Critics: “Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.”
― Roger Ebert, The Great Movies III
“When it comes to the selections, I heard several observers claim that the Academy was embracing “nostalgia” by honoring The Artist and Hugo. Give me a break! Hugo represents cutting-edge storytelling by a world-class director—in 3-D, no less. The Artist dares to revisit a form of cinema that was abandoned in the late 1920s. The Academy members admired these films for making the past seem immediate and relevant. That has nothing to do with nostalgia; it has everything to do with great moviemaking, which is what the Academy Awards are all about.”
― Leonard Maltin
A camel is standing alone in the middle of the Gobi Desert, wind whipping back her golden mane. And she is singing. I’m not kidding. I’m looking at her. The cinema is dark and I’m squinting at the pale pages of the notebook in my hand. Then I look up into the vibrant screen and stare at this beautiful redhead—this camel singing somewhere in Mongolia at dusk—and my vision blurs through tears. No, this isn’t a goggle-eyed, knobby-kneed Disney camel. This is a living, breathing camel standing in the lavender dusk of the shifting dunes, staring into the distance and singing.
-Jeffrey Overstreet, Through a Screen Darkly
Movie Audience:
“I wish we could go to the movies."
I stared at him. "We're in a creepy dungeon. There's a chance I might die in the next few hours. You are going to die in the next few hours. And if you had one wish, it would be to catch a movie?”
― Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass
The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.
-Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
“The idea of going to the movies made Hugo remember something Father had once told him about going to the movies when he was just a boy, when the movies were new. Hugo's father had stepped into a dark room, and on a white screen he had seen a rocket fly right into the eye of the man in the moon. Father said he had never experienced anything like it. It had been like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
790 Television
TV and Movies:I actually think film and TV are sort of the same thing now. To me they're all motion pictures. There's a camera, a script, other actors and a director. Doing a sitcom is a little different. It's kind of a hybrid, half movie, half play, presented in a proscenium fashion - the camera's on one side of the line, the set on the other, the audience sitting behind the cameras.
-Alan Ruck
“To say that film and television are the same thing is to say poetry and the novel are the same simply because they are words written on a page.”
― J. Andrew Schrecker
TV Critics: The genre that The Sopranos had critiqued and cannibalized—the mob drama—was considered a serious one, tied directly to the Best-Film-Ever, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. The genres that Buffy mashed together (teen soaps, vampire horror, situation comedy, superhero comics) were not. Buffy was disco; The Sopranos was rock. When you were watching The Sopranos, you were symbolically watching side by side with a middle-aged man, even if you were a teen girl. When you watched Buffy, your invisible companion was a fifteen-year-old girl, even if you were a middle-aged man. From my perspective, both of these shows were equally radical interventions into their medium: One of them was a mind-blowing mob drama about postwar capitalism and boomer masculinity, the other a blazing feminist genre experiment about mortality and sex. But only one of these shows transcended television. The other one was television.
-Emily Nussbaum, I Like to Watch
TV Writing:
Grey’s Anatomy was my first real job in television. Having a show I created be my first real TV job meant that I knew nothing about working in TV when I began running my own show. I asked every TV writer I bumped into what this job was like, what being in charge of a season of a network television drama was like. I got loads of great advice, most of which made clear that every show was a very different, specific experience. With one exception: every single writer I met likened writing for television to one thing—laying track for an oncoming speeding train.
-Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person
Memorable TV:
Abraham Lincoln once said that, 'If you're a racist, I will attack you with the North.' And those are the principles that I carry with me in the workplace.
— Michael Scott (Steve Carell), The Office, Season 1: Diversity Day
"You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone."
— Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories)
Scooby-Doo and the gang are casually driving in the Mystery Machine—that flowery blue-green product of the late ’60s—while a calming voiceover soothes us. They seem at peace … but not for long. A shiny, intimidating car slams into the van, knocking the Scooby Gang off course. It’s white. There’s a sleek red “M” on the hood. It’s the Mach 5. The theme song for Speed Racer unexpectedly bursts forth, and the young racer, Speed—known as Gō Mifune in Japan—nods at the Scooby Gang as they fly off a cliff and explode.
-Chris Stuckmann, Anime Impact
Father Ted: “Come on, Dougal, switch the television off. Chewing gum for the eyes!”
Father Dougal: “Oh, no thanks Ted, I’ve got these crisps here.”
-Fr. Ted
792 Theater:
About Theater:
“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.”
― P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe
“Truth in theatre is always on the move. As you read this book, it is already moving out of date. it is for me an exercise, now frozen on the page. but unlike a book, the theatre has one special characteristic. It is always possible to start again. In life this is myth, we ourselves can never go back on anything. New leaves never turn, clocks never go back, we can never have a second chance. In the theatre, the slate is wiped clean all the time.
In everyday life, "if" is a fiction, in the theatre "if" is an experiment. In everyday life, "if" is an evasion, in the theatre "if" is the truth. When we are persuaded to believe in this truth then the theatre and life are one. This is a high aim. It sounds like hard work. To plays needs much work. But when we experiences the work as play, then it is not work anymore. A play is play.”
― Peter Brook
“Holy Dance of the Vampires, no! Dance of the Vampires!' (Instead of cursing, we shout out the titles of legendary Broadway flops.”
― Tim Federle, Better Nate Than Ever
780 Music
Music: “People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
“Bach, Chopin, Schumann, these composers have mastered the art of listening. Richard hears Debussy’s “Clair de lune,” and every cell in his body has a broken heart and bare feet dancing in the moonlight. Playing Brahms is communing with God.”
― Lisa Genova, Every Note Played
“I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.”
― David Byrne, Bicycle Diaries
“Headphones opened up a world of sonic colors, a palette of nuances and details that went far beyond the chords and melody, the lyrics, or a particular singer’s voice. The swampy Deep South ambience of “Green River” by Creedence, or the pastoral, open-space beauty of the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son”; the oboes in Beethoven’s Sixth (conducted by Karajan), faint and drenched in the atmosphere of a large wood-and-stone church; the sound was an enveloping experience.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
793 Indoor games & amusements
Anti-Monopoly hit the market around the time that news about Watergate broke. In the ensuing weeks, details about the scandal, followed by denials from the Richard Nixon White House, unfolded day by day. Meanwhile, OPEC announced a plan to cut oil production by 25 percent. Ralph thought all the bad news boded well for sales of his antiestablishment pastime. He sent an early Anti-Monopoly game to famed consumer advocate Ralph Nader, saying that Naderepitomized “what the game is all about.” In Anti-Monopoly, attorneys similar to Nader were cast as heroes battling against corporate America. Ralph never heard back from the tall, lanky lawyer, but he did later learn that Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, had given her father, Randolph Hearst, a copy of the game as a joke.
Mary Pilon, The Monopolists (2015)
Everyone knows how to play Scrabble. Along with Monopoly, Candy Land, and a few other chestnuts, Scrabble is among the best-selling and most enduring games in the two-hundred-year history of the American toy industry. Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to Scrabble in North America, sells well over a million sets a year. Around a hundred million sets have been sold worldwide since the game was first mass-produced in 1948. In some households, Scrabble is extricated from closets around the holidays as a way for families to kill time; in others, it’s a kitchen-table mainstay. Regardless, say the word “Scrabble” and everyone knows what you’re talking about: the game in which you make words. it also embodies the narcotic allure of strategic games and the beauty of the English language.
a copy of the OSPD — The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (first edition)—with the following inscription: “For consultation only. NO memorizing!”
I play LOGE for 13. He plays DICE for 27. I play
ZEST for 41. Score: 287–140. “I’m surprised you didn’t have a Y for ZESTY and a double-word score,” Williams cracks, gibing me for my good fortune. He passes his turn, trading in an I, O, R, and two U’s. Okay, so maybe I am getting good tiles. I play WIDTH on a triple-word score for 36. I play TAX on a triple-word score for 30. I finally do get that Y, and play YAM for 21: 391–202. FIT for 30, NO for 17. When it’s over, I have beaten the executive director of the National Scrabble Association, 457–277.
Stefan Fatsis, Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001)
“A duck walks into a store and asks the manager if he sells grapes. The manager says no, so the duck leaves. The next day the duck goes back to the store and asks the manager if he sells grapes. The manager says, “NO, we don’t sell grapes,” so the duck leaves the store. The next day the duck goes back to the same store and asks the manager if he sells grapes. The manager is furious now and says, “NO, WE DO NOT SELL GRAPES! IF YOU COME BACK AND ASK IF WE SELL GRAPES AGAIN, I’LL GLUE YOUR BEAK TO THE FLOOR!” The next day the duck goes back to the same store and says to the manager, “Excuse me, do you sell glue at this store?” The manager says, “No, we don’t sell glue.” The duck replies, “That’s good. Do you sell grapes?”
― Rob Elliott, Laugh-Out-Loud Animal Jokes for Kids
796 Athletic & outdoor sports & games
“Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.”― Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”
― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
799 Fishing, hunting, shooting
I’M FISHING THROUGH thirty years of unreliable memory, to a meandering trip through southern Ireland in a Morris Minor of ancient vintage. I have a few changes of clothes, a rubberized Irish raincoat; and the rest is my fishing gear. I have accepted driving on the other side of the road and shifting with my left hand, the
delicate hum of the little motor, the alarming Third World driving habits of the locals.
It was very pleasant under the great clouds of swallows and mayflies, despite the thin population of fish. The scattering of ancient ruins, the long, mysterious Irish summer evening, the small trout whose ancestors swam this water when the ruins were full of people—all lent a gravity to our proceedings
proceedings that I was to feel throughout my stay. Too, it was the company of anglers like Ned Noonan who could never recall when they began fishing, so undivided was it from the thread of their lives.
Thomas McGuane, The Longest Silence (2014)
When regular rations on the Lewis and Clark expedition had to be reduced to one biscuit a day, it was the sweet yellow fruit of the papaw that kept the explorers going. Even today, in this age of space flight and split atoms, sustenance tasty enough to satisfy us in times of plenty and nourishing enough to keep us healthy if survival ever becomes a problem grows free for the taking in yards, vacant lots, and fields, along roadsides and seashores, on mesas, stream banks, and lake edges, and within marshes and sequestered woodlands—ready and waiting for those who recognize the bounties they hold.
A man can have all the rabbit meat he wants to eat and still perish. So-called rabbit starvation, as a matter of fact, is particularly well known in the Far North. An exclusive diet of any lean meat, of which rabbit is a practical example, will cause digestive upset and diarrhea. Eating more and more rabbit, as one is compelled to do because of the increasing uneasiness of hunger, will only worsen the condition. The diarrhea and general discomfort will not be relieved unless fat is added to the diet. Death will otherwise follow within a few days. One would probably be better off on just water than on rabbit and water.
Bradford Angier, How to Eat in the Woods (2016)
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