THOMAS MANN ON THE GROTESQUE AS ANTI-BOURGEOIS STYLE. Oooh, shiny. Read more

PRAYING WITH LIOR. This looks pretty fascinating: An engrossing, wrenching and tender documentary film, PRAYING WITH LIOR introduces Lior Liebling, also called “the little rebbe.” Lior has Down syndrome, and has spent his entire life praying with utter abandon. Is he a “spiritual genius” as many around him say? Or simply the vessel that contains everyone’s unfulfilled wishes and expectations? Lior – whose name means “my light” — lost his mother at age six, and her words and spirit hover... Read more

“…The world of today is one in which religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must seem to have been invented by Bunyan and had teeth put into it by Dostoyevsky. This means that only those who have been indescribably wicked in the past can hope to be religious in the future: indeed, I would go further, and say that the only road to Rome nowadays is via Moscow. There are alternative by-ways: many intellectuals, for example, have... Read more

FIVE FLIES ON GRAY VELVET: The current Horror Roundtable asks participants to name the five directors they’d want to do a horror anthology flick. (Via Sean Collins.) I decided to do five non-genre contenders; can’t sleep, so added suggestions for possible tropes, as well. I genuinely would love to see every single one of these. Alain Cavalier: werewolves; or serial killerMarc Cherry: evil carnival (grar! actually he’s a writer, of course, not a director–so okay, he’ll write this one–why not... Read more

“Why, if one day Beau disappeared, how I would take on! I would search for him in every house in England; whenever I saw a man I would go up as close as possible to him and stare into his eyes, listen to his voice, study his walk and ways! I would sound alarms all through the country, and never rest until I found the man in whom Beau was hidden.”—Cards of Identity Read more

KITCHEN ADVENTURE: SOUP IS GOOD FOOD. In which I make an onion soup. Day One: Make steamed broccoli in the microwave, using the juice from a lemon. Eat that! Put the broccoli bits and bobs and the squozen lemon halves in a pot, barely cover with water, add some dried bay leaves, and make stock: Bring to a boil, then simmer about 40 minutes. You want a very lemony stock. Refrigerate overnight. Day Two: Slice some onion. (I used one... Read more

CLOTHES READING: I have a review of the Met’s “blog.mode: addressing fashion” show, at the Weekly Standard. Unfortunately, it’s only available to subscribers, so I don’t actually know if they used my “fashion lolcat” line…. The rest of the article is better than the opening, I think. Read more

A VENDING MACHINE. FOR CROWS. (Via Rattus.) Read more

“…But we know, don’t we, that many an atom bomb is merely a Mrs Finch? Think of her as a piece of film, wedged deep in the unconscious. We cannot eject her, so we place behind her the powerful light of guilty evasiveness, which projects her upon the screen of the outer world, distorted into the likeness of a bomb. Thus we rid ourselves of an internal mother, by transforming her into an external explosive.”“Then the atom bomb does not... Read more

GARFIELD MINUS GARFIELD. Hee hee!! (Via Unqualified Offerings.) Read more