Cynthia Closkey's blog
yourDictionary.com offers 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words.
I’m sorry to discover a few mispronunciations that I’m guilty of (“cardshark” for “cardsharp,” “lambast” for “lambaste”) — or maybe I should feel glad to now know how to pronounce them properly. I am pleased to see that I already say most of these properly, including “February.”
(Link via The Morning News.”)
From Parenthetical Note:
I’ve been thinking about how many times I’ve ridden the ferry since he vanished: at least twice a day on weekdays, back and forth to work, and then some on the weekends to drink Budweiser and shoot pool when I had a friend in town. Then there was that night job I had as a photographer for two weeks, when I had to work late in dance clubs on Saturday and Friday nights. Those were the nights I left my apartment at midnight and came home at four in the morning, when everyone else was asleep, when even the people riding the ferry back from the city were sleeping, leaning against each other, drunk or hungover or both. Was he in the water then, under us, every time we went back and forth? Was I on the boat when he jumped?
From Yankee Pot Roast, Celebrity palindromes. A sampling:
“Oprah deified Harpo.”
John Hodgman reveals to us Kerry Conran and the technological blockbuster movie he started in his bedroom:
Word of ”Sky Captain” began to spread around the Internet only after Conran finished primary shooting in London last spring — extraordinarily late for the Internet, which often seems invented specifically to track movies with giant robots in them. Even then, no one knew who Kerry Conran was. Google couldn’t touch him. He was so undocumented in the world of Hollywood that I briefly wondered, when I began pursuing him, if perhaps he was just a front for his producer and partner and mentor Jon Avnet, who is well known for producing ”Risky Business” and directing ”Fried Green Tomatoes” but who is not so well known for retro-science-fiction summertime blockbusters, and who unlike Conran seems to have been photographed at least once in his life. I don’t think Conran would mind that I doubted his existence. In fact, for a long time, that was the plan.
(Link thanks to Old Hag.)
From the Detroit News: What a trend we have in Jesus.
Even before “The Passion” hit screens, pop culture had reinvented the image of Jesus. Tabloid fashionistas such as Pamela Anderson, Ashton Kutcher, Ben Affleck and Lara Flynn Boyle have all been seen sporting the popular “Jesus is my homeboy” T-shirts.
Los Angeles-based clothing company Teenage Millionaire introduced the design three years ago. “We were looking at pop icons of the 21st century, and Jesus topped the list,” says Chris Hoy, a partner in Teenage Millionaire. “(The shirts) appeal to the religious people and the hipsters alike.”
The shirts present a friendly, down-to-earth image of Jesus, far from the tattered, crown-of-thorns wearing Jesus central to religious texts. They are a more mainstream way for people to support their religious beliefs, “rather than the classic crosses and traditional stuff,” says Angie Muir, a manager at Urban Outfitters in Ann Arbor where the shirts are carried.
Read more from the article below, or click here to see the whole thing.
(Thanks to Agenda for the link.)
The Post-Gazette has a nice feature today on blogging in Pittsburgh. They explain blogging pretty well. They also mention several interesting local sites, although they fail to provide links to any of them.
Fortunately, the article mentions Tube City Online (UPDATE: OK, so TCO isn’t mentioned after all … I’m not sure how I found it. I must have been on a mad clicking frenzy. Just lucky, I guess.), which maintains a list of Pittsburgh-area blogs. Compared to the blog circles in NYC or San Francisco, the ‘Burghian blogosphere looks laughably small. The situation isn’t helped by the Tube City list being incomplete: no Inner Bitch, no Pixel Stupor, no Brilliant Mistakes. (Inner Bitch has a more thorough blogroll of local blogs than I do: check it out.)
I’m sure we’d all benefit from a focused blog collective, like NYC Bloggers. I’ve meant for some time to search out local blogs, and this seems a great occasion to start.
UPDATE: Bill Toland, the author of the Post-Gazette article, emailed to say that the links in the article have now been activated, so one can hop directly to the blogs mentioned therein. I see also that the PG website is featuring the article on their home page, in the “Hot Picks” column. Nice exposure for everyone involved.
Esquire magazine will publish a list of “cities that rock,” and they’ve ranked Pittsburgh number 1.
The Tribune Review talked with people in the local music scene. Naturally, everyone’s pleased and hoping that this will lure young people to the ‘burgh. And everyone’s also a little surprised — or more than a little.
I’m curious to see the criteria that Esquire used in setting the rankings. It’s great to have Pittsburgh mentioned so prominently, but I have trouble imaging how it outranked a city like Boston, which has an amazing rock legacy and a thriving community today. Pittsburgh is often skipped by major concert tours, and several clubs seem to turn over yearly, leading me to believe that the audience is fickle.
On a side note, the Trib article mentions that Rosebud will be reopening in April under new management. The new name will be The World. It’s a great venue for seeing bands (except for parking, but whaddaya gonna do), and being in the Strip it’s easy to reach from north of the city. The club’s opening is just in time, as Club Laga will be shutting down next month.
(Links via Pittsblog.)
Better Non Sequitur looks pretty cool. Here’s how they describe themselves:
We are a small, independent media company located in San Diego, CA. We specialize in the publication, production, and distribution of books, films, and music; but we are open to basically any artistic achievement.
So, they do fun, valuable work and they live where the weather is nice?!? Curse them. And then buy their products and submit stuff to them.