All posts by James

About James

James Seidler is a writer living in Chicago. The editor for the now-defunct humor publication FLYMF, he has now decided to maintain his web presence and smart remarks through this blog.

He Lost Control

Movies

The central question in Control, the new biopic by Anton Corbijn, is whether Ian Curtis is capable of holding anything is reserve, or whether he holds far too much. Curtis, the troubled lead singer of Joy Division, would argue the former. “Don’t they know how hard this is for me?” he asks as he hears the clamor of a crowd demanding his presence in his first show back after a failed suicide attempt. “They keep wanting me to go further, and I don’t know if I can.” A riot erupts, but only after he closes himself down, unable to continue on stage.

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Make ‘Em Laugh

Books

Steve Martin has a wistful piece in the October 29 New Yorker looking back at the origins of his career in comedy. It progresses through his first employment at Knott’s Berry Farm through the “avant-garde” excitement of the 1960s, complete with stops to lose his virginity, date Dalton Trumbo’s daughter (setting up the article’s hardest-hitting joke), and develop his theory of humor. It is infused throughout with the presence of a young man who was older than his age, and an older man struggling with the passage of time.

Only the abstract is available online, but comedy fans should try to track down the piece in print.

Read Classic Comics Online

Comics

It’s always bittersweet when you hold an idea for a long time and then see that someone else has acted on it before you had the chance. In the case of the Comic Strip Library, however, it’s a bit of a relief, seeing as it was probably a lot of work! The web site, hosted by Zachary Chavez, features full scans of classic U.S. comic strips that have entered the public domain, namely Winsor MCay’s gorgeous Little Nemo In Slumberland and George Herriman’s oddball Krazy Kat. (Later Krazy Kat strips can also be found at Peter Campbell’s Coconinio County.)

All are worth a read, but there are also plenty of other classic comics in the public domain that can’t be found on the web…maybe there’s room for me yet!

The American Idea

Well Worth Reading

In the Atlantic’s 150th anniversary issue, they asked a variety of authors, inventors, intellectuals and cultural figures to comment on “the future of the American Idea and the greatest challenges to it.” The responses are interesting to read, even as many of the respondents struggle to define the American Idea, much less predict its future.

John Updike, George Will, Google Founder and CEO Eric Schmidt, Edward O. Wilson, Nancy Pelosi, Greil Marcus, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Pinsky, Sam Harris, Frank Gehry, Judith Martin and many others participated. Many of the reactions align the state of the American Idea with our country’s current direction, rendering it bleak, while others are more hopeful. Some are creepy (Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind screeds), some are shallow (Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, whose piece could be a tourist brochure), and some are outright pricks (Tom Wolfe, whose patronizing essay makes me relieved I never bothered to pick up I Am Charlotte Simmons).

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Grease Is Good

Well Worth Reading

Fast Company magazine has an amazing article about Johnathan Goodwin, a Wichita mechanic who’s able to modify cars to provide drastically more running time on dramatically less fuel (or biodiesel).

As the article reports, “The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered–the poor man’s version of a Goodwin conversion–he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions.”

Continue reading Grease Is Good →