This is next on my list of movies to see. From the director of “The Station Agent.”

Subway Art blog wins again.

The show is Single Fare 2.

I wouldn’t immediately think of carrots as my favorite vegetable but I eat them more than any other vegetable by far, almost every day. Over at Food 52, check out these carrot recipes, include this really tasty one, grilled tarragon carrots.

Matt B, hooking it up:

The 30 greatest rap demos? Chairman Mao drops science over at Complex.com.

Oh, hell yeah.

After a long, hard week, time for a tub…

Felt like spring for real out there today.

Tonight gives tourney time, baby…

There is only one conclusion to draw from Ivan Nova’s performance on Wednesday night in Tampa: he is going to make the Opening Day roster, and most likely as the No. 4 starter. In bouncing back from his lone poor performance this spring, Nova pitched brilliantly by forging six hitless innings against the Orioles. He threw strikes, kept his fastball down, and even mixed in a slider, the latest addition to his repertoire. Nova recorded 11 of his 14 outs on ground balls, which is exactly the kind of ratio the Yankees would like to see this summer.

With Nova slotted in the fourth spot, that leaves only the No. 5 starter to be decided. The two right-handed veterans, Freddie Garcia and Bartolo Colon, will continue to fight for that honor, with the loser possibly heading to the bullpen, especially if the Yankees take the careful route and place Joba Chamberlain on the disabled list to start the season. (I don’t think Chamberlain’s oblique injury is all that serious, but the Yankees tend to be overly cautious when it comes to these things.) The Yankees could also open up a relief spot by releasing or trading Sergio Mitre, a possibility that has actually been rumored this spring despite Joe Girardi’s affinity for the former Marlin.

The other outside possibility for the bullpen is Romulo Sanchez, the ex-Pirate who is out of options. Sanchez has been wild this spring, but he has a live fastball that has impressed opposing scouts, and would almost certainly be claimed on waivers by someone. At 26, Sanchez is a lot younger than both Colon and Garcia, and more accustomed to pitching out of the pen.

Whatever happens with the 12-man staff, the Yankees at least appear to have some decent pitching options, more so than they appeared to have at the start of spring training…

(more…)

Over at the Japan Society, there is a cool-looking exhibition (through June 12th): “Bye Bye Kitty! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art.”

Nate nerds up to the salad bar.

Matt B Friday continues…here’s a funny piece he hipped me to that Michael O’Donoghue once wrote about How to Write Good.

Back to the old school, for the old-timers like Matt B, and anyone else too.

Swoon…Boom, buh-Boom, buh-Boom.

All together now…

Yeah, it’s mad salty, but it’s still good.

There is a long piece by Dana Goodyear in the New Yorker this week about a shrink to the stars. I didn’t get much out of it, but this did speak to me:

By far the most common problem afflicting the writers in Michels’s practice is procrastination, which he understands in terms of Jung’s Father archetype. “They procrastinate because they have no external authority figure demanding that they write,” he says. “Often I explain to the patient that there is an authority figure he’s answerable to, but it’s not human. It’s Time itself that’s passing inexorably. That’s why they call it Father Time. Every time you procrastinate or waste time, you’re defying this authority figure.” Procrastination, he says, is a “spurious form of immortality,” the ego’s way of claiming that it has all the time in the world; writing, by extension, is a kind of death. He gives procrastinators a tool he calls the Arbitrary Use of Time Moment, which asks them to sit in front of their computers for a fixed amount of time each day. “You say, ‘I’m surrendering myself to the archetypal Father, Chronos,’ ” he says. ‘I’m surrendering to him because he has hegemony over me.’ That submission activates something inside someone. In the simplest terms, it gets people to get their ass in the chair.” For the truly unproductive, he sets the initial period at ten minutes—“an amount of time it would sort of embarrass them not to be able to do.”

I have a friend who is a fiend for public access TV. He lives in Manhattan so I don’t get to see the shows that float his boat (in the Bronx we are graced by the fine North End Liquor ads). But he shared this with me.

Warning: This May So Great it Hurts or So Awful it Hurts (either way, pain is involved):

Robert Altman once said that you could write a movie by listening to snippets of conversation as you walked down the street.

Overheard on my lunch today…

Short woman talking into her cell phone: “Don’t hang up on me, bitch, I’m trying to f***ing talk to you.”

Two young women:

“W’e’re late, it’s already 1:15.”

“I’ve got 1:07.”

“Oh, that’s cause I set my watch ahead so that I freak myself out so that I’m not late in the morning.”

“That’s smart.”

Business guy talking to another business guy: “And I didn’t get in until 2 but I don’t even feel hung over.”

Dude on his cell phone: “C’mon baby, you know I love you. I love you  like cooked food. What? No, for real, I love you like Red Lobsters.”

[Picture by William Gedney]

Check out this fantastic post over at WFMU on the early career of Dave Letterman.