But it’s hard not to when you look at this collection of mugshots from the 1920s.

Dig Kottke’s holiday gift guide. 

What scares you?

Picture by Elizabeth Fleming.

I was given a book as a present last week and I’m enjoying it. It is well-written yet twice in the in the first 50 pages the author, who is otherwise careful with her prose, uses the word “literally” incorrectly. The use of this word, the improper use or the redefined horseshit use, drives me nuts.

I like what Martha Gill suggests–we should just avoid the damn word. Literally.

Frank Rich profiles Stephen Sondheim:

here are few things that remain constant in life, but for me one of them is this: Stephen Sondheim’s work has touched me for more than half a century. It did so when I was first listening to records as a child, when I didn’t know his name or much else, and it does so right this minute, as songs of middle-aged regret like “Too Many Mornings” and “You Must Meet My Wife” are randomly shuffled into my headphones by iTunes. It’s unusual to remain so loyal to a single artist. We tend to outgrow our early tastes and heroes. It’s even more unlikely to have that artist materialize in person and play a crucial role in one’s life—as Sondheim first did when I was 21 and he was 40. Since then, with some lengthy intermissions along the way, he’s been a mentor, an occasional antagonist, a friend, and even an unwitting surrogate parent.

While it was far from the case when I first met him, Sondheim at 83 is an institution and a cottage industry. He’s received every prize an artist can in America, often multiple times. His shows are in constant revival. In November alone, he was lionized by the New York Public Library, the Museum of the City of New York, and City Center at home, even as a West End production of his 1981 Broadway failure, Merrily We Roll Along, beat out The Book of Mormon for Best Musical in London’s Evening Standard awards. At this point, so much has been written about his career that it’s hard to find much new to say about it. Besides, Sondheim often says it better than anyone else. The most transparent of artists when it comes to explicating his craft, he has given countless interviews detailing his methods and motives, meta and micro, song by song and show by show. (Much of it is codified in the essays tucked into the two juicy volumes of collected lyrics he published at the start of this decade.) But the man himself, the guy behind the work, can be harder to pin down. This is a challenge that the playwright and director James Lapine, Sondheim’s friend and longtime collaborator, and I tried to address in Six by Sondheim, our documentary debuting December 9 on HBO. I’ll let the film speak for itself, not least because almost all the speaking is done by its subject, whose on-camera interviews over 50-plus years shape a narrative built around a half-dozen of his songs. But I continue to wrestle with my own, separate Sondheim narrative: Not a day goes by when I don’t reflect on what I’ve learned from him and what he and his work have meant to me for as far back as I can remember.

This was a defining question for many years. By nature, I’m a Stones person. But I also love the Beatles. And I’m too grown to pick one over the other. They’re both great for very different reasons.

Head on over to Esquire and get some relationship advice from a 98-year old woman:

According to statistics, more and more women are the ones asking for the divorces these days. Very different from your generation.

Right, the world today is completely different because the women are successful. A lot of women are more successful than their husbands. And that’s not necessarily good for marriage. It’s wonderful for women, of course, but if they become more successful than their husbands, it can be bad because then the man loses respect for himself. And then the husband becomes the pussycat—and that’s no good. That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong plenty of times in my life.

Do you think the men are more like women these days?

I think so. I think men are much more interested in the way they look. Much more. I think they dress differently than they used to. They go to the gym. Now, the women have to keep up with them!

Would you like to be a young woman in today’s world?

Oh yeah. Because I feel like I could keep up with any man. I’m not being conceited—don’t misunderstand me. But I understand men. I do. My father, he always said to me, “If I was married to a woman like you, I’d own the world.” He used to tell me that. I was the favorite, and I knew it. I could have had anything I wanted. I don’t tell that to my brothers and sisters because I don’t want to hurt their feelings.

I’m with the Beasties on this one. Yeah, the Goldiebox commercial is admirable in spirit but they’ve got the nerve to rip off music for their own purpose and then hide behind their politics.

Cool product, and at this point, they’ve accomplished their mission because the video has gone viral, but still: they get the Gas Face.

TV Theme Song of the Week:

Okay, we need a better title but thought it’d be fun to highlight a catchy TV theme song each week round here.

Lil’ help with a title?

Welcome Back to Where & When.  This will be a special edition to highlight the recent loss of a cultural icon.  For several generations and cultures who inhabit the city, this was their Penn Station. I present this without further comment, but feel free to post thoughts.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013:

 Here is a Google Gallery of what was 5 Pointz. 

Here is a little history.

Dig Jhalal Drut, a most-cool blog.

Back for another edition. And we’re talking about the noun here…

What’s the difference between a jerk off and a jag off?

Forget traditional definitions let’s be contemporary, okay? Tell me: what’s the difference between a “nerd,” a “geek” and a “dork”?

I’d like to get this straight.

Hannah Price’s portraits of the men who catcall her.

David Bryne writes about New York City:

I moved to New York in the mid 1970s because it was a center of cultural ferment – especially in the visual arts (my dream trajectory, until I made a detour), though there was a musical draw, too, even before the downtown scene exploded. New York was legendary. It was where things happened, on the east coast, anyway. One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn’t move to New York to make a fortune. Survival, at that time, and at my age then, was enough. Hardship was the price one paid for being in the thick of it.

As one gets a little older, those hardships aren’t so romantic – they’re just hard. The trade-off begins to look like a real pain in the ass if one has been here for years and years and is barely eking out a living. The idea of making an ongoing creative life – whether as a writer, an artist, a filmmaker or a musician – is difficult unless one gets a foothold on the ladder, as I was lucky enough to do. I say “lucky” because I have no illusions that talent is enough; there are plenty of talented folks out there who never get the break they deserve.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don’t buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down. I don’t romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don’t believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That’s bullshit. But I also don’t believe that the drop in crime means the city has to be more exclusively for those who have money. Increases in the quality of life should be for all, not just a few.

[Picture by Bags]

Ray.

In Focus celebrates 123 years of Yosemite National Park. 

[Photo Credit: Ernest K. Bennett, 1952]

Over at Kottke dig these cool Japanese manhole covers. 

Mental Floss takes us Reagan babies back with the history of the Trapper Keeper.

Salute.

Music Man Murray (movie) from Richard Parks on Vimeo.

Photo, and more, via NPR.