Gray Back Matter: April 2009

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Enjoying a film festival with guacamole and gelato

I've been very busy at the Daily Wildcat these past two weeks:

Marisa Fisher, Brandon Specktor, and I reflect on the Arizona International Film Festival. We also chose the best of the festival. (You can find a video hightlight of our discussion here.)

I wrote reviews on certain AIFF films on the Wildcat Blog. (Unfortunately, I didn't have time to comment on all the films I watched.)

Want to find gelato? I went on a search for great gelaterias in Tucson.

Co-host Becca Lesser shows me her family recipe for guacamole, which is used for their restaurant, in the penultimate installment of Conquer the Kitchen.

Tags: journalism, art, films, food, gelato, writing, video

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Words of the Night

Hypopanpituitarism - the subject line of an email.

Overheard in the newsroom:

Heather: "I think I'm teething."
Shain: "That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard a grown-up say."

Tags: journalism, words, life

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Monday, April 27, 2009

Screw Earth Day! - Grist's April Campaign

"One day is for amateurs." - Grist on Earth Day.

For the month of April, Grist Magazine has been embarking on a fun YouTube campaign with Umbra hosting the festivities and facts:

Tags: environment, video

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"Against Readings"

From The Chronicle of Higher Education's Mark Edmundson:

"Schopenhauer tells us that all major artists ask and in their fashion answer a single commanding question: 'What is life?' The critic works to show how the author frames that query and how he answers it. Critics are necessary for this work because the answers that most artists give to major questions are indirect. Artists move forward through intuition and inference: They feel their way to their sense of things. The critic, at his best, makes explicit what is implicit in the work.

This kind of criticism is itself something of an art, not a science. You cannot tell that you have compounded a valid reading of Dickens any more than that you have compounded a valid novel or a valid play. When others find your Dickensian endorsement of Dickens to be of use to them, humanly, intellectually, spiritually, then your endorsement is a success. The desire to turn the art of reading into a science is part of what draws the profession to the application of sterile concepts."

Even though this is about applying a certain analytical vocabulary, this quote jumped out at me.

Tags: literature, criticism, writing, reviews, education

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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A Quickie Review

Quiet week for me:

My review of the new CD from DOOM (formerly MF Doom) is published.

Tags: music, reviews, journalism, writing

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

A Taste of France in Tucson

As the Thrifty Foodie, I investigate the offerings of Ghini's French Caffe.

Becca helps me Conquer the Kitchen this week with an Easy Pita Pizza.

I am taking a break in food reviewing next week to focus on a community nutrition project. But I shall return with another Tucson delectable in print.

Tags: food, reviews, writing, video, cooking