The Paris Review blog does this incredibly entertaining thing where it asks people of substance to record their cultural activities for a week (my pedestrian phrasing, not theirs). It’s called The Culture Diaries, and it’s full of people saying things like ‘Before I left my friend’s house we talked about how scary we both find Hemingway’s short story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”’ Well, before I left my friend’s house last night, I mentioned how much I would like a puppy. We can’t all be geniuses around here.
Here’s my cultural diary.
Wednesday: Am perturbed that Lil Bow Wow grew up handsome. Read 17 words from The New Yorker.
Thursday: Read Alice Pung’s Unpolished Gem and Growing up Asian in Australia to prepare for Melbourne Writers Festival session. Consider placing bucket underneath my desk to catch my giant Asian tears.
Friday: Listen to Mariah Carey’s ‘Dream Lover’ on repeat for three hours. Practice jokes in front of the mirror to prepare for Magazine at MWF, with Michaela McGuire and Benjamin Law. Look up ‘jokes’ on the internet and am puzzled that it returns 59,800,000 results.
Saturday: Saturday is a no-culture day.
Sunday: Watch Pride & Prejudice 1.5 times.
Monday: Go to my friend’s house for dinner to farewell another friend, who is going to Columbia to do an MFA. Feel so depressed and jealous that I eat entire packet of double coat Tim Tams and a matched weight in black olives.
Tuesday: Watch the video of the Bret Easton Ellis interview at the Wheeler Centre last week and decide whether to listen to the already infamous BEE vs. Ramona Koval interview slash stand-off. End up not deciding anything. See Inception in 3 seconds and am underwhelmed, but enjoy the final frame. Find my favourite thing on the internet for the week: what fonts Richard Posner, judge of the US Court of Appeals, uses and why:
I usually compose in Century Schoolbook. But I cannot for the life of me remember why I chose that! I used to compose in Baskerville, which I like a lot. Garamond is nice, too. And I composed two books (both on intelligence reform) in Verdana, which I also liked; but I no longer remember why I did that, either.
Watch Pride and Prejudice 2.3 times.
Thuy Linh Nguyen | 18th Aug 10 | 10:41 am |
Have you seen the 2003 film of Pride and Prejudice?
estelle tang | 18th Aug 10 | 6:55 pm |
Nope. I’m not sure I’m up to the physical strain of it.
genevieve | 18th Aug 10 | 11:32 am |
The judge sounds like a nice fellow. My daughter will like that story.
Did you catch the BEE interview on ABC Classic FM? that was pretty good really – Margaret Throsby is the bomb. She even let him play Deltra (as Dame Edna would say).
Cultural diary for a week – ow.
After having a very cultural morning at Heide, I went to Vermont South library and read The Monthly last night, but I can’t remember what I read in it; I do however recall reading and borrowing The Family Daughter by Maile Meloy, which is fab.
I came home and did half a Sudoku, to my complete surprise and showed it off to my kind son/Sudoku coach, who gave me a few more pointers.
This morning I read Harper’s Bazaar in a coffee shop while I was waiting for the bike shop to open so I can fix a wheelbarrow wheel (very cultural) and there was a great interview with Bono and Scarlett Johansson in it about his Third World charity (RED) – relegated to page 360+ while Kate Hudson schlepped it up in Vegas style gear all over the front of the mag. Consider it deconstructed.
I then came home and messed up the bottom six squares of the Sudoku, with about five numbers to go. I looked up the solution and considered my errors, like all good mediocre maths students.
Now about that wheelbarrow…
This is fun! I might do it tomorrow too..!!
estelle tang | 18th Aug 10 | 6:56 pm |
DID YOU KNOW THAT VERMONT SOUTH LIBRARY WAS MY LOCAL LIBRARY FOR ABOUT 25 YEARS OF MY LIFE??
I am simply athirst for a Maile Meloy book. Soon I will fit it in.
Did not catch that interview with MT. I wonder if it is online.
genevieve | 18th Aug 10 | 11:33 am |
but probably not online
Simon | 18th Aug 10 | 6:28 pm |
i find this post amusing. i look forward to crashing your MWF escapades. btw, you were mentioned the other day but not by a famous person this time.
estelle tang | 18th Aug 10 | 6:57 pm |
Intriguing! But probably my fifth-grade piano teacher who is your aunt or something, I am sure.
With Extra Pulp » Blog Archive » In which I stea…er, borrow another idea: The Culture Diaries | 18th Aug 10 | 11:42 pm |
[...] before the end of the day and came across Estelle of 3000 Books’s latest blog post, which was her own take on the Paris Review’s Culture [...]
genevieve | 19th Sep 10 | 11:24 pm |
oh estelle, our comments crossed, and I meant that I would not do the Culture Diary again online, not that the BEE interview wasn’t there. Just checked back and noticed that, so here is the MT interview, I was just writing about it today:
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/throsby/stories/s2977148.htm