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The first teaser trailer from Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Les Miserables. The adaptation also stars Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen and will be released December 14th.
Changes
If you’ve been in my bedroom, you may have noticed a framed piece of paper that tells the story of a little princess named Simone. That piece of paper (pictured below) is the first page of my first book which I dictated to my mother when I was 5.
I was telling stories before I knew how to write them down. I dreamed up short books throughout my childhood, wrote poems and articles for my school’s newspaper and literary magazine through grade school, reported for the school paper in college and still scribble down short stories, songs, scripts and freelance articles today. My family and friends always thought I would be a writer “when I grew up,” so it’s not a huge shock that I wound up a producer (modern, new media storytellers). Anyway, the purpose of this self-indulgent post is to share that I’m leaving my post as a digital manager at Broadway Video to step into Development Producer role at NorthSouth Productions where I will be creating concepts for unscripted television programming for Discovery, History Channel, Style, Food Network, etc. I couldn’t be more elated and you can expect to see an increase in human interest pieces and anthropological/sociological stories on my blog as I start looking into American subcultures in search of interesting stories to share.
… and dead baby jokes. They won’t stop.
via NYT: Public-Place Laws Tighten Rein on Sex Offenders
My friend (and Amherst soccer alum) Ian Lovett wrote this article that was ON THE FRONT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!
Read it here.
via Flavorwire: Contemporary Authors We Think We’ll Still Be Reading in 100 Years
Lit. nerd alert: When SOPA was introduced, my first thought was “I wish Orwell were here to write about this.” Then I started wondering, what literate will our progeny celebrate? What will be considered the Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, The Stranger, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nests of our generation? Who will be lauded like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harper Lee, Aldous Huxley, Camus, Mark Twain, Ken Kesey, etc? The article below touches on who we might honor in a similar way when our grandchildren’s English classes are studying over great literature.
via Flavorwire: “Earlier this week, we read a fascinating article over at The New Yorker that asked the question, “why is literary fame so unpredictable?” Apparently, in 1929, the readers of The Manchester Guardian were asked to vote on the authors they thought would still be read widely in 2029, and their top choice was John Galsworthy, who — though he won the Nobel Prize for The Forsyte Saga in 1932 — is now relatively unknown, or at least not very popular. The article goes on to discuss the difficulty in making predictions of literary prestige over long periods of time, noting a couple things that might give clues (a staunch but small readership of fellow authors, for one). While we concur that this kind of thing often rests on chance, fashion and unforeseeable future circumstance, we thought we’d take a stab at rounding up a few of the contemporary (read: living) authors we think we might still be reading in 100 years. Click through to see our predictions, and let us know your own in the comments.
Gabriel García Márquez
In addition to having written several beautiful novels (and, you know, having been awarded the Nobel Prize), Márquez is the figurehead of magical realism, a literary style that he popularized with the success of One Hundred Years of Solitude. So if nothing else, the author will at least be forever remembered and studied in conjunction with that stylistic trend, and his popularity will likely shift along with it.”
Continued here.
via Sports Dumpster: The Southern Entertainment Center Network
Another perspective…
“14.9 Million.
That is the amount of human beings who watched ”Hatfields & McCoys” – The History Channel’s first foray into scripted drama. A record for non-basic cable television. After launching The History Channel was soon bored with actual historyand delved into reality TV. When reality TV overfilled their golden purses, they realized scripted television was their next natural progression.
I expect the SEC Network to follow the same playbook.
Televising collegiate athletics constantly is a cute concept, but we are in this for money. “Hatfields & McCoys” is G6 money. “CSI: Tuscaloosa” is G6 money. “Vandy vs. Mizzou” will cover one leg of a Southwest flight into Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport. Little else.
Think of this, the M in MTV no longer stands for music. There’s no money in just that crap. That is why The SEC in SEC Network will soon mean: SOUTHERN ENTERTAINMENT CENTER Network. Why limit yourself to just sports? Especially banking on something like American football which will be outlawed thanks to pro-soccer lobbyists within the next five years.”
Continued here.
via MentalFloss: 5 Signs Humans Are Still Evolving
1. We Drink Milk
Milk image via Shutterstock
Historically, the gene that regulated a human’s ability to digest lactose shut down as they were weaned off of their mother’s breast milk. But when we began domesticating cows, sheep and goats, being able to drink milk became a nutritionally advantageous quality, and people with the genetic mutation that allowed them to digest lactose were better able to propagate their genes.
A 2006 study suggests this tolerance for lactose was still developing as early as 3,000 years ago in East Africa. That genetic mutation for digesting milk is now carried by more than 95 percent of Northern European descendants.
Continued here.
Simone Note: I was thinking about this the other day: lactose intolerance is modern natural selection, an inherited mutation that causes lactase production in adulthood. Survival of the fittest!
on Bloomberg’s “Chia Seeds, Wall Street’s Stimulant of Choice’
Christine Kenney, a triathlete who works the equity capital markets execution desk at Citigroup (C) in Manhattan, starts every morning at work with a bowl of low-fat yogurt, honey, and a heap of chia seeds. Throughout the day she subsists on chia snack bars. “It’s better for my job because I’m not supposed to be off the desk very much,” she says, noting how she’s gotten most of the co-workers from her desk hooked on the seeds. “There’s other seeds out there that are nutritious, but this is the best. It’s the alpha seed.” Continued here.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Childish Gambino continues to turn over new tracks from his mix tape. This week’s single is called Silk Pillow, produced by Beck and Gambino. It’s great, like all of the others.
Everything VICE does is fascinating. If you aren’t familiar with the brand, it’s Rolling Stone means National Geographic. This is a short documentary in which geologist Azusa Hayano gives a tour of the Aokigahara Forest, the most popular suicide destination in Japan. Be warned, it’s upsetting.
The Aokigahara Forest is the most popular site for suicides in Japan. After the novel Kuroi Jukai was published, in which a young lover commits suicide in the forest, people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year. The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses. The authorities sweep for bodies only on an annual basis, as the forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji and is too dense to patrol more frequently.
Girlfriend-Less Prince Harry Sounds Lonely
I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE.
“Princes William and Harry are making appearances and talking to the media in honor of their grandmother the queen’s imminent Diamond Jubilee, which celebrates her 60-year rein. The insanely lucky Katie Couric got to interview both of them individually about what it’s like to be them. Prince William, 29, said he was enjoying his marriage, wants kids, and that he and wife Kate Middleton aren’t fighting bitterly (not that he could admit it if they were, but I believe in their perfection anyway). As for Prince Harry, 27, who took a Diamond Jubilee tour around the world, he apparently wants more than brief, massively publicized trysts with hot lingerie models. He told Couric:
‘I’ve longed for kids since I was very, very young. And so I’m just, I’m waiting to find the right person, someone who’s willing to take on the job.’
The lonesome prince longs for a lady love he can take on his royal tours with him:
‘I’ve always said that it’d probably be easier as a, as a couple. I don’t have anyone. I wasn’t allowed to bring anybody with me.’
Aw, Harry. Of course it would be “easier.” Prince Harry probably can’t bring any chicks on official royal tours with him until he marries, and once he does that, everyone will be obsessed with his wife and not care about him. Look at Prince William! No one had a conniption over who would design his wedding dress, or lost their marbles over how great and thrifty he is when he shockingly wears $1,800 suits twice (that’s still $900 per wear, mind you). When he and Kate did their North American tour, he was her accessory. She and her clothes were the ones working overtime.
Harry’s always seemed pretty good at kicking his feet up and relaxing about his royalty, and once he finds his Kate? He can really go into college senior mode.”
