Juliet lives like rednecks drive: mashing down the gas with the radio blasting and howling lusty swear words all over the open road. Her stories are full of love and rage, heartbreak and mayhem and sex and drugs and the kind of laughs that rattle the optic nerves. She’s far and away my most exciting new friend from the Moth, thrilling and kind and just a little dangerous — the kind of person who might throw your car keys into the river and then get you to laugh about it.
Having an enlarged heart is a dangerous medical condition: oversized hearts are tender and fragile and wear out easy. But an enlarged heart is also the biggest ball in the storyteller’s cannon. People with giant hearts fall in love with everything in the entire world and get their hearts broken every single time and brother, do they have some stories to tell.
Juliet’s heart is a massive flaming comet, flying all over the place and collecting all kinds of dirt and debris and you just can’t wait to hear where it’s been.
Here she is telling a story at The Moth a few months ago, on the theme of “Respect.”
I’m going to be appearing at a story show at her house in Philadelphia this weekend along with a couple other Moth regulars and a band called the Resin Ballz. It promises to be nothing short of awesome.
You can see a story by The Moth’s Jim O’Grady here:
Jeff sent me a link to an awesome, fun, faux-vintage sci-fi short film a while back, and I mean to share it with y’all, but it slipped my mind… until I was flipping through a sketchbook and found this hastily scrawled list of cultural references that I saw while watching it for the first time:
She-Ra, Princess of Power. Lord of the Rings. American Apparel advertisements. The Neverending Story. Mario Bros. Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. “The Clapper”. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Space Invaders. Silverhawks. Batman. Thundercats. Tron.
These things, in no particular order, sprung to mind immediately for me. Some of them are obviously intentional, others perhaps unintentional but likely to be seen by anyone who grew up when I did and watched the same stuff. Still others were triggered by a small detail or action in the video that other folks might not notice or associate in the same way. Anyway, here it is!
A few months ago, I saw David Levy give a presentation based on his new book “Love + Sex With Robots” at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan. While the presentation had a pretty interesting premise, I had so many questions afterwards and could’ve run roughshod over the Q&A session.
I bought the book and read it for myself, and just like the presentation it left me wanting so much more. Levy lays his belief that one day, people will have sex with robots, out like a master’s thesis that drops every idea down brick by thudding brick, cementing with precedent and detail in a way that makes you believe him while thinking “alright already, I get it. Where’s the fun stuff?” I have no problem buying the fact that pleasure robots are on the horizon … what I want to know is how they’re going to fit in, how society will change.
The book’s been talked about in a number of places online since Levy’s presentation. Wired, MSNBC, and The Globe and Mail have all done pieces on the book and its premise. I tend to agree the most with Joel Achenbach’s recent review in the Washington Post’s book section, but in all of this chatter, something’s been missing.
David Levy was kind enough to grant me an e-mail interview for this blog in an attempt to scratch my itching curiosity. The interview follows, after the jump …
Very busy executive would like to hire a writer to send emails on his behalf on personal dating websites. And do a few enails back and forth to get the ball rolling..
This person needs to know how to write in a masculine, but romantic way and at the same time create a challenge for the reader of the email
I’m from the South and I live in New York, so I’m not sure how y’all work it out there in Los Angeles. On the one hand, it seems like this dude runs the risk of getting his ass found out as soon as he does some ill-advised Blackberry thumb-stumbling of his own. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that this guy’s target audience would be smart enough to notice or deep enough to care.
I’m wondering here - what’s the real goal? Is it to meet someone of quality? Or just get laid? What’s the backup plan when this guy gets found out? I mean, if the ghostwriter succeeds, then they’re able to do something that the poster himself cannot do. This just won’t last.
I’m curious, too: what kind of responses did he get? How does one land this job, and what’s the time commitment?
One thing’s for sure though: whoever takes this job and takes it seriously is a putz, big-time. It sucks needing work and it sucks needing money, but I’d imagine what really sucks is looking in the mirror and knowing that you’re Cyrano de Bergerac with a dick for a nose.
Sushmita’s been a fan of my blog for a year or two, which is an Ice Age in Internet time. We’ve never met in person and probably aren’t likely to anytime soon. She lives in Bombay, and my days of flying across the planet to meet online friends are D-U-N DONE.
But the fact that Sushmita reads regularly and is not in my life means a lot to me … I figure my friends check in on this from time to time because they know and like me, but her comments and continued reading mean to me that this frustrating labor of love is good enough for complete strangers, too. And to someone that’s as vain and insecure as I can be, the Sushmitas of the world mean a whole, whole lot.
She sent me a really nice note about the blog’s new incarnation … after the jump:
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