Thursday, May 26, 2011

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Matthea Harvey's OF LAMB

2nd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Amazon

Product Description: Lamb and Mary were alike. Unbalanced. Flat-footed. High-strung. This is their story like you’ve never heard it—the tale of a loopy shepherdess and a depressive farm animal. In this version of the children's nursery rhyme, Lamb and Mary fall in love. They swoon, they are smitten. Then Mary has second thoughts. Lamb is a lamb, after all, not a man. Lamb, heartbroken, turns to drinking. Lamb goes to a madhouse. Mary buries her feelings. And then somehow, Lamb pulls it together. He leaves the madhouse mature—saddened but more dignified, ready for another chance to win Mary's heart. But will Mary let Lamb back into her life?

Award-winning poet Matthea Harvey offers a story told in short packets of verse, and artist Amy Jean Porter brings each stanza vividly to life with her eye-popping illustrations. The collaboration yields a beautiful, off-the-wall tale of a lamb who wants only to be human, and a human who wants the love of a lamb.


Monday, May 23, 2011

"Medium" Level of Morale for Troops in Afghanistan

1st NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix


As fighting and casualties in Afghanistan's war reached an all-time high, U.S. soldiers and Marines there reported plunging morale and the highest rates of mental health problems in five years.

Some 70 percent to 80 percent of troops surveyed for the report said they had seen a buddy killed, roughly half of soldiers and 56 percent of Marines said they'd killed an enemy fighter, and about two-thirds of troops said that a roadside bomb — the No. 1 weapon of insurgents — had gone off within 55 yards of them.

Some 20 percent of troops said they had suffered a psychological problem such as anxiety, severe stress or depression.

"We would have expected to see a much larger increase in the mental health symptoms and a much larger decrease in morale ... based on these incredibly high rates of exposure" to traumatic combat events, [Col. Paul] Bliese said.


The Approval Matrix: Week of May 30, 2011

Thursday, May 19, 2011

BLOOM COUNTRY by Berkeley Breathed

3rd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Amazon

"Book Four of Berkeley Breathed's Eisner Award-winning series and New York Times best-seller features some of the most fondly remembered Bloom County cartoons, both from a humor standpoint and from a biting, political one. This is the period for which Breathed won a Pulitzer Prize, the highest award in journalism, for editorial cartooning. Breathed is one of only two cartoonists to win a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning (Garry Trudeau was also a recipient for Doonesbury). This volume begins more than six weeks after the strips in Volume Three conclude. This is because of a near-death experience suffered by Breathed, who, having broken his back in an ultralight-plane crash, was unable to continue his daily grind and the strip went on hiatus for nearly two months. Breathed went on to incorporate some of his experiences into one of the most famous Bloom County sequences ever - Steve Dallas breaking his back after being attacked by an enraged Sean Penn!"

East Side Access Project TWO TUNNEL BORING MACHINES Flickr Set

2nd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Flickr

Monday, May 16, 2011

THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SKIRT by Jon-Jon Goulian

1st NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Publishers Weekly\ via Amazon

A man wears women's clothes, rejects a legal career, and otherwise baffles his parents in this flamboyant but callow memoir. Goulian, a former secretary at the New York Review of Books, has a Columbia B.A., an unused law degree, and a proud history of menial jobs and underachievement: "I own nothing, save nothing, accomplish nothing tangible and have no permanent hold on life." Goulian relates body-image issues (he had his first nose job at age 15), a militant refusal to grow up (at age 29 he was collecting stuffed animals and calling his long-suffering father "Dada"), or his gruesomely detailed sexual anxieties. Much of the book consists of Goulian fencing with relatives—including his choleric grandfather, the neoconservative philosopher Sidney Hook—as they nag him to do something with his life, but his defiance of bourgeois propriety and ambition comes off as defensive narcissism.

The Approval Matrix: Week of May 23, 2011

Thursday, May 12, 2011

$45 Million in Product Placement in Next Bond Movie

4th NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From The Frisky by Kate Torgovnick

... the new James Bond flick, “Bond 23,” will be financed by a whopping $45 million worth of product placement. That is an entire third of the movie’s budget.

It’s far more than any Bond film in the past, even ones that had huge sponsors like BMW and Omega, and more than twice as much as the film that previously held the record for the most money made from product placement, “Minority Report.” That movie got $20 million from American Express, Lexus, and Bulgari to help with production. So crazy that now looks like small potatoes.


WORKAHILICS On Comedy Central

3rd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Comedy Central



Wenesdays @ 10:30/9:30c

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

"After Hours: Murals on the Bowery"

2nd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From NY Art Beat

For “After Hours: Murals on the Bowery,” taking place on the occasion of the Festival of Ideas for a New City, seventeen international artists create site-specific paintings on roll-down security shutters of numerous commercial supply stores along the Bowery between Houston and Canal Streets. The project continues the rich history of art-making in the New Museum’s neighborhood, where artworks often appear in unexpected public locations.

At the invitation of the New Museum, the Art Production Fund selected a cross-generational, international group of artists, and approached proprietors of retail spaces along the Bowery who will host the murals for two months. In some cases, the murals may remain indefinitely.

Source: Racked

Five more murals can be viewed here...

Monday, May 9, 2011

Friday, May 6, 2011

CLOUDGIRLFRIEND.COM

4th NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

GO THE F**K TO SLEEP by Adam Mansbach

3rd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Amazon

"Go the Fuck to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach's verses perfectly capture the familiar--and unspoken--tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. In the process, they open up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations, and laugh at their absurdity."

Thursday, May 5, 2011

5 Year Old Screenwriter For FAST AND THE FURIOUS Sequel

3rd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From The Onion

Jim and Tracy welcome Chris Morgan, the kindergartener who wrote the latest action-packed "Fast And The Furious" sequel.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

JERUSALUM At The Music Box Theatre by Jez Butterworth

2nd NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Royal Court Theatre and Jerusalem Broadway

The award-winning Royal Court Theatre production. Directed by Ian Rickson, and starring Tony and Olivier Award-winning actor Mark Rylance.

A comic, contemporary vision of rural life in England’s green and pleasant land…

Jez Butterworth’s award-winning smash hit arrives on Broadway following record-breaking sold-out runs at London’s Royal Court Theatre and in the West End.

On the morning of the local county fair, Johnny Byron is a wanted man. Local officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants his full attention, and his motley crew of friends wants his ample supply of booze.

Starring Mark Rylance in the “performance of the decade” (Sunday Times) and the “superb” (Time Out London) Mackenzie Crook, members of the original London cast are joined by Tony Award-winner and Broadway favorite John Gallagher Jr. in what has been hailed “an instant modern classic” (Daily Telegraph).

Jerusalem opened at the Royal Court Theatre in July, 2009 with critics praising playwright Jez Butterworth’s beautiful and comic elegy for a disappearing way of life in rural England and actor Mark Rylance, who was lauded as delivering one of the great stage performances of our time. The production played an extended sold out run at the Royal Court, before moving to the Apollo Theatre in the West End in January, 2010, where it received an unprecedented set of five-star reviews from 12 London newspapers.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Announcer Tom Durkin Quits TRIPLE CROWN Voice Career

1st NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From N.Y Daily  by Jerry Bossert

 The voice of the Triple Crown is stepping away from the microphone.

Tom Durkin, 60, will no longer call the Triple Crown series - ending a 27-year relationship with NBC Sports - the result of suffering from stress.

"It's something I had do to," Durkin said. "It's not something I wanted to do."

Durkin is currently taking the prescription drug Inderal, a beta blocker designed to help him deal with anxiety.

"The Triple Crown is part of my life for three months of the year and I'm always under stress," he said. "It doesn't go away. It stays with you and that's the dangerous kind of stress."

Durkin said the "numbers started going in the wrong direction" with his doctor, forcing him to make the difficult decision.

Despite being under contract with NBC Sports, Durkin received special permission to call the last five Belmont Stakes, which were aired on ABC-TV. This year all three races will be televised by NBC.

Durkin will still call the June 11 Belmont Stakes at the track while the race will be broadcast on NBC with a yet to be determined announcer.

NBC Sports didn't name a replacement but is expected to do so shortly with the Kentucky Derby to be run on May 7.

Larry Collmus, the track announcer at Gulfstream Park and Monmouth Park who has been rumored to be Durkin's replacement, didn't comment on the developing situation.

"It's rare in this business that you find someone who has such extraordinary talent, who works relentlessly and never ceases to be the nicest person in any room he is in. We will truly miss Tom on our Triple Crown broadcasts," said NBC Sports Group Chairman Dick Ebersol.

Durkin will remain the track announcer at Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga.

A GAME OF THRONES by George R. R. Martin

1st NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

From Amazon

"George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series has become, in many ways, the gold standard for modern epic fantasy. Martin—dubbed the “American Tolkien” by Time magazine—has created a world that is as rich and vital as any piece of historical fiction, set in an age of knights and chivalry and filled with a plethora of fascinating, multidimensional characters that you love, hate to love, or love to hate as they struggle for control of a divided kingdom."

A Game of Thrones 4-Book Boxed Set:

The Approval Matrix: Week of May 9, 2011