Category Archives: Stephen Fry

08/18/2012
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Dustin Glick, Edward R. Murrow, Grant Street Jazz festival, Ha-Joon Chang, Humanists, Isaac Asimov, LSD, Milan Kundera, Stephen Fry, Upworthy, Voltaire, Woodstock

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.” — Milan Kundera

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KICK UP YOUR SHOES

We need easy to digest aphorisms, quotes, comments, and charts today. Which is code for: I’m too lazy to come up with original stuff.

It’s a glorious Saturday morning, with the Grant Street Jazz festival set to begin in a couple of hours. See GO!, below, for the the lineup. Today’s GO! is chock-full of things to do — it’s the best events listing in Bloomington, kiddies.

Summer, at last, is enjoyable — as opposed to the earthly hell it’s been for a few months now.

BTW: Woodstock wound down 43 years ago yesterday. Today would have been the anniversary of the most miserable cleanup imaginable.

So let’s be thankful we don’t have to fish missing car keys out of LSD-tainted mud.

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Edward R. Murrow:

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Ha-Joon Chang:

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UPWORTHY:

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ISAAC ASIMOV:

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VOLTAIRE:

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STEPHEN FRY:

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Dustin Glick:

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

Indexed

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❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present & Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

Click For Full Article

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❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

◗ Frank Southern Ice Arena — Bloomington Community Yard Sale; 8am

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Farmers Market; 8am-1pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Basic Literacy Tutor Training, 1st of 4 sessions, call 812.349.3173 to register; 9:30am-1:30pm

◗ Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center — One-Day Retreat: Introuduction to Buddhist Philosophy in Daily Life, led by Ani Choekye; 10am-4:30pm

◗ City Hall, Showers Plaza — Community Volunteer Fair, +40 nonprofit organizations represented; 10am-1pm

◗ Monroe County Courthouse — Backstreet Missions Fundraiser: A Slice of Heaven, homemade pies; 11am-3pm

◗ First Church of God, Ellettsville — Classic Car Show; 1-4pm

◗ Grant Street between Kirkwood and 6th — Grant Street Jazz Festival, featuring:

  • Mayo Jazz

  • Paul Kirk & Dave Bruker Duo

  • Craig Brenner Duo

  • Monika Herzig Trio featuring Janiece Jaffe

  • Jazz Fables led by David Miller

  • Postmodern Jazz Quartet led by Jeff Isaac

  • Café Cubano

  • IU Jazz Faculty: Pat Harbison, Tom Walsh, Luke Gillespie, Jeremy Allen, Steve Houghton, Michael Spiro;

  • 1:30-11pm

◗ Trained Eye Arts — Writers Guild Social & open mic, potluck snacks & beverages, 3-minute readings of original writings; 3pm

◗ IU Cinema — Live action shorts from 2012 Seattle Children’s Film Festival; 3pm

◗ Housebar — End of Summer Gala, food, alcohol, live music:

  • Tim Baker

  • Deadghost

  • The Vorticists

  • Jerome and the Psychics

  • !mindparade

  • Elephant Quiz;

  • 5-11pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series, “The Well Digger’s Daughter”; 6:45pm

◗ IU Cinema — Film: “Beasts of the Southern Wild”; 7pm

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Travis Creek; 7-9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Suzette Weakley, Broken Fences; 7-9pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre — Drama, “Solana”; 7:30pm

◗ Brown County Playhouse, Nashville — Dave England & the Haters, Forest Gras Experience; 7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series, “The Pigeoneers”; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Nick Griffin; 8pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Williams & Company; 8pm

◗ IU Fine Arts Theater — Ryder Film Series, “Polisse”; 8:45pm

◗ Max’s Place — Honey Locusts; 9-11pm

◗ The Bluebird — Dot Dot Dot; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — Bobby Bare Jr., Prayer Breakfast; 9:30pm\

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Cootie; 9:30-11:30pm

◗ The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Oldies Night: Elvis, Beatles & Stones Dance Party; 10pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — Nick Griffin; 10:30pm

◗ Max’s Place — Carpenter & Clerk; 11pm

ONGOING:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

  • “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th

  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th

  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th

  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th

  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012

  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st

  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

  • Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th

  • Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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06/06/2012
3 Comments
Big Think, Gov. Scott Walker, Hugh Laurie, Jeeves, Lewis Black, Natural Foods, Organics, PG Wodehouse, Stephen Fry, Transit of Venus, Whole Foods Market, Wisconsin Recall Election

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“In my lifetime, we’ve gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We’ve gone from Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we’ll be voting for plants.” — Lewis Black

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WISCONSIN IN ONE WORD

Damn!

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WEDNESDAY BLOOMINGTON HAPPENINGS

Click the logo for the best events listings in our town.

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THE ARCHAIC BRITISH CLASS SYSTEM BY MOONLIGHT

The transit of Venus wasn’t the only celestial event to hold Bloomingtonians rapt yesterday.

Did you catch the spectacular full moon overnight?

Sometime around 3:00am, Steve the Dog and I woke up and, as we often do, padded around the house aimlessly for a few moments. This time, though, we stopped in our tracks.

The world outside the Chez Big Mike windows was oddly bright. The full moon was so brilliant that I wondered if I could read by it.

I know, I know — I do strange thing in the middle of the night. So I grabbed the nearest book, a volume of PG Wodehouse‘s Bertie and Jeeves stories. I flipped the thing open and — whaddya know? — I was able to read it without the aid of a lamp.

Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry As Bertie & Jeeves

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Cool, huh?

I’ll keep you posted on further nocturnal experiments as they occur.

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SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE PROVES: FOODIES ARE JERKS!

Hah!

Even though I consider myself the smartest, most sensitive, fairest-minded member of our species, even this humble reporter can fall victim to the phenomenon wherein we read and believe that which we already hold to be true.

As an example, I nearly thrust my arms in the air and cheered when I came across an article with this headline in the Big Think this morning:

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Take it from a guy who once worked for years at Whole Foods Market (in the education department, no less) — this article nails it.

My years at WFM only strengthened my preconceived notion that natural and organic food aficionados are merely mirror images of Puritans and Savonarolas.

See, foodies believe there’s a clean and pure way of living — a conceit I know to be false. They also believe that anyone who doesn’t agree 134% with them is either an evil agri-business lackey or is a deluded victim of the forces of Dick Cheney.

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Don’t get me wrong: I do my best to minimize my intake of red meat, I refuse to eat veal or pate de foie gras, I try to stay away from hydrogenated oils and white flours and sugars, I strive to eat a variety of varied-color things, and I rarely buy salt-laden prepared foods.

But, see, there’s the rub — I try to do all those things. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I have a taste for a Big Mac. Sometimes I don’t have the time or energy to cut up fresh vegetables. Sometimes the siren song of that bag of Wavy Lays is too strong for me to resist.

I am neither a Puritan nor a Savonarola.

But by and large, I try to hold to a general foundation of healthy eating habits (save for the fact that my portions usually are about the size of those served to hippopotami at the Indianapolis Zoo.)

Let’s Eat!

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Anyway, I’ve always felt that foodies believe they’re going to cheat death, much as the Puritans believed they’d attain eternal life through their belief in god. Like the Puritans, as well, foodies tend to think they must save the ignorant masses of unwashed humanity from themselves. And like religious zealots flagellating themselves or confessing their sins to cleanse the soul, food zealots purge and cleanse their alimentary canals in hopes of achieving some sort of higher level of existence.

To which I reply, Leave me alone so I can eat my Tombstone pizza in peace.

Yeah, foodies are pretty jerky. And now I’ve got science to back me up.

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