The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Video and audio mp3 of address.

But when you said that I wasn’t worth talking to, I had to take your word on that.
— ‘Divorce Song’, Liz Phair

Carrie Brownstein comments on the 15th anniversary reissue of Exile in Guyville:

In 1993 I moved to Olympia, Washington to attend college. The Northwest was full of incendiary bands in the early 1990s. Some of the sounds were heard around the globe, others remained stubbornly underground, festering and smoldering, creating an incognito hysteria and inspiring offshoots. There was twee and lo-fi, angular post-punk, emo, metal, riot grrl, noise—most of it eager, breathless and frenzied.

It was within this context, this feeling that everything important had a line drawn around it and that my town was inside that imaginary border, that I first heard Liz Phair. She crashed through the insularity, with no clear alliance to one music scene, writing from the periphery of her own. I was at a friend’s house, he was making us dinner and he put on the album. The fact that I remember any details at all about what my friend was cooking, what we wore, the layout of this small apartment–those memories only exist because of Exile in Guyville. Otherwise, it would have been just another night. I was 19.

I don’t know if it was the weight of the endeavor, or the fact that those of us over a certain age couldn’t escape this album if we tried, but Exile in Guyville’s presence is still felt after all these years. I admit to not having followed Phair much since the mid 90s, but listening to Exile again, I think it just might qualify as a monster of rock.

More details on the Exile in Guyville reissue at Pitchfork:

And who do we have to thank for all of this Liz Phair goodness? Why, Dave Matthews, of course! Matthews is one of the co-founders of ATO Records, which in addition to putting out the reissue has signed Phair for a new studio album due in the fall. (Yes, she is no longer on Capitol Records.) AND Dave introduces the Guyville Redux DVD.

So between this, My Morning Jacket, and Radiohead, is it finally time to stop hating Dave Matthews?

Compare the quick-change sequence in “Funny Face,” with Audrey Hepburn robed in one Givenchy masterpiece after another, and you sense not merely the greater snap in Stanley Donen’s direction (with more than a hand from Richard Avedon), and the hotter bloom of the coloring, but the way in which Hepburn herself outglows the frocks, with her smile and her imperious shout—“Take the picture, take the picture!” No thoroughbred was ever just a clotheshorse.

Following up with: “All the film lacks is a subtitle: ‘The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe.’ ”

Anyway, here’s Martin Schneider with lines from The New Yorker’s 2008 Conference: Day 1, Day 2.

Examples:

“Miles per gallon is the new high score.” — Jane McGonigal

“Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out next year. It has already sold two and a half trillion copies.” — David Remnick

“Ninety-nine percent of what policemen do is relational—resolving disputes and so on. So why are all cops big beefy guys?” — Malcolm Gladwell

“I can tell a California cook from a New York cook any day of the week—they’re slower… I’m calling out all of California, pretty much.” — David Chang

“The poster child for that ‘no sellout’ thing was Bob Dylan, and he ends up in a Victoria’s Secret ad.” — Steve Stoute

“H&M is kind of like a gateway drug.” —Kal Raustiala

“Change is inevitable; progress is optional.” — Andy Stern

“Like in ‘06, you’ve got to go take it from [Republicans]. They don’t give up power easily.” — Rahm Emanuel

Also covered by Jason Kottke. Event videos are online.

During the lease negotiation, I sent the landlord a long list of upgrades we wanted—at our expense, of course. Glass partitions, floor-to-ceiling mosaic tile, imported German fittings by Dornbracht, granite and marble—and that was just what we wanted for the shower. …

Like many architects who do a lot of commercial work, they were thrilled to finally have a client ask for something other than cheap. These poor architects get out of grad school, imagining all the creative, artistic spaces they will design, and they get their first clients, and they sit down for a meeting, and they start talking about negative space and permeability and modernism, and the clients cut them off and say, “Actually, we want cheap.” …

So if you ever hire an architect and tell him or her to create something cool enough to put in a portfolio to show to potential clients, and you invite the architect to make a beautiful and useful space instead of a cheap and nasty space, the architect will love you and go to the ends of the earth to figure out ways to raise the ceilings another 2 inches. Which is why we’re going to have a great space to move into at the end of the summer.

There will be a reception area with a dry creek of stones and pebbles and plants that will make a great first impression on our guests. There will be a big lunchroom, because we all eat together, as well as a coffee bar, a lounge, a 180-gallon saltwater aquarium, the aforementioned shower, a library with reclining chairs for naps, two private meeting rooms, 20 private offices for programmers, 23 adjustable-height workstations for everyone else, Wi-Fi, a big screen for movies and video games, and enough glass to build the world’s largest ant farm. We will have some room to grow, finally. And in two years, if all goes well, it will be too small for us.

Related: Google Office in Zurich, Google Benefits

Facebook Benefits: Medical, dental and vision plans with no premium for employees; 401(k) plan; 21 vacation days per year, plus 8 company holidays; Day care subsidy for parents; Complimentary catered breakfast, lunch and dinner daily; Dry cleaning and laundry service onsite; Free downtown parking permit; Subsidized gym membership; Up to 4 months paid parental leave; Your option of 15″ Apple MacBook Pro or IBM ThinkPad with large screen LCD monitor.

Jon: It’s quite a phenomenon. How was it?

Samantha Bee:
Honestly Jon, I don’t know where to start. I mean, I know everyone’s excited about the movie and from the previews I expected it to be some sort of drama about four middle-aged alcoholics who spend their time wearing crazy clothes and walking places in a line.

And I guess on that front it delivered.

But, I had no idea there’d be such a Samuel Beckett vibe to the whole thing. I mean, they talk about men for over two hours but then in the end they decide they’re happier just having ladyfriends and lots of money and alchohol. So depressing! Sort of like a No Exit with feathered hats.

[...]

Jon: I feel stupid. We sent there cause I thought the subject matter was appealing to your age group and demographic and stuff.

Samantha: Oh, me? Oh no. You’re confusing me with my husband Jason. He is such a Charlotte. I think I actually have a clip.

John Oliver: Sorry I’m late. I was having sexual intercourse with a woman and I completely lost track of time.
Jason Jones: Insert small-genitalia pun.
Larry Wilmore: Oh I am so promiscuous and sad. You know what I love? Neckties.
John Oliver: This was a six-hundred dollar necktie.
Aasif Mandvi: Ooh, I just had a necktie-gasm
Jason Jones: To herpes!
All: To herpes!

Samantha: I fucking hate his friends.

Interviewed by CBC’s Sook-Yin Lee, January 2008.

Ugg Boots?
I don’t quite understand the appeal to them. If you ask an Australian about them as a fashion statement they’d laugh at you, because they’re for housewives in the outback.

Going back in the time machine, to the 1970s I think. Candies, plastic stilettos from the 1970s. What do you think?
I thought they’re pretty hot actually. Things can look good when they’re unusual and not seen very often and suddenly when they get all over the place they just don’t look very good. But that particular shoe on its own, if it didn’t go mainstream and so huge—they were a cute pair of shoes. They looked good on your feet, they were sexy, they fit well, they were easy to wear—easy enough for a high-heeled shoe for a girl—and I thought they looked great. But then they get really mainstream and they don’t look so great anymore.

What about that uber-chic Sex in the City shoe that’s very de rigeur these days for a certain type of lady. Manolo Blahnik shoes.
I think—well, I have to be honest, don’t I?—it’s not that I don’t like Manolo Blahnik or I don’t think he’s a good designer. From a design point of view, a bit of a rehash from what was going on in the end of the 70s and early 80s. I’ve been at this a long time now. So I’ve been obviously been through a lot of different eras of footwear and vibes and generations and I’ve been there and done that, put it that way.

But as far as—I mean, girls obviously still like wearing really high spiky shoes, they just like putting them on and it makes them feel great. I’ve tried very hard not to do that. In fact, when all that came out I brought out a really round-toed heavy-bottom shoe that was completely opposite to what everything else was going on. And I actually sold them.

Crocs?
I think they’re great for washing your car. I think they’re great for working the garden. But to wear them every day, all the time—I don’t think so. It’s a bad fashion statement of who you are as a person, I think.

What do you think’s gonna happen—what’s the next big shoe in the future?
There’s different feelings like I was saying, different emotions of fashion that we go through in different eras. And I’m sensing a return to the early 70s. During that time it was a Victorian era and there was a resurgence of old areas and cities, like in Gastown for instance where I just opened another new store. And I believe that it’s going to get more traditional. So quality and tradition like lace-up boots, maybe heavier shoes for girls. Shoes that are sensible but feminine at the same time. So I’m going Victorian.

From The Onion:

The Pentagon announced Monday that it had developed a new chemical weapon called “ennui gas,” a nerve agent that overwhelms its victims with sudden philosophical distress over the meaningless tedium of human life.

Symptoms include uncontrollable sighing, repeated utterances of the phrase “What’s the use?” a confusion and bitterness regarding one’s place in the universe, and an increased proclivity to listen to Lou Reed records.

“Because ennui gas is a nonpersistent substance, it is highly probable that its victims will someday feel whole again,” said Christie, suddenly furrowing his brow and gripping his temples. “Then again, no one is truly whole, are they? We are all just pieces of flesh and bone masquerading as life, and the world will go on without me, my absence unnoticed, death as futile as life. Pain hath no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower.”

Christie then lay down behind the podium and told members of the press to leave, repeatedly stating that there is no point to it all.