mattlawyue

"At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he..."

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:35:00 -0500

“

At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle.

At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate. To please his mother, who did not take kindly to his being a pirate, he briefly managed a mink farm, one of the few truly dull entries on his otherwise crackling résumé, which lately included a career as a professional gambler.

Mr. Fairfax was among the last avatars of a centuries-old figure: the lone-wolf explorer, whose exploits are conceived to satisfy few but himself. His was a solitary, contemplative art that has been all but lost amid the contrived derring-do of adventure-based reality television.

”

- This obit of John Fairfax is one of the most absurd, enthralling and encouraging stories I have ever read.

Omakase dinner at Sushi Yasuda last night.

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:15:28 -0500

Omakase dinner at Sushi Yasuda last night.

Dining in Philly this weekend. Osteria for dinner and...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:41:35 -0500

Parma pizza, veal tongue, cured salumi

Chix liver rigatoni, Fazzoletti pork

Rabbit with polenta

Roast pork w/ broccoli rabe, provolone

Dining in Philly this weekend. Osteria for dinner and DiNic’s for lunch.

Dinner at Momofuku Ssam Bar last night with the girl @emmulate....

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:29:00 -0500

bbq bun – crispy pork belly

edward’s wigwam ham (surry, va)

veal sweetbreads – almond, sauerkraut

spicy honeycomb tripe

catfish – squash curry, green mango

roasted lamb loin & belly – bulgur

Dinner at Momofuku Ssam Bar last night with the girl @emmulate. It was Lincredible.

"The Hotel Workers Union, under the leadership of Peter Ward, has created a network of one-stop..."

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:39:00 -0500

“

The Hotel Workers Union, under the leadership of Peter Ward, has created a network of one-stop clinics where union members can receive any care they need, free of charge. By building a medical community, and providing their own insurance, the union has developed a system so efficient they can offer free coverage at 1/3 the cost of the average HMO.

You may think that sounds crazy. I think it’s crazy we’ve waited so long to try and replicate their success. So this year we’ll bring the Hotel Trades model to a group of New Yorkers that has a hard time affording health care – freelancers.

Independent workers like temps or copy editors now account for 30% of the workforce, and one in four make less than $25,000 a year. Through the leadership of Sara Horowitz, the Freelancers Union has created a growing community of over 93,000 members in the five boroughs. Working with Council Member Maria del Carmen Arroyo, we’re going to help the Freelancers launch a flagship clinic, to provide low cost care to any member who needs it. This kind of creative health care model has the power to connect more New Yorkers to primary care, take some of the burden off of struggling hospitals, and strengthen our non-profit healthcare system.

”

- FYI for all the freelancers in New York City worrying about health insurance. This might be something for you to keep an eye on, via Council Speaker Quinn’s State of the City address today. She’s beginning to lay the groundwork for her Mayoral run in 2013.

sophiabiabia: bitchinfromthebaseline: LINSanity!!! notschrutef...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:58:42 -0500

sophiabiabia:

bitchinfromthebaseline:

LINSanity!!!

notschrutefacts:

nbaoffseason:

Landry Fields and Jeremy Lin’s new handshake: skimming through book, taking off glasses, then placing inside pocket protector.

Note: Landry Fields graduated from Stanford, Lin from Harvard. Way to set the bar super high for all Asian parents, Jeremy.

Love it. The Ivy League handshake.

The ivy league handshake

Happy Birthday, Gay Talese

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:01:26 -0500

Happy Birthday, Gay Talese:

longformorg:

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra’s four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.

Gay Talese | Esquire | Apr 1966

motherjones: jesuswasacommunist: staceythinx: These elegantly...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:35:24 -0500

motherjones:

jesuswasacommunist:

staceythinx:

These elegantly simple transit map posters were the wonderful result of a collaboration between a graphic designer and an engineer. They are available for sale at lineposters.\

I really want Boston, Paris, and NYC. (but mainly Boston because y’know we rock)

So Paris’ transit system is basically one giant homage to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What does it mean??

"Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected..."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:42:00 -0500

“Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.”

- Bill Bryson isn’t a particularly deep read, but, more often than not, he’s on point when he waxes poetically like this. From neither here nor there.

"Because … what the hell has Kim Kardashian ever done besides the X-rated roll-around and..."

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:40:37 -0500

“Because … what the hell has Kim Kardashian ever done besides the X-rated roll-around and moronic, naval-gazing reality shows? Last week, according to a breathless US Weekly report, Kim was in Dallas with sister Khloe, the wife of Mavericks forward Lamar Odom (a story of vacuity for another time), ‘doing a little retail therapy at a local mall before visiting the Dallas Aquarium,’ where, as Kim writes on her blog, they took photos of all the ‘fab animals.’ The magazine reported, apparently without irony, that Kim had to ‘cut her trip short due to work commitments.’”

- Jack McCallum leading off Scorecard in this week’s Sports Illustrated. He absolutely obliterates reality TV culture. Fantastic.

"I used to tell your sister when she was a kid that if she didn’t study hard and get good..."

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:12:45 -0500

“I used to tell your sister when she was a kid that if she didn’t study hard and get good grades in school, I would leave her in Harlem.”

- This is 1980’s Harlem my mom is referring to. Now my sister has her own kids. Can’t wait to see what threats she has in store for them.

Whenever you can end the day with Chinese pork belly, well,...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:54:29 -0500

Whenever you can end the day with Chinese pork belly, well, you’re just shit out of things to complain about.

"But theology is only in part social commentary. Crucially it has to do with the authority of a..."

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:25:27 -0500

“But theology is only in part social commentary. Crucially it has to do with the authority of a vision, of a world that is only like this world in essence.”

- The Book of Books by Marilynne Robinson. Reading this twice was the extent of my critical thinking this weekend. Everybody needs to recharge at some point, right?

Thursday.

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:43:00 -0500

Thursday.

This was the first soccer match I ever went to. June 25, 1994 at...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:49:00 -0500

This was the first soccer match I ever went to. June 25, 1994 at Giants Stadium, World Cup Group F between Kingdom of Saudi Arabia vs. Morocco. I was six years old at the time and one of the 76,322 fans that day to witness a 2-1 KSA victory on a mishandled Amin Fuad 25-yard shot (start at 3:40 in the video) nearing stoppage time of the first half. Found these tickets in a folder last night. Dad took me.

condenasttraveler: Istanbul’s Lush Life | Hagia Sophia I need...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:56:16 -0500

condenasttraveler:

Istanbul’s Lush Life | Hagia Sophia

I need to go back. Not want, should or would like. I need to.

platanoingotham: Harlem (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:43:05 -0500

platanoingotham:

Harlem (Taken with instagram)

2012?

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:41:34 -0500

2012?

"‘It was as if I woke up one morning and realized that however good or bad it might have been,..."

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:36:21 -0500

“‘It was as if I woke up one morning and realized that however good or bad it might have been, well over 95 percent of what I’d written in my life had been used to wrap fish,’ George told me. ‘If I wanted to leave something more permanent, write things I’d always planned to write, and leave a worthwhile body of work behind, I needed to get off my ass and do it.’”

- The Two-Fisted, One-Eyed Misadventures of Sportswriting’s Last Badass by Alex Belth

Manhattan by night.

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:37:45 -0500

Manhattan by night.