I Am Upset About The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest books ever written. F. Scott Fitzgerald was brilliant. These are two American cultural facts about which almost everyone can agree.

Can we also all agree that Baz Luhrman's film adaptation of the story is going to completely ruin it?

Odds are there will be more debate around this. I would like to say immediately that I stand far on the right: Yes. Watching this movie will completely destroy your romanticized perceptions of The Great Gatsby's scenes, settings, and characters. Do not watch.




For starters, the movie is being done in 3-D. That's literally enough for me to flip a top-hat-shaped lid over, but I'm going to try to move on to more salient points.

THE SOUNDTRACK!!!! ARGHHH Whyyyy?!?!

Hopefully this is just trailer show gunning, and the movie itself stays a lot more period piece and a lot less cling-to-modern-pop-culture-to-attract-young-droves.

As a book, The Great Gatsby smolders. But it looks like this movie is all sparks and flash. Screaming scenes. Sex scenes. Standing and drinking in cars as they drive over bridge scenes. (Credit where credit is due: I am super psyched to see more of the recreation of NYC skyline circa 1922.) And doesn't Meyer Wolfsheim have a Yiddish accent? Come on, people.

Nick's perceptions of the Gatsby parties were always that of the reserved observer.. He noticed the women's clothes, their almost imperceptible gestures  the faults and the facades. In the trailer we are bombarded with fireworks and glitter and over-the-top raucous. Where is the restraint? The angst? The pent up emotions held close to the chest?

I'm not seeing it.

Maybe it's a smart play. Maybe the movie is all East Egg subtlety, and the trailer is all West Egg show -- and we the audience are the fools buying in to The Great Gatsby's party. I hope so.

Seeing as this is just the trailer, I'll try not to judge too much. (Uh, too late.) But I will read the book one last time before inevitably watching the movie and possibly ruining my perceptions of the whole thing.

And I will totally, totally, play this online version of the NES Great Gatsby game and say "Good job, old sport!" no matter what.

Books and Nooks

Aren't books great? Don't say no; you'll look like an idiot. It's a fact of humanity that books are indeed fantastic.

But man, they take up so much space! I live in a 2x4 box and I have a really hard time throwing out printed materials. Magazines I find stupidly hard, but at least I can do it every six months or so. But books? I can not throw out a book. I must hold on to it and stare at it taking up space on my shelf for all eternity.

There's something about feeling like you have a library that's really satisfying, right? That's why I'm really satisfied that an entire wall of my living room is taken over by a series of book shelves. Granted, only the bottom half of said shelf system is actually holding books, but that's because we happen to hold onto a lot of other junk too, specifically... curios. So there are some books in the kitchen and under the bed too, but WHATEVER. That's not the point. The point is putting lots of books together into a library is a super satisfying thing to do in life. Plus, it makes you look smart, and probably kinda cool. (Unless you're like me and you put your books together by genre. Then you're a nerd who should probably go work at the library and get it all over with.)

There are many ways to put your books to decorating use. Check it:
Bet you never thought to make the walls out of books, huh? Well, you can thank the Michel Berger Hotel in Berlin for this one. Apparently it's a really rad hotel with theme rooms. Yeah, I said it: rad. Totally tubular.

This bookshelf is combining my love for book storage with my intense love of maps, and well... it's intense. My love for it is intense. I want a grand foyay to display all of my amazingness amongst these stately shelves.


(I'd probably just fill the Alabama shelf with porn and the backs of cereal boxes, because let's get serious.)

Another really awesome thing to do with books is color code them. Full disclosure: I did this with my CDs back in the day when people actually had those.



Speaking of color coding, and other tedious tasks:



Woo, that was fun!

If you're going to decorate your home with books, then man, you gotta have a nook. Books and nooks is like peanut butter and jelly! Ricky and Lucy! Stickers and glitter!

(Sneak attack: some of these people combined their nooks and their books. It's pure genius.)



Hello!? This nook makes me want to get tuberculosis or something. I would never ever leave, and drink so much tea and paint my nails so many colors and read SO MANY BOOKS. (Assuming I wasn't dying or anything. Whatever.)


Aren't they beautiful?

I desperately want to live in a place where I can build a nook somewhere. For now, I can totally do this:


Who's up for a sleepover?

Welcome to the Fun House

They've done it. Those crazy Asians have finally done it. They've created the most fun place to live on the planet. Level Architects have made my and every kid's dreams come true with this:






That is one hell of a slide house, boys and girls! Unfortunately, you'd have to go shack up in Tokyo to experience the overwhelming joy that clearly pervades those four walls.

The slide even ends in a secret library


Which brings me to another point about things that make houses awesome: books and nooks. Books and nooks to come. For now, let's continuously ogle this fun house.

It also has a blowing ball pit. For real. These kids are the happiest children on the planet:


This is an actual room in their home, just for them. Just wait until they get old enough for homework. Then what? Mom and Dad are just going to casually get them to stop playing in their awesome in-home ball pit and do math? Pfft, yeah right. Oh wait, they're Asian. Alright, they should be ok.

I guess it's time to start gearing up for Christmas List 2011, because this bad boy is definitely going to top it.

(PS - I basically just jacked this whole thing from dezeen.)

In Honor of the Coming of Fall....

A bunch of ridiculous books about pumpkins. 

The scary thing here is all the "Users who bought It's Pumpkin Time! also bought I Like Pumpkins" messages on Amazon.  If your kid is that into pumpkins, it's not time to buy him multiple pumpkin books. It's time to sign up for gymnastics camp.  Pumpkins should not be your number one interest.  And definitely not the way you get drunk. (Although I would be more than willing to drink pumpkin moonshine, if that exists.)