Story140

nick-warren-twitter-pic

 

I’ve been invited to write a 140 character story for the Story 140 competition being run by Twitter’s very own micro-novelist Nick Warren. A daunting task. If you haven’t read any of Nick’s stories on Twitter I suggest you stop reading this and go and follow him now. The drama, intrigue and humour he can find in 140 characters (including spaces) is staggering. My particular favourite being his story of Jan 19 2009, the eve of President Obama’s inauguration:

Welcome Mr President, we’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Agent Owen and I are with Alien Liaison sir, perhaps you’d better sit down.

Don’t know if I can match Nick’s pithy prose – as he puts it, a novel is a marriage, a short story an affair, the twitter story is a kiss – but I’m having a damn good go. Have written 10 possible contenders so far. I can only enter one, not sure how I’m going to pick, but so the other nine don’t go to waste, I’ll post them here after Nick has announced the winner of the competition.

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HipsterFromTheBookStore

Une Fille Comme Les Autres from Jalouse blog on Vimeo.

Fantastic viral ad for French fashion mag, Jalouse. Bam, hipster from the book store.

It’sNotWhatYouGotIt’sWhatYouDoWithIt

Tony Schwartz: The Myths of the Overworked Creative from 99% on Vimeo.

Great talk from ‘renowned media guru’ Tony Schwartz (no, me neither) about how it’s not how much time you have, but what you do with it that counts. The obvious is stated repeatedly – it’s not multitasking, it’s spreading yourself too thin; giving your full attention to one thing results in better work than giving a little bit to everything; email is evil, but addictive; working instead of sleeping will not make you more productive – but all of it is worth hearing again, especially Tony’s suggestion that our ability to work follows the same 90 minute cycle format as our sleep. Basically, everything he said explained my current struggle to get my head into anything like a creative space, so in future I’ll be sleeping more and turning the internet off.

SoundOf2012Cont.

So, having complained that there are in fact bugger all ‘ones to watch 2012′, I have been pointed in the direction of Red Kite. They release first single Montreal as a very limited edition on Dec 5, and if it’s anything to go by, a large part of 2012 might well be theirs.

VideoGames


So, after hours of listening to ‘ones to watch 2012′ tracks posted on Soundcloud by various PRs and record labels, the only one which really did it for me was Lana Del Ray’s Video Games, which has been kicking around for months now. Still, it is good. Like her description of herself as ‘the gangsta Nacy Sinatra’ too.

KillsAndKills


Current favourite song, Breaker by Low. Can’t stop playing it. Had it on constant loop for hours. Be warned though, the video will put you off cake forever.

LivingForTheCity


Trailer for Gary Hustwit’s new film, Urbanized. The Barbican have a week of screenings, 16-23 December 2011, tickets and info here. Big fan of Gary’s work and this looks amazing. Can’t wait.

BarbicanBeauty

Great short from the The Avant/Garde Diaries series, with blogger Peter Henderson talking about The Barbican, one of my favourite places in London.

CanIGetAJetPackWithThat

Excellent short film about the internet and how we’re all going to be nodes on a big super connected network of exciting shit in the future. Can’t wait. Can I get a jetpack with that.

TheBirds

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Amazing video of a Murumuration, which apparently is what starlings are when they get together.

SaulBassBook

Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design from Laurence King Publishing on Vimeo.

Short film about the new Saul Bass book from Laurence King Press. You don’t get to see much of the book, but what you do see looks amazing, as do the spreads from it at the bottom of the info page.

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