Author Archive: Paul Epps

Words

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Our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. They have not adapted themselves to the new reality. — Paul Auster, City of Glass Read more →

Goodbye to All That

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I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every word, all of it. — Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That” Read more →

EppsNet at the Movies

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Thanks to Netflix, I’m catching up on movies that I never got around to seeing. It’s a long list because I don’t see a lot of movies. Almost Famous With the exception of the boy’s mom, there aren’t any interesting characters in this movie. It’s like spending two hours with uninteresting people. The Lester Bangs character doesn’t count because Lester Bangs was an actual person who was interesting in real life. You don’t get credit as a writer/filmmaker for creating an interesting Lester Bangs character. Cameron Crowe seems to have learned his directorial style from an Olive Garden commercial. Great soundtrack. Rating: Blah. The Big Lebowski Look at the scene and ask yourself “Is it dramatic? Is it essential? Does it advance the plot? Answer truthfully. If the answer is “No” write it again or throw it out. — David Mamet This movie has interesting characters and snappy dialogue. I… Read more →

Lester Bangs, 1948-1982

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My responsibility as I see it as a critic is not to help a lot of new bands sell their records. It’s to help people who are buying the records to keep from making a purchase that they’re going to get home and hate my guts and the band’s too because it’s a piece of shit. And these critics, most of them, it’s much easier to help the bands, because you get more work that way and every magazine wants to print reviews that say, “This is wonderful, this is great, go out and buy it.” A lot of magazines won’t even print negative reviews. A friend of mine does a record review column in Esquire, and it’s like five positive reviews every time. They don’t want you to say anything that’s bad because they don’t get advertising bucks that way. So it becomes like a facet of your groovy… Read more →

Conditions

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What actions you take, you believe in. What commitments you make, you keep. What resources you have, you use. What words you say, you believe to be true. What you create, you intend to be great. — Jim and Michele McCarthy Read more →

Something Out of Nothing

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Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. — Stephen Hawking I still don’t get it. This is the one question that really gives me a headache: Why is there anything at all instead of absolutely nothing — no time, no matter, nothing? For the universe to create itself out of “nothing,” doesn’t there have to be something? Read more →

Nice Guys Finish Last

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You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice guy or you can be a great scientist. But nice guys end last, is what Leo Durocher said. If you want to lead a nice happy life with a lot of recreation and everything else, you’ll lead a nice life. — Richard Hamming Read more →

How Much Information Do You Really Need?

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On the web there’s a certain kind of encouragement to never ask yourself how much information you really need. But when I get to the point where I’m seeking advice twelve hours a day on how to take a nap or what kind of notebook to buy, I’m so far off the idea of lifehacks that it’s indistinguishable from where we started. There’s very little advice right now to tell people that the only thing to do is action, and everything else is horseshit. — Merlin Mann Read more →

The Value is in the Struggle

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I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in itself. — Richard Hamming Read more →

The Direction I Thought Was Important

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I found in the early days I had believed ‘this’ and yet had spent all week marching in ‘that’ direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched in the direction I thought was important. It’s that easy. — Richard Hamming Read more →

Here Come the Brides

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We went to a wedding over the weekend, although it won’t be recognized as such by the state of California because both people involved were women. One of the women is Asian, the other Mexican. Both are in their late 20s, both pretty, and they seem to be very happy together. The reception was held at The Reef restaurant, affording a beautiful view of Long Beach harbor and the downtown lights beyond. The bride wore white. The other bride also wore white.   We couldn’t find a “bride and bride” wedding card at the Hallmark store. We asked an employee about it, an older woman. “You want what?” she said. “A bride and bride card. All the wedding cards are bride and groom, a man holding a woman’s hand. What we want is a bride and bride card.” “We don’t have anything like that,” she said. “You should get some.”… Read more →

One Problem After Another After Another

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I could see life being a long sequence of one problem after another after another. After quite a while of thinking I decided, “No, I should be in the mass production of a variable product. I should be concerned with all of next year’s problems, not just the one in front of my face.” By changing the question I still got the same kind of results or better, but I changed things and did important work. I attacked the major problem — How do I conquer machines and do all of next year’s problems when I don’t know what they are going to be? How do I prepare for it? How do I do this one so I’ll be on top of it? By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I… Read more →

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