2. In a move that rivals that woman who was upset that Drive wasn’t enough like a Fast and the Furious movie, some cinemagoers in the UK are demanding their money back because they didn’t realize that The Artist was a silent film. [via Telegraph]

3. The producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark are now suing the show’s former director, Julie Taymor, claiming that she developed “a dark, disjointed, and hallucinogenic musical involving suicide, sex, and death,” and refused to make the necessary changes when there were problems. [via BBC]

4. Pusha-T, Jay Electronica, and Frank Ocean are among the G.O.O.D. Music artists who are set to appear on Kanye West’s forthcoming compilation album, which is set for release this spring. [via NME]

5. LL Cool J is hosting this year’s Grammys which air February 12th on CBS at 8 pm. Didn’t realize that this particular awards show even had one? The last time it did was back in 2005, when Queen Latifah was at the helm. [via Vulture]

Bonus Buzz: The Internet’s Blackout Pages And SOPA Protests

1. In “The Death of a Government Clerk,” a man sneezes on an older man of higher rank, while they’re at the theater and then tries in vain to apologize. Who is this disrespectful young man?
A. Zac Efron
B. Seth Rogen
C. Conan O’Brien

2. In “A Transgression,” a middle-aged man is shocked to find a baby on his doorstep, and assumes that the child is the result of an adulterous affair he has conducted. Who is this guilt-ridden baby-daddy?
A. Will Smith
B. David Letterman
C. John Edwards

3. In “Bad Weather,” a woman and her mother await the return of the young woman’s husband. Who is the prodigal bridegroom?
A. Ashton Kutcher
B. Tiger Woods
C. John Boehner

4. In “An Enigmatic Nature,” a middle-aged woman on a train laments to a young man sitting next to her that no one has ever really understood her. Which secretly alienated woman might this be?
A. Oprah Winfrey
B. Hilary Clinton
C. Meryl Streep

5. In “Not Wanted,” a man goes on vacation only to find that his wife has populated his vacation home with noisy acquaintances. Whose social butterfly wife would do such a thing?
A. Larry David
B. Alec Baldwin
C. Rush Limbaugh

6. In “A Classical Student,” a struggling young student gets a whipping for his failures. Who has received such public flagellation?
A. Heidi Montag
B. Lindsay Lohan
C. Snooki

7. In “Hush,” a writer attempts to do his job despite a steady stream of distractions from his wife and friends. Who is this drama-drawing wordsmith?
A. Jonathan Safran Foer
B. David Simon
C. Eminem

8. In “At the Barber’s,” the father of a beautiful young woman confronts a barber who he believes is destined to be with his daughter. Who would sell out their baby girl with such ease?
A. Billy Ray Cyrus
B. Bruce Jenner
C. Donald Trump

9. “The Man in a Case” tells the story of a man who lived his life rigidly, never admitting pleasure or freedom. Who has lived with such limitations?
A. Jon Lovitz
B. Stephen Colbert
C. Michael Vick

10. In “The Darling,” a newly widowed woman is consoled by her neighbor and later becomes involved with him. Who has gone from supportive friend to lover?
A. Tom Hanks
B. Keith Urban
C. Ellen De Generes

ANSWERS: 1-C, 2- B, 3-B, 4-A, 5-B, 6-B, 7-C,  8-A, 9-A, 10-B

Flavorpill: Can you explain the religious roots of the project?

Ben Greenman: I met co-creator Nicola Behrman at one of Reboot’s events; they try to pair people in different disciplines to work on projects. We were talking through some issues: technology; how people don’t really have space to think in the same way they used to; how that might be corrected. The initial version of 10Q evolved out of that.

The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time to think about the year that passed, and let go of grudges — broadly speaking it’s the same kind of thing as the New Year. You put aside whatever bad things have happened. A lot of things about the secular New Year have become problematic. Because of parties, and, you know, our friend alcohol, we leave the reflection part out.

FP: So why the decision to bring it offline as well?

BG: The jumbotron? Well, that’s sort of just a point of entry for people. The project still exists online, it’s just a way of getting people to notice, to push them toward the site where all the activity happens. Last year it was sort of a pilot program, although it ended up being a lot bigger than we thought it would. This year, as it goes much more broad, and as we’re trying to bring in lots of different kinds of people, we thought it’d be nice to have a place for everyone to see it. The questions will be there, one a day, for the duration of the project and will point people back to the website.

FP: Do you journal?

BG: Well the thing is, I’m a writer. It has varied over time — I mean, how much my writing is actually about me. When I was 15, I probably was doing a lot of personal journaling, and then there was a period where it was more important for me to start making those things into finished products, writing novels, etc. But yes, that kind of process I’ve always gone through. And one of the things about 10Q that is interesting is that a lot of the people in this group — the people who pushed behind it — were, broadly speaking, writers. They were working in film, or the stage, or they were journalists. We’re using language all the time anyway, it doesn’t mean that we’re better at it; it just means that process is probably —

FP: Natural.

BG: Right. But one of the things that I think we’re trying to work against is — there’s so much self-expression without introspection. It’s so much easier now to react to something immediately and instant publish it. We want people to think of what has been building up that they might not have expressed over the last year. I mean, people can use it however they want, and I’m sure people will read it very differently, but that’s one of the nice things about the questions.

But if I had to pick, I would rather somebody just sit down and think about the question, not for six hours, but for, you know, ten minutes. Realize, “Oh, I guess I’ve become too distant from my sister. You know, that hadn’t really occurred to me until I sat down and worked through this.” That’s the hope.

FP: The concept of keeping the responses for a year, and then emailing them back to participants — what are you hoping to achieve?

BG: There are three levels of disclosure. You can either be sealed from the group and nobody has to see it at all. It can just come back to you after a year. You can also share anonymously, or share with attribution. And people, again depending on how they’re using it, or how much of an exhibitionist they are, they choose. But if you choose the most personal level, you just wait, and then a year from now, you get them sent back. That’s kind of a more delicate, less intrusive version of the, you know, write “I want to lose five pounds” in an envelope, and then seal it and open it next January 1st. This is the first year people are getting responses back; that’s one of the interesting things, to see how the people who did it last year react.

One of the things we’re trying to figure out is how to keep that sense of private space. We’re trying to avoid people using it as a way to measure themselves against others. You go read somebody else’s blog and that person is complaining about whatever, and there’s a picture of their apartment, and you think, “Hey, that looks kind of big for Fort Greene, that’s not fair.” Maybe we’ll have a one week period in the winter where people can browse the responses at the half-birthday of the process and take them back down again. We have a million nominations for how to deal with that, and we’ll just go through them all and see which makes the most sense.

FP: How did you guys come up with the questions?

BG: We purchase them from a corporation. [laughs] We basically did a first draft of them. We knew we wanted to have roughly half looking backwards at the year that finished, and roughly half looking forward to the year that hasn’t happened. We listed out everything, and we tried to make them neither too specific nor so generic that people didn’t have to really say anything. We tried to avoid directing where somebody’s thinking goes. So we drafted them all out, circulated them among a very small focus group, and tinkered a little bit with the tone and language, to make sure that everything could elicit a response from everyone and nobody felt excluded. And it’s still open. It says right in all of the literature that we’re sending out this year, if somebody wants to suggest an improvement, or an alteration or a replacement of the question, then they’re welcome to do that. It’s kind of open source in that way.

Are you going to do it?

FP: It sounds intriguing.

BG: Last year there were people who by the ninth or tenth question were saying within the answer that the process really shaped and informed the way they think about their year. Which is great, it’s great to hear, but it’s a little surprising.

FP: OK, well now I’m definitely going to do it.

BG: Yeah, it’ll totally change your life. It might. You’ll be unrecognizable to yourself.

Want to participate too? Sign up for 10Q here.

Here’s the back story from Ben, via Largehearted Boy:

“When I was writing my new novel, Please Step Back, which tells the story of a funk-rock star in the late sixties and early seventies, I was also working as a journalist at my day job at the New Yorker, and along the way I wrote a little piece about a new record by Swamp Dogg. Swamp Dogg, of course, is a cult funk legend from the early seventies. His work is fantastic. It has been in my head for years, and it had something to do with the character I was creating. After I wrote the piece, I got an email from Swamp Dogg himself. He liked the review. We struck up an email friendship. When I finished the book, I wrote him with a crazy idea. I had lyrics in the novel that were written by my fake funk star, Rock Foxx. One of the lyrics was never recorded. Would he be interested in recording them. He wrote right back: ‘like a black motherf**ker,’ he said. We discussed the two possibilities. He could either create a song that sounded like it came from 1973, and in doing so play the role of my fake funk star, or he could create a song that sounded like it came from 2009, and play himself, covering my fake funk star’s song. He chose the latter.”

How freaking cool is that? Click here to hear the track and here to check out the book which is due out May 5.

One can’t help but recognize the irony in Jeffries contemplating the topic on his blog.

We recalled this when we read New Yorker editor BEN GREENMAN’s newest book, CORRESPONDENCES. The “book” consists of seven short stories, six written in the form of a letter. The aesthetics are unique, with each story printed on thick paper in its own distinctive font and folded into neat squares; two stories per bundle, presented in a box. The seventh story, “What He’s Poised to Do,” is embossed on the cover of the case, and not only communicates a story to the reader, but begs his/her participation via postcard.

When FLAVORWIRE had the opportunity to correspond, via email, with the author, we asked him a few questions to uncover the story behind this singular endeavor. Our favorite bits of the interview after the jump.

On whether he’s nostalgic for a time before the Internets
“It’s not really nostalgia so much as it’s a highly specific, highly angry form of Luddism. I use email. I love email. I depend upon it. I’m depending upon it right now. But I also feel that it’s ruining everything. It’s screwing up emotional biorhythms, gutting relationships, and hurting people at their hearts. It is making hearts soft and unprepared. Letters, on the other hand, work the emotional core, the same way that certain kinds of exercise target core muscles.

“Here’s something that will seem like a digression but isn’t: you know in old soul songs, when people talk about receiving letters? Well, that suggests a time-frame that no longer exists. Sam Cooke, in “Ain’t that Good News,” says (sings) “I got a letter just the other day / telling me that she was on her way.” There’s something so nice about the layers of experience and emotion in that lyric. When did he get the letter? How long has she been gone? When is she coming back? Where did this layering go? Down the tubes, largely. There are also wonderful things about email and texts that I will not, at the moment, admit.”

On writing letters to deal with what he’d rather avoid
“Maybe because I’m a man who sometimes thinks in an inappropriate manner. I think, too, that letters are supremely elegant ways of dealing with dirty business: dirty meaning unpleasant or sexual. They give recipients time to process the message. Oh, also, I think that technology creates the illusion of progress. We think we’ve figured things out because we have miniaturized jukeboxes into the iPod or because we ride around on Segways. But the basic problems of male-female relations aren’t really solved, and may never be.”

On the inspiration behind the interactive Postcard Project
“The Postcard Project grew out of these same tensions: the exclusivity of literature set against the universality of writing. Or, put another way, not everyone is an author, but everyone expresses himself or herself. Why? Who draws those lines? Are they fair? Obviously, I have ideas about the answers, because I’ve spent the last however many years fashioning a career as an author, but I wanted to put my ideas to the test. I had a story written that was kind of skeletal, and I liked it that way, but I also wanted flesh on the bones. One day, it occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one capable of fleshing it out.

“It was (it is) a story about romantic betrayal, and most everyone has had some access to that, whether they’re male or female, eight or eighty. I wanted that particular story, “What He’s Poised To Do,” which is actually printed on the case of Correspondences, to be written by as many people as possible, assuming that only one of them was me.”

If you live in New York, join Greenman tonight for the launch party for Correspondences at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

- Angelina Venezia