Welcome, and thanks

If this is your first time at ffactory, welcome! In addition to the small but growing circle that have been supporting this weblog since the beginning of the year—special thanks go out to John Keene, Kevin Thurston, and David Beaudouin—we've been getting a surge of new visitors directed via the mighty Google [some of them looking for girly pix of Nancy Ajram and Anna Beatriz Barros, not that there's anything wrong with that!] and Tyler Green’s essential MAN.

(Photo courtesy of the
Los Angeles Conservancy.)

I’ve been working on a few things, including a piece on the new Al-Azhar Park in medieval Cairo, a follow-up on Maryland's Constuctivist lottery game heralded by the viral bovineunite.com, a look at Orhan Pamuk's Snow (recently reviewed in NYRB), and the usual heap of popcult TV, music, and film stuff. But ff will be going dark for a week, as I’m jetting to Los Angeles this evening for some R&R; on my return, I’m planning a formal launch with an ad blitz, so stay tuned for a survey of LA’s gallery scene (thanks, art.blogging.la), &c. See you next week! ::cws