August 2007 Archives
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Watching
Video Digest: August 31, 2007
When Miss South Carolina expressed her concerns about American teens’ lack of geographical knowledge, and the Iraq, I’d like to know exactly how many people were truly surprised. Yes,...
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The Non-Expert
How the Internet Changed the World
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we assist a mother with her daughter’s homework: imagining a world where emails required stamps.
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Albums of the Year
The Top 10 Albums of 1985
Even though it wasn’t an election year, in 1985 Alex P. Keaton could have run for president—and won.
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In Hindsight
Playing With Fire
In August, fires large and small swept through homes around the world. And whether dousing flames, solving domestic disputes, or posing shirtless, firefighters were there.
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Listening
How to Win at Relationships
While I can’t personally relate to “a mescaline freakout at an off-Broadway show / in the morning,”* there’s something familiar and friendly about Luke Temple’s “Saturday People.” Its...
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Of Recent Note
Bottled Drinks
With Labor Day gaining fast, summer is almost over. Rather than mourn its demise with a sack of hooch, we should toast our memories with a bottle of something special. The writers have some suggestions.
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Reading
Book Digest: August 27, 2007
&Consider the journalistic artifice where writers presume to know the habits and activities of their readers: “While you are stuck in a 22-mile backup on your way to—and back...
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Gallery
Pulp Friction
Thomas Allen’s work brims with loose women, bad men, and secret, dangerous lives. Working with pulp novel covers, he infuses them with new life and narratives, pushing pulp’s roughish allusions into three dimensions.
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Watching
Video Digest: August 24, 2007
There I was the other night, lying on the couch, flipping through channels, when I came across it: the blooper show. No, seriously. They still have these things? I felt...
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The Non-Expert
Age of Consent
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we instruct a starry-eyed reader in the ways of bagging young Hollywood tail.
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Listening
Wherever You’ve Been, We Missed You
When you really think about it, a vampire weekend sounds either incredibly lame (as in hanging out in the cemetery with a bunch of goths, drinking cheap red wine, and...
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Personal Essays
Like Pulling Teeth
Whether it’s experimental injections, sleep deprivation studies, or freelance writing, sometimes the best way to look after your health is to risk it.
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Going Back to Kali
Paradise Lost?
As relatives gather for a wedding, Pasha Malla faces tough questions about why his family moved away from Jammu and Kashmir and tries to figure out what, exactly, they left behind. Part five of his travel journal.
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Reading
Book Digest: August 20, 2007
As if there are not enough reasons to read The New Yorker, last week it was reported that James Wood (he of the “hysterical realism” coinage) was joining its staff....
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Gallery
Monsters
Charlie White sends subtle messages. His photographs twist our social mores, commenting on the associations we make with famous (and imagined) events, art, and characters—revealing the monsters that hide in our corners.
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Watching
Video Digest: August 17, 2007
I don’t know that I ever want to write a book, but I certainly wouldn’t mind going on a book tour. The work’s already done, now you...
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The Non-Expert
Hooking It Up
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we apply cold logic to a hot topic: How can pre-adolescent hockey players become sexually active?
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Albums of the Year
The Top 10 Albums of 1984
It was no Orwellian nightmare; to have nightmares you need to sleep, and you can’t sleep when you lay awake terrified about nuclear war.
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Astroland's Last Summer
Miracle on 33rd Street
What do you get when you marry Rodriguez to Rodriguez, double it, parcel it out, deliver it from evil and send it back to church?
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Listening
The Haçienda Must Be Built
From “Formulary for a New Urbanism” by Ivan Chtcheglov (Internationale Situationniste, October 1953): And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars...
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Notes From the Lawn
Leaving Charlottesville
Departing the (garden) lovers’ state for one that loves its cement and money more, our scribbler of the lillies Our writer realizes the crucial difference between caring about plants and caring for them.
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Reading
Book Digest: August 13, 2007
I had it in mind to vituperate on some irksome aspect of American book culture but then I realized that time spent venting my spleen on well-trod terrain would be...
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Gallery
Still Life
Martin Klimas breaks recognizable objects so they become something else, and stops us just at the moment of transformation.
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Watching
Video Digest: August 10, 2007
Not until somebody gets a drumstick through the throat, will drum aficionados cease debating who’s the superior stickman: Neal Peart or Phil Collins. But one argument is still unexplored:...
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Lane Hartwell
San Francisco: Chicken John
Name: Chicken John Time of birth: 11:48 p.m. Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime? Showman. Ditto. We’ve heard you’re running for mayor. What’s the main idea...
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The Novice
How to Give a Tattoo
Those who can’t do, learn. In this installment of our series in which the clueless apprentice with the experts, we pick up a long-sought skill from Brooklyn tattoo artist Duke Riley—who also plays canvas.
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Op-Ed
In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was “Um”
Many hear verbal stumbles as a lack of eloquence—or worse, intelligence. However, there’s a new love and respect for our little hesitations.
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Listening
What Was Once Was Lost, Now Is Found
MTV owes me my youth. Most of my ’90s memories are a hazy blur of Lenny Kravitz videos, Mountain Dew commercials, and news about Madonna that will all come back...
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Gallery
Hand Job
The composition of everyday things is up for review. Each week we find out new things about genes, about molecular structures—so why not the letters we read on signs, in magazines, on the flipside of our hovering skateboards?
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Going Back to Kali
When We Go North
Along bumpy roads and past intimidating border posts, our author heads north for his cousin’s wedding and discovers safety might be just a state of mind, in the fourth installment in his travel journal.
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Reading
Book Digest: August 6, 2007
In his novel Elizabeth Costello, J.M. Coetzee has his protagonist give a speech when she accepts an award for her literary achievement—Coetzee’s acceptance speech to the Swedish...
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Watching
Video Digest: August 3, 2007
&tI work in an office building. My “office” is a cube in the center of the room, affording me little privacy and no view. Some of my coworkers are truly...
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The Non-Expert
Adverb Your Enthusiasm
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we help a reader determine if her one true love is letting adverbs get in the way of romance.
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Pushing Petals
All-Time Lows
In the ‘90s she toured the world with her rock band Zuzu’s Petals. Now she’s trading attitude with the other mothers at Chuck E. Cheese.
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Listening
Mp3 Digest: August 1, 2007
Pop music is at it’s best when it’s not actually pop music, but a teeming, cacophonous, and experimental diversion from pop book-ended by an otherwise unassuming, jaunty indie-pop...