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In Which The Saxophone Travels Extremely Well
The Sensual Experience by JOANNA SWAN Atop the Great Wall the other day, savoring the great silent woods below, I was assaulted by Kenny G. His music was coming from a transistor radio clutched by a...
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In Which Shawty Right There She's Got Everything I Need
The Archaeology of Bieber by MOLLY O'BRIEN Most of the cultural phenomena that surrounds pop music is self-explanatory — it all really boils down to “the men don’t know but the little girls...
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In Which She Gave Herself To Sin And Providence
This Blessed Arrangement by KARA VANDERBIJL The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides 406 pages Madeleine Hanna's time at Brown University has been confusing: she chose to study literature out of (she...
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In Which We Mandate A Reverse Bechdel Test
How to Be a Gentleman by DANIEL D'ADDARIO In order to pass the so-called Bechdel Test, a work of art must contain two women discussing a subject other than a man. Black Swan and All About Eve — films...
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In Which We Know Nothing Of His Work
Streamlined All of the critic Marshall McLuhan's work is about communication, so taking stock of his rhetorical inventory in his letters is dizzying work. He appears to have an easy facility with...
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In Which We Make Life Decisions Based On Media Archetypes
The Dastardly and the Dopey by SARAH HIRSCHMAN Around the third day of architecture school, you realize things are not quite what you expected. Your friend's architect father, when he took you to...
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In Which We Were Pretty Much Dead To Begin With
White Flight by DICK CHENEY The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont Sundays at 9 on AMC Only white characters are permitted backstories on AMC's The Walking Dead. If you are white, you have a...
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In Which We Start Dating Elvis Presley
This is the first in a two-part series. An Elvis Timeline by ELLEN COPPERFIELD Thanks to Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen's supremely detailed 1999 book, Elvis, Day by Day, the trivial details of...
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In Which We Invest Everything In Lou Reed
Try It At Least Once by HANSON O'HAVER "I would cut my legs and tits off/ When I think of Boris Karloff" is how the Lou Reed/Metallica (henceforth: Loutallica) album, Lulu, begins. Immediately it's...
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In Which Joseph Cornell Transcends Personal Nostalgia
Inside the Box by ALEXANDRA MALMED The American artist Joseph Cornell's sister recounted that his first experience with the cosmos was one of fear. After examining the winter sky from a window in...
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In Which We Get Down To The Actual Writing
margaret atwood in cambridge, 1963How and Why to Write The best writing advice contradicts itself, because there are not a finite number of ways to create a masterpiece. Advice about writing is more...
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In Which The Life We've Been Living Will Bleed Us Dry
Messing Around by ALEX CARNEVALE Indecent Proposal dir. Adrian Lyne 121 minutes When Robert Redford first sees Demi Moore in Adrian Lyne's 1993 movie Indecent Proposal, she's taking a handful of free...
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In Which A Long Long Time Ago
Suicide by Planet by ALEX CARNEVALE Melancholia dir. Lars Von Trier 131 minutes Melancholia begins with the two stalest of film clichés, presented back-to-back: the end of the world, and a wedding....
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In Which We Are Vaguely Offensive And Obviously Out Of Place
Substantially Late to the Party by JOANNA SWAN Certain habits of a socially dubious nature are sometimes afforded an aura of Cool when rephrased in an affectedly casual way: thrift store shopping,...
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In Which Lemmy Is Most Likely God
Trick Question by HANSON O'HAVER Airheads dir. Michael Lehmann 92 minutes In the early 1990s, a group of men set out — unknowingly, as these feats invariably are unknowable — to make the most...
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In Which Our Heart Fills Up Like A Balloon That's About To Burst
The Soft Animal by ELENA SCHILDER American Beauty dir. Sam Mendes 92 minutes A few days ago I stopped at the St. Mark's Bookshop and bought a collection of Mary Oliver poems. I was trying to give...
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In Which Pedro Almodóvar Is Both Violator And Violated
Manipulation Without Intervention by KARINA WOLF The Skin I Live In dir. Pedro Almodóvar 117 minutes The first five minutes of a movie are like the opening parries of any relationship — the early...
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In Which We Return To Something Like Pasture
Padlock by RACHEL MONROE On my birthday I realized the most complicated relationship in my life was a geographical one. This didn't make me feel any better. Baltimore was endearing — there was, for...
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In Which We Imagine Ourselves As Veronica Geng
with Philip Roth Veronica in the Extreme by HELEN SCHUMACHER Even after her death, her friends didn't hesitate to call her a monster. Veronica Geng, a contributor and fiction editor at the New Yorker...
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In Which God Generally Likes To Watch
Black Furniture by JESSICA FERRI The Devil's Advocate dir. Taylor Hackford 144 minutes Are you a really good lawyer or is your dad just the devil? This is the type of question that plagued our minds...
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