"Oh no. Is it really?"
"Yes!"
I despaired. No one will vote for my chili now, I thought.
We were having our third all-staff cook-off. Previous dishes included meatballs and macaroni and cheese. This time, it would be chili. Though my goal had been to achieve the perfect balance of sweetness and spice, it seemed I had gone overboard with the peppers. How could I resist? At the C-Town on Jersey Avenue, the randomly packed, green, red, and yellow peppers were…
"Back in the early 1960s, any young boulevardier between the ages of 10 and 15 knew that the greatest publication in all the world was Mad magazine. Oh, Sick and Cracked might have their aficionados, but for the true connoisseur of humor and satire these Mad wannabes functioned largely as backups, temporary palliatives to tide one over until next month's Mad appeared at the corner drugstore. In those days an issue cost 25…
The Digested Reads are almost always at least amusing, but this week's, an evisceration of Neil Strauss' fantasy/autobiography about his life as a pick-up artist, The Game, is a particular delight.
"I didn't want to write this book. In fact, I am as embarrassed to be writing it as you may be to pick it up. But we are embarrassed for different reasons. I'm embarrassed because I'm being paid a wad of cash to write garbage…
Joshua Kosman's fine appreciation appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Robert P.Commanday's appears here. Allan Kozinn's NYT obituary is here.
I first heard Imbrie's music because of New World Records, that noble defender of American music in all its forms. Imbrie's clarity and contrapuntal majesty attracted me, particularly in his songs and his transcendent string quartets.
Yet, according to many, his greatest quality was his ability to teach…
"Underlying the hype is the silly notion that if a work introduces plenty of characters and traipses after them for enough years and pages, it is ipso facto ambitious. The true mark of an ambitious work is its style and depth. We would recognize Anna Karenina as such a novel even if only its first few pages had survived, because they depict characters with extraordinarily rich and complex inner lives. In contrast, Tree of Smoke starts off with one Seaman Bill Houston shooting a tiny monkey he sees in…
At first, the album seemed odd, patchy. I wasn't sure where Sam Beam was trying to go, wasn't sure what he was trying to say, wondered if he was lacking…
The Bird and The Bee: The Bird and The Bee
The Little Ones: Sing Song
Beirut: The Flying Club Cup
New Pornographers: Challengers
Fiery Furnaces: Widow City
PJ Harvey: White Chalk
Neko Case & Her Boyfriends: Furnace…
It was only somewhat comforting to read that these discs represent "a new generation of instrumentalists, singers, and conductors"—it's not your grandpappy's classical. I'm not over the hill, yet.
Most important, however, is the fact that Number 9 on this impressive list is Cantus' new eponymous disc—engineered, edited, mixed, and mastered by our man, John Atkinson.
I have to say that this is my very favorite…
Jeffrey Owen Jones was a father, scholar, college dean, Emmy Award winner, and magazine editor—all of which managed to fit into one paragraph of his obituary. But let the poet laureate of his generation write one nasty song about your cluelessness and that they'll remember.
Jones seemed to take it well. "'I was thrilled—in the tainted way I suppose a felon is thrilled to see his name in the newspaper,' Jones wrote in a story for Rolling Stone magazine some years later. 'I was awed too that Dylan had so accurately…