Essays

An essay

• Heaven Can Wait Nov 29, 2012

  Meredith Allen, Atlantic Avenue (bugs bunny), 2000. Courtesy the artist and Lesley Heller Workspace .

• The Age of Mechanical Reproduction Jul 10, 2011

  Jeremy Dean, Wealth of Nations, 2011. Courtesy the artist and {CTS} creativethriftshop, NY .

• The Beaver Post-Production Jul 14, 2010

  POST-PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR ANDREW CHALMAN: I’m back. This place looks like a bomb— FOSTER: Just tell me what they said.

• Just Like Heaven Jan 5, 2010

  Have a question? Need some advice?

• Six-Word Reviews of 1,302 SXSW Mp3s Mar 17, 2009

  Many bands appearing in Austin did not release mp3s directly to SXSW; only those bands that did so were reviewed. The data used to create this table is available in a Google Spreadsheet .

• Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW Mp3s Mar 11, 2008

  I recently downloaded the SXSW 2008 torrent file , which contains nearly 48 continuous hours of music from 763 acts appearing this week at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas (these bands elected to give away MP3s; they represent less than half of the total number of acts). I found myself wondering how to locate the songs worth hearing, and imagined that others were having the same problem.

• How to Say I Love You Nov 1, 2007

  Have a question? Need some advice?

• Lawyering Jan 25, 2007

  Have a question? Need some advice?

• The Grass Is Blue, by Dolly Parton Oct 27, 2005

  I just discovered Dolly Parton's 1999 album The Grass Is Blue , a collection of sincere bluegrass interpretations of country classics. Sneering poseurs might shake their heads at Dolly, but they can listen to the boring new Death Cab while I listen to Dolly break my heart over and over.

• Preview of What Is It? Oct 20, 2005

  I have now watched the Quicktime preview to Crispin Glover's self-made, low-budget movie What Is It? at least a dozen times.

• No Business Sep 29, 2005

  No Business , Negativland's 25-year audiocollage project, soldiers on. Sure, it's familiar now--they're cutting up the music industry's words and putting them back together, going after file-sharing hypocrisy this time--but no one is capable of more subversion on a single CD.

• I Am Gary Benchley Sep 27, 2005

  One Saturday night well over a year ago, I went to Williamsburg, Brooklyn—more specifically, to the bar Galapagos—to meet my girlfriend, Mo, who wanted me with her at a modern burlesque show where one of her friends was performing. I emerged from the Bedford Avenue L-train stop into a parallel universe where everyone seemed to be pressed out of the same mold.

• Alphasmart Neo Sep 20, 2005

  What makes the Alphasmart Neo interesting is what it doesn't do. It's a word processor--a full-sized keyboard with a six-line LCD screen--and that's all.

• Forty Signs of Rain Sep 13, 2005

  Kim Stanley Robinson writes good, didactic, socially conscious hard science fiction. He's best known for his Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt , which imagined what would have happened if Europe hadn't come out of the plague.

• Accidental Cairns, Mount Savage Jun 22, 2005

  I was invited, as a contributing writer for The Morning News, to attend the opening of a new show at the Museum of Sex. But the story needed a hook, because sex without context is kind of boring.

• A Tour of the George W. Bush Presidential Library Aug 29, 2004

  Now that you’ve signed your loyalty oath, let’s get started! Welcome to the George W.

• Take the Downtown Train May 24, 2004

  In 1997, Ian Kerner was my supervisor at an ‘internet strategy’ firm that evaporated in the dot-com crash. I hadn’t heard from him in years, but a few months ago, I asked a mutual friend what Ian was up to.

• The Passion of the Christ: Blooper Reel Mar 1, 2004

  (Translated from Aramaic and Latin) Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shopov) stands with the scourged and thorn-crowned Jesus (James Caviezel) before a throng of Jews, all of whom shout for Christ’s crucifixion. Pilate has a bowl of water brought to him so he can ‘wash his hands’ of Christ’s condemnation.

• Diamonds Aren’t Forever Feb 22, 2004

  On Friday February 20th, 2004 the MTA is retiring the Q Diamond train after more than 20 solid years of service, to make way for ‘progress’ and ‘faster trains’ over the newly restored express tracks on the Manhattan Bridge. Well, we aren’t letting the Q Diamond disappear without a party honoring its awesome service.

• An Interview With the Dolphin Apr 7, 2003

  Takoma is one of the U. S.

• 75,000,000 Toddlers Can’t Be Wrong Mar 16, 2003

  ‘People are wondering why I would leave this fantastic kids show and try to make it as a musician,’ Steve Burns says, holding a guitar pick in his hand. ‘And it was fantastic.

• Cool 2B Real Feb 23, 2003

  at the first meeting at Circle 1 Network , a marketing company that specializes in getting brand messages to kids age three and up, creator of cool-2b-real. com National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Rep: …I came home one night and my daughter was eating a garden burger.

• An Extremely Incomplete Taxonomy of Cinematic New Yorks Feb 2, 2003

  Looking for New York over the last 7 years, I’ve gone from the bottom of Staten Island to the tip of Pelham Bay Park, to the far end of a pier off the West Side Highway, to edges of Flushing Meadows, to the shores of Red Hook. I found wonderful places, components of a whole, but what I ended up with was a collage of impressions, no unified sense of the place.

• Obsessions: Looking It Up Nov 25, 2002

  I love reference works, and prefer Ulysses Annotated, with its maps and descriptions of the popular music of Bloomsday Dublin, to Ulysses. At least a quarter of my books have headwords, and I would rather take The MacMillan Visual Dictionary to bed instead of a novel.

• The Opposite of Sex and the City Oct 20, 2002

  I have never seen the program Sex and the City , but its images—particularly those of Sarah Jessica Parker (always all three names—the needless “Jessica” has cost us all gallons of ink and hundreds of column-inches), who plays Carrie Bradshaw, the show’s heroine—have been beamed into my mind from bus stops and subway ads, Ms. Parker looking serious and sexual and cityish in my direction, her every armpit hair waxed or shaved or plucked away.

• Where Are They Now? Sep 17, 2002

  Davy, “Piano Man” Actually, it’s David Jenkins. “Still in the Navy and probably will be for life,” right?

• A Wrench the Size of Delaware Jul 21, 2002

  It’s 8PM on Saturday. I am visiting a friend in the city.

• News of a Ratproofing Jun 25, 2002

  My neighbor wanted Joy Division. I needed something with some redemption, so we put on some Johnny Cash, Live at Folsom Prison, opened beers, lit up nasty-smelling cigars, and cursed our landlord.

• Heart of Greenness May 19, 2002

  The Gowanus Canal runs through a small section of Southwest Brooklyn, passing a block from my apartment. It is a waterway of jokes, legendary for its funk and as a place to dump gangsters.

• Visitors in Brooklyn Apr 15, 2002

  I had dinner on 47th St. with a friend from high school, his sister Sandra, down from Alaska, and an ex-girlfriend I hadn’t seen in 10 years.

• Catalogue of Bicycle Rides Apr 1, 2002

  Prologue: Training I found a kid’s bike—a BMX, half-buried in snow—in front of our porch. I showed it to my brother, who took it to the basement.

• Beyond Black Dogs and Mice Mar 29, 2001

  Churchill was beset by a metaphoric black dog; it sent him into long stretches of melancholy. Kafka had mice, and Sartre, I think, had cockroaches.