November 2010
1 post
September 2010
3 posts
August 2010
1 post
July 2010
1 post
April 2010
1 post
December 2009
3 posts
November 2009
2 posts
October 2009
4 posts
Alistair Morgan's 'Sleeper's Wake' -- a review
originally published at The Rumpus.
John Wraith is at war with an unlikely, but very worthy, adversary: his penis. In this battle he joins a number of notable literary anti-heroes—Alexander Portnoy and Humbert Humbert probably chief among them—whose dicks are divining rods for locating fleeting pleasure and lasting trouble.
At forty-six, Wraith is virile to a fault, his implacable horniness...
The Would-Be Activist
Because Nate was so sweetly self-deprecating about it -
“Transforming into an activist demands that one must always ask more of people than they wish, or is truly polite, so if you wouldnt mind forwarding this on to some people who wont think that you are demented for doing so, or perhaps even a post on cracking spines with a bit of an ironic twist. At your leisure, of course,...
September 2009
12 posts
“Chick lit - the range of fiction by women about contemporary city life,...”
– from Nancy Franklin’s “Brooklyn Dodger,” in the current New Yorker.
I’ve never had my entire career pre-criticized before, and so spot on.
Zombieland: A Brief Review
the smartest person i know who isn’t pretending to be an artist:
typicalmale:
I’m not exactly sure how Jesse Eisenberg managed to find himself in two “somethingland” movies in a row, playing more or less exactly the same character in each. Fortunately, it’s a good character for him, though having seen him in only those two movies it may very well be the only character for him.
Zombieland...
July 2009
1 post
June 2009
10 posts
Reasons My Dad and I Shouldn't Text Each Other
Dad: Ineluctable modality of the visible, at least that if no more...
Me: Yes
Dad: As in "Yes I said Yes I will Yes"? Or as in what the fuck is dad prattling about now?
Happy Bloomsday, Y'all.
Bonnaroooooo - day 3
At Bonnaroo, the notion of time is an extremely relative concept. During a bad set, a five-minute song may seem like thirty. Conversely, an energetic three-hour performance, like Phish’s on Friday, might be too short. Time spent waiting for a band to take the stage is always elongated, the minutes turning into hours. By the third day of the festival, sleep deprivation begins to add to time’s...
Bonnaroo Day 2
originally published, in slightly different form, by Decider
People in general (not a band) Everyone at Bonnaroo seems to have a tribal tattoo. No one seems particularly tribal. Also roughly sixty percent of the people here seem not to own a shirt despite massive productive sweat glands. Also, girls down south are less self-conscious about wearing bikinis than girls in Minneapolis. After a few...
Isa
originally published by decider: twin cities
Maria Isa, Street Politics (SotaRico)
Unquestionably, Maria Isa is multi-talented: She raps, sings, and spits out lyrics in English and Spanish with deftness. Her sophomore disc, Street Politics, ranges from funky, brassy Latin rhythms to steadier beats more typical of rap. (Though, the transitions between are just okay.) But she’s trying to prove...
May 2009
5 posts
Review - Colson Whitehead's 'Sag Harbor'
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Originally published in the Strib
Benji Cooper is having a rough time figuring out how black he is. His status as the sole black kid in his hacky-sack circle makes him acutely aware of his skin. But his parents’ wealth and his own predilections for “Star Wars” and Kraftwerk lead him to question if somehow...
the Sound Opinions guys once talked to me
originally published by reveille…like a year ago
With the emergence of file-sharing programs like Napster, music’s relationship to listeners began to change in a fundamental way: Suddenly, it was free. With no constraints except for the size of one’s hard drive, tastes expanded. MF Doom, Philip Glass, Dave Brubeck, and Justin Timberlake could merge on a single iTunes playlist....
April 2009
15 posts
Walgreen's seeks bailout
President Obama announced today from the White House’s north lawn that he was ratifying a bill the senate had just passed that would give $174.5 billion dollars to Walgreen’s, the national drug store chain.
Walgreen’s has been in financial trouble since competitors like Wal-Mart and Target began offering discount prescription drugs - Walgreen’s long-time source of profits...
For those who might be interested:
(an email i received yesterday. this guy’s pretty good, and i’d take the class if i could)
Dearest Twin Citians, (and others in the area): Some of you don’t need this. Others won’t care. But if you happen to know anyone who might enjoy this class on narrative nonfiction, I’d love to have some real writers in it. Please pass it along to interested parties: Course:...
The Cadillac is a Delorean
originally published in City Pages
There aren’t any windows in Hell’s Kitchen’s new basement location, and during their shifts the servers periodically bitch about not being able to tell what time of day it is. Especially when the lights are dimmed for afternoon happy hour, usually around 3:30, one’s temporal equilibrium can get murky. Then, on Thursday nights, things get...
PB&J -- Concert Review
from Decider: Twin Cities
“Like, half the words are just ‘la la la,’” one concertgoer remarked during Peter Bjorn And John’s Fine Line show-opener, “Just The Past,” on Tuesday, April 21. That ratio may be exaggerated, but it’s definitely safe to say that PB&J are comfortable with the classic scat-like syllables of indie pop: la, da, hm, mm, and even the...
Louis Jenkins - Twin Cities' best poet '09
from City Pages Best Of issue
Louis Jenkins would have written this paragraph better than we did. He would have written it more musically, but also somehow more bluntly. The sentences would have fit together with stronger, yet subtler, transitions. In the last 30 years, Jenkins has mastered—tackled, subdued, harnessed—the prose poem. He’s got more than 10 books to his name—most recently...
The Future of Music
from Decider: Twin Cities
The state of music is at its lowest: Record companies and record shops are closing as they deal with decreased sales, musicians are writing their songs for commercial ring tones instead of artistic merit, and a gang of renegade motorcyclists has stolen all the world’s sheet music and is holding it hostage until David Byrne promises to quit writing really great, original...