January 2005 Archives
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Opinions
New Ways to Lose Your Lunch
Everybody barfs. But it’s an altogether different product depending on if you’re an infant or the last one standing at tequila happy hour.
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The Non-Expert
Cameron’s Physics, Tara’s Slips
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we help two readers with vital questions of national security: Can cars backtrack mileage if driven in reverse, and who is responsible for forcing celebrities down our throats?
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The Education of Elisabeth Eckleman
Flirting With Disaster
Elisabeth Eckleman just left home, and has a lot of difficult decisions ahead of her. In this installment, Elisabeth decides that when her date becomes a ho, she will too. You decide what happens next.
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Stories
Richard Wagner’s The Breakfast Club
While the influence of Wagner’s oeuvre is heard today even in such folksy phrases as “It ain’t over ’til the prom queen sings,” what endures most from Wagner’s one true masterpiece is its totally bitchin use of character motifs. JAIME J. WEINMAN explains.
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New York, New York
Your Books and Neighbors
A used-book store stocks its customers’ tastes and perversions, and then sells them to their neighbors. A Brooklyn shop find life after New York’s Book Row heyday by providing a service computers can’t beat.
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Letters From the Editor
Recent Holiday Travel
A frazzled woman struggles to keep her three children from running wild through the magazine shop, and finally screams, “Tyler! Jackson! Monroe! Front and center, now!” A man, presumably her...
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Birnbaum v.
Louis de Bernières
Our man in Boston talks with author Louis de Bernières about his most recent book, Birds Without Wings, during a fascinating discussion about the Ottoman Empire, how good people go astray in crowds, and the richness of Arab proverbs.
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The Non-Expert
The East Coast Olive Conspiracy
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we answer an age-old question about green and black olives, and more importantly, and why New Yorkers can’t get green olives on their pizza.
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The Rooster
The First Annual TMN Tournament of Books
Too often are literary awards arbitrary, dull, or meaningless. Too rarely are they determined by an NCAA-style Battle Royale of bloodthirsty competition. It’s time for a change. Announcing the First Annual TMN Tournament of Books—complete with downloadable brackets poster!—sponsored by Powells.com.
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Gary Benchley, Rock Star
Working the Demo
Trusting your instincts is tough; trusting others’ instincts can be a lot harder. Chastened with a broken ankle, Benchley puts his faith in his roommate’s healing hands, and his band’s ideas for their future.
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Listening
The Tears, Live in Heaven
In 1992 Suede was hailed by the notoriously excitable Melody Maker magazine as “The Best Band in Britain”—before they even had a legitimate single out. The appraisal, almost unbelievably, was...
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Gallery
The Ghosts of Christmas Just Past
The tinsel and Santas have come and gone in the city, but still we are haunted by Christmas: the tossed-out trees that never seem to go away. TMN Contributing Photographer Geoffrey Badner brings us a gallery of coniferous Laura Palmers.
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Personal Essays
A New, Old House
It’s true: You can never go home again. Watching a construction team renovate the house you grew up in, and understanding why your parents wanted a new place to live.
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The Education of Elisabeth Eckleman
Pimps & Ho’s
Elisabeth Eckleman just left home, and has a lot of difficult decisions ahead of her. In this installment, Elisabeth goes to a sorority party and isn’t sure what to do once the theme takes over. You decide what happens next.
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Gallery
Look at Me
If you spent your entire life traveling—and posing for a photo on every trip—would you want your memories sold at a flea market? Or published on the web? TMN Art Director Frederic Bonn brings us a startling gallery of found pictures.
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Birnbaum v.
T.C. Boyle
If we spend so much of our lives thinking and worrying about sex, is it any surprise the involved emotions are tied to chemicals? A conversation with maverick author T.C. Boyle in a lively back-and-forth about Dr. Alfred Kinsey, contemporary fiction, and the role of the husband in the kitchen.
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The Non-Expert
People Watcher
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we help a college student out of her end-of-school doledrums by suggesting a hobby both interesting and adventurous, but that sometimes skirts the wrong side of the law.
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Personalities
Letters from Egypt: Short, Cautionary Tales
Hotel bombings and terrorism aside, it’s the daily alien frustrations and local rituals that put the grit into living abroad. Our writer reports from Cairo on the small infuriations that make her city unique.
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Gary Benchley, Rock Star
Among the Horses
In the city of ambition, dreams are rarely packaged with paychecks, and everyone must do something to pay the bills—even if it doesn’t involve rock.
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Gallery
The Bear
Traveling to see the world can provide fresh perspectives, especially if one’s view is less than two inches from the ground. Artist Witold Riedel brings us a gallery of a very small friend abroad in the world.
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Spoofs & Satire
Diaries of Andy Warhol, Terrorism Czar
The White House has found trouble in recent weeks with its security appointments, so the president boldly takes a new approach. Our writer reports on Andy Warhol’s installation as the ultimate (and silvery) homeland defense.