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What a tangled web we weave.
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...
I don't remember Mark Spragg's 2004 bittersweet novel An Unfinished Life garnering much review attention, but the new film based on it is sure to have a paperback edition with Robert...
For those who knew the wacky shirts were actually a comedian’s armor. For those with an answering machine message that said “Hi dee ho!” For those who’ve ever been lost out there and all alone. Excerpts from the forthcoming Dave Coulier fan fiction anthology.
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake is a collection of works by one of the best American short story writers you've probably never heard of. He was a young man,...
In which the saga is revealed that bred Gary Benchley; inspired a circus of half-loving, half-betrayed fans; landed a book deal; and even—truly—forced a trip to the hospital after Benchley almost gave his author a heart attack.
We are so excited about Gary Benchley, Rock Star—the fabulous new book that builds on (and completes!) Paul Ford’s much-loved series on TMN—that, starting today, and through...
As it turns out, the rules of science are more flexible than you’d think. When you tinker with the mechanics of the universe, however, you’d better be prepared for drastic repercussions.
Imagine every Haruki Murakami novel came with its own bar pianist--that's Solo Piano by Gonzales (the Paris-based producer of Feist, Manu Chao, many others). Unfortunately only an import for now,...
Here's the maddening thing about toddlers. They prefer Murray Wiggle to Nina Totenberg. Being a stay-at-home dad has seriously cut into my radio time, but NPR podcasts have become my...
It’s Elisabeth Eckleman’s first year of college, and she has a lot of tough choices to make. In this installment, Elisabeth travels home for a visit and returns to a roommate whose behavior is becoming more and more difficult to live with. You decide what happens next.
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything, even the oldest questions. Such as, how can you tell if a girl loves you or not?
Common on greeting cards and dorm room posters, black-eyed Susans, known as an "aggressive perennial" (translation: a nuisance), are underappreciated. They bloom their hearts out from June to October--that's nearly...
One person’s porch is another’s stomping ground; one person’s garden is another’s view. This week: How to share the world with your neighbors or, failing that, how to suffer their existence.
The siege of Leningrad lasted 900 days and hardly any food went in or out. In two months alone, January and February 1942, over 200,000 people died. Elise Blackwell's slender, lovely novelette Hunger...
When you find someone who can cut your hair right, get engaged. Otherwise they’ll eventually leave, and you’ll have to find someone new. Someone who, in our author’s case, would love to see you with a high-top fade.
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. For writers like me who can't...
Whether or not the new head of FEMA knows what’s best for New Orleans is a matter of concern—at least for the one person who knows he knows what’s best for the city. Presenting a manifesto, a proposal, a parvum opus from one Mr. Ignatius J. Reilly.
Most of today's bestsellers will be forgotten in 60 years, and some of the least-known books will be hailed as classics. For the latter category, I nominate The Furies, Janet Hobhouse's...
When a child is on the way, the last months can seem agonizingly slow. So does it help, when you’re finally ready, to have your mother suggest you and your wife are ambivalent about the whole baby thing?
Besides appreciating certain olfactory delights on their own merits, I am a normal neurotic American, bombarded with commercial messages about personal malodorousness: breath, body, foot, hair, and clothing, not to...
I rarely play computer games, and Doukutsu Monogatari is the reason. It seemed a like a harmless and fairly uninteresting diversion when I started, but that was before I spent...
Do fiction writers put their best face forward in their work or in their private lives? Will the next story always be the one that maybe gets it right? A conversation with the extraordinary author about the craft.
Peanut butter, banana, and honey. What could possibly flatter this tercet of deliciousness? I'll tell you: pork fat. In a peanut butter, banana, honey, and bacon sandwich, your taste buds...
Even in the face of disaster, life finds a way. But how long can we afford to flout forces beyond our control and live on unsteady ground? And what are we willing to pay? Our writer sends a dispatch from New Orleans.
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...
Battered and bullied in the press room, morning, noon, and night. What’s a normal, average press secretary to do when he just wants to spend some quality time with his wife? As it turns out, things aren’t much better there.
I will forever remember The Like as the band that rocked so hard it made me stop caring about Liz Phair's downturn. Their new album, Are You Thinking What I'm...
It’s Elisabeth Eckleman’s first year of college, and she has a lot of tough choices to make. In this installment, Elisabeth lies to protect Raj, then tries to determine who told the professor about their extracurricular activities in the first place. You decide what happens next.
Being a restaurant junkie when it's affordable, I read Steven Shaw's Turning the Tables: Restaurants From the Inside Out in one sitting, with two beers. It's a delicious guide on...
After a week of decisions, heartbreak, and travel, the lives of many exiled New Orleans families have been altered forever. A firsthand account of one family’s seven days of evacuation.
For years, I have eaten yogurt every morning--Dannon's Fruit on the Bottom, Yoplait's Original strawberry. All I can say is: Never again. Recently, I tried Fage Total Greek yogurt, and...
Thirty-two hours in a van, scavenging for clues and solving puzzles—that’s “the Game,” a battle of smarts and endurance, and the competition is beyond fierce. Part three: Plowing through the final competitions and racing to the finish.
Don Winslow's third novel, The Power of the Dog, is a white-hot, high-velocity narrative through the narco-trafficking of the '70s, '80s and '90s, credibly implicating the various...
If you want to know how European capitalists spend their copious amounts of disposable income and leisure time there is no more entertaining source than the Saturday Financial Times. The...
The Gulf Coast is in ruins, but that won’t stop the political machine from running—in fact, it means it’s only getting revved up. Our writer watches the waves of disaster that just won’t stop.
When a critic slams Bravo’s new take on Battle of the Network Stars, our writer remembers what made the first one worth a do-over. As it turns out, while the show could be remade, it could hardly be revived.
If it's not careful, Ratatat the band (otherwise known as Evan Mast and Mike Stroud) may find suddenly find out it's Ratatat, the star production team. With their dizzying "Big...
We interrupt our weekly Non-Expert column to bring you this dispatch, beginning a new series of letters: Our author in Rome returns home, from Italy to Idaho, finding chaos everywhere he looks.
The amount of epic symbolism and ironic tragedy overflowing Grizzly Man, a documentary about a man who wants to live amongst grizzlies, makes it almost too perfect to be believed....
I don't even remember how they all know each other any more. But for more than five years now, I've voyeuristically watched a gang of pals who quietly sort-of blog...
Thirty-two hours in a van, scavenging for clues and solving puzzles—that’s “the Game,” a battle of smarts and endurance, and the competition is beyond fierce. Part two: Cracking codes and scaring the locals.