October 2006 Archives
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Gallery
Lights in the Dark
As a street artist, Dan Witz lends wit, color, and grace to New York City. As an oil painter, he seduces outsiders into warm homes and lit storefronts.
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Spoofs & Satire
The Vanishing Date
Halloween: time for stories of headless horsemen, escaped psychos with hooks for hands, and ghosts other than the white-sheet variety. But the same stories year after year can get a little dull.
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Reading
Book Digest: October 30, 2006
I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings. Partly this is because it is fall and as the child of an academic, autumn is the year’s first season for...
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Personal Essays
All Hallows
Ghost masks, trampy nurses, and razor-stuffed apples—yes. But Halloween’s true character, as a day to remember the dead, can still sneak up on you.
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Spoofs & Satire
Googling for Trouble
The search company has asked that people tread lightly when verbing its name—but can it turn away history’s momentum?
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Watching
Video Digest, October 27, 2006
On Wednesday night, I went to the Les Freres Corbusier production of Hell House, the right-wing horror show so memorably depicted in George Ratliff’s 2000 documentary of the same name....
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The Thoughtful User Guide
iPod Etiquette
We have something important to discuss. Are you listening? Oh, seriously, will you take out your earphones? Yes, both of them.
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Celebrity Magazine
Bring Me the Head of Mickey Rooney
Staff changes are announced at the world’s most famous magazine, and Drew is handed the axe and told to swing it.
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Listening
As Reviewed by My Mother
We occasionally invite guests to review the best songs we’ve discovered that week while surfing around the mp3-blog universe. This week, I invited my mother. Ann Baldwin loves...
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Gallery
Ghostly Ruins
Harry Skrdla has a wistful eye for old mansions and giant hospitals that have fallen on hard times. Here he tours a country of ruins in the making.
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Op-Ed
Closed Heart Surgery
Going under the knife is an arduous, lonely experience, and anyone who will share your pain is welcome. But Donald Rumsfeld? Finding an unlikely medical companion in the Defense secretary.
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Birnbaum v.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about her new book and the Biafran War, being African in America, and the distorted picture of Africa created by the media.
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Reading
Book Digest: October 23, 2006
You are forewarned: This is about me. In a rare paroxysm of self-consciousness I recently spent some time going over (in my head, mind you) my contributions to American literary...
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Watching
Video Digest: October 20, 2006
Tuesday at 4 a.m., a clatter awakes me from sleep. In the dark of my living room, I find my cat batting around a small lump—a scrunchie, perhaps, or...
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The Non-Expert
At-Home Halloween Costumes
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we help a young woman work through a desperate situation: What to wear this year on Halloween?
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Personal Essays
Amuse Bouche
To butter or not to butter: That is the question, and gluttons with high cholesterol should know the correct answer. But when friends organize a gastronomic tour of Paris, who am I to say no?
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Listening
Everything But the Music
When Peter Saville created the artwork for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures he’d never even heard the album now wrapped in what is arguably the work for which he...
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The Gutless Gourmet
High School Nights Bite
Manhattan press events are like so many proms: the bold and beautiful dance all night long, and the rest of us hug the walls. So why does James Beard Award-winner David Leite keep pulling on his blazer?
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Spoofs & Satire
Acmegate
The White House has a secret that not even an Acme Ultimatum Dispatcher could eke out.
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Reading
Book Digest: October 16, 2006
Perhaps there is some truth to the old saw that literary squabbles are so vicious and virulent because they are for such small stakes. Assuming that the dispute around Myra...
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Gallery
American Cities
Catherine Opie photographs the backbone and the marrow of American cities. These portraits show not only a city’s architecture, but its character.
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Celebrity Magazine
Welcome to Celebrity Magazine
In a world where everyone is famous, who’s going to do the reporting? Working at a glossy is never easy—especially not with this cast. The first installment in a new series.
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Watching
Video Digest: October 13, 2006
So let’s talk, briefly, of the new television season. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: Have you ever seen comedians be so serious? Typical Sorkin—the show sure can rock...
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Profiles
The New Boss of Bossa Nova
Bossa nova was developed more than 40 years ago in Brazil, but one of its most lively contributors is working today in Brooklyn. A chat with Vinicius Cantuária about his music, how it’s changed, and what inspires him.
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Listening
CBGBs RIP
The history of rock may be written by the losers, but this week the losers will have some attention in their hands to point out the decline of Western civilization...
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An Online Petition to Save the Redwoods
Part Three
Continuing to pore through Charlotte’s blog leads to some strange revelations, surprising moves, and a conclusion, of sorts.
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Personal Essays
Bonding in the Battlemaze
The family that plays together, stays together—unless they’re playing laser tag.
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Reading
Book Digest: October 9, 2006
There was a point at which I experienced great vexation that the steady drumbeat of eyewitness reportage contained by the books of Jon Lee Anderson, George Packer, Thomas Ricks, and...
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Politics
Encyclopedia Brown for District Attorney
Every October, placards touting candidates you’ve never heard of litter yards and medians across the nation. Our writer creates his own campaign signs, and invites you to do the same for our Election Day photo gallery.
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Watching
Video Digest: October 6, 2006
The Departed is the kind of double-crossing, wiseguy mini-epic for which I will gladly fork over my $15. Plots twisting into gun barrels, brains and blood splashed across the lens—well,...
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Spoofs & Satire
Tricks, and Beer, Are for Kids
Adding another log to the public-relations pyre where several corporations recently burned, an exclusive, damning memo from Toys’R'Us.
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Listening
Mp3 Digest: October 4, 2006
Having just seen the K Records Documentary, I can now say with authority that music critics do have a place in this world outside of keeping Yo La Tengo in...
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An Online Petition to Save the Redwoods
Part Two
Discovering a co-worker’s blog means having to find out if you’ve been written about. Along the way, however, you will learn things you weren’t supposed to know.
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Personal Essays
In the Realm of the Oak Queen
A generation ago, the death of a pet prompted heartbreak, but the burial may have been a simple backyard affair. Pet funerals these days are going upscale, and one New York pet crematorium sets a shining example.
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Letters From the Editor
Just Can’t Get Enough
Change is good. Change is terrifying. Change achieved by means other than permanent body alteration: priceless. We never plan our redesigns. One day, we’re perfectly content with how the...
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Reader Letters
What About Dirty Harry?
Dear TMN, Francey Russell’s recitation of American Male archetypes as expressed through cinema is, as usual for The Morning News, outstanding; however, I am puzzled as to how Ms....
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Op-Ed
Betting Wrong
Session after session, congressional battles have us rooting for one side or the other. But it’s not easy to tell who the good (and bad) guys are. A theory by way of He-Man and the Masters of the United States Congress.
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Reading
Book Digest: October 2, 2006
You don’t need me to make you aware of such new books as those by Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, or Margaret Atwood—the literary press (such as it is)...
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Gallery
Light Years
You feel like you’ve seen Gerald Förster’s work before. It’s filled with people who seem legendary. But these photographs, shot in locations across the globe in a portable studio, have never been possible until now.