July 2007 Archives
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In Hindsight
Smoke Signals
Looking through a month of news can reveal a lot about what’s going on in the world. And in July 2007, everybody was smoking or quitting smoking.
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Reading
Book Digest: July 30, 2007
The coming months are filled with promise of great literary pleasure: books on the horizon include those by some of my favorite writers—Andrea Barrett, Percival Everett, Richard Russo, Joseph...
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Spoofs & Satire
Television: How Novel
People who hate television love to talk about it, not realizing they could be spending their time improving their minds—with novelizations. The best of the oeuvre, with and without Steve Urkel.
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Watching
Video Digest: July 27, 2007
When my editor asked me to write about Ms. Alexyss K. Tylor for this week’s Video Digest, my prudish side was shocked. Does he know what she talks about,...
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Astroland's Last Summer
Waiting for the Sirens’ Call
Coney Island’s annual Siren Festival is billed as the largest free outdoor indie music festival in New York. This year’s lineup included 14 bands—all of which were free, outdoor, and apparently, indie.
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Pitchaya Sudbanthad
New York: Farris Libsey
Name: Farris Libsey. Time of birth: 1928. Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime? Retired electrician. How would you describe your look? Well, I look the best I can every day....
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Listening
Mp3 Digest: July 25, 2007
Apparently Daft Punk is currently touring the U.S. with what some are calling “the best show they’ve been to in their ENTIRE LIFE.” (Emphasis Daft Punk nut.) Since...
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Going Back to Kali
New Money
On a trip back to India, our author sees the shining new face of the country’s idealistic business elite—and also the not-so-shining parts. The third installment in a series of travel essays.
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Reading
Book Digest: July 23, 2007
A note to the feral fans of J.K. Rowling: Seeing them live in a seemingly endless video loop, and knowing there are apparently huge piles of lucre at stake...
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Gallery
Running the Numbers
Chris Jordan takes reports of large-scale waste and consumption out of the realm of statistics and places them squarely in front of our faces.
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The Non-Expert
Cat Heathens
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we help a reader decide whether she should send her antisocial, over-meowing feline to the big litter box in the sky.
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Watching
Video Digest: July 20, 2007
Like many of you, I’m a Nova kid. I remember sitting in the classroom, blinds closed against the Friday afternoon sun, staring transfixed at volcanoes exploding, crocodiles jumping for...
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Profiles
Web Noir
When writing for online magazines, crime doesn’t always pay—but it can earn you a fashionable T-shirt. Investigating the current era of crime fiction on the web and the magazines that are making new voices heard.
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The Artist at Home
Essad Bey at Positano
Lev Nussimbaum spent the second half of his life as a refashioned Muslim prince—before meeting an early end in Italy.
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Listening
“This Ain’t No Fado Part II,” guest-edited by Philip Graham
Did you know the Portuguese Empire lasted from 1415 to 1999? I sure didn’t. I sure do miss the Portuguese Empire. Philip Graham will too, as his year abroad in Lisbon...
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Mai Le
San Francisco: Will Chiapella
Name: Will Chiapella Time of birth: Two whole days of childbirth (sorry Ma) Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime? Street photographer, flaneur, crytoscopophiliac, generally harmless person How would you...
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Gallery
Back to Nature
The watercolors and packing-tape installations of Robert Waters are frank and intimate, with luminous simplicity; what they’re made from serves the message, and not the other way around.
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Reading
Book Digest: July 16, 2007
July happens to be the anniversary month of four revolutions—the American, the French, the Cuban, and the Nicaraguan. Maybe there is a theory that explains this; more likely it’...
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Profiles
Ozymandias’s Washington
Though the U.S. capital is home to scores of memorials, just a handful of them command the attention of most visitors. A tour of Washington’s other monuments.
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Watching
Video Digest: July 13, 2007
The other day I saw a woman wobbling down the street in high heels, texting someone as she walked. You see these people every so often in New York, weaving...
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Albums of the Year
The Top 10 Albums of 1983
Because album lists shouldn’t happen only once a year. In this installment: The New Wave was drying up and the New Romantics were taking hold. But tell that to a Cub Scout in 1983 and you’ll get a blank stare.
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Listening
Reviewing the Week in Pitchfork Reviews
Pitchfork continues to be one of the most popular and polarizing music review sites around, even 11 years after it first began. In fact, calling them a “music review site” is...
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Birnbaum v.
Thomas Mallon
When history class turns into a blur of names and dates, historical fiction may be just what you need to put a face on things. Thomas Mallon talks with our man in Boston about the appeal of novels and the state of publishing.
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Going Back to Kali
A Couple of My Dad’s Lives
On a trip back to India, Pasha Malla sets his itinerary in search of his past. He gets up close and personal in a nation of arranged marriages, in the second installment in his travel journal.
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Astroland's Last Summer
Independence Day
Coney Island celebrated the Fourth by crowning the first American hot-dog eating champion in seven years.
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Reading
Book Digest: July 9, 2007
Here’s some inside baseball on big-time journalism’s favorite default mechanism to fill space or air in the event of a slow news day or a lack of imagination:...
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Gallery
Obedience
Even if you’ve never heard his name, chances are you’ve seen Shepard Fairey’s stickers, posters, and stencils on lampposts in New York City, or peeking out from doorways and street signs in one of the countless countries where his street art has traveled.
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Watching
Video Digest: July 6, 2007
About two years ago I wrote an article for this magazine about Battle of the Network Stars. It was an attempt to defend the 70s and 80s kitsch show—as...
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The Non-Expert
Midnight in the Garden of Wood and Evil
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we address a reader’s concern about her plant’s feelings with stories about menacing shrubs.
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Profiles
Cassandra Wilson, Impromptu
For singer Cassandra Wilson, some of the best music is composed on the fly, and if the entire performance is last-minute, so much the better.
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Reading
Book Digest: July 2, 2007
From a Paris Review interview published in 1977, here’s Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on patriotism: Interviewer: You are a veteran of the Second World War? Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: Yes. I want...
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Gallery
Wild Animals
Think of your favorite teddy bear. Now imagine it’s been ripped open, gutted, and turned inside-out. That’s what Kent Rogowski has done to the iconic stuffed animals of our childhoods.