November 2007 Archives
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Watching
Video Digest: November 30, 2007
I managed to watch this week’s CNN-YouTube Republican debates and I don’t want to be a jerk, but HDTV was not kind to the candidates. Fred Thompson is...
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In Hindsight
Shop Till You Drop
The weeks prior to Black Friday were spent preparing for it: learning which gifts could drop your kid into a coma, and which you’d need to beat a fellow shopper senseless to buy.
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Christina Clusiau
The Bronx: Rocco
Time of birth: 1961. But I run circles around guys half my age. Hometown: The boogie-down Bronx, New York. Occupation, both real and desired in another lifetime: Fireman. And an entertainer,...
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Listening
A Suspect Copy of the New Lupe Fiasco
On Nov. 14, Lupe Fiasco released the tracklist to his sophomore effort, The Cool. The tracks themselves will remain in a tightly guarded lockbox until the album hits stores Dec. 18. Or...
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Guides
The 2007 Good Gift Games
As long as you’ve got two to four friends, that’s all you need for a fun afternoon of playing board games. Oh, except for a board game that’s actually fun. Presenting this year’s crop of games even sore losers will enjoy.
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Of Recent Note
Online Merchants
‘Tis the season of Amazon and Zappos, but what about those web merchants with more rare offerings, or services you didn’t know were available online? The writers offer a few of their current favorites.
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Reading
Book Digest: November 26, 2007
From Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster”: A totalitarian society makes enormous demands in the courage of men and a partially totalitarian society makes even...
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Gallery
On the Beach
Richard Misrach puts the dread back into sunbathing. Perhaps it’s that people are so small in Misrach’s pictures next to the dunes and waves, or that we’re so trivial.
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Listening
Everything’s Gonna Be All Right
The holidays have arrived. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, Black Friday looms imminently on the other side, and then it’s a mad dash to whatever your religion or creed suggests you...
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Op-Ed
What’s the Point of Giving Thanks?
Thanksgiving is upon us, and while what we’re thankful for is up to each of us, the reasons we feel so appreciative are unclear.
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Going Back to Kali
Good Morning
On the way home to Canada, Pasha Malla struggles to focus on India’s future even as one of its own children wails in his ear. The conclusion of his travel diary.
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Reading
Book Digest: November 19, 2007
From Joseph O’Connor’s yet-unheralded new opus, Redemption Falls, as his protagonist is escaping exile in Tasmania: The revolution needs theorists, visionaries, poets: figures who will be cast in...
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Gallery
The Laptop Club
A wonderfully crafty collection of construction-paper laptops designed by seven- to nine-year-olds in North Carolina that are both heartwarmingly personal and frighteningly tied to pop culture.
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Spoofs & Satire
Three Simple Ways to Abandon Your Family
When enough is enough, when federal investigators are on your trail, or you’ve decided to marry that cocktail waitress after all—it’s time to leave.
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Watching
Video Digest: November 16, 2007
Last weekend, during an Ibero-American conference, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar a fascist. Why? It wasn’t quite clear. Current Spanish PM...
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Profiles
Hail Ira
Rosemary’s Baby author Ira Levin died this week—and it wasn’t a lousy book review that killed him.
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Listening
Long Live the File-Sharers
As the recent loss of OiNK sits heavy in our hearts, I’d like to take some time out to think about the other file-sharing applications that have come before...
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Spoofs & Satire
Children’s Letters to George W. Bush
The White House is besieged by requests from all corners, even America’s classrooms. A trove of letters to the president, discovered.
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Profiles
Dianne Reeves
The jazz chanteuse talks about meeting a legend, experimenting with styles, and finding her own voice.
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Reading
Book Digest: November 12, 2007
Norman Mailer died this weekend. I was a fan of Mailer’s and think I be may one of the few people who read his massive stinker Harlot’s Ghost....
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Lisa Whiteman
Wall Township: Rachel & Arch
Names: Rachel Elizabeth Brower Albertson Pettit and Arch T. Pettit Time(s) of birth: 1913 and 1916, respectively Relation to the photographer: Grandparents Occupation title(s), then and now? Rachel: Housewife, mother,...
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Gallery
Paris Changing
Between 1888 and 1927, Eugène Atget photographed thousands of Paris scenes, cataloguing the city as it grew into the modern era. Christopher Rauschenberg spent a year in the 1990s revisiting many of Atget’s locations to see what had changed.
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Watching
Video Digest: November 9, 2007
Looking back on advertising, it is easier to unearth the hidden messages marketers embed in otherwise clear and plain copywriting. For example, look at what they are really saying in...
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The Non-Expert
Strictly Business
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we instruct a future MBA in the art of networking. That sound? The last gasp of your ethics.
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Profiles
Our Champion
When the New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp died recently from lung cancer, America lost one of its most riveting writers—one of the best critics we’ve ever had, and quite possibly among the worst.
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Listening
Lovelesses
My Bloody Valentine’s shoegazer-defining Loveless still finds incredible favor among critics and listeners alike and is generally assumed to be one of the best albums ever. The dudes at...
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Spoofs & Satire
Letter From Hollywood
Striking TV and film writers should be shutting down the industry, right? Not so fast. Hollywood has a plan for a new kind of synergy, and now that the writers are out of the way, it’s showtime.
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Going Back to Kali
Lessons in Humility
In a flying trip to Bombay, our author encounters the ghost of Gandhi and considers how the late leader’s values intersect with those of today’s hard-charging India. The next installment of his travel journal.
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Reading
Book Digest: November 5, 2007
Last week I made reference to Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska—and once pointed out that her small volume Nonrequired Reading is my inspiration for this column. In that book, she...
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Gallery
Site Specific
The tiny figures that dot Olivo Barbieri’s site-specific aerial photographs seem to be placed there by an invisible, looming architect.
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Watching
Video Digest: November 2, 2007
In high school, I spent a lot of time in the AV department. It was where the geeks, gays, weirdoes, and Goths hung out—plus the theater types, straight-edgers, pot-smoking...
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The Non-Expert
How to Say I Love You
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we pull out all the stops to help a reader say “I love you,” in precisely 100 different ways.