December 2008 Archives
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The Non-Expert
How to Lose Friends and Alienate Family
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. We step in with some last-minute advice for a reader confused by a Christmas party conundrum: Do friends and family mix?
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Guides
2008 Holiday Survival Guide for Slackers
It’s a holiday tradition: You’re giftless mere hours until Christmas, and it’s printouts and January ETAs for the unlucky few on your list. Gift ideas for the eternally belated.
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Albums of the Year
The Top 10 Albums of 2008
After 12 months of listening, only 10 records remain.
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Reading
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
One might wonder why three Mormon historians—Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard—chose to investigate an unarguably black mark on the Mormon religion and published...
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Gallery
The Great American Catalog
From the holiday bizarre-fests of Neiman Marcus to the travelogues of J. Peterman, the American catalog has a rich history, saying as much about what we want as who we are.
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Listening
Diamonds From the Trough, Part 3
Enguarde! Ole! Here here! In the second part of our end-of-year mini-series searching for forgotten gems in the best-of-list, Erik got down dirty with year-end lists and caught some tasty...
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Of Recent Note
2008
From unearthed media to otherworldly technology to reflection on a personal and economic level, the year was filled with things of every shape, size, and significance. THE WRITERS give us the best of what they noted.
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Listening
Diamonds From the Trough, Part 2
In every effort to outdo Mike's first entry in this ad hoc series, I've gone about collecting those lapidary listens from the past year's releases which, though somehow managing to...
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Reading
Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting
Over Spanish painter Joan Miró’s (1893-1983) long and storied career he spent more than a decade in aggressive experimentation with material, media, and subjects--"I want to assassinate painting”—...
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Guides
How to Go Caroling
‘Tis the season to be jolly, all over the cul-de-sac, on your neighbors’ porches, against your neighbors’ most fervent holiday wishes.
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Listening
Diamonds From the Trough, Part 1
Heaving in another year's haul, diamonds gradually reveal themselves as I trawl through lists and lists of the year's best music--people distilling a year of high energy and much distraction....
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Gallery
High Lonesome
Matthew Porter’s photos are arresting for their feelings of stillness—at a car chase’s peak moment, or while the Hindenburg floats over the American West—as well as the crisp colors and punctilious construction.
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Reading
The Man Who Owns the News
Before I picked up Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff’s (Autumn of the Moguls) new opus, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch (Broadway...
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The Non-Expert
Rhymes With Riches
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. When a reader runs into a dilemma involving bitches, we take the high road, at least for a few paragraphs.
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Announcements
Of Recent Note: 2008
Here it is, the final Of Recent Note of 2008: What's the best thing you discovered this year? It could be the Fleet Foxes album, it could be tweed moccasins, it...
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Spoofs & Satire
Christmas Carols, Revised for the Recession
Not only reckless, “dashing through the snow” appears wasteful, certainly not a prudent act in uncertain times.
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Reading
Tinkers
Some months ago I received an anthology from a heretofore unknown (to me) publisher, Bellevue Literary Press. Apparently I have been blessed to remain on their mailing list, as I...
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Profiles
Bangkok Anew
Bangkok’s image as a city for sex, knife fights, and cobras is burnished to a shine. A trip home finds some of that, but mostly it’s ghosts—real ones—and they’re not quiet.
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Watching
Starship Troopers Revisited
Starship Troopers, in the year it came out, was one of most profound moviegoing disappointments of my life. I was 13, and a little idiot. I sat there blinking up at...
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Personal Essays
Our 2008 Holiday Letter
No matter how factual the accomplishments gained or the tragedies sustained, holiday letters, like the season itself, are often sugarcoated. But not this time.
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Reading
Books About Books
I am going to risk casting a pall of pedantry on this breezy corner of literary terrain and mention that late last millennium the term “meta” floundered onto the periphery...
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Listening
Blood Bank
Man goes to the woods, builds fire, thinks, records album, wins huge, deserved praise in end-of-year list gatherings. Justin Vernon, Bon Iver, will soon be back with Blood Bank EP....
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Reading
The Ghost in Love
If I had not spoken with expatriate (he lives in Vienna) American writer Jonathan Carroll a few years back, I might be surprised that his online biography is bilingual (English-Polish);...
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Listening
They All Got It Wrong
The supposed end of the world, the last amplifier. No great crescendo, just the open air, desert breeze, a bright white light. Or is this the end for us all?...
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Gallery
Like a Thief’s Dream
During the past 40 years, writer and photographer Danny Lyon has recorded the stories of “outlaw bikers” and documented the front lines of the Civil Rights movement.
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Reading
Demons in the Spring
A handsome volume by Columbia College (Chicago) mentor and Nelson Algren-award-winning writer Joe Meno (Hairstyles of the Damned), Demons in the Spring (Akashic Books) anthologizes 20 pieces of short fiction, some...
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Listening
Music Blogovision
Every once in a great while, a thing comes along which is more or less some things you've already been using diligently for that same while, and suddenly you're experiencing...
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Of Recent Note
Guilty Reading
Whether it’s political nonfiction, extraterrestrial erotica, or some combination thereof, we hold our genres dear. The TMN readers and writers reveal their favorite works from the back of the shelf.
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America, America, Burning Bright
Bright Inaugural Day, Washington
The U.S. presidential inauguration in January will be one for the ages. A hat tip to Langston Hughes.
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Reading
Lincoln Logorrhea
Even before the grand finale of the 2008 election campaign, new books on the only other president elected from the great state of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, were much in evidence in...
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Gallery
Planes on Fire
At major airports around the world, aircraft often burst into flames, get buried in buildings, and are burnt black. But don’t worry, the fiery wreckage isn’t real, it’s intentional.