May 2009 Archives
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Current Reads
Performance Anxiety
Alex Rodriguez stopped being interesting to me about the time he went from the Seattle Mariners—where he played with Junior Griffey—to Texas, where he was handed 200 million dollars...
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Awards
2009 Editors’ Awards for Online Excellence
We maintain a list throughout the year of our favorite new websites—the ones that entertain and inform our wired lives. Presenting the 2009 Eddys, celebrating the best of a fleeting medium.
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The New Pantheon
George Pelecanos
(Photo by Robert Birnbaum) One of the dependable touchstones of publishing is that every few years that rickety engine will cough out a book by maestro George Pelecanos (and a...
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Current Reads
Desperate Housewife
While I am not a big fan of Oprah Winfrey, I don’t hold it against any writer that Oprah (who is not a tasteless dummy) may have brought them...
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Letters From Mumbai
It’s Like This, Only
Language in Mumbai can be tricky for newcomers, especially foreigners trying to hail taxis.
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Announcements
How Are You Coping With the Recession?
This month's Of Recent Note topic is: Recession Confessions Are you stealing paper as well as pens from the office? Furnishing your apartment with castoffs? Attending parties you wouldn't normally...
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Deadwood on the Hudson
An Arm and a Leg to Be Divided
Four hundred years ago, Henry Hudson took a pleasure cruise up to Albany—and so began a bloody, murderous chapter of American history.
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Apropos of Nothing
An Introduction
Despite something approximating my best efforts, many venues for book information continue to propagate the silly notion that there is such a thing as summer reading. This is such a...
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Current Reads
Best Western
As a young American, I was never enamored of the so-called horse operas that populated the airwaves in the ‘50s and ‘60s: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, Gunsmoke,...
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Genre Genre Genre
Dirty Big Secret
English writer Philip Kerr, who has authored 19 novels (including some children’s books) and found himself on Granta’s second “Best of Young British Novelists” list in 1993 (along with Louis...
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Current Reads
The Artist Accused
Photographer Philippe Halsman snapped some of the planet’s most famous faces—Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Bob Hope, and countless others—and...
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Gallery
Teen and Transgender Comparative Study
The series is a correlation of two stages of transformation, pairing teen girls (12-14) with like adult male-to-female transsexuals.
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Interview
Cadillac Man
Cadillac Man, as he was known on the streets, spent the better part of the past 15 years homeless in New York City. After losing a managerial position at a Pepsi...
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Announcements
What have you been paranoid about lately?
This month's Of Recent Note topic is: What have you been paranoid about lately? There's always job loss and pandemics to worry about, and zoo carousels that go much faster...
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The Non-Expert
The Power of the Three
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we reveal the secrets of the mighty triumvirate that rules the universe. But you didn’t hear about it here.
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The Spider and the Fly
Your First Lay
Of the free games included with Windows, none is more treacherous than Spider Solitaire. In the second installment of a new series, the master sets the tutelage in motion.
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Op-Ed
Prodigies, Peons, and Purple People Eaters
The wide world of sports is full of fallen angels and exhausted stories. A season of discontent condensed into five brief acts, with prayers for a glorious summer.
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Spoofs & Satire
Letters to a Young Lawrence Welk
Before he became famous, Lawrence Welk was just another hoofer working for tips. Then he reached out to Rainer Maria Rilke.
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Gallery
At the Lake
Heading to the lake this summer? You may want to rent a kayak for the best views. According to Amy Bennett, a return to the great outdoors is another opportunity to peek in on the neighbors, and it just might have something to teach us about human nature.
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Op-Ed
Autistic Trekdom
In the latest Star Trek movie, Gene Roddenberry’s message of diversity takes on new relevance as more people are diagnosed with Autism.
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Letters From London
When the Going Was Good
British elites have been caught using public money to clean their moats, and a nation seethes. A primer on Parliament and the latest controversy sweeping Great Britain.
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Personal Essays
Reading With Scissors
If not for a tragic car accident in 2001, W.G. Sebald would be celebrating his senior citizenship next week. Recalling an obsessive introduction to the author’s unclassifiable genre.
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Listening
No Take Backs
Four Tet is actually Kieran Hebden, a post-rock/electronic musician from London. Dubstep producer Burial, after a great deal of speculation, finally owned up to being William Bevan. Hebden and...
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Interview
Jad Abumrad
Not sure if this question is appropriate for the morning show but I’d like to know if Jad would ever consider exploring why humans have no guilt in killing...
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New York, New York
Out of the Old Hotel
As the New York Times kills its City section this month, New York loses a fine way of knowing itself. Paying tribute to all the Joseph Mitchells and Joe Goulds.
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Gallery
White Space
Painter Silke Schöner turns landscapes on their heads with extraction, paving fields and sky with empty plains of space that we can fill in.
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Personal Essays
La Vache Qui Rit and Another Cow Altogether
A passion for French cinema turns into an offscreen romance. Never mind the language barrier, because the cultural barriers are so much funnier.
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Personal Essays
The Transient, Digital Fetish
As the world goes Kindle and iPhone-mad, paperbacks and mixtapes become worthy of devotion. Watching a music collection disappear and wondering what it meant.
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Notes From the Lawn
Timescape
We preserve old buildings, why not old landscapes? Transplanted horticulturalist JESSICA FRANCIS KANE discovers a mysterious garden outside time’s realm in Greenwich Village.
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Listening
Waiting for the Right Move
Less than a month has passed since up-and-coming Austin act VEGA, who were pretty well-received at SXSW earlier this year, allegedly stole Crystal Castles's guitar pedal, and yet we're all...
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Spoofs & Satire
Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman
The U.S. and the U.K. have much in common, but not postage. A duo account for the mysteries of two very different mail systems.
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Gallery
Begin the Bauhauroque
Paul Laffoley’s paintings of time machines, prayer devices, and maps of the cosmos take inspiration from such sources as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his own encounters with UFOs.
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Of Recent Note
Viva Print
As the industry stands ready to pulp entire newsstands, devotees of periodicals refuse to give up on their first love. Our readers and writers extol their favorite ink-based publications.