Does gravity have commitment issues? For months on end, it grounds and steadies us, then at the least topple, it sucks us off balance. Classic ambivalence, I would say. Drunks and babies fall softly because they are not arrogant. The rest of us fall hard—in love, off the wagon, from glory—and fall so […]
Nostalgia travels at the speed of sound. This is the obvious conclusion after watching four, five or—why the hell not?—twenty-five old MTV-era music videos archived in YouTube’s vast URL indices. The age of a person’s cultural tastes, on the other hand, travels far faster. So fast that if you search for […]
When I woke from the nap it was dark in the room except for the lights on the tree. I was headachy and confused, and when I moved, my laptop woke too and lighted my face. The neighbor, coming home from work, was walking past my window just then and glanced […]
Having devoted a chunk of my life to writing for and editing magazines, I wondered whether Jeff Jarvis’s smart little chronicle, Magazine, would feel like nostalgia or PTSD. He opened so well, it ceased to matter. The pages of books, Jarvis wrote, “give the tactile impression of a dowager’s fine linen stationery.” The […]
What does a musical artist do in the midst of a bloody war? Eddie Balchowsky was twenty-one and planning on a future as a concert pianist. He had studied three years at the University of Illinois (before getting booted because he had broken into a music studio). He wound up in Chicago, working […]
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” is easily the most famous film-script shorthand, if not legerdemain, for what we mean when we say that fiction has outrun or beaten reality at its own game. Film fans everywhere know it as the most famous line from the 1962 John Ford […]
My younger son wanted to visit the Goodwill Outlet in the city before he goes back to school. He convinced me to drive by saying they would have wall mirrors, which I collect from Facebook Marketplace, and even possibly a chair. He wanted to look for thrifted clothing. Teens love washed-out […]
Douglas Adams called him “the greatest comic writer ever.” Hilaire Belloc went so far as to pronounce him “the best living writer of English,” and rather than retract that excessive praise he explained it. P.G. Wodehouse had perfectly accomplished what he set out to do: create and sustain a world that would amuse […]
I used to grin when our most cynical friend, a British leftist, ranted about The Mouse, his shorthand for the Disney empire and therefore for all the evils of late-stage capitalism. But with Mickey emerging from his legal cage of copyright protection, his true nature is open for speculation. “Mischief,” we called it […]
I was explaining to my son how classical Asian poets known as Stonehouse, Cold Mountain, Spring Essence, and Bashō (a raggedy, unproductive form of banana tree) took pen names from significant places or things in their lives. These names have a comic quality now for their simplicity and the way they […]
