HE MAKE IT RAIN HE MAKE IT RAIN HE MAKE IT RAIN HE MAKE IT RAIN—GEORGE BUSH “[T]his is a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years… that essentially said that we should strip away … Read More
Editor’s Note: What follows is composed from features published in The New Yorker between September and December 2010. No alterations beyond rearrangement were made to the texts, excepting those that ensured gender, tense and number agreement.
As _Avatar_ gradually accrued its second billion dollars in the last few weeks, coverage of the film itself (rather than its receipts) sank from complacent praise to idle speculation. Was the film racist? Well, accidentally. Is there going to be … Read More
The case for Anne Carson’s _Nox_ might begin with its box (that’s not binding): grey with white binding (that’s not binding) and a single silver sliver, in which stands a boy diver on grass maybe forty summers ago, wearing superhero … Read More
WICKEDEST CENSORS—CNN “Hey, can I call you Joe?” she asked. “[Off-mike],” he responded. BEST MIXED METAPHOR—SARAH PALIN “The barometer there, I think, is going to be resounding that our economy is hurting.” MOST GERUNDS—SARAH PALIN Gerunds are for the weak, … Read More
People change. People estrange. The wear and tear on the asbestos flange took my grandfather at seventy-five. My grandmother is alive, and turning eighty. The moon landing is forty. I am twenty. Ten, five. The moon is a Kennedy penny … Read More
If great hip-hop artists produce minor hip-hop artists, as RZA brought us Method Man and Biggie Diddy, Gucci Mane may achieve greatness on October 5th, when Waka Flocka Flame attempts to achieve with _Flockaveli_ what OJ Da Juiceman sort-of eventually … Read More
GREATEST INVASION IN FOREVER—NORMANDY
In the undisputed declaration by McCain, the American invasion of Normandy in World War II is “the greatest invasion in history, still to this day, and forever,” although he promised, snickering, that his future land war in Asia would give it a “run for its money.”
Close your eyes. Are they closed? No, good point, I guess you’ll need to keep them open to read the Powerpoint. Okay, close them when you can, and otherwise close your inner eye, or eyes. The number of inner eyes … Read More
It’s the little things you remember when you die. The children. The moments. Your face after achieving multiple simultaneous orgasms. The orgasms. The presidential campaigns, the incipient volcano underlying the western half of the continental U.S. It’s the little things … Read More