On CNN, I think, the election night coverage was titled ‘America Votes.’ I was watching and a friend next to me said, “No, it doesn’t.”
At face value, the descriptive statement ‘America Votes’ is false. America really doesn’t vote, at least not the majority that can. The sentence ...

I've made a vow not to subject students to my highly educated and refined political world view, aka my rantings and ravings about the contemporary political situation, but I don't mind admitting that I'm totally obsessed with U.S. electoral detailia – I'm talking obsession like something ...

My father is a newsman, and during the election season he heads down to D.C. to do reporting. When Rumsfeld resigned, I knew that he would be thrilled. Donald Rumsfeld is one of my father’s least favorite Americans. When I heard the news, I gave him a call ...

Holden Caufield can wonder about the ducks all he wants. I wonder about where bohemia went—my bohemians went and why I can’t find them and how they survive on these streets in the winter—, and so I imagine my own funeral. Dynamite will be welded to my joists ...

By far the best film of 2005 was Werner Herzog’s mind-altering Grizzly Man. Those who disagree should go out and rent it again. Good, huh? I know. I liked it too.

Yes – I am one of those annoying North New Jerseyans who pretends they know the City. Just accept it. Like any other wannabe New Yorker, I jumped at the chance to show my suitemates around the Big Apple. Our lofty intentions of spending the afternoon shopping downtown were forced to ...

Like the juiciest of farts, the relieving and incredibly human production of The Playboy of the Western World arouses in the depths of your belly that sort of visceral, ancient laughter perhaps only possible and appropriate in Irish villages. It’s evident to all, not just to theater experts, that ...

Towards the end of the summer, I was wasting an evening with one of my friends in Micawber. Note: at the time it didn’t seem that pathetic. Anyways, in between flipping through random books I noticed Chuck Klosterman’s newer book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I’d read ...

I love Woody Woo students. Their affability. Their political charm. Their electoral obsession. But I know I’m not – nor ever will be – one of them. I’m a prideful English major, content with my metrics, and my ever-mounting stacks of books. There are overlaps, assuredly, between the literary and the political approaches to life – human psychology and pompous writers come to mind – but sometimes, the gulf is felt. And a lot.

David Lynch is for “intellectuals.” I once thought that this was a good thing.
And then I went to the New York Film Festival and took a look around. I guess that’s what Parliament-smoking, black-frame-glasses wearing, first-class hipsters will do to you. In fact, as I walked through the ...

It's the images of a frying egg which haunt me, I think, and make my responses to his question habitual. "No," I respond again. This is probably the fifth time he's asked me to get high with him. Something about new levels of consciousness. I tell him my ...