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Sittin’ Pretty in Wham City
A week and a day after I saw Dan Deacon play his new DVD, Ultimate Reality, at Bard College, I saw him buying a camera at B&H in Manhattan. B&H is probably what the Nazis feared the planet would look like by now: an electronics store run and mostly staffed by Orthodox Jews, every item…
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Billy Collins Reading “The Names” Before Congress (September 6, 2002)
“This snowfall is my final fantasy. Once America the woman was coming on my dick, her flag pin a pinhole to a world without strife. But then—” he sneezes. “Let me begin again. Terrorism. The weeping willow lowers her hair and head in sorrow. The fireman and his wife die and die and are finally…
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Debate Scorecard
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.”
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Debate Scorecard, Redux
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, remember that. AN UNBRANDED RANGE ANIMAL—JOHN MCCAIN That’s the definition of ‘maverick’, you know. THAT…
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Debate Scorecard, Part III
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 regulations, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all…
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Here We Go Again
You might have heard that a half-black man named Barack Obama is running for President. This sounds ridiculous, but the last few weeks have revealed that some have not.
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Play My Music
I had never heard a Jonas Brothers song before the first week of this school year. I was throwing a pre-game for Lawnparties, offering Tequila Sunrises and mojitos in the a.m.—the youngest oldest thing Princeton students do. The eclectic and up-to-the-minute iTunes playlist I had made for the occasion had run out, and some roommate…
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Scan His Rhymes
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 bothered to get around to with _Tha Other Side of the Trap._ Of course this…
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Moon Shot
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 in a madras sky, and the man in the moon got a rocket through his…
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“Push, Push, in the Bush”
When browsing classic disco blogs—always maintained by sweaty, foreign men, a tendency I have learned from the pictures of themselves they publish inexplicably—one can only judge the quality of the records by their album covers. There are no band biographies, no album reviews, no other photographs: it is a cultural archive without history or salesmanship.…
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*Life Story* starring Jeff Goldblum
*Life Story* starring Jeff Goldblum The mystery has a name, Jeff Goldblum.