It wasn’t a dare made on a drunken night nor was it a private joke made with friends—one that would make us splutter at random moments to the displeasure of a passersby. It wasn’t even one of those mental promises made casually to myself (CVS run, get pens; sign up for dinner with faculty) that eventually slips into languid oblivion.
It happens more often than perhaps it should: a celebrity, be it rock star, movie icon, or stud athlete, is upheld on a pedestal for many years during his or her career, only to come crashing down at some shocking revelation that leaves fans disappointed and disenchanted. Sunday, February 4th left me with a similar feeling, when it was proclaimed over various social media outlets that Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his New York apartment with a needle in his arm and significant amounts of heroin in the vicinity.
Whenever people ask me, “What do Andy Samberg and Beethoven have in common?” I usually point to the obvious: “They both have big hair” or, “they both lived in different centuries.” The comedian and the composer both sport unwieldy manes … Read More
“The dead linger after their passing in the memories of those who knew them; this poem, however, lingers only on my hard drive, contextless and adrift in the sea of my thoughts and memories.”
When Pitchfork asked Annie Clark, better known by her stage name St. Vincent, how she celebrated winning a Grammy for her self-titled album St. Vincent, she responded, “I just took a shower. [Laughs.] I’m having a coffee with cocoa.”
“Punk culture is very atheistic in a certain way, and I never felt like there was really a place there for my Jewish identity. Maybe to some extent people would be into us, but there might be some difficulty in connecting with the traditional punk audience.”
