December 2011
21 posts
5 tags
A Drunken Afternoon with Anthony Bourdain →
“I made a number of really important decisions in my life very early on,” he continues. “I didn’t go to France. I didn’t even bang on the doors of the best restaurants in New York, begging for a position. I took the money, I took the girls, I took the drugs. I had a hell of a good time.”
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Václav Havel's Funeral: Why Truth Needs Love →
In this universe, it makes complete sense to mix a deep-seated appreciation of free speech, keen interest in far-flung human-rights abuses, literate debate over economic policy, fierce defense of personal freedom, and a well-cultivated taste for life lived interestingly. This will remain one of Havel’s greatest legacies.
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The Ghost →
“I got this new song I just wrote. It’s about how much I hate the modern Nashville establishment. It’s called ‘I Put the Dick in Dixie and the Cunt in Country,’ but my label hates that shit. They’ll never let me record it. So fuck them. Fuck them all. They can all go fucking fuck themselves.”
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The Zombie Hunters: On the trail of... →
The note was cordial and succinct, written in stilted English. “Hello,” it began. “We attack your servers for some time. If you want save your business, you should pay 10.000$ bank wire to our bank account. When we receive money, we stop attack immediately. If we will not receive money, we will attack your business 1 month.”
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Struggling To Survive →
A year after the storm, St. Bernard Parish is struggling to survive. The recovery has gone little better than the initial response. The deluge of water was followed by an alluvium of indecision and a blizzard of red tape.
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Ghosthunter →
Preserving the gingerbreads is fraught with obstacles, not the least of which is the dissonance that comes from spending money to improve high-end housing in a city where a half million people lack shelter.
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When Irish Eyes Are Crying →
“Irish people actually believe in fairies?,” I ask, straining but failing to catch a glimpse of the typical fairy ring to which Ian has just pointed. “I mean, if you walked right up and asked him to his face, ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ most guys will deny it,” he replies. “But if you ask him to dig out the fairy ring on his property, he won’t do it. To my way of thinking, that’s believing.” And...
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Unspoken Truths →
Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.
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Velvet President →
Vaclav Havel, the 66-year-old former Czech president who was term-limited out of office on February 2, built his reputation in the 1970s by being to eyewitness fact what George Orwell was to dystopian fiction. In other words, he used common sense to deconstruct rhetorical falsehoods, pulling apart the suffocating mesh of collectivist lies one carefully observed thread at a time.
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The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway →
The year was 1960 and Randy Wickline was building something so immense and unnerving that he dared not ask what it was. All the Superior Supply Co. plant manager was told was that he was to haul concrete — an endless river of concrete — to be poured into the cavernous hole that had been excavated beside the posh Greenbrier hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.
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Death of the interview →
What is lost amid the swirl of random information? What died along with the interview? Texture and perspective, to be sure, and any true sense for who an athlete really is and what he stands for.
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Mercenary →
If Larry and Kyle were real, then Zeke was an assassin in the employ of a secret governmental agency that had seen fit to give him a job at a nuclear plant just as he was starting to go crazy with guilt and shame. If they weren’t real, then Zeke was not just a liar; he was a liar who was willing to engage in complicated three-way public conversations with people who didn’t exist. He was a liar...
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How To Become An American →
Some of them died in the war. Some were slaughtered when it ended. Some of them died in the deep jungle, and some drowned in the Mekong, because the Hmong were mountain people and didn’t know how to swim. Some of them died in the camps. Moua survived. He is here. His son, on the floor playing video games, is a quarterback and a defensive back and an American.
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The People Who Hate Tim Tebow →
On one pole, you have people who hate him because he’s too much of an in-your-face good person, which makes very little sense; at the other pole, you have people who love him because he succeeds at his job while being uniquely unskilled at its traditional requirements, which seems almost as weird. Equally bizarre is the way both groups perceive themselves as the oppressed minority who are...
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Twainmania: Hannibal, Mo., braces itself for a... →
The shopkeeper protests that he’s not going to Paris but is in fact staying at home the entire summer, and Twain’s friend can’t believe it. “It was a lie — that is my opinion of it!” he tells Twain after they’ve left the store. I’ve found myself in that same situation. I’ve already run into several people who have no plans to go to Hannibal next year, and I attribute that to their not yet...
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Obama takes on the LRA →
Obama’s apparent sudden escalation of U.S. engagement in Uganda, then, came as quite a surprise. His announcement did not publicize the fact that U.S. Africa Command has had an unspecified number of soldiers deployed in the area to assist the Ugandan army for years.
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The Power of Poobah: From the Tennessee... →
Last night at the recording studio, the subject of pawnshops came up, and Poobah said, “I used to bank at pawnshops.” A few seconds later, he said, “I should write that down. That sounds like a song.”
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Letter From Egypt →
There is a question that less-sophisticated Americans ask (and more-sophisticated Americans would like to): Why are people in the Middle East so crazy? Here, at the pyramids, was an answer from the earliest days of civilization: People have always been crazy.
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Tim Tebow: Magical White Person →
While the Magical Negro is downtrodden and discriminated against, yet mystically gifted, Tebow has spent the last eight years or so with every advantage at his disposal, and he’s managed to run the NFL game play gamut from merely mediocre to preternaturally awful. Somehow, he’s managed to achieve this despite terrible adversity, like licensing deals.
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What Editors Think of Writers →
We all stand on the shoulders of giants, right? Not these wannabes. There is no yesterday. History is irrelevant, even for stylistic purposes. I’m not sure what they read. Correction: whether.
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The Difference Between American and British Humour →
Americans say, “have a nice day” whether they mean it or not. Brits are terrified to say this. We tell ourselves it’s because we don’t want to sound insincere but I think it might be for the opposite reason. We don’t want to celebrate anything too soon.
