Last year at this time, we were imbibing on a fine spring wine, Nouveau Obama, thinking of all the wonderful things the president was going to accomplish in his first hundred days. A long year later, the hangover not yet dissipated, we are unhappy to read about the lingering health care reform bill; to read …
Happy Birthday to Cara. At top left, two days old, coming home for the first time after another big snow in the stormy winter of 1993; at bottom left, deigning to have her picture taken, but just once, and only for the requirements of posterity. ?
Snow is not exactly a stranger in these parts, and even some eventful ten and twelve inch dumps that may have inspired shock and awe in other places get shrugged off like the play of a high school guard who averages a tidy sixteen points per game: nice, but we’ve seen it before, and we’ll …
Drove up to my house last Friday afternoon, found a guy in a car with Virginia plates in my driveway. This isn’t exactly a vision we’ve never experienced before. We’re the first driveway off the first street off an exit of a reasonably busy road that forbods people from making a left hand turn and …
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Many thanks to True/Slant’s senior producer Michael Roston, who came to my class at Marymount Manhatan College last week to talk about what makes an interesting blog, how writers can generate more traffic, and so on. Michael is very big on linking, which is why I’m linking to his True/Slant page here. He didn’t seem …
Oscars are amusing, Olympics are fun, but for a good solid laugh, give me the competition for the Diagram Prize, the award presented annually to the Oddest Book Title of the Year. The shortlist of nominees for this year’s prize, which has been awarded for the past 32 years by the British trade publication The …
The most necessary story of the young year is Jane Mayer’s article in the most recent issue of The New Yorker. It’s called The Trail, and it very carefully picks through the discussion about what legal powers we can bring to bear terrorists like the Underpants Bomber and the other dangerous individuals whom we have …
In 2008 a young poet named T.A. Noonan conducted interviews with Stacy Morrison, who is the editor-in-chief of Redbook, and with me, in my capacity as Managing Editor of Playboy, on the topic of fiction in magazines. Ms. Noonan has run the results on her website, which is called Delirious Hem. The results, I think, …
Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks. I believe this deserves three vas and a voom.