Rumpus Originals

Ted Wilson Reviews the World #17

Ted Wilson  ·  January 4th, 2010

THAT PICTURE FRAME MODEL
★★★★★ (2 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing that picture frame model. …more

Ted Wilson Reviews the World #14

Ted Wilson  ·  December 14th, 2009

PONZANI BROS. APPLIANCE REPAIR
★★★★ (1 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Ponzani Bros. Appliance Repair. …more

Ted Wilson Reviews the World #13

Ted Wilson  ·  December 7th, 2009

FAKING AN ILLNESS FOR SYMPATHY
★★★★ (4 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing faking an illness for sympathy. …more

Ted Wilson Reviews the World #10

Ted Wilson  ·  November 17th, 2009

THE FOR SALE SIGN PLACED IN MY YARD
★★★★★ (5 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing the ‘for sale’ sign placed in my yard. …more

The Glass Eye

Jeannie Vanasco  ·  November 12th, 2009

The night my father lost his left eye to a rare disease, my parents and I were playing a game we called The Memory Game. The goal was to find among sixty-eight cards in all two that matched. …more

Ted Wilson Reviews the World #8

Ted Wilson  ·  November 2nd, 2009

A HAT MY NEPHEW FOUND ON THE BUS
★★★★ (1 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing a hat my nephew found on the bus. …more

Letters Home

Kevin Smokler  ·  October 29th, 2009

Writing by hand does remind you, primally, of what this crazy thing we do is made of. The careful spilling of ink on paper, the joints and girders of letters. Paragraphs as immovable as cornerstones and the proud stab of a punctuation mark. The occupational hazards of a rip in the paper’s membrane or a smear on your shirt sleeve. Cluttered, imperfect business. Like life. …more

The Rumpus Interview with Trucker Desiree

Claire Cameron  ·  September 21st, 2009

“I really had nothing left in my life when I came to trucking, just the clothes on my back.” …more

Barbara Gupta’s Aha! Moment–as Told to Linda Cherripondicherikooti

Melanie Gideon  ·  September 14th, 2009

Incapable of making a good cup of tea, Barbara Gupta asks her colleague Meena Patel to teach her how to make Chai, not the pre-sweetened Starbucks kind that she loves so much, but the real thing, like the Chai that was served to her when buying overpriced textiles while vacationing in Coldcutta, I mean Calcutta, I mean Kolkata. …more

Sex and the Witty

John Madera  ·  August 17th, 2009

 There’s Something Wrong with Sven combines imaginative leaps worthy of Calvino and Vonnegut with tragicomic irreverence of the George Saunders variety. …more

The Perfect Murder Weapon

Kevin Davis  ·  July 28th, 2009

“Hey, kid, what’s the perfect murder weapon?”

George Covaleski used to ask me this question every time I went to see him. No matter how hard I tried, I could never come up with the right answer.

George knew a lot about murder weapons and the many ways people could get killed. …more

A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column: #12 Running Backs in Love

Brian Schwartz  ·  July 27th, 2009

imageDB-1Last week, D.H. Lawrence wasn’t mentioned by name in any sports sections, and no professional athletes cited The Rainbow in their postgame interviews. But there were intriguing baseball- and football-related stories about the line between violence and love, anger and passion, manhood and mania—and what could be more Lawrentian than that? …more

AN ORAL HISTORY OF MYSELF: 12. Wendi

Stephen Elliott  ·  July 26th, 2009

208-abm“Why are you doing these interviews?” …more

A Writer, a Traveler, and an Expat

Rabih Alameddine  ·  July 22nd, 2009

I’m a congenital traveler, had been long before I wrote my first book. I took my first plane ride when I was two weeks old (taught me to travel light) and haven’t slowed since. Other than the frequency of travel (you want me to come to China and you’ll pay for it? Granada and Madrid, really?) what has changed since I’ve officially become a writer is that I’m now given social license to do what I’ve always done. I’m no longer stupid and slightly insane; I’m eccentric and dedicated to collecting stories, compulsive even. …more

The Inevitability of Fashion

Ted Wilson  ·  July 21st, 2009

As a society, there are specific fashion trends we all look back on and can pretty much agree were horrible mistakes. …more

A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #11: The Auxiliary Father

Brian Schwartz  ·  July 14th, 2009

070424104857237My high school soccer coach was a Guatemalan immigrant who had made his way to the States when he was in his twenties. At first he’d earned his living as an Arthur Murray dance instructor, but that phase of his life, at least to those of us he coached, had faded into an unlikely myth. …more

An Oral History of Myself: 11. Ronit

Stephen Elliott  ·  July 13th, 2009

women_good_400x300

I put myself in the group home. I was in the therapist office with my mom and I said, “I give up. I’m not going to try anymore,” meaning getting along with my mom, and he suggested the group home. To me it was a terrific idea. …more

AN ORAL HISTORY OF MYSELF: 10. Jenni

Stephen Elliott  ·  July 5th, 2009

Jenni – Patient Account Representative

I treat people the way I’m treated, with the same respect. I’m not worried about your feelings. …more

When Pigs Fly

Troy Headrick  ·  June 29th, 2009

dubaiThe e-ticket I held in my hand entitled me to board two airplanes, which I did.  I flew all the way from Cairo International Airport to the glitzy city of Dubai with its innumerable skyscrapers jutting up out of the pastel-pink sands of that part of Arabia. …more

North of the Border

Marianne Rogoff  ·  June 8th, 2009

n303340A group of Mexican teenagers encounters a bizarre America in Luis Alberto Urrea’s latest novel. …more

The Rumpus Interview with Carlos Cuarón

Gravity Goldberg  ·  May 13th, 2009

47db358a9e530318757ee2d89cc6c4e4During an assembly-line interview process last week, I sat with writer and director Carlos Cuarón to talk about his new film, Rudo y Cursi. We met up at a self-described rock-and-roll hotel suite in downtown San Francisco. With his rat’s tail haircut and unwillingness to smile on demand, he reminded me of the kid I sat next to in eighth grade art class.

Carlos explained how Rudo y Cursi is a departure from his first writing credit, the foreign art-house classic, Y tu mamá también, although it is still a meditation on male bonding. After he got talking about the film, I asked Carlos to discuss his artistic influences. …more

Cash and Cars: Formula 1 Bahrain

Laura Onstot  ·  May 7th, 2009
cimg6650Rising in front of us, surrounded by nothing but miles of empty sand, is the Bahrain Formula 1 racetrack. …more

The Rumpus Interview with Jim Granato

Jonathan Nathan  ·  May 2nd, 2009

“How many people are willing to actually die for their art? I don’t know. I’m sure many are willing to take a risk and push themselves as far as they see fit, depending how dedicated and smart they are. Was Pat smart in the decision he made? Well, he did still have partial function of his kidney at the time, which minimized the dialysis some, although that could have changed at any point.” …more

The Rumpus Review of War Music

LS McKee  ·  April 24th, 2009

war_music_poster_1_web-797215If you live in San Francisco you’ve probably seen the signs on storefronts and taxis—the posters eye-catching and cryptic: War Music, flanked by a wing and a gun. …more

A Second Class Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Padma Viswanathan  ·  April 16th, 2009

virginia_woolf1Hermione Lee’s marvelous biography of Virginia Woolf tells us that Woolf applied the same clear-eyed and unstinting analysis to her father, Leslie Stephen, that she did to most of her subjects, subjects that tended to be Victorian, domestic, and preoccupied with the mind. On her father, the upshot, for Woolf, was this: “Stephen’s crucial weakness, she thought, was that he allowed himself to behave like a genius (badly, that is), whereas he was, as he once told her, ‘only a good second class mind.’” …more

The Rumpus Oral History Project — Harry Ricker, Alaskan

Luke Waltner  ·  March 24th, 2009

182It is -7º F outside. In his kitchen, Harry makes me tea. He is a broad-shouldered man with a prominent chin and a deep, smooth voice. He has been remodeling this house for the better part of a decade, after expanding the house where his children grew up and his first wife still lives, less than a block away from here. …more

The Rumpus Original Combo: Paul Yoon’s Once the Shore

Grace Talusan and Stacey Swann  ·  March 23rd, 2009

yoon-photo-214x3001“One time I was reading Haruki Murakami and I thought: if I had the chance, would I ever ask him why his characters always vanish? I’m not sure I’d want to. Maybe he doesn’t know either.” …more

The Rumpus Review of Sunshine Cleaning

Jenni Miller  ·  March 17th, 2009

posterA lovely little film that’s more gallows than humor. …more

The Rumpus Interview with Tucker Nichols

Jesse Nathan  ·  March 12th, 2009


Click right corner of image for full screen. …more

The Rumpus Interview with Jason Kottke

Ainsley  ·  March 2nd, 2009

sw-kottke“The site was becoming unmanageable as just a hobby… so I decided I either needed to quit the site or turn it into something I could live off of… The bigger challenge was how to balance taking the site seriously while simultaneously not worrying about it too much.” …more

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