2009
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Humor, Interrupted
Here on the Internets, we know narrative digression all too well as the “hyperlink.” Those of us who are accustomed to, and indeed savor, the buds of info that bloom on the page waiting to be plucked may find the…
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Jonny Olsen: Laotian Pop Star
When Jonny Olsen, from Southern California, first went to Thailand, he stumbled on a plastic toy khaen, the native instrument that sounds like part harmonica, part reedy accordion. Well, the rest is pop music history… Read about his incredible (ridiculous?)…
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Punk/Rai/Jazz/Rock
Rachid Taha is an important musician on the international rock scene beginning in the early 1980s. Rachid Taha was born in 1958 in Oran, Algeria. His music is influenced by many different styles such as Raï, techno, rock and punk.…
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The Importance of Being Nice
Abject admiration is the worst way to start a review. Isn’t it the blurbist’s job to kiss a writer’s behind, the critic’s to skewer it on the formidable barb of his or her literary intellect?
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BitchCraft: Endings and Finishings
I’m obsessive. I like to knit a lot. I go through cycles. I binge knit when I do. The knitting group I go to looks at the skirt I’m making on skinny little needles and asks how long it will…
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Wiring the Lush Life
“I just saw a billboard on Houston street, it says ‘where have all the junkies gone?’” Clocking Some Time With Richard Price
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Basque Nationalist Rock/Punk
Fermin Muguruza is the prime mover behind Kortatu and Negu Gorriak, two of the fiercest rocking punk-rooted bands you probably never heard, Fermín Muguruza is almost certainly the single most important catalyst in the development of the radical, Basque language…
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WWJD (What Will Jack (Bauer) Do)?
WWJD (What Will Jack (Bauer) Do)? During the presidential campaign, many people worried that a president Obama wouldn’t be able to create new jobs. But I don’t think anyone ever envisioned that in one of his first acts in office…
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Story Time!
Sometimes you just want to come home from your haircut, curl up with Judy, and sit in the last sunshine of the day reading a good short story, a story that starts one way and then goes another, tragically, by…
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The Rumpus Long Interview with Ron English
“…The day that you don’t have any Republican friends, or you don’t have any Christian friends, or you don’t have any Muslim friends, that you only have, like, artists-from-New-York-City friends, then I think you have a problem.”
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Fade to Orange: He is So Totally That Into Me Edition
I was in Halifax this weekend, visiting my 93-year-old grandma. Seeing her reminded me of the ace movie reviews she started sending me right after I moved to New York. My grandma loved to go to “the show” and would…
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Lady Aiko, Solo
Since she broke from the international street art collective Faile that she helped to found, New York artist Aiko Nakagawa, aka Lady Aiko, is making a mark all her own. In some of her works, butterflies, bunnies and babes swirl…