November 2011
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Cultivating a Scruffy Image
“Vonnegut’s genius was to stake out this experience of anticlimax as his novelistic territory. His heroes are bemused bit players whose lives are measured by their distance from great affairs, rather than their proximity to them. It is a worldview…
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Love of My Life: Freddie Mercury’s Death, 20 Years Later
On Monday, Nov. 25, 1991, my mother woke me up with a knock on the door. “What’s the name of that singer you love so much?” she asked, cigarette and coffee in hand. “Because he’s on the news.” I was…
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More Burgess
“Manchester-born Anthony Burgess, who died in 1993, wrote at least 33 novels, 25 works of non-fiction, two volumes of autobiography, three symphonies, and more than 250 other musical works including a piano concerto, a ballet and stage musicals. “But more…
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Real David Crockett
“Wallis points out early on that Crockett was most definitely not ‘born on a mountain top’ and only started wearing his iconic coonskin cap when he needed to boost his public visibility and stay politically relevant. Literally turn the page,…
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You Tell Me Its Underpinnings
Davis maintains a deep engagement with, and investigation of, the world around her. She is able to immerse herself in the newness of things by seeing them through children’s eyes, and describes what she sees with a lovely freshness and…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Update: the world is very small. Man, there were some pretty awful ideas for what the White House should look like. Oh hello, spider shrimp. Ugly Renaissance Babies is your tumblr of the day. A visual history of Manhattan’s grid.
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WHERE I WRITE #19: With Love From My Desk From A Dumpster
I write at a desk two gay men helped me pull from a dumpster and load in my truck. The legs are bruised, and its paint’s coming off.
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HIDE/SEEK in Brooklyn
Gallerina implores us to see HIDE/SEEK, “the groundbreaking examination of sexuality and gay identity in American portraiture” that opened last week at the Brooklyn Museum to the din of anti-gay groups. Noting its novelty and nuance, she breaks down the…
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Erin Rose’s Tech Links
So now facebook has a phone. Apple now owns several porn domains that could potentially be affiliated with the company’s trademarks. Somehow I doubt they’ll be making their own iPhone porn. The US public is willing to accept experts’ consensus…
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Inventing Languages
This article discusses the Klingon language—its creation and lasting influence (“people get married in Klingon ceremonies; one man tried (unsuccessfully) to make it his son’s native tongue”). The piece ends with a video in which linguist Marc Okrand explains how he…