Rumpus Originals
9691 posts
An Oral History of Myself #10: Jenni
I treat people the way I'm treated, with the same respect. I'm not worried about your feelings.
Recession Strippers #1: The Laura Beth Experience
Dancers always want to quit but rarely do. The cliché is that sex workers are stuck. But, it’s more complex than that. Dancers quit for years but always come back…
Loitering in the Wrong Places
The book, with its halting, unbeautiful, disjointed lines, proves her awareness of the difficulty of writing poetry about war, trade, immigration, Hurricane Katrina, and George Bush. These are intensely politicized…
A Mashup of Devils
These days one doesn’t have to look strictly to horror movies to find devils.
What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
Five short stories modeled on the works of the old masters make up this smart, witty first collection
The Dead Sea Scrolls of John Dillinger
The tale of a long-lost account of one of America’s most notorious criminals, a struggling ad man, and the contributing editor at Playboy who brought the story to light.
Don’t Look Back
A memoir by a critic for The Onion views a troubled youth through the lens of popular culture
George Pelecanos’ Favorite Westerns
The Magnificent Seven (1960) A handful of professional gunmen led by black-clad Yul Brynner are hired to protect a south-of-the-border farming village from scores of bandits in John Sturges’ western…
Denying Epiphany
Otremba’s are poems of rigorous looking. In most, a speaker coolly observes a work of art, a person or animal, the poems’ tensions emerging in part from the speaker’s struggle…
Conan the Barbarian: an Appreciation. Seriously.
I adore Conan the Barbarian. For years I’ve been telling people that my favorite movie is 8½, say, or On the Waterfront, but it’s time for me to stop lying…
When Pigs Fly
The 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…