“In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening anywhere in the world without leaving his own house,” the gypsy chief Melquiades prophesies to the settlers of Macondo on Page 2 of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Fast-forward 415 pages, and we learn that Melquiades’s chronicle of […]
Before al Qaeda and ISIS, before the age of attacks at crowded celebrations such as the Boston Marathon or the prelude to a Sugar Bowl, the “dangers” at a New Orleans New Year’s celebration were considerably more, well … entertaining. As one year passes to the next, the famous French Quarter is usually jammed in […]
Angela Merkel hired no fewer than eight English language translators to work on the German text of her new autobiography, Freedom, which is astonishing when one considers how little of substance she has to say. Upon assuming the chancellorship of Germany in 2005, Merkel made history not only as the first female leader of the […]
Right before Thanksgiving, social media’s latest viral star was born: a Cambridge academic named Ally Louks, who posted a photo of herself on X posing with her successful dissertation only to generate hundreds of thousands of comments mocking her work due to its title, “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.” […]
In typical American fashion, Halls of Fame have lost their glory in their translation across the Atlantic from the original shrines established in Europe. Seemingly every high school has one for its graduates, and every profession seems to have its own miniature pantheon. There are Halls of Fame for pornography, social workers in California, and […]
This year, three particularly foul-mouthed and insulting young rappers named “Lil Jeff,” “Lil Scoom,” and “Ybcdul” recorded a song together. All three had been killed before the end of the summer. For anyone who pays attention to the underground rap scene, and the internet spectator culture that follows both the music and the violent crime […]
In viewing A Complete Unknown, I must admit to remaining mystified that rock biopics continue to get made at all in the wake of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the hysterically funny and tragically underseen 2007 parody of basically every rockstar biopic ever made. Indeed, so comprehensive is its satire that the titular Cox […]
“One of the best things about being an ordained minister,” a friend of mine who is an ordained minister told me recently, “is that they give you a card you can put on your dashboard that means you can basically park anywhere.” “I mean,” he quickly added, “that’s not a reason to get ordained, of […]
When a novel misses the mark, an opera sinks like a stone, or a Broadway show closes up shop, few care beyond the niche contingent conversant in the inside baseball of the respective art form. By contrast, when large-scale, grandly budgeted movies prove ruinously unprofitable at the box office, even amateur cinephiles find themselves doubled […]
President-elect Trump announced several appointments for his Treasury Department and choices for ambassadors for two European countries. In multiple Thursday Truth Social posts, Trump outlined who will work alongside his Treasury chief Scott Bessent, along with his picks for ambassadors to Spain and to the Netherlands. Trump picked Ken Kies to work as the assistant...