August 2011
1 post
Let us now praise this summer's movies
Last night I went to a panel at Housing Works Bookstore called “The Last Shot” on the state of the summer blockbuster. Afterward, some friends and I were talking about what we had heard, and one lamented that the panel seemed to overly dwell on the embarrassments and messes of summer 2011. I don’t fault cohosts Zach Baron and Sean Fennessey for this; they opened with some...
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
At the AV Club, I reviewed Chris Adrian's THE... →
January 2011
2 posts
Two recent book reviews
If you like reading about super-religious people and/or you liked Nixonland, Darren Dochuk’s From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is right up your alley. As for David Vann’s Caribou Island, the bleakness is right in tune with how the cold this year in New York has broken me and I will be in these wool socks until June. (My Pilgrim forebears are way upset.)
Here's my review of Matthew Gallaway's The... →
Happy 2011! This was actually the last review I wrote in 2010, so I maintain that I was just ending one year on a down note, not dooming my 2011 reading list to mediocrity.
A commenter pointed out that the book follows the plot of a Czech opera called “The Makropulos Affair,” which indeed I hadn’t heard of before reading. Here’s a description of a 2009 performance on a...
October 2010
1 post
1 tag
My sister's review of the new Weezer album...
That’s right, we’re outsourcing… but this is too good:
bad bad bad. low-point has got to be “where’s my sex,” just because it brings up vestiges of the ironically whiny weezer of days past but unfortunately we are just left with an awkward whine.
Crucial context, my sister was THREE when Weezer’s debut album was released.
August 2010
3 posts
I was featured in USA Today as part of the Stieg... →
See sidebar, referring to this review for the A.V. Club. I reviewed all three Larsson books (…so far?) for them, and this was the only one I disliked, for the record.
July 2010
2 posts
June 2010
4 posts
AV Club: My review of Sloane Crosley's HOW DID YOU... →
AV Club: My review of L. Tolstoy and B.H. Winters'... →
Commenters are very angry that I wasted my time reviewing this book. Quoth Bob K, “I guess I’ve just never seen the entire commentariat this united about anything, including the Wire.” That’s it! I was just trying to bring people together.
May 2010
6 posts
AV Club: My review of The Girl Who Kicked The... →
For what it’s worth, I really liked the first two?
“According to my most beloved source, “something I read somewhere once”
– 2Birds1Blog
1 tag
Susie: You guys, I’m really going to miss this place. Coop: Me too. Ben: Hey, let’s all promise that in ten years from today, we’ll meet again, and we’ll see what kind of people we’ve blossomed into. Susie: Yeah! Ben: What time do you wanna meet? J.J.: You mean ten years from now? Coop: Let’s meet in the morning so we can make a day of it. Susie: Okay, so what is it? Is it like 9:00? 9:30?...
Shows I was not allowed to watch →
miltnr:
stryker:
pleasedontsqueezetheshaman:
Three’s Company: Gay Orgy
The Love Boat: Floating Orgy
The Smurfs, ET, Star Wars, Fantasy Island, Thundercats, Ghostbusters: Satanism
Home Alone: “I don’t like the way he speaks to his parents. He has an attitude problem.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: “You don’t need to be hearing all that New Age nonsense from that rat.”
Jurassic Park:...
April 2010
7 posts
National Post article on the "Beatrice and Virgil"... →
I’m sensing an implication from the way the bottom half of this article is structured that the negative reviews have something to do with the fact that Martel is Canadian. And I would just like to say, I love Canada in general. But I still gave this book a D+.
AV Club: My review of Mark Kurlansky's THE EASTERN... →
If this sounds interesting to you, Steven Gregory’s THE DEVIL IN THE MIRROR is another excellent book about the Dominican economy.
Wormbook: In which I attend "Hamlet," the French... →
I won tickets to the Met last week through Dailylit. Can you imagine a world in which Hamlet lives? YIKES.
Atlantic Media says they will pay their interns,... →
‘Cause I think we’ve all seen the listings for internships that pay a “$10 stipend,” which will cover a Metrocard and maybe lunch, but not rent or anything else.
I have had a few unpaid internships in my day, and some of them were invaluable and others were worthless. But really, this is news, that the system is subject to abuse?
“People gave me shit about my artistic integrity when the book deal was...”
– From Salon — Joe Mande of LATFH may be my favorite recipient of a Tumblr blog-to-book deal yet.
March 2010
2 posts
SPJ: The Imperfect Ten →
My friend Dennis Anderson and I wrote a point-counterpoint on this year’s Best Picture field. Won’t you go over and read it?
February 2010
4 posts
AV Club: My review of John Banville's THE... →
Currently working on the British-or-Irish question, stay tuned.
AV Club: My review of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN... →
I finally got around to reading SHOP CLASS AS... →
“Raise your hand if you’ve had a job governed by idiosyncrasy before.”
AV Club: My review of Julie Klausner's memoir I... →
January 2010
11 posts
AV Club: My review of Rebecca Newberger... →
AV Club: My review of Joshua Ferris' THE UNNAMED. →
That high a grade this early in the year? Totally wrecking my reputation.
Discuss: "Trial By Ferry" →
A local representative for Lower Manhattan wants to hold the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial on Governors Island, a protected park and former military base off Lower Manhattan parallel to Red Hook in Brooklyn.
One of my favorite memories of the summer was running along the southern edge of the island and reading on its grassy knolls. I worry that what the court will save in security by holding the...
AV Club: My review of Jonathan Dee's THE... →
First of ‘10!
“[Whole Foods] ranked among the biggest purchasers of green power last year, but...”
– From “Is Whole Foods Bad for the Planet?” by Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones (via marthaq) (via allstory)
My friend Kate Sheppard is awesome.
AV Club: Best Books We Read in 2009 →
If you feel strongly about Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, you might want to get over there because there are a lot of haters in the comments. Personally, I liked it, but it wasn’t my favorite book of the year. Was that enough of a teaser for you?
One country has already banned books in carry-on... →
It’s as if they don’t like us any more.
On "Avatar."
My life is pretty good right now so it’s about time I found something to irrationally dislike! That’s why I created Shut Up, “Avatar” to post about the hysterical press James Cameron’s overrated scifi epic has been getting and why it is so, so wrong. It will also contain my uncollected thoughts on the year in film and some reviews of movies better than...
December 2009
10 posts
The Lost Girls and me →
I’ve been a fan of Holly, Jen and Amanda at Lost Girls World for a long time, so I was excited when they asked me to review Franz Wisner’s HOW THE WORLD MAKES LOVE for their site. (It’s not a manual, but you may find some good advice in it.)
In the Fray: Airborne anxiety -- two novels about... →
Wherein I discuss Walter Kirn’s UP IN THE AIR and Jonathan Miles’ DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES.
Christmas 2009 NYC To-do List
Put up tiny Manhattan-scale tree
Handel’s “Messiah” at Carnegie Hall
Ice skating
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” at the Brooklyn Lyceum
Walk down Fifth Avenue looking at the windows and listening to Dean Martin
Cheesy Time Warner Center holiday light show
See “The Road” and “The Lovely Bones”; rewatch “A Serious Man” (these...
Men's Health accidentally repeated half its... →
Via Anna, a rare win for P. Hilton.
Unintentional Dr. Seussism of the month
On a New York Times reporter in D.C. dating a representative’s P.R. director, Gawker’s John Cook writes that some of the paper’s other employees have “jumped in the sack with a source or a flack.” Makes it sound so much more delightful than it is!