Author:

For Yan Pei-Ming, One Portrait Size Fits All

“As I sat on the bench in the center of the exhibition room, dwarfed by the mammoth panels of the tryptic, I considered my reaction.”

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Hot or Not?

It’s time for a game of “Hot or Not.” Rompers: Hot or Not? Two-finger rings: Hot or Not? Denim button-down shirts: Hot or Not? Boyfriend jeans: Hot or Not? Recently I surveyed a friend’s closet and found the above articles … Read More

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Something Not Played Out

I didn’t find Funny Games particularly scary on a visceral level. I’m not saying this to suggest I have a hard stomach for movies like this. I don’t. I over-think them and too often imagine what it would be like to be in the characters’ shoes. I try to freak myself out. Funny Games invites its audience to do just that – freak itself out. Funny Games establishes a genre that marries horror with documentary.

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The Princeton Runway

Bothering half-celebrities, severely.

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Hipsterotica

Jo was sitting behind the counter of Beacon’s Closet in Williamsburg. Her friend and co-worker Cathey was working the register and telling Jo about her most recent purchase at Strand Bookstore in the Village: “It’s like an annotated version of … Read More

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Sittin’ Pretty in Wham City

A week and a day after I saw Dan Deacon play his new DVD, Ultimate Reality, at Bard College, I saw him buying a camera at B&H in Manhattan. B&H is probably what the Nazis feared the planet would look like by now: an electronics store run and mostly staffed by Orthodox Jews, every item carried from the shelf to the salesman to the register by conveyor belts, each one tricked out with neon blue trim.

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The Embargo

When I was fifteen, when my hair was growing down past my collar and my face was fixed into a jaded smirk, Mom and Dad decided it was time to get out. Out of the city; out of sinful, glorious … Read More

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Reasons I Called P-Safe on My Roomate

There’s nothing worse than a bad roommate.

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A Cup Can Be a Bowl: Lessons from Outdoor Action

A curated list of hard-earned life lessons from one writer’s OA excursion.

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Why I Am Here

My students keep asking me why I am here. It is a good question. I am an anomaly at Greenville-Weston High School. I am white in a school where most teachers, and nearly all students, are black. My race fascinated my tenth graders for the first few days of school. One student asked if I found the term “white” offensive, and if I would prefer that he refer to me as “Caucasian.” Several students asked to touch my hair.

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The Romney Boys, Remembered

Brothers of Jared.

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More Fighting in the War Room

The Democratic Party has promised the electorate change, but is not always clear about what this will mean in practice. There is Obama change with its emphasis on bipartisanship, and there is Big Momma change with its emphasis on taking back the country for liberals. The first kind is an easier case to make to the American people, but it is the second kind that might actually make life better for them.

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