Reluctantly back home with my parents two months after deciding to take time off from Princeton, I wasn’t exactly in prime form. My uncontrollably racing mind had left me sleepless for weeks. The process of peeling away the suffocating layers of anxiety accumulated at prep schools and college was proving to be agonizingly slow.
As the firstborn in my family, I was a unique challenge for my parents. Of course there were all the new issues of how to raise a child, but first and foremost, what would they call me?
Doug Aitken’s installation _Migration (Empire)_, which is on view in front of the University Art Museum until November 14, has two very different faces.
This poem not about flowers just goes to show how far we’ve come since the days when people could practically not think without a daffodil, when in poetry a rose was not yet just a rose but always stood for … Read More
The first thing they do when they get your freshman rooming preferences is they throw them in the trash. They just dump them right in, piles of them crunched up and discarded until that great big bin is brimming full with them. And then – then the real thing starts. They shut the blinds and dim the lights. They lock the office door. And finally, when everybody’s seated, when everyone is ready, they begin to assemble the hell that is our roommate pairings, exhibiting all the tact and skill of a television writing staff as they concoct these garish personal sitcoms that recall either Perfect Strangers or, for the more unfortunate, No Exit.
The Beacon Down there, by the Old Red River in the woods by the darkened elementary school, out where the painted scary people shoot up wan drugs and shiver all night, empty cans sparkle like mirrors. The moss on the … Read More
By far the best film of 2005 was Werner Herzog’s mind-altering Grizzly Man. Those who disagree should go out and rent it again. Good, huh? I know. I liked it too.
The movie opens with a young man sitting alone on a beach singing The Beatles song “Girl” to the viewer. This is the first sign (to anyone who did not know, i.e. me) that Across the Universe is a musical. … Read More
