To my parents’ horror, I discovered Eminem at age twelve when my uncle gave me a copy of Encore for my birthday. I was enchanted; I loved the tenderness of ‘Mockingbird’ and the humor of ‘Puke,’ and the unbridled rage and violence that riddled the album were more visceral and real than any emotions I had ever heard in music.
Spoiler alert: Harry doesn’t die. He probably should, but he doesn’t, and there’s not really much we can do about it. The day the seventh book came out, my friend and I sat in the bathroom of our bunk at camp and read the entire thing.
After being disinvited from a panel on campus about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Associate Professor Max Weiss wrote in The Daily Princetonian, “Princeton must remain a place where open debate and academic exchange is encouraged and allowed to flourish, even on the most controversial issues.” It would be a lot easier to take him at his word had he not just convened a panel on academic freedom the week before, to which he invited zero dissenting voices.
The following is a blow-by-blow of my impressions of the songs on the album, with some comments from my step-grandmother, who admits that she is a Kid Cudi neophyte.
They are the prophets of unwanted gaiety, the minstrels of midnight madness—they are the piano players of Frist, and I hereby appoint myself their public defense.
My father chose the name and my mother chose the spelling. My father—for the High Priest Aaron of the Israelites, Moses’ fallible brother who leads the priestly order of Levites but is forever tainted by his participation in the building of the profane Golden Calf.
The legend in question began with a Lego figure of Anakin Skywalker. When your family doesn’t use electricity on the Jewish Sabbath, there is not much to do. You play Risk. You play monopoly. You play Magic: The Gathering. Most of the time, though, you play Lego.
Exodus chapter 34, verse 26: “Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.” Some 5,000 (or 2,000, depending on who you think wrote the Torah) years ago, God told the Jewish people not to mix milk and meat. … Read More
