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.
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.
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.
Two fists and a bruised knuckle. No lunch money. No school bus. He wears his soles out each morning, drops them at the back of the courtyard, and goes to class barefoot. Doesn’t say much. He sits alone some days and other days he doesn’t. Always the same thing for lunch. Carrots and men.
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
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.
