Sui generis on the rocks: Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.
Sean MurphyThe best way to compliment a writer, as a reader, is to recommend their work to others. That I wholeheartedly do --and have done. The best way to compliment a…
New Zion Trio: Fight Against Babylon
Zelig-like, Jamie Saft has been an indefatigable fixture in the downtown NYC music scene. Equal parts MVP and unsung hero, his presence—as player, producer and composer—is at once daunting and…
Howard Tate, R.I.P.
Not a lot of fanfare surrounded the death of Howard Tate (a couple of obits here and here). In a sad, sadly typical way, this is appropriate, since there was…
Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’: Even Better Than You Thought It Was
Whatever one’s feelings about progressive rock, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung is a rare album that remains at once part of, and above, the fray. It is, to be certain, a cornerstone…
Hubert Sumlin, R.I.P.
Another giant of whom we'll never see the likes of again has left the planet. R.I.P. Hubert Sumlin. I'll resist the urge to say it's the least they could do,…
Just Say No or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Sex (In Fiction): Revisited
Lying in bed, thinking about geometry. Like: how my arm next to her ass makes a right angle, or how her legs in either direction form an isosceles triangle (or…
Fairy Tales and Feeding Tubes*
The brief experiment with the feeding tube was sufficiently impractical and unsavory that it seemed a small, if conflicted victory when we agreed to discard the apparatus. “So just call…
The Boogeyman, Goonery and Five for Fighting
The ongoing three-part series of the life and untimely death of NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard is an essential piece of reading for any hockey fan. And it's a timely…
“I’m An Idea Man…”
Predictably, that bastion of sober, probing and reasonable analysis, The Washington Post (more on my relationship with that rag here, here and here) has surveyed our political moment and is ready…
Got Arsenic?
Seriously? This is why it's increasingly difficult to take our cultural priorities seriously, because the people who are elected --and paid-- to make them a priority don't take anything seriously.…