Author: Brad Zellar

  • J.K. Rowling

    This is it, apparently. With the seventh and final installment in the series (list price: $34.95), the Harry Potter gravy train finally lurches to a halt. That, of course, means this will be a bittersweet occasion for J.K. Rowling’s legion of fans—adults and whippersnappers alike—and perhaps even more so for the publishing industry, which has…

  • Holiday in Cambodia

    When I was at home, I was in a better place. —Shakespeare, As You Like It “I’m somewhere in a godforsaken rainforest on the north coast of West Papua, Indonesia, and I’m ready to get the hell out of here.” So begins Michael Behar’s “The Selling of the Last Savage,” which originally appeared in Outside…

  • That Miami Sound: Going, Going, Gone?

    That one felt…I don’t know, it felt bad, I guess, like a game in late September with hope sliding away with every pitch and a cold autumn rain beating the leaves from the trees along the boulevards (cue Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”). Maybe that’s just because it was a Friday night, and Friday nights don’t…

  • The Basics, More Or Less

    Source materials for the project at hand, whatever it is, and whatever it might yet be: Grimm’s Fairy Tales; Hans Christian Andersen; William Graham Sumner’s Folkways; Frazer’s The Golden Bough; Mythology (Graves, Bulfinch, Hamilton, etc.); the Icelandic Sagas and Norse myths; The Odyssey and The Iliad; The Aeneid; Ovid’s Metamorphoses; The Divine Comedy; James Brown;…

  • Game Two In NY: You Tell Me And We'll Both Know

    The first two games of the Mets series were a perfect snapshot of the Twins’ see-saw season to date: An 8-1 loss and a 9-0 victory in the span of 24 hours. Five hits one night, thirteen the next. Go figure. Actually, if the season ended today, you could put the last eleven games in…

  • Game One Of The Never-Ending Road Trip: The Soccer Hooligan In Me

    I don’t have the energy to write an entire entry in Irish or Cockney slang, but that’s what I feel like doing every time this team slips into its offensive (and I do mean offensive) imitation of a World Cup soccer team, which lately seems to be several times a week. I just took a…