rakemag Puck was a man of huge appetites. I don’t mean the ones that made him prone to stroke, but the ones that made him figuratively larger than life. I knew Kirby, not well, but some. I helped report a little about the Twins when I was at City Pages. I played in his pool tournament … Read more
An actor for president? No way Americans would ever do that. Our old friend David Carr did a nice job of blogging from the Oscars yesterday. But perhaps his best observation was to simply quote George Clooney’s acceptance speech. In case you were watching a basketball game or something, here it is: “You know, we … Read more
He’d be assassinated today, too. I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or cry yesterday when I heard that Michele Bachmann had “scolded” the God Hates Fags protesters at the funeral of the Minnesota soldier who had been killed in Iraq. As Bachmann explained, it’s not that God doesn’t hate fags, it’s just that he … Read more
“Ok, Cheney, just you and me. Shotguns at 10 paces.” I just couldn’t let this go, but it popped onto my computer a few minutes ago when I used Yahoo for the first time in months. The headline that jumped at me was this: Bush Confident Bin Laden Will Be Captured. Big talk from a … Read more
The Mekons, who came roaring out of Leeds in the wake of British punk’s late-seventies explosion, remain shining exemplars of a band as a committed, progressive community. Jon Langford, a Mekons ringleader, is now rolling through his fourth decade of creating provocative and politically charged music and art. The man remains ridiculously busy, with various … Read more
When your dad knows so much about antiques and fine art that people like Jackie Kennedy come to him seeking help in building their personal collections, you either watch closely and soak it all up, or rebel and become a stockbroker. Subhash Kapoor chose wisely, taking up where his father left off and cultivating an … Read more
Working in portraiture must be a little unnerving at times. Imagine all those eyes staring back at you in the darkroom. Perhaps that’s why Chris Felver, who is best known for his portraits of “creative revolutionaries” (writers, poets, filmmakers, actors, musicians, and protesters) turned his back on all those eyes and wandered outside. The latest … Read more
While some artists can explore one theme or medium for years, Kiki Smith is notable for how far and wide she has ranged in her work. Despite its variety, you can see it shifting, in a sense, from the micro to the macro. In the eighties, Smith was sculpting individual body parts and organs, moving … Read more
Allegra Goodman is one of those ridiculous prodigies who managed to sustain and build on her early buzz. Her first collection of stories, Total Immersion, was written while she was an undergraduate at Harvard, and she’s since published another collection and a couple of novels, including the remarkable Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). … Read more
Here’s a guy whose novels always start with really good ideas. In fact, Whitehead’s jacket copy often is more interesting than other authors’ entire novels. That’s an impressive gift, indeed. Nor does he disappoint over the long haul, spinning those ideas–hooks, really–into clever, entertaining, and deceptively weighty stories. For instance, his first novel, The Intuitionist, … Read more