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These captivating and surreal photographs capture a range of moods in various other-worldly northern lands. Three contemporary photographers revisti places throughout Central Asia photographed by Johannes Gabriel (J.G.) Crano, a Finnish scientist and explorer, between 1902 and 1916. While Grano’s photographs show majestic environments relatively undisturbed by his species, his modern successors encounter great changes; … Read more

Ford has led a most interesting life, even by the inflated standards of a profession where outrageous biographies are as common as dust jacket hyperbole. He’s been a high school baseball coach, an editor at American Druggist, and a sportswriter. Then there’s his fiction, which has garnered enough critical hosannas and awards (his 1995 novel … Read more

Bobbie Ann Mason’s straightforward, observant writing about the plain folks of rural Kentucky has generated comparisons to Raymond Carver. Like Carver, her characters are everyday non-heroes, such as a Vietnam veteran suffering from Agent Orange-related problems (In Country) and a truck driver with a road-related leg injury (Shiloh and Other Stories). Clearly, she’s got a … Read more

Watching other people eat revolting things has become a new spectator sport in our reality TV culture. Perhaps this replaces earlier entertainments like gladiator fights and public hangings, thereby satisfying some primal desire to watch others suffer. Of course, these days everyone gets to go home at the end of the show–sometimes with money. Elliot … Read more

Besides being pals with Tori Amos, Neil Gaiman has worked with Douglas Adams on his companion to A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, created the enormously successful Sandman comic book series, and written for children (Coraline), the silver screen (Beowulf, in production by Robert Zemeckis), and fantasy-horror fans (American Gods). And he dwells among us, … Read more

Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel made him the darling and the whipping boy of the literary world. Brilliant and pretentious, and at times completely impenetrable, the book chronicled the adventures of a geekish young collector of family ephemera named Jonathan Safran Foer (pure coincidence, of course) who travels through the Ukraine in search of the … Read more

One day, when Mike Watt was thirteen, he was standing under a tree when D. Boon fell out of it and landed on him. Thus began one of rock’s great friendships and collaborations. With George Hurley, they formed the Minutemen, a pioneering punk band that lifted motifs from all over the musical spectrum, took its … Read more

Dead people? Check. Black humor? Check. Johnny Depp? Check. Yep, it’s another Tim Burton film, and this one’s a love story. A young man on his way to his wedding stops to practice his wedding vows. He puts a wedding ring on a stick poking out of the ground, and waxes eloquent upon it. Turns … Read more

The Heights is one of the things we love about these cities: It regularly screens silent black and white classics accompanied by a live Wurlitzer organ, just the way your great-granny saw them. Even the folks at the Heights have to agree that sound was a pretty great invention, though, and to celebrate seventy-five years … Read more

Short and googly-eyed, cackling and sniveling, Bela Lugosi played the perfect piteous wretch in some of the greatest horror films ever made. He became a distinctively dank and unseemly type, one with no modern equivalent, not even Tom Cruise. Although he is best remembered for acting as sidekick to more commanding actors like Boris Karloff … Read more