Just Say No or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Sex (In Fiction): Revisited
Sean MurphyLying 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.…
The Past Is Calling: Reconsidering The Who’s ‘Quadrophenia’
Most popular Who album? No. Most important Who album? No. Most influential Who album? No. Best Who album? Definitely. More: Best album of the ‘70s? Probably. More? Best rock album,…
Thanksgiving 2011: Some Things I’m Grateful For
The dogs in our lives. The ones who are no longer here, like Leroy and Terra and the dearly -departed Quinzy. Quinzy treated the world like his bitch and while I couldn’t…
The Whiteness of the Whale: Remembering The White Album (Revisited)
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar…
When Words Fail*
It will be okay. This is what parents are obliged to tell frightened children and what some children must one day resort to telling their parents. It will be okay,…
Black Magic: 15 Essential Black Sabbath Songs
Yes, they created the template for heavy metal and thrash, but even now it’s instructive to acknowledge just how unique Black Sabbath was; how different from anything else anyone was…