Buy It! {Simon & Schuster} When a book is deemed a "good summer read", I tend to avoid it. "Summer reading" often indicates something light and quick and non-taxing (i.e. braindead); a book to have on hand and semi-committally peruse whilst on the beach, or having a picnic, or doing whatever else people do in […]
Buy It! {Pleasure Boat Studio} A couple of weeks ago I sat down at an Upper West Side restaurant for a wet lunch with an old friend of mine. Having just published "Puget Sound: 15 Stories", a book about the state we both grew up in, I asked if I might be able to ask […]
"Of course I'm communicating – could we just not talk about it?" Woody Allen's latest annual offering, Melinda and Melinda, tells two different tales of two completely different characters named Melinda. The only things these Melindas have in common is that they look more or less identical (though not as much as you'd suppose given […]
The Intiman's press notes for its current production claim that writer/performer Josh Kornbluth is best known for the 1992 comic monologue Red Diaper Baby, his story of growing up with Communist parents who vehemently refused to support The Man. I was only familiar with his 2001 flick Haiku Tunnel, a droll little indie (and, previously, […]
"If you don't believe in any magic or mystery in life, you are basically dead." In the spring of 1995 I had just finished a rather unsuccessful two-year attempt at graduate school. My life opened up in front of me with a crushing sense of possibility. To avoid 'real life' just a little bit longer, […]
"If you don't make decisions, you're stuffed." OK, mountain climbing is not for me. There is no damn way I'm gonna use ice-axes and weird spikey shoes to climb a straight-up ice-covered wall of rock, dig a snowcave in the side of a big ol' mountain to sleep in at night, and melt snow over […]
If you've seen Beau Travail, and especially if you like boys, you're probably well aware that director Claire Denis is a fantastic sensualist. Her masterpiece is a hot and existential movie loaded with toned, sun-drenched lads at a French Foreign Legion outpost in Africa; there's nary an unsexy frame to be found. In her wonderful […]
