Harmon Leon’s error-riddled report from the underbelly of America.
Posted inBooks
Spell Check Not Included
Harmon Leon’s error-riddled report from the underbelly of America.
Justin W. Sanders
Posted inTheater & Performance
Reporting from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Reviews of three plays at Ashland’s annual festival.
Posted inMovies & TV
Slumming It
City of Men, AKA City of God Lite
City of Men is based on an extremely popular Brazilian television series of the same name, which in turn was based on 2002’s critically acclaimed City of God. Like its predecessors, Men takes place in a vibrant, lushly shot slum stocked with teenage gangs and poverty. Ace (Douglas Silva) isn’t a gangster, but a flaky […]
Posted inNews
Indoor/Outdoor
Some “Hard” Truths About Public Sex
At a certain point in human evolution, making “crazy love” somehow became associated with having sex in public places. If one is truly, madly, crazily in love with someone else (or someone elses… ), it follows that spontaneous, breathless, fumbling public lovemaking must at some point ensue. In practice, however, sex in public places—while a […]
Posted inBooks
Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me
edited by Ben Karlin (Grand Central)
Anthologies can be kind of repetitive, with entry after entry harping on the same tired subject. The theme of Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me feels particularly uninspired, as the genre of men bitching about women is arguably the most prominent in the history of literature. But the credentials of editor Ben Karlin […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Hell Up Close
Ghosts of Cité Soleil: Humanizing the Inhuman
In Cité Soleil, a region of Haiti’s Port-Au-Prince, scrawny, filthy toddlers run naked in the trash-covered streets. The town resembles an enormous, nightmarish labyrinth, with grim, narrow stone corridors winding endlessly past citizens dazed by the strife of a merciless struggle for survival. Danish director Asger Leth’s Ghosts of Cité Soleil captures this traumatized locale […]
Posted inBooks
Mingering Mike
by Dori Hadar (Princeton Architectural Press)
Dori Hadar describes himself as a “criminal investigator by day and DJ by night.” But even years spent sifting through dusty bins for the ultimate B-side and sniffing out convicts could prepare him for the treasure he found on a cold December morning at a Washington, DC flea market. Hadar came across a box with […]
Posted inBooks
Haiku
I can think of no successful writer who writes them, and no successful critic who writes of them—and yet who doesn’t encounter a haiku’s 17-syllable, three-line format on the page and experience a satisfied glint of recognition at this Japanese form that does so much with so little? Haiku has virtually no presence in literary […]
Posted inFeature
Arena Rock
Confessions of a Professional Basketball Music Programmer
Pullout: Rock & Jock
Posted inArt
Kirk Radley
In the carpeted living room of Kirk Radley’s Canyon Road apartment, artwork hangs over the dining room table, in the hallway to the bathroom, and next to the computer desk. From afar, they look like runaways, paintings that have leapt off the canvas and crawled away to make a frameless home of their own. Up […]
Posted inUncategorized
Stuck in the Middle
Bo Restobar Splits the Difference
Based on a premise that “originated in Thailand,” the press release for Bo Restobar (the new dining establishment attached to Hotel Lucia) reads: “Bo Restobar features food that you wouldn’t expect from a bar and a drink menu and alcohol selection you’d rarely see in a restaurant.” It’s not a restaurant. It’s not a bar. […]
