Do you still have that dress? You know the one I mean. Elegant, satiny, a little bit revealing. I was always asking you about it — even though you hardly ever wore the thing. Tell me it’s still in your closet.
Well, you can’t really tell me, of course — because I’m asking you here to wear it to my funeral. So I’m just going to assume you still have that dress. And that it still fits the way I remember. Continue reading
I’ve had friends of various types throughout my life. But the first time I ever encountered the phenomenon of internet-only friends — “nonlocal acquaintances” — was about six years ago. Continue reading
It was one of those internet relationships that people started having during the Late Aughts: We met online, exchanged pics, exchanged fantasies (mostly mine), exchanged racy pics (mostly hers), chatted, vidchatted. Then maybe vidchatted some more. Continue reading
For dedicated fans of podcast savant Marc Maron, it can be a real challenge to list all the amazing aspects of his WTF podcast.
First there are the jokes; those are pretty good. Then there are the incredibly revealing interviews with comics and other performers.
Plus there’s the astonishingly consistent quality of those conversations: By now most of Maron’s guests know what to expect from the interviews, so they could easily prepare some boilerplate responses — but almost none of them does. Also there’s the incredible volume of podcast material available: 375 WTF episodes and counting, each one an hour long or more. And there’s the fact that practically every WTF episode has been made available (temporarily) for free — which for a product of this impossibly high quality seems to defy not just the rules of show business, but of capitalism itself. Continue reading
Here in 2013, American short-fiction author George Saunders is having a moment. His fourth collection of short stories, Tenth of December
I don’t know how many of my compatriots realize this — but we currently live in a golden age of American comedy. And this glittering era doesn’t follow from anything projected onto various screens by Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey or Tina Fey. Nor is it due to anything written or directed by Seth MacFarlane or Judd Apatow. And it’s not because Charlie Sheen left Two and a Half Men, finally allowing the flagship brand of televised network comedy (cough!) to reach its true potential.
Instead this golden age has resulted because Marc Maron — a formerly little-known standup comedian with more than two decades of performing experience, but little lasting success — has been producing his uniquely tense and revealing comedy podcast for more than three years now. Continue reading
In mid-December D.T. Max, author of the first full-length biography of the American novelist David Foster Wallace — titled Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
In my last year of law school, I was the first student at the legal-aid clinic to take a client to trial.
You wouldn’t call this a “lucky” development, exactly — but it was pretty unusual. Most law students at this clinic went entire semesters without taking a client to a trial. Years, even. It was that rare to be assigned a client whose case was at the proper stage, and who wanted to go to trial. Continue reading
On Thursday, August 30, Viking Press will publish Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
CBS News: Robert Pattinson kicked off his Tuesday ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange…accompanied by David Cronenberg, the director of his new film Cosmopolis. (Emphasis added.)
All eyes are upon him — blinking, widening, twitching. He approaches the raised podium and awaits the designated moment. There is a hush. Continue reading