Criticism-in-finity!
Posted in Reviews on Dec 30th, 2009
The Adirondack Chair is a quintessential symbol of relaxation in the Northeast, though I have never actually seen someone from the Main Line sitting in an Adirondack chair. These Main Line Adirondacks, frequently spotted in pairs, positioned on front lawns, remain quintessentially a symbol. The Main Line is a strip of Philadelphian suburbs characterized by [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 28th, 2009
Unfortunately winter is upon us, which means that the time of the year during which one can wash one’s car has basically ended. Alack! For the chance to wash one’s car is truly one of the greatest pleasures offered by car ownership, aside of course from speeding on country roads or from having an excuse [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 25th, 2009
Twenty years ago, three paratroopers shot Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu, rulers of Communist Romania, to death. Footage of the event, along with the hour-long secret trial, aired on Romanian television later that day. Christmas day. Do You Hear What I hear? Frosty the Romanian. Feliz Navi-dead. Details are murky, though news outlets try to present [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 25th, 2009
The crossing begins at one o’clock in the afternoon; a good 23 hours before Washington ever stepped into a boat, though, perhaps, this is for the best: children have been up for hours now, and to ask them to stay awake in the Titusville cold a shade before the crushing disappointment of December 26th would [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 25th, 2009
It is best to begin with Wallace Stevens. “One must have a mind of winter … not to think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind.” I frequently return to that first half of the singular syntactic unit that constitutes “The Snow Man” because I vacillate between a lack of comprehension and [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 23rd, 2009
My greetings, future lover! Your countenance is that of a weary angel, and your tight-gripped travel mug a wonder of the metallurgical arts. Allow me to redistribute these various tomes, so that you may occupy the seat adjacent to my own. How felicitous it is that I am able to make your acquaintance en route [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 21st, 2009
Walter Benjamin tells us that there is a homology between the pace of modern life and the cinema. The speed, shocks and dislocations of the city were “established as a formal principle” in film’s “rhythm of perception”. Perceptive as it is, we need to update Benjamin’s thesis. In the 21st century, there is a new [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 14th, 2009
An Olympic hopeful once told me that when his swimming career ended in a vehicular collision, it was all for the best since he was enjoying having a social life at last. I asked him if he ever still dreamed of gold in the hundred fly and he turned silent. We both knew that a [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 11th, 2009
Cats: In short, you can’t trust them. Perhaps that’s being a little too dismissive. Let’s dig in, like claws into a peacefully sleeping stomach, and contemplate cats. Aesthetically: An animal made of angles; sleek, small, light on its feet. Their movements are so subtle that one doesn’t see them when they’re there, does see them [...]
Posted in Reviews on Dec 9th, 2009
Rogue taxidermy is the practice of creating stuffed animals that have no real, live counterparts out of the corpses of animals that have real, live counterparts. As literal hybrids, rogue pieces serve as 3-D manifestations of our anxiety over the ethical use of animals and our fear of the ever-growing threat of mutation. Rogue taxidermy [...]