January 11, 2017 Our Correspondents My Pillow: The Movie By Jane Stern Mike Lindell with My Pillow. Camera scans the rubble of a gray, dystopian landscape. Nothing is left, fallen buildings smolder; wrecked cars and gutted bodies of the dead lay discarded on the street. Camera pans to small object on the horizon. Slow zoom to pristine white rectangle. It is the sole survivor of the apocalypse. It is all that is left of civilization. It is My Pillow. Read More
January 10, 2017 Our Correspondents Saint of Saints By Elena Passarello Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. This week: Barry the Saint Bernard. Design by Kristen Radtke. From the day he was born, before he was given his name or opened his eyes, even as a tiny puppy, Barry heard the alarm. —Barry of the Great Saint Bernard, 1977 Just where it drifts, a dog howls loud and long, And now, as guided by a voice from Heaven, Digs with its feet. —Samuel Rogers, “Barry,” 1850 After his death, which was but recent, his body was carefully buried, and his skin stuffed to imitate nature, and with an action resembling life, stands in this state, decorated, with his collar, in the Museum of Bern. —Ladies’ Literary Cabinet, 1820 Name: Barry Species: Canis familiaris Years Active: 1800–1812 Habitat: A snowy cloister eight thousand feet above sea level Skills: Surefootedness, loyalty, the ability to smell humans buried deep in snow Distinguishing Features: Up for debate Additional Notes: Read More
January 5, 2017 Our Correspondents Everyone Has Accidents By Amy Gentry Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful often ends up in the bathroom. Still from Unfaithful. I’m always on the lookout for domestic thrillers with weird bodily fluid obsessions, so naturally the toilet fixation in Adrian Lyne’s 2002 film, Unfaithful, caught my attention. A remake of Claude Chabrol’s La femme infidele and Lyne’s last film to date, the film opens with a prolonged peeing shot and closes with a wet bed. In between, there are enough scenes shot in the WC to make anyone regret having chugged down a bottle of Aquafina before pushing play. But then, this is a film about the emotional incontinence of the bourgeoisie. Connie Summers (Diane Lane) is a gorgeously middle-aged suburban housewife who begins an affair with young French Lothario Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez) after being literally swept into his arms while shopping on a blustery day. Lane’s superb, slow-burning performance earned her an Oscar nomination and several other screen-acting awards; her face, often shot in extreme close-up, is so sensitive and vulnerable that her jowly husband Edward (Richard Gere, who put on weight for the role at Lyne’s insistence) looks positively opaque by comparison. Midway through the film, the perspective shifts from Connie to Edward, and from one type of incontinence—Connie’s lust—to another—Edward’s rage, which erupts into violence. The melodrama becomes a domestic thriller, though a reluctant, murky one that focuses more on the crime’s emotional consequences than its legal ones. Read More
January 4, 2017 Our Correspondents Pavese’s English By Anthony Madrid Cesare Pavese. A great many of the writers whom I admire were supposedly fluent in several languages. I say “supposedly.” I have my doubts. Fluent is a big word. In my own life, when I meet Americans who “speak French” or “speak Spanish,” I like to put up at least a little bit of resistance. “Okay, so what’s the word for belt buckle?” I admit I am partly animated by a mean desire to expose as a sham any accomplishment to which I myself can lay no claim. Such vileness of temperament is commonly appeased by recourse to mutterings. My own bad character prefers a show trial, in which any single piece of prejudicial evidence is sufficient for instantaneous sentencing. If you do know the word for belt buckle, I will find some word you don’t know. Oarlock, fidgeting, the shoulder of the highway … Read More
December 22, 2016 Our Correspondents Monsters for Grown-ups By Jane Stern Learning the ins and outs of our Reptilian overlords. An artist’s rendering of the coming lizard-human war. This election was a nightmare. As the day grew close, I sequestered myself at home. I would not watch the news, read the paper, or visit any site more taxing then CuteKittenOfTheDay.com. I didn’t visit my relatives on Thanksgiving because I knew that turkey and dressing would devolve into torture and debacle. Instead, I hid at home, baked cookies, and binge watched Mystery Science Theater 3000. Read More
December 21, 2016 Our Correspondents Zonies, Part 3: Utopia By Mike Powell Mike Powell’s column is about living in Arizona. Biosphere 2. One morning, in early 2011, my friend Ray took a few friends and me up to a place about an hour north of Tucson called Biosphere 2. Ray was working or volunteering there in some capacity and suggested that we follow him around. We drove up Oracle Road, which turns into Route 77, which I mention because you know that when a road turns into a route that you are leaving something. Strip malls and sprawl thinned out into empty desert. We made a few turns and rumbled over some cattle guards and that’s when I saw it, like a young boy’s crayon drawing of a space station rising majestically out of the dust. “We’re here,” Ray said, as though that wasn’t already clear. At the time, all I understood about Biosphere 2 was that it was a scientific research facility filled with re-creations of real-world environments: jungle, desert, ocean, et cetera. That, and that a group of scientists voluntarily locked themselves in there for two years during the early 1990s, where they strived, studied, bickered, lost a lot of weight, and eventually became the butt of a cultural joke. I admired them already. Read More