Arts & Culture

2/14 “Say, baby, can I interest you in a little cicada? It’s good for what ails you. Why yes, that is a long-horned beetle in my pocket, but I am glad to see you. Care to come up to my place to see my dried bug collection? It’s hot. Hey,…

2/17 We, the smarty-pants reporter for the oh-so-hip alternative weekly, will now attempt to write about a bowling event without any snideness or class snobbery. Promise. How hard could it be? Any sport featuring beer, rented shoes and guys with 60-inch waistbands can’t be all ba…OK, that didn’t even last…

2/13 O, Ponyboy, Ponyboy! Wherefore art thou Ponyboy? Deny thy Greasers and refuse thy Brylcreem! And I’ll no longer be a Soc, wearing my madras and mother’s argyle. ‘Tis but thy clothes that are mine enemy. Ponyboy, thou art a wronged poet on the run, like the towheaded Johnny Boy,…

2/12 Even the biggest exhibitionists we know tend to stash their sex books between the mattress and box springs. But there’s one that’s remained a mandatory bedside fixture in intelligent and well-educated homes. And, just in time for the Cupid season, we can learn even more about this history of…

2/13 You’re simply not trying, you guys of Dallas. Last February’s retail recap revealed the same old, same old for the top four Valentine’s Day gift categories. Chocolates, flowers, cards and naughty nighties are so uninspired. Think outside the heart-shaped box this year and get your gal pals all aquiver…

It was only a few days ago that Shane Carruth, software engineer-turned-filmmaker, was ready to walk away from the money on the table and keep his movie–78 minutes’ worth of cheapo celluloid that had, in a Utah instant, become as valuable as strands of gold. He had stopped answering his…

It’s time for that annual exam. Put on the backless, scratchy paper examination gown. Giddy up those ankles onto the icy cold stirrups. Now scoot closer. No, closer. Seriously, closer. Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? Sure, we can complain–and we will–but we’ve got it better than women in…

Errol Morris, sitting just one story above the floor from which Lee Harvey Oswald killed (or did not, whatever) John Kennedy, does not know where to begin. The maker of documentaries–he’s interviewed subjects ranging from Florida codgers and owners of pet cemeteries to the imprisoned innocent and builders of execution…

The stories of ZZ Packer have appeared in The New Yorker, The Best Short Stories of 2000 and The Best American Non-Required Reading 2003. She has the academic pedigree of a Rockefeller: Yale, Johns Hopkins, the Iowa Writers Workshop and Stanford. Last year, her picture graced the pages of practically…

Thursday, February 5 Our line of sight falls somewhere just below five feet. We’re short and tend to look down when we walk, plowing through crowds of people like a fox running through heavy underbrush. So when it comes to buildings, it takes a lot to catch our attention. Yet…

Last week, the security cameras at the Meadows Museum caught Edmund P. Pillsbury (Ted to his friends and sycophants) red-handed. Actually, surveillance video revealed white-gloved hands carefully tracing the gentle curve of a nude woman’s buttocks. He was seen stroking the arch of another’s back, caressing the contours of her…

2/7 Ask the barefoot and pregnant-by-a-first-cousin young women slouching in broken lawn chairs, drinking Coors Light and smoking unfiltered Camels under hail-damaged awnings outside rusted-aluminum trailer homes on the outskirts of Little Rock if they like being lumped into a big, stinky stereotype such as “Arkansas girls.” It’s not always…

2/6 I had few qualms about telling my 6-year-old Max that there was no Santa Claus or that the tooth fairy can run out of cash, just the same as his old man. But when Max was cheering wildly for the Harlem Globetrotters to win their game against the hapless…