Cracker Barrels for the Creative Classes
Jordan Somers04.26.13
Both sides of the cultural divide against the tedium of the middle: a serving of nostalgia trends in the faux-olde timey bar and restaurant scene.
A BLOWJOB IS PROBABLY OUT OF THE QUESTION, EH?
Peter Thompson04.15.13
A review of nudist club-cum-desert resort Buff Valley Sun Club and various aspects of the landscape thereabouts. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Interview: Alt Lit with Noah Cicero
Matthew Sherling02.01.13
Matthew Sherling interviews Alt Lit author Noah Cicero about diligent writing, the future of literature, and the benefits of the internet.
How Dare She Claim The Sun As Her Own?
Laura Jane Faulds01.07.13
A strained relationship with Cat Power’s Sun is the opening credits in a sitcom about the life and times of Laura Jane Faulds. A story about the soundtrack of her life & waiting for it to hit.
When Riot Grrrls Grow Up
Christina Lee10.12.12
Feminist Press and the Corin Tucker Band’s new releases––the PUSSY RIOT! A Punk Prayer for Freedom eBook and Kill My Blues––both hearken to riot grrrl nostalgia, but with seemingly different responses on how to restart the radical feminist movement. Who’s right?
My Kingdom for a Sexologist
Michael Thomsen07.16.12
Does a little online chicanery a sexpert make? Or is there a legitimate borderland between science and the philosopher’s albatross? Michael Thomsen searches among manifold claims to authority for a legitimate sexologist. Art by Danny Jock.
G is for Ghetto
Louis Chude-Sokei05.10.12
Louis Chude-Sokei analyzes the meaning of a word, the reality of a community, and the failed assimilation of an immigrant in Inglewood.
Elegy for Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012
Laura Carter04.26.12
The resonant hall of memory is a lot like the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Polk Street, San Francisco. Adrienne Rich held court in both, filling her audience with the direct, fluid power of her words. Laura Carter examines her legacy, grasps at the delta, to find that the poet “long ago moved on / deeper into the heart of the matter.” Rest in peace.
The Cinema of Whitney Houston (with Bradford Nordeen)
Kevin Killian02.23.12
Fanzine arrived at Moby Dick in San Francisco just in time to see Whitney sing Step By Step on February 11th in a televised tribute to her own life, as happens with celebrity, the product outliving the person, a self-made monument. Fanzine took the long way home, reflecting, and stayed up late watching her films. Kevin Killian’s 2008 essay, with fellow fan Bradford Nordeen, analyzes her mythic presence through her movies, locked in the vice-grip of fame, of performance, of the voice.
Prologue: This Fragile Fortress
Thomas McBee01.19.12
Thomas Page McBee is running––down a street in Oakland, down a stretch of history, down a thread like an ant in the description of a tesseract. In the prologue of his (as yet) unpublished memoir "about crime, family, and masculinity," This Fragile Fortress, McBee brings his hands together in a flash––a boyish Mrs. Who––and the ant passes from who Thomas was into who he is about to be. Oakland, California: 2010.
