culture Page 26 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
If You Never Liked <i>Once Upon A Time In America</i>, Give The Director's Cut A Chance
Michael Sragow’s review of the director’s cut of Once Upon a Time in America appeared in the March 5, 1985 edition of The Boston Phoenix and appears here with the author’s permission. ...
Walter Matthau Was Addicted To Losing
A Siegel Film, Don Siegel’s account of his life as a film director is an entertaining and instructive guide to making movies. I especially like the section about Siegel’s experience working with Walter Matthau on Charley Varrick. ...
Can I Get Fired For Dating My Boss's Daughter?
Welcome back to Ask a Lawyer, where I, a lawyer, respond to your questions. Got a vexing legal issue? Send it over, or drop it in the comments below. Today’s query:...
Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
Thanks to the essential weekly newsletter, The Sunday Long Read (compiled with taste and care by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jacob Feldman), I found Alex Bilmes’ excellent British Esquire interview with Paul McCartney:...
In Praise of Robert Frank
Ah, now this looks like it’s worth your time. Nicholas Dawidoff’s New York Times Magazine profile of the great Robert Frank:...
The Prison Break's Lovelorn Tabloid Villain Is No Mere "Shaw-Skank"
Sometime on the night of June 5, two convicted murderers popped out of a sewer near Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York and started running. It took three weeks to stop them; the aftermath left one dead, and the other shot and recaptured. Two prison workers who aided that stunning esca...
We Are All Escape Artists: What Night Is Like In Prison
Each of the approximately 3,740 days I spent incarcerated in the prisons of New York State was divided into three shifts. The changeovers were marked by counts; the number of convicts in a prison has to agree with the central office’s official tally. The outgoing crew spends the final moments of its...
Some Thoughts On The Doping Allegations Against Alberto Salazar
The doping allegations about well-known distance running coach Alberto Salazar put forth in the collaborative ProPublica/BBC reports continue to precipitate reaction. Here are some further thoughts on the subject....
How To Win Your First Week At A New Job
The nice thing about a new job is that it probably won’t start sucking immediately. It’ll be easy at first—kind of like the first week of class, where the only thing expected of you is your presence and appropriate clothing (anything beyond pajamas). But unlike the first week of school, your first w...
Straight From The Heart
From Whitney Balliett's book American Musicians: Fifty-Six Portraits in Jazz:...
Watching Rocky II With The Champ
Nice work by Longform hipping us to this 1979 article by Roger Ebert about watching Rocky II with Muhammad Ali:...
Not Minding That It Hurts
Little Boy Blues is Malcolm Jones’ beautiful memoir about growing up with his mother (and sometimes, his father) in North Carolina in the late Fifties and early Sixties. It’s my favorite kind of memoir—understated, succinct, honed. The prose is precise without being delicate: “My father was a quiet...
A 21st-Century Rip Van Winkle: What Changed In My Decade Behind Bars
When the New World was two centuries newer, Washington Irving set a fable, "Rip Van Winkle," in the oldest parts of New York State, where the original Dutch settlers' culture still lingered. Life was European then—just set in America. But progress stops for no man. The story's hero evades his naggin...
Reeling With Errol Morris
Head on over to Grantland and check out their Errol Morris week. And while you're at it, dig Brin-Jonathan Butler's excellent Kindle Singles interview with Morris:...
Straight To The Hole Like My Man Malik Sealy
Monk One has long been one of my favorite DJ's. I've never met him but have been aware of his dope mixes since the late '90s when my pal Jared Boxx hipped me to his work. When I proposed to my wife, I had Monk's dub of this Archie Whitewater classic playing:...
Michael Jordan: Bull On Parade
A few years ago Wilfred Santiago gave us a beautiful comic book about the life of Roberto Clemente. Now, Santiago is back with Michael Jordan: Bull on Parade. Yet another sure shot from the great publisher, Fantagraphics. ...
Beautiful Baltimore Bums
My father was born and raised in New York City. He idolized, among others, Sid Caesar, Walt Kelly, and Adlai Stevenson. As his son, I campaigned for Mondale/Ferraro when I was in the 8th grade, drew anti-Reagan political cartoons for my social studies class, and hung a huge Keith Haring "Free South ...