August 8-12, 2011
It’s Beverage Week at The Idler!
Everybody drinks. Mike Vincent pulls together some of his favorite beverage songs, with a brief Blackadder detour, in “Drink tea, for the love of god!”
Rosemary Van Deuren has spent a lot of time imbibing a lot of fluids. Get the sordid details on where, what, and when in “My life in liquid: beverages I have known, loved and exploited”
“In the Queue” returns! This week, Tim Carmody watches Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film Ladri di Bicyclette (Bicycle Thieves). Read “A broken world of bedsheets and bicycles”
Daniel J. Hogan has been exploring Michigan’s Upper Penninsula, and his greatest find may have been the Moscow Mule, a drink served in a mug so valuable, that the bar demands collateral before they’ll give you one. Read “A Moscow Mule, in a copper mug”
New columnist Francine McKenna will be writing about “A Drinking Life,” and she gets her both column and Beverage Week started with “Coffee, I owe you my life”
Jill Kolongowski is on the road like Sal and Dean, and she offers her professional guide to your travel drinking choices in “A girl’s guide to road trips: Choose your own adventure”
Drink tea, for the love of god!
Beverage week. This is a music column. My drink of choice is tea, iced tea. I drink lots of it. Not quite buckets, not quite gallons, but I do drink my fair share. I love it. Ask anyone. My life is cluttered with glass bottles. Often I am like Stephen Fry’s portrayal of Wellington in … Continue reading
My life in liquid: beverages I have known, loved and exploited
Beverages have represented different things to me at various times in my life, and I find that my drink preferences can be easily broken down into clearly defined eras, each with its own, distinctive needs. Those needs were not always satiated, but boy, it didn’t stop me from trying using whatever was sloshing around in … Continue reading
A broken world of bedsheets and bicycles
In “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (And Vice Versa),” Seymour Chatman argues that in film, “the dominant mode is presentational, not assertive. A film doesn’t say, ‘This is the state of affairs,’ it merely shows you that state of affairs.” Consider a key scene in Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Ladri di Bicyclette (Bicycle … Continue reading
A Moscow Mule, in a copper mug
I am mainly a beer drinker, but I like to say I am an “equal opportunity drinker,” so I will try anything once. When I was prepping for my recent journey to the Keweenaw Peninsula (some 550 miles away from me in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula), I reached out a friend who attended college in the … Continue reading
Coffee, I owe you my life
You’re the first thing I think of in the morning. I’ve never smoked, but I imagine it’s a similar craving. Should I make a pot or run to the corner café? When my head is heavy with sinusitis, it’s impossible to lift it off the pillow. On these days I need coffee to keep me … Continue reading
A girl’s guide to road trips: Choose your own adventure
Ladies and gents, in grand Jack Kerouac fashion, I’m driving as we speak across Nebraska and Wyoming, headed for the land of fog and seafood and fabulous people–San Francisco. I’ll continue my post about my grandparents next week. Because my family was never super wealthy and because they liked the kind of torture that only … Continue reading
August 1-6, 2011
Conventional wisdom is that the $60-per-title console video game is dying, and this could be really bad for games that want to tell a story. Gavin Craig says that the video game is dead, long live the video game. Read “Let me tell you a story”
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by his record collection, Mike Vincent decides to thin things out a little, and finds himself looking forward. Read “The language of letting go”
Kate Sloan takes a look at the failure of Borders, the success of Strand, and how sometimes life is not like Meg Ryan movie. Read “To the mattresses”
Have you been to Las Vegas? Neither have I, but Ana Holguin has, and she gives you the skinny on what to love and hate about your visit in “The non-woo-girl’s guide to Vegas”
It’s no secret that Rosebud is the empty center of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. It’s also, Tim Carmody says, the ultimate end of the way Charles Foster Kane uses items to signify attachment, and gifts to demand the love of the people around him. Read “Kane’s gifts”
Lindsey Malta always lives every week like it’s Shark Week. Especially when it actually is Shark Week. And it is Shark Week. Read “The most wonderful time of the year”
Jill Kolongowski is starting to feel more comfortable in the kitchen, except when she’s cooking for her awesome (and only slightly scary) grandparents. Read “Cigarettes and coffee: cooking for my grandparents”
Let me tell you a story
Video games are a troublesome medium. Rogert Ebert, famously, isn’t convinced that they’re art. Even those of us who love video games are often apologetic. Yes, many video games are just terrible. Yes, it’s true that no video game can stand up to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, or Ulysses. … Continue reading
The language of letting go
A few weeks ago, maybe a month now, I sent our beleagured editor/driving force/pappy of the site Gavin an article on death. It wasn’t just about death, but it permeated the article, which revolved around a dumpster behind a cemetery in my town. A dumpster full of mementos and things like flowers and stuffed animals. … Continue reading
