I’m always happy to learn more about the state of the art in artificial languages, such as this article in yesterday’s New York Times. If that whetted your appetite for a historical overview of totally made-up dialects, you might enjoy a 1996 Wired article I wrote that delivers exactly that.
posted 13 December 2011 in Links, Outside. no comments yet
This past weekend marked the twentieth anniversary of Guns N’ Roses’ messy yet magnificent magnum opus, Use Your Illusion. Honoring that occasion, the excellent Maura Johnston, music editor at the Village Voice, made herself a single-disc edit of the sprawling two-CD album–something I did for my own entertainment five years ago (although any honoring of [...]
posted 19 September 2011 in Links, Tasty Bits. 2 comments
Congratulations to the lovely and talented Melissa McCarthy for her Emmy win last night. McCarthy and I had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch together a few weeks ago, at which we ordered more fried food than we intended to. You can read a short excerpt at the Rolling Stone website, or check out the George Harrison [...]
posted 19 September 2011 in Articles, Links. no comments yet
I love having mysteries in my daily life, but I’m even happier when they get explained. Exit Through the Gift Shop provided me with a narrative for a lot of the mysterious street art and billboards I had been seeing during my first couple of years living in Los Angeles (although I’m still not certain [...]
posted 16 August 2011 in Links. 1 comment
My old friend Marc Weidenbaum has high-quality blogs to cover every conceivable interest. Well, if you can’t imagine being interested either in anything other than the iPad or ambient and electronic music. But they’re both excellent–go check them out.
posted 31 March 2011 in Links. no comments yet
Three reading recommendations from three talented friends on a summer Monday: There was an intense debate in our cafeteria over who would be the first rock star to make a video where he got crucified and sing his latest hit from up on the cross. Flynn thought it would be Ozzy. I argued for Billy [...]
posted 12 July 2010 in Links. 1 comment
The latest issue of Rolling Stone, still on newsstands, has an article by me about Aziz Ansari, who you might know from Parks and Recreation, Funny People, Human Giant, or his recent gig hosting the MTV Movie Awards. Since my profile didn’t get Ansari summoned to the White House and then fired, I have to [...]
posted 7 July 2010 in Articles, Links. no comments yet
Two quick Monday links to a couple of friends (and frequent Rule Forty-Two commenters): The mighty Rob Sheffield has a new blog at Rolling Stone’s website. Lucky us! Recent topics: Rue McLanahan, Broken Social Scene, “The Humpty Dance.” My grief when Tom Nawrocki shut down his last blog, One Poor Correspondent, was exceeded only by [...]
posted 7 June 2010 in Links. no comments yet
There’s been a lot of fine writing about Michael Jackson’s life and death in the past twelve days, and some of the best of it has been by friends of Rule Forty-Two. I have a few more MJ-related posts to make, but before I cut off this skein, I wanted to steer you towards some [...]
posted 6 July 2009 in Links. no comments yet
I have an embarrassing number of friends who are also talented authors. No fewer than four of them have books out right now. You should, of course, spend all your free time doing nothing but reading them. I would prefer that you did this blindly on my say-so, but in case you want to know [...]
posted 1 June 2009 in Links. no comments yet