August 2017

At the end of February 2012, I was sitting in a bar in the Chicago Hilton, discussing Ray Bradbury.

In English at least, there’s very little research on gaming in the Soviet Union. We know from surviving arcade cabinets that what titles did exist were somewhat derivative of Western products.

The ad was meticulously crafted to foster outrage. I reposted it, commenting that it was “the most disgusting ad I’ve ever seen,” disregarding the inevitable: that my conservative friends might repost it.

James Hurley - forehead contorted into the bland echo of a mummified Incan princeling - can never be cool. He is ‘the original sad boy’. Sad reacts only.

I imagine a cosy dining room somewhere in eastern Europe, in Bucharest or perhaps Zagreb. But it could be Timișoara or Bratislava as well.

In 1840, Edgar Allan Poe described the ‘mad energy’ of an ageing man who roved the streets of London from dusk till dawn.

The 2009 film The Last Station, based on a fine book by Jay Parini and featuring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, made the story of Lev Tolstoy’s last days accessible to many who had not read the biographies.

Like many people, I discovered Raymond Pettibon’s artwork through his ink drawings that were used on a few SST Records album covers, most notably Black Flag’s Slip It In, which my neighbor had somehow procured in 1984.

Earlier this summer, I saw a photo on a lifestyle blog of three women by a pool, drinking rosé. They are taking a group selfie — one woman’s arm is extended, holding a black iPhone

“My own autobiography has never interested me very much,” John Ashbery once told an interviewer. “Whenever I try to think about it, I seem to draw a complete blank.”

Though the collapse of the seven-year Republican effort to kill off the Affordable Care Act came in one of the most dramatic moments in US Senate history

When Plath moved from Devon back to London in the late autumn, one of the things that seemed to thrill her most was the easy access to medical care.