2) From a scientific standpoint, the new pictures of the unmasked King Tut are fascinating. But they have been all the fuck over the news for the past 24 hours and while none of us would be okay with viewing photos of someone's neighbor lying in the morgue, we seem to be fine with looking at the Boy King's mottled flesh over our phad see ew and spring rolls because, after all, he's been dead a really long time. I feel like I missed a meeting on this one.
Two years ago I interviewed Sherman Alexie for the second time. The interview was going to be a centerpiece of a theme issue for a magazine that I had written for a number of times before. The editors decided to scrap said theme and the interview hung in limbo for nine months before the managing editor killed it. I've interviewed dozens of individuals from Wanda Sykes to Ron Jeremy and Alexie remains among my favorites, both because his art impacts my life and because he is boundlessly intelligent. He sends my mom the sweetest thank you notes when she sends him baklava, plus, he is the only person who's ever had the balls to write her and say, "Could you please send more?"
Alexie's new book, the autobiographical young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, was just nominated for a National Book Award. What follows is the introduction to and an excerpt from the interview that never ran. It went up this morning on the literary site I write for, The Nervous Breakdown:
...considering how we suffer in the course of the contest."
By Michael Kahn
LONDON (Reuters) - It was sensational stuff that riveted a nation: A mild-mannered American doctor poisons then dismembers his unfaithful wife, flees England in disguise with his mistress -- and is caught, tried and hanged.
The problem is that the poisoned corpse that sent Dr Hawley Crippen to the gallows in London in 1910 was not that of his wife, according to new evidence found by U.S. researchers.
"...not being Serious with a capital S...In other words, it's much harder to damage your career by consistently supporting war and cruelty than by consistently supporting peace and love. The default position is 'bombs away.' The problem with the outside-the-Beltway mentality is an ignorance of what the actual human pressures and incentives are inside the Beltway, why politicians and pundits behave the way they do, and why that is not necessarily entirely attributable to their moral depravity."
"I came into the world at ten o'clock at night, and I've often thought that was the reason I turned into such a nocturnal creature. When the sun sets, honey, I feel more, oh, alert. More alive. By midnight, I feel fantastic. Even when I was a little girl, my father would shake his head and say, 'Let's just hope you get a job where you work nights.' Little did he know what was in store for me. It takes talent to live at night."--Ava Gardner, from Ava: My Story
When you groove on almost everything about someone but must contend with the fact he does not like Bob Dylan.
