Author Archive

Never Wise Up a Chump

Written by Jim Knipfel on February 29, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

It didn’t look as bad as all that outside to me. The snowstorm hadn’t been nearly so wicked as promised. I’d seen much worse. I remember being shown pictures, as a child, of the snowdrift that (quite literally) buried my family’s house in upper Michigan in 1967. Now there’s something to get breathless about. I
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Antismoking Insanity

Written by Jim Knipfel on February 29, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

I guess that name makes its aims and goals obvious enough. "Together," the coalition’s website announces, "we can win smokefree workplace legislation, including smokefree offices, restaurants, bars, night clubs, bowling alleys, and jazz clubs." Bowling alleys and jazz clubs? Now, I try not to be an asshole smoker, myself. I don’t smoke in strangers’ homes
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The Big Question

Written by Jim Knipfel on February 15, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

I’d been walking a long ways. It was cold out and I was weary, but I was finally underground again, and was looking forward to sitting down on a bench for a spell. As I approached the unoccupied wooden bench, however, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the seats were covered with newspapers,
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The World Didn’t End. Damn

Written by Jim Knipfel on February 1, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Now here they were again. Probably those black helicopters, too. It was a good sign. It meant something bad was happening, or was about to happen. On the radio next to the bed, news readers were sounding a bit too calm about the resignation of Boris Yeltsin, and about his handing over the nuclear football
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Heroin Addiction and the Ibogaine Wars

Written by Jim Knipfel on January 25, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

A quick recap: In 1962, Howard Lotsof, a 19-year-old junkie, was given a psychedelic drug derived from the root of Tabernanthe iboga, a West African shrub. The root had been used for centuries in local ceremonial rituals. He came out of a 33-hour trip with no withdrawal symptoms, and no further desire for heroin. After
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The Nightmare Fallout of Kendra’s Law

Written by Jim Knipfel on January 18, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

The idea is not necessarily a bad one. There’s no denying that some people should be under constant supervision, whether in or out of the hospital. Pundits always bring up the case of "The Wild Man of 96th St."–and more recently of Paris Drake, who smashed Nicole Barrett’s skull with a paving stone. I remember
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Making People Uneasy Is My job

Written by Jim Knipfel on January 18, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

I tapped past the post office and the funeral home and the McDonald’s, past the spot where my ribs had been savaged by two ornery thugs, and came to rest at the next corner, waiting for the traffic to pass. I’d made it that far, at least. Just five blocks to go now. Just far
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Studying American Propaganda Films

Written by Jim Knipfel on January 11, 2000. Posted in Books, Posts

Mental Hygiene by Ken Smith (Blast Books, 240 pages, $24.95) I went into driver’s ed with a head full of stories my sister had told me about the horror films they’d be showing us–Highways of Agony, Mechanized Death, Last Prom and the like. We’d get to see real pictures of real human brains splattered across
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Blame Him for Pokemon

Written by Jim Knipfel on January 11, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Jim Malone is 33 years old and lives on the Lower East Side. He insists that his parents didn’t name him after one of the Untouchables. The rock ’n’ roll band he writes, sings and plays guitar for, Standpipe, can be seen around town occasionally at places like Arlene Grocery and the Bitter End. They
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Three-Way Mirror

Written by Jim Knipfel on January 4, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

While trying to track down something else yesterday, some smudge of information, something I was never able to find (leaving that unreachable itch of curiosity and frustration raging in my head), I came across a passage from Nietzsche that I’m certain I must’ve seen before, but which had obviously not stuck. I guess it’s that
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