Author Archive

Q&A With Rock Revolutionary John Sinclair

Written by John Strausbaugh on February 22, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Now, some people don’t understand. They think a blues player have to be worried, troubled, to sing the blues. That’s wrong. It’s a talent. If every man with a worry could play the blues, why… from "Doctor Blues" I don’t pay much attention to the Super Bowl. Miss more games than I’ve seen. Never in
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Dave Eggers In Review

Written by John Strausbaugh on February 15, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

I can’t review it. Eggers is a friend of and occasional contributor to this paper. Reviewing his book would be a bit like reviewing Jim Knipfel’s, or Amy Sohn’s, or Terminator’s this spring. We liked Eggers’ work a long time before we met him (always dicey), back when he was doing Might, the smartest and
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Old Writers Take on Youth Culture

Written by John Strausbaugh on January 25, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

You know that very fine line between genius and stupid? Marty walks it like Philippe Petite–which is to say, sometimes he falls to one side or the other. On the stupid side, he’s done a Madonna cover with snot running out of her nose ("She’s Snot All That"). On the smart, there was the Fishwrap
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Lame Ivy League Fiction and Brilliant Paranoia

Written by John Strausbaugh on January 18, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Tom Paine’s first book is Scar Vegas and Other Stories (Harcourt, 215 pages, $22), and I pick on it only as an example. Let’s concede that having a story collection published nowadays is in itself an accomplishment, given a commercial publishing environment where short story collections are considered box office death. Paine’s bona fides are
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Rev. Jackson Preaches to the Stupid

Written by John Strausbaugh on January 11, 2000. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

We spent Christmas out in Santa Monica, visiting with Diane’s brother Ben at his house in Pacific Palisades. Christmas day, when all the presents had been torn open, some of us went out for a walk. It was a beautiful, clear day, maybe 75. We sauntered down the Palisades hill past the 1920s Italianate villas,
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Worn on the Bayou

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 28, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

He nods. “Not bad for an elephant, eh?” You want to take anything Komar & Melamid say to you with a grain of salt. They are masters of the art of the deadpan, deadly serious joke. As dissidents in Moscow they did work that slyly mocked Soviet culture. Since moving here in 1978, they’ve gently
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Don’t Mess With the Greeks

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 21, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Was I mortified. I learned a hard and important lesson: Don’t mess with the Greeks unless you really know what you’re doing. I got a little itchy all over again a few times while reading two new translations from the ancient Greek that are both very loose adaptations: Ted Hughes’ version of Euripides’ Alcestis (Farrar,
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Dirty Doughty & Hasty Alfred

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 14, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Hangdogs, Furious George and Girls Against Boys. George Tabb did what he does best: insulted the audience, Doughty and Girls Against Boys fans until projectiles flew at his head. Punk rock. Turns out he’s not joking about his new bass player being his Mini-Me: the resemblance is bizarre. If he could get his drummer to
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Radical Culture

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 7, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

In her new book Don’t Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial (Beacon Press, 196 pages, $25), Ellen Willis casts a jaundiced eye back on the 1990s from her perspective as a longtime feminist, leftist and self-described "cultural radical." A veteran of the original New Left and antiwar movements in the 60s–and, arguably, the
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Mary, Mother of JFK

Written by John Strausbaugh on November 30, 1999. Posted in Breaking News, Posts

Her celebrity notwithstanding, I can’t say I was happy to see the Blessed Mother take time off from her constant schedule of personal appearances in Old Catholic regions around the world–an unstinting service to humanity for which she’s treated to the worst calumny from godless blackguards of the Christopher Hitchens stripe–to appear on NBC in
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