Remember 2011? It's hard to recall just how much more optimistic we were in those times. Everything seemed so suffused with possibility and promise. And the music… there just seemed to be so much going on. In case you've forgotten that era, here's your chance to take a look back at the tunes of those dimly-remembered days.
Here's an extensive preview of the rest of the year in books! Here's what we're most excited about:
• The Jeffrey Eugenides book, The Marriage Plot, is, according to people who have read it, ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE. Out in October.
• Donald Ray Pollock's first novel is out next week, yay. He is a very nice dude from Ohio who worked in a paper mill and published his first book of stories in 2009, after he went to the Ohio State writing program at the age of 50.
• The Lev Grossman sequel to The Magicians is out next month, as is Awl pal Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You. [...]
N.B. For this particular annual death pool, points are awarded for each "correctly" chosen person at a rate of 100 minus age at death. This may account for some youngward skew. 51 total entries were received.
Randy Quaid: 4 lists Stephen Hawking: 4 lists Larry King: 4 lists Mel Gibson: 4 lists Jimmy Carter: 4 lists Gerry Rafferty: 4 lists Peter Tork: 4 lists Keith Richards: 4 lists Ronnie Biggs: 4 lists George H. W. Bush: 4 lists Ariel Sharon: 4 lists
Of all the videos uploaded to the Internet this year, here are fifteen that found their way into my feeds and dashboards and inboxes and my bookmarked aggregators of varying stripe, fifteen that inspired me to to copy and paste their URL into a Google Doc labeled “2011 Videos Wonderful,” a title comprised of words I was likely to search for when later I couldn’t find my ongoing list, and fifteen that survived when I took that giant collection and whittled it down to ten, and then added five that were somehow similar to others in the top ten and deserved inclusion because they hinted at some kind of [...]
[Your web browser does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. However, you may visit the related page.]
Ladies and gents, it's the "Drawings in a Hurry: The Future is Now, 2011" calendar! Amy Jean Porter has made a drawing for each month, each of which tiles delightfully on your computer monitor. You can download the calendar, without captions, most easily here, in an adorable little zip file. [2.8MB] Those are the most handsome. Or you can download the calendar with captions here, if you like words, and who doesn't? [3.4MB] Would you like to see it in action on [...]
This is not a “best of 2011” music list. I didn’t hear or read or see all the music this year. Did you? Perhaps after consulting with a suitably large staff, a publication could reasonably claim to draw a box around, say, the best music of the year. I tend to count myself rarely satisfied with these attempts, though, even if I'm consulted. How about you?
No, don’t even start, as I’ve seen every single one of you beefing on Twitter about a subjective list. You weren’t wrong to do so! Lists are always wrong. It’s a part of their power, this axiomatic guarantee of failure. A list might “start [...]
I was supposed to be a geologist. It’s true: I know a lot more about dips and strikes, mass extinctions, the relative time scale (which I can recite thanks to the mnemonic “Please come over some day, maybe play poker, three jacks cover two queens”—look it up), dissolved oxygen, schist, gneiss, basalt pillow formations and various dramatic fault lines than I do about the current New York Times bestsellers list, or what’s trending on Twitter. I’m an editor, but I still spend a lot of time thinking about rocks. And water. Actually, saying I was supposed to be a geologist isn’t quite right: I was supposed to be a [...]
