P.T. Anderson's Latest and Our Obsession with "Like"

If the first question we ask after experiencing a piece of art is “Did you like it?” we’re operating out of a skewed framework. Our transactional culture is preventing us from doing the larger calculus required to comprehend art’s intrinsic value. Fettered by Facebook clickers that tally numbers of “likes,” this framework is rather graceless.

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61 Local: the Profits of Virtue

Brooklyn’s 61 Local is just your typical community center/public house/bar/restaurant/art space/community garden/think tank/beer hall.

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When a Giant Plucks a Tree

It was as if fate dropped into their beer mugs and they stared at it as it swirled into some cruel divination, which they imbibed with the relish of a cup everlasting. Here’s to Opportunity. Here’s to Recompense.

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After the Summer

“At seven o’clock, the sun set across the edge of her cheek, as she faced south and the violet evening turned dark and empty, her voice still resounding, now with an elderly tremble, oscillating between a broken yowl and a soft lullaby.”

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The Quiet Film

In praise of slowing down.

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Harbinger of Spring

Seasonal musings from an existentialist caveman in the city.

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Off-Broadway: Long Tails, Affordable Tickets

There is life (and good theatre) beyond the tkts booth.

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Sufjan Stevens’s The Age of Adz and the Irony Spectrum

The independent music world seems to be shrugging off the cynicism and fighting snark with two very different weapons: sincere folk-based orchestration and digitally futuristic innovation.

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The Predominant Pigskin

What the National Football League tells us about cultural capital.

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Diesel Wants You to "Be Stupid"

The hypothetical pitch meeting with Diesel execs and Anomaly Ad Agency.

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Good Work and Beer Culture

What it tells us about work, and five beers that will make you say, “It is good.”

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Shepherding Artistic Objectivity

Sweetgrass approaches objectivity as gracefully as Ansel Adams, making the cowboy myth reality.

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Time Capsule: The Last Ten Years

That Y2K stuff sure comes in handy.

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"Agriburbia": Friend or Foe?

The idea that sustainability is a penance paid simply through intelligent purchasing is innocently nearsighted, but more problematic is the idea to return to the autonomous indulgences of a sprawl design that’s wrapped in recycled newspaper, claiming that the sum of your repentant emotions is good enough.

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WTF?

What can possibly account for the many millions of hours we spend watching babies laugh, dogs sleepwalk, and cats do strange things on the Internet?

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The Diaries of Dennis, A Hipster

What’s a guy gotta do to be be cool without looking like he cares?

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Rick Steves, Travel Guru

Rick Steves courteously, politely, and awkwardly explores Europe, rendering the Ugly American a nerd.

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The Hurt Locker: Dismantling the Summer Action Movie

The Hurt Locker is an intelligent expression of the beauty behind the destruction, and the harsh reality in the rubble.

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The High Line -Manhattan's Newest Public Park

New York’s prophetic public space has found “romance in the ruins.”

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America's Rebellion Against the Car The Philosophy Behind Making Times Square a Public Space

How do we transform a space that will maintain its hard-working American grittiness, yet still become the highest standard for urban pedestrian sanctuaries? This will be the question that the city of New York must carefully answer if they are to be the example for the New American City.

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A Dinosaur Crawled Into My Backyard (Attempts at Connecting with Nature)

For he is a dinosaur.

And I a twenty-something white guy, who can’t imagine a world before cell phones.

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The Ugly Path to Adulthood

Thomas Sadoski and Piper Perabo in a scenefrom Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty. Playwright Neil LaBute has always been a master of malice. His plays, filled with the grand intricacies of name-calling and the subtlety of allusive pricks to the heart, are studies on the subterraneous cruelty we have grown accustomed to brandishing against […]

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When Avant-Garde Becomes Accessible: Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion

“Avant-garde” has consistently described Animal Collective’s place in the indie scene, with their bizarrely resonant sounds that meld into corrosive melodies and tribal tones, but they haven’t been coined “accessible” – until now.

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Bell of the Ball: An NFL Commentary

If we are, in fact, in store for tougher times, then I take comfort in the resilience of a gridiron jock who won with humility.

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Notes From a Budget Truck

Does a lack of belonging breed materialism which leads to neuroticism which leads to paranoia which leads to believing that this downward spiral of material obsession will continue and Steve Jobs will eventually create a troop of iPod robots so sleek and desirable that they will seduce us into being their slaves?

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An American Beer Garden

If there is an equation for good community, I think it goes something like this: people + nature + moderate amounts of alcohol – television = good.

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