Introducing Chilly Gonzales

“Hi, I’m Chilly Gonzales. If you don’t know me, I’m a Grammy-nominated producer. I hold the Guinness world record for longest continuous piano concert at 27 hours. I’ve got a lot of famous friends.” He pauses for effect, then, “In France, where I live, they call me un génie musicale.”

Killian is a freelance journalist and screenwriter based in London.

Why Doesn’t Spider-Man Beat Up Women?

Douglas Wolk explores the psychology of Spider-Man and introduces Turn Off the Dark, the “circus rock ‘n’ roll drama, whose Broadway premiere has now been pushed back to the fall.

Douglas Wolk writes about arts and culture. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Rethinking Environmentalism

The problem is not with how we treat the Earth. It’s with how we treat ourselves. We work 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. And thanks to microcomputing, we work all the time. All the time. There is no leisure, there is no pleasure.

Daniel is an independent writer, reader, teacher, and philosopher living in San Francisco.

The Magnetic Fields: Realism

A decade after 69 Love Songs, the Magnetic Fields are still relying on formal stunts. This time, they’ve made an acoustic “folk” record–the joke being that Realism couldn’t be any less “realistic.”

Douglas Wolk writes about arts and culture. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

America: Go Forth! (In Levi’s)

July 1776 folds into February 2008: Jefferson and Obama merge. The visual motifs of McGiney revitalize the verse of Whitman. The gold rush pioneer morphs into the post-recession innovator or agent of change.

Christopher Lynsey is a thinker and conceptual writer living in New York City.

Dominick Dunne: Too Much Money

Roman à clef doesn’t make quite as much sense as a form now that we have Gawker and Perez Hilton to provide us with the real names and humiliations of anyone involved in a scandal.

Molly Young is a writer and blogger based in Manhattan.