Story Archive

E(vil)-Mail

John Freeman explores e-mail’s dark side

Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009

Feel free to e-mail this story to your friends. It would be ironic.

Loving Leonard: The Cohen songs we’ll never get enough of

Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009

Weekly editors weigh in on the Leonard Cohen selections we'd gladly keep on repeat.

Some super-exciting, utterly random factoids about Kelly Clarkson!

It's all you ever wanted

Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2009

Our lives would suck without this American Idol winner.

Roll out the ’bones

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009

At UNLV, 76 plus four equals 100.

Trucks don't need no stinkin' badges!

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009

Why does the Highway Patrol’s “badge on board” program—in which troopers ride shotgun in selected 18-wheelers and cite drivers who stay in blind spots, don’t allow for wide turns, etc.—focus on the cars?

Works you may not read before you die, and what you’ll miss

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009

You'll never guess who dies in Death of a Salesman!

Poetic license... and velociraptors?

Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009

Poetry an acquired language.

James Ellroy, thinking machine

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

"I see myself as emblematic of extreme drive and ambition and focus."

Seeing more of Marge

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

Two thoughts on the occasion of Marge Simpson flashing some nip in Playboy.

The airport connector ain't the tunnel of love

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

Look, it didn’t take a nickel’s worth of foresight to see that the tunnel would be this heavily used. Because it’s not a shortcut, with that word’s connotations of unearned convenience; it’s an incredibly useful service.

Handel lends a hand

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009

George Frideric Handel can help you. Here's how.

Why you're fat

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009

Scott Dickensheets and turducken have a little in common.

Hendertucky Tough

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009

Downtown residents are upset by the lack of respect their neighborhood gets. Try living in Hooterville, NV.

One night, two stories: Slices of life from September 23

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009

An uncomfortable speech at the Fifth Street School Wednesday night or writer Stephen Elliott, barefoot and wearing a gray T-shirt, at a backyard literary event. You pick who had the better night.

Spitting sisters

Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009

One Downtownie insists his neighborhood "is as close as we are going to get to San Fran." Proof: Sister Spit.

Checking in on checking out

Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009

Unless the food really sucks, inevitably the worst part of a dining experience is waiting for the bill.

Charles Schulz meets abstract art

This is what happens when high- and lowbrow collide

Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009

Look at this piece, “EP V,” from the exhibit Ellsworth Peanuts, by local art collective Ripper Jordan. It’s abstract, (just like real art!), but what if, as you look at it, we say these two words: “Peppermint Patty.”

Open letter to my favorite radio station

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009

Dear 107.9-FM: You’re airing promos asking listeners what changes they’d like to hear, and I do have a suggestion: How about a tad more musical adventurousness?

Why you should see writer Stephen Elliott read from his new book at Laurenn McCubbin’s house

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009

Because Elliot’s new book, The Adderall Diaries, sounds like a great book.

Greek-Italian throwdown!

Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009

The Greek Food Festival. The San Gennaro Feast. Two great ethnic food events—but what if you can only attend one? How to choose? Perhaps this handy point system will help you decide.

What's in a name

When it’s a title like the one of Jerry Misko’s latest display, plenty

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009

Jerry Misko’s distinctive work—paintings that zoom in tight on this city’s signage and neon iconography—has made him one of the quintessential Vegas artists. His new exhibit is titled Jerry F’n Misko. We asked him about that.

An honorable tribute

Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009

This is one way pitiless Sin City shows its heart: throwing an A-team of Strip performers at a good cause. In this case, to remember Michael Jackson for the benefit of school music programs.

Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives

Edited by Peter Terzian. Harper Perennial, $15.

Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009

A lovely diagram review of the book edited by Peter Terzian.

It's our time again

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009

Minutes before deadline, we did a Google news search on the terms “Oscar Goodman” + “Time Magazine.” After all, Time’s new cover piece about effed-up Vegas is just the sort of vandalism that reliably gets Oscar foaming.

A museum for every crime

Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009

Why stop at a mob museum? If the Mayor is right, if we can launder the city’s grubby soul into squeaky-clean tourist coin, why not capitalize on the full range of immorality Vegas offers?

Serra's weighty drawings

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

So what do you make of these prints by New York sculptor Richard Serra? Start with the obvious: They’re big and uncomplex and heavy. Not intimate, these etchings.

Not sissy books

A few words from best-selling romance novelist (and Henderson resident) Robyn Carr

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009

I absolutely am not one of the tortured writers. I’m having a good time, and if I wasn’t I’d do something else. I don’t like to suffer. Depression doesn’t work for me—I think I could have a good time at a car wreck.

Giant size me

Thursday, July 30, 2009

It’s hard to explain why a single giant Cheeto is better than a handful of regular Cheetos. Trust us.

An Oscar party for everyone

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Anger toward vandals? Exaggerated dismay at Obama’s Las Vegas remarks? His drinking habits? Oscar Goodman shares it all. Now, he's letting us share in his birthday party, complete with a special gin cocktail for the occasion.

Doctorow’s in the house

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Quick, name America’s poet laureate. Those of you who knew it’s Kay Ryan will surely be on hand November 5 when she gives the opening keynote speech for the Vegas Valley Book Festival.

Adding significant value?

Thursday, July 16, 2009

What is the value of creativity? Not in some artsy-fartsy, theoretical way, either: What’s it worth in dollars?

Know what’s funny?

The 21 comic writers interviewed in Here’s the Kicker sure do

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Scan the list of big shots on the cover: Buck Henry, Al Jaffee, Bob Odenkirk, Paul Feig, Merrill Markoe, Larry Gelbart, Harold Ramis, David Sedaris, Jack Handey, Larry Wilmore. That’s a lot of funny business for one book.

Hella Nation

Thursday, July 2, 2009

These hard-won tales, dragged in from the grubby margins of America—where Wright’s anarchists, grifters, white supremacists, porn performers and one very gonzo war documentarian all hang out—deserve a wider audience than the latest fad diet manual.

Interview Issue: Cindy Funkhouser

Thursday, July 2, 2009

The co-founder of First Friday and owner of the Funk House addresses concerns over the future of the monthly art festival and her rebuttal from other artists that she's a "control freak."

The view from Ensign's hair

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Whereas the senator is deceitful, the Hair is steadfast. Whereas the man commits hypocrisy—in public, family-values warrior; in private, doing a married employee—the Hair remains unwavering, always.

This week's damn fine idea: Annex Neonopolis

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Given Mayor Goodman’s announcement it'll be impossible to build a new city hall, a recent visit to the mostly empty Neonopolis has put the obvious idea in our head: Annex Neonopolis as a new city hall.

The consequences of nonsense

Talking with Charles P. Pierce, author of Idiot America

Thursday, June 18, 2009

"I differentiate between the greatness of America in producing people who are completely crazy—and it’s a wonderful thing about us. But if we act upon it as a society, and if we accept these ideas whole into the mainstream, actual people get hurt, and actual damage is done."

How the other half lives

Idiot America explores people’s unquestioning faith in dangerous ideas

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Idiot America—we’ve all been there. It’s that other country, overlaid on top of this one, that you hear on talk radio and Bill O’Reilly’s show, and it’s probably occupied by a few people you know.

Pita perfection

Kabob Korner offers a tasty trip to the Middle East, or not

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Okay, let’s not bullshit each other here. I’m not going to pretend I can tell you whether the food at Kabob Korner is “authentic” in the sense that it tastes like what you’d get in the Middle East. (Never been there.)

Academy: reopened

Charleston bookstore back from the ashes

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Here’s your main takeaway from this story: Academy Fine Books is open again.

Heaven forbid!

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Patron saints—isn’t it time to deputize some new ones, fresh inspirational figures to help us face our uniquely modern problems?

The wrong choice

Thursday, April 23, 2009

At Timbers Bar and Grill on Sunday morning, in full view of my wife, friends and the overly caffeinated waitress, I commit the biggest mistake I’ll make all week: I don’t order the Sierra Madre Omelet.

Mr. Sunday night

Thoughts on the retirement of John Madden

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The measure of John Madden is simple: He helped make Sunday the new Monday.

A literary mash-up

Chatting with the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Thursday, April 16, 2009

In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, $13), humor writer Seth Grahame-Smith took Austen’s original masterpiece and added the undead.

Deep-fry them puppies!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Deep-frying might be the best thing to happen to food since the advent of eating it. It’s alchemical.

Three questions about the American Dream

A chat with Vanity Fair writer David Kamp

Thursday, March 12, 2009

David Kamp traces the evolution of the American Dream and how it became the twisted pursuit of excess that appears to be the reigning interpretation of the phrase.

Zombie burlesque!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Of all the things that phrase could denote—a new album by The Vermin; a chapbook by a desperately hip poet; a display of mildly taboo art in a gallery you’re not cool enough to know about—perhaps the most surprising is this: a zombie-themed burlesque show.

The Vegas Watchmen

Matching up the dystopian heroes to notable local figures

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Nite Owl's defining characteristics: Geeky, gadget-dependent, needs persona to connect with women. Closest local equivalent: Criss Angel

It's a crime

Bookstore and bakery Cheesecake and Crime is the Valley's latest casualty

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009

Every time a bookstore closes, a broker in bundled subprime derivatives should be tossed from the roof of a government-rescued bank.

Opening doors

Rich imparts hard-earned wisdom for tough times

Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009

Ryan D’Agostino cold-called residents in some of America’s wealthiest neighborhoods to ask rich people how they got that way.