News
Booze Does the Body Good
Matt Kiebus :: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 6:10 pm
Over time men at bars have made up a million lies and urban myths to convince women that we are more interesting or accomplished than we really are. Our methods have been juvenile, classless, and have never been based in any scientific fact, until now. The New York Times has reported that according to a recent study, women that drink “moderate amounts of alcohol” a day gain less weight than nondrinkers. MORE »
News
Global Warming’s Changing Tides
Amy Laviero :: Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 4:15 pm
Global warming has always had its skeptics and until now, those skeptics came across as ignorant, ill-informed bastards. However, with the release of hundreds of hacked e-mails from an England-based climate research center last fall, credibility of the anthropogenic global warming cause has deteriorated. MORE »
NYTimes Op-Edometer
March 2, 2010
Stephen Blackwell :: Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 6:45 pm
If only we were Norwegian; Whoa, The NYPD still administers a policy of disrespecting minorities? No way! And frankly Roger Cohen, I didn’t understand a goddamn word of your editorial today.
News
Blogger Existentialism
Stephen Blackwell :: Monday, March 1st, 2010 6:30 pm
Get an e-mail, write some shit about it, grab a photo off google images, and poof, there it is. Blogging. Is it pointless?
The Atlantic’s bloggers are not typical bloggers. Sure, they’re fantastic at sending off bits of information, but they also write 10,000-plus-word articles for the print pub that, when at their best, change the way you look at a particular aspect of the world.
They want you to know how talented they are, so much so they’re referred to as “Voices” rather than bloggers or contributors or some variation thereof. It’s cheesy. And a person discovering their brand for the first time online wouldn’t know the difference anyway. But egomaniacal chest-beating still has a place in content creation, so when The Atlantic re-tooled its website, their Voices went apeshit. MORE »
News
Kick-Ass Trailer Kicks Too Much Ass
Shannon Hassett :: Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 2:45 pm
I know it only made it in as a scapegoat, but the appearance of Kick-Ass in the movie section of today’s New York Times was every bit as humorous as you would expect. The film, out April 16, is based on the comic book series by Mark Millar about a group of vigilante super heroes as heavy on violence as helping the innocent. The movie stays true to the comic’s graphic content, promising a barrage of blood and profane language from the likes of Nicolas Cage to an 11-year-old girl and everyone in between. The R-rating is a given, but the problem with such violence based films then becomes the trailer, which according to the Times piece is a viral nightmare. MORE »
Dick of the Week
Dick of the Week: New York Times
Shannon Hassett :: Friday, February 19th, 2010 7:00 pm
New York Times, you dick! While you may not have started the slew of rumors surrounding your little ‘expose’ on Governor David Paterson, your refusal to comment on the situation makes you no better than the gossip whoring social media mongers you were attempting to rise above. An aide that quickly rose through the ranks with a six figure salary to match? Overall laziness and some expensive dinners charged to the campaign budget now and then? We’re not talking pre-Clinton politics here, and I want some sexy laundry in my career ending journalistic endeavors. Look, I get it; some dude at the Observer decided to ask his fellow tweeters what they had heard about your upcoming piece on Paterson, and it was soon the shot heard ’round the world wide web. With Paterson’s reelection bid already healthily on its way out prior to printing, you were to be the final nail in the gubernatorial coffin — and you failed! I’m not criticizing your use of unmitigated rumors to sell some papers — times are hard, and over here in print media, we’ve got to be willing to take on new lows — but when those rumors begin to make their way into the realm of the real, you have to fess up. The murder of a political career is a terrible thing to waste.
News
Classic Movie Theaters: The Refurbished and Forgotten
Matt Kiebus :: Friday, February 5th, 2010 3:45 pm
Movie theaters have been an escape for generations of people, a place to forget about outstanding electric bills and minimum wage paychecks. There is something magical about seeing films at movie theaters, the arresting combination of moving pictures and music merge to create portal into a different world. During the 1920s and 30s massive theaters were built across the country, designed in Art Deco style and finished with flair. These theaters were most prominent throughout golden age of film, when men wore jackets and ties and women dresses to the movies. Over time these grand cinemas have fallen into disrepair, forgotten by the masses in favor of practical and profitable multiplexes. MORE »
Food, Lists
Growler Prowler: A List
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 5:05 pm
It’s happened to everyone at some point or another. You’re at a bar, innocently drinking with friends, when someone starts rattling off exactly why they love their beer in excruciating, technical detail. “It’s the hoppiness that really makes that finish so divine,” or some such.
Yes, my friends, beer culture has essentially become wine culture, replete with its own jargon and condescension. Usually, you can bullshit your way out of a long-winded history of microbreweries and their oh-so-vastly superior output if you mutter a few words to show that you’re in the know. Real past responses I’ve used include:
“Unibroue is by far the best German export, I think. Excuse me for a second, I need to pee.”
“Dogfish Head isn’t THAT overrated. I think I see my friend over there.”
“Uh, yeah…IPAs.” [Don't judge me too harshly here. I was slumped in a corner with no real exit strategy].
News
Apple Tablet Unleashed (tomorrow?)
Adam Kearney :: Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 12:30 pm
Money says the wizards of Cupertino will show off the prototype Apple tablet at a conference tomorrow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the world will get a glimpse of the gadget with the potential to destroy print publishing as we know it. All we’ve had to go on so far are rumors about what the device will look like, how much it will cost, and what its capabilities are, but tomorrow all will be revealed (hopefully). MORE »
News
New York Times To Charge Frequent Readers
Adam Kearney :: Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 2:05 pm
The New York Times has decided to begin charging repeat visitors to the website before the beginning of next year. This is likely to scare off some of the less frequent readers, so they have designed a plan where regular visitors would need to pay a subscription price, but those finding articles on search engines would be able to read for free, and keep generating advertising revenue. MORE »
News
Soundtrack Of The Year: The Way We Get By
Alex Moore :: Thursday, November 5th, 2009 4:00 pm
Death+Taxes loves a good underdog story. The Way We Get By and its accompanying soundtrack is the underdog story of the year.
The film began as a home-grown documentary about a group of seniors in Bangor, Maine whose lives are enriched through dedication to a specific act of service: greeting troops on their way out and way home from service. The New York Times called it, “unfailingly modest and profoundly humane.”
But the heart and soul of this movie is the soundtrack. Written by breakout Zack Martin, these songs are profoundly humane, and unfailingly modest. Usually soundtracks are an extra add-on or gimmick — maybe something worth picking up as a collector’s item for your favorite movie. It’s rare that a soundtrack stands on its own - Singles, Pump Up The Volume. This is another one. Not only do Martin’s songs stand alone, but the carry the profound emotional depth of film. Take a listen to “The Trapper” below — and do yourself a favor and pick up both the film and the soundtrack here.
Click through the jump for more from Zack Martin about his music and the film. MORE »
News
About Bloomberg’s Victory…
Stephen Blackwell :: Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 3:40 pm
Yesterday morning all my friends from New Jersey were asking if I voted. I was like, Voted for what? The mayor? Why would anyone vote for the mayor of New York City? Bloomberg had it clinched. As a matter of fact, his campaign literature and advertising materials projected the following message: I am already the mayor; This election is happening to somebody else. Very Don Draper.
Like every other person who reads the New Yorker I was shocked he only won by a 51% margin. (The New York Times used the subtler term “unexpectedly close race.”) I am trying to figure something out: Am I an excruciatingly out-of-touch white person? Or is Corzine’s defeat n New Jersey and Bloomberg’s narrow victory emblematic of America’s distrust in the moneyed class. Or both? MORE »
Issue 22, Magazine
Jay Reatard: The Ballad of Jimmy Lee Lindsey, Jr.
Alex Moore :: Monday, November 2nd, 2009 4:00 pm
If you haven’t seen it, the new issue of Death+Taxes is alive with an interactive technology that allows you to take pictures of images in the magazine using the camera in your cell phone, and instantly get exclusive audio and video content delivered right to your phone. It’s insanely cool and we recommend you go find yourself a copy, but for now, we’ve translated the technology to the web so you can use it right now!
Just click through the jump, take a picture of the image of Jay drinking a beer in a cape with your phone (so that it takes up the whole frame) and email it to [email protected]. Or you can MMS text it to 66268. You’ll instantly receive a 30 second cut of a video from Jay Reatard’s photo shoot back to your phone.
Our article on Jay Reatard is after the jump as well. MORE »
News
Jonathan Lethem Reads at McNally Jackson
Alex Moore :: Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 12:45 pm
McNally Jackson in SoHo became the epicenter of the New York literary whirlpool last night as Jonathan Lethem arrived for the third part of his “marathon reading” he’s doing to promote his new novel, Chronic City.
It’s kind of funny to see a guy as nerdy and white as Jonathan Lethem invoke the hip hop lexicon of “chronic” to describe the majijuana haze in which his new novel lives and breathes. And Lethem was just that — funny. Like, laugh out loud funny. MORE »
