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Revisiting the Catholic Worker Movement: Dorothy Day and Anarcho-Socialist Christianity
Kaya Oakes
07.21.10
Dorothy Day was a radical socialist single mom who founded the Catholic Worker movement. Catholic Workers are more likely to be found cooking food at your local punk house or at meetings of the I.W.W. than at the Vatican. Should she be nominated for sainthood or your next tattoo? Here, Kaya Oakes, author of Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, makes a strong case for the tattoo.
The Life You Save May Be Bill's: An Interview with Tom Bissell
Matthew Simmons
06.06.10
A phenomenally talented writer with a strong sense of logic and history, Tom Bissell has often explored war and its moral complexities in his writing, including as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last few years he has also become the veteran of "eight- or nine-hundred digital wars." As he confessed in a recent excerpt from his book Extra Lives in the UK Observer, Bissell spent three years high on cocaine and playing video games while his formerly prolific writing ground to a halt. Videogames have recently become not only his obsession but his subject. Along with his recent book he has become The New Republic's resident video game critic, a first for the magazine. Following the firestorm surrounding Roger Ebert's comments about why video games are not art, Bissell and Simmons hazard the opposite opinion and discuss the conflict between interactivity and narrative, as well as their possibilities.
Pottymouth
Kevin Sampsell
04.15.10
The oral aspect of sex can't be overestimated and here Kevin Sampsell presents several case studies of the way we talk during the act. Sampsell is the author of the recent memoir A Common Pornography and proprietor of Future Tense Press. Art by Danny Jock.
Rupaul's Drag Race
Bradford Nordeen
02.05.10
The growth of positive depictions of gay chracters and themes on television likely has as much to do with advertising demographics as recent shifts in public opinion and, true to form, Rupaul's Drag Race is packed with as many product placements as the other reality TV shows it mirrors. Bradford Nordeen, author of Fever Pitch, highlights the pleasures and frustrations that the show has to offer as well as how it literalizes Warhol's maxim about fifteen minutes seconds of fame.
The Chase is Always Better Than the Kill
Michael Louie
12.19.09
Michael Louie spent five weeks deep in the trenches during the first annual Brooklyn Fishing Derby, which happened to start the first day of mandatory fishing licenses for all New York saltwater anglers. He seeks out the secret and hidden fishing spots amongst the new development and regimented city property and finds that maybe he's not quite the terrible fisherman he thought he was.