I never thought I’d hear “Hotel California” in the bleak desert landscape of Iran. Don Henley’s tale of a bad trip was a big hit with our guide, Reza, however, and he’d turn up the volume whenever the song looped around on his tape player. “This could be heaven or this could be hell,” Don […]
Noy Thrupkaew
Noy Thrupkaew is a Prospect senior correspondent.
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Clock Watching
Virginia Woolf is putting on her coat with red, rough-knuckled hands. She stumbles out the door, pockets a large stone and wades into the river near her house in Sussex, England. As her shoes slip free of her feet, we hear her voice reading a suicide note to her husband. “I don’t think two people […]
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Rhyme and Reason
Part of the fun of 8 Mile is guessing at who’s in the lead role: Is it the real-life Marshall Mathers III, the sullen Eminem or the explosively perverse Slim Shady? Starring Mathers, aka Eminem, aka the most controversial white boy in music today, 8 Mile teases us with its billing as a semi-autobiographical account […]
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Tori Lite
Tori Amos has made a career of channeling other people: sensitive teens, rape victims, women in love, in breakups, in the throes of regret. Her last album, Strange Little Girls, was the most ambitious, if imperfect, display of her skills as a musical medium. She conjured female narrators for songs originally written and sung by […]
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Animation Sensation
Terrified by the toxic perkiness of Pokémon and Sailor Moon, or by the splattery violence of other Japanese cartoons, mainstream America has largely shunned as childish or eccentric what Japanese audiences see as a sophisticated, adult art form — in every sense. Anime, as Japanese animation is otherwise known, has its eroguro (erotic-grotesque) side: One […]
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Mob Psychology
“Everything comes to an end,” says Carmela Soprano to her beleaguered Mafia husband Tony. That line comes early in the season premiere of The Sopranos, but it manages to conjure up a sulfurous cloud of impending apocalypse that hangs over the rest of the episode. For a season opening, there is a lot of ominous […]
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Money Where His Mouth Is
Afghan women acquired an unlikely ally last November, when first lady and “Comforter in Chief” Laura Bush became feminism’s newest convert. In a radio address, Mrs. Bush bemoaned the plight of Afghan women and declared a U.S. commitment to restoring their rights. Four months later, on International Women’s Day, the first lady embraced even more […]
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She’s No Martha:
On the issue of Martha Stewart versus Julia Child, the world is clearly divided into two camps. Perhaps you love Martha — her freakishly neat ways, her ability to strangle the warmth out of homemaking, the artificially manufactured twinkle in her eye. Or perhaps you love Julia — the hooting voice, the happily sloppy technique, […]
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Morality Tale:
As millions today celebrate a celebrity who started out sleek and sexy and wound up puffy and bloated, it’s a good time to pay homage to another star who is following the same trajectory. That’s right, folks: Anna Nicole Smith. Unlike Elvis, however, Smith has no discernable talents, save an insatiable desire for fame that […]
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Ladies, Please:
If you had wandered into Sanctuary Theater in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 8, you might have seen a most unusual spin-off of patriotic imagery. As Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” blared over the sound system, performance artist Bridget Irish and her crew, wearing nothing but George W. Bush masks, covered their bums and […]
