World
Three Plays on the Pancake
Pancake Soufflé at Pitt’sIt’s arguable that this dish, the flagship dessert at chef Jeremy Salamon’s proudly kitschy Red Hook restaurant, isn’t actually a pancake: no pan, no cake. But...
Watching the “King of the Hill” Revival from Texas
I came to “King of the Hill” late, during the COVID pandemic. The animated hit co-created by Mike Judge ran for thirteen seasons starting in the late nineties. I’d...
The Banal Provocation of Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans
Two American blondes have recently hawked denim. Beyoncé, an ambassador for Levi’s, dressed in outlaw drag, arrives at a semi-deserted laundromat. She slinks out of her 501s, revealing her...
The Musician Bringing the Bagpipes Into the Avant-Garde
One night this past spring, the audience members at a bagpipe concert in Red Hook, Brooklyn, could be organized into two neat categories: people who knew little to nothing...
The Enduring Power of “The Rules of the Game”
Even if Mozart’s name and a quote from Beaumarchais’s play “The Marriage of Figaro” didn’t feature in the credits of “The Rules of the Game,” this 1939 film by...
Worlds in Rooms
I think that sometimes, when we look at art, we’re hoping to recapture a piece of our past—a golden time when we had a deep and unforgettable experience with...
How Tom Lehrer Escaped the Transience of Satire
Satire, George S. Kaufman famously said, is what closes on Saturday night. Meaning, of course, that it has a limited run because of its intrinsically circumscribed interest. To this,...
Was the Renaissance Real?
Roeck goes on to address the great question of why Europe became the center of prosperity and innovation on the planet. Colonialism and imperialism can’t explain it; they’re as...
L.A.’s Food Culture, Transformed by Immigration Raids
In early July, while shopping at a farmers’ market on the east side of Los Angeles, where I live, I bought a few packages of raw chicken thighs from...
