by Brandon Perkins

In the previous installment of our futuristic fiction series, Please Use Rear Exit, Mikhail, who has recently x-ed his GF (Katya), ventures out for his first major post-break up night on the tiles with the boys (Chevy and Jayson). After kicking off the night’s drinking spree at the #720’s main terminal, Mikhail gets separated from his buddies thanks to his bladder’s need for relief. The evening will subsequently take an unexpected turn after an encounter with an Internet Goddess – but first Mikhail must reunite with his friends…

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by Jay Hathaway

“The thing you loved as a kid is the thing you should do when you grow up.”
– Paul Pope

Paul Pope has built a reputation as a visionary artist and writer on the strength of some of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the past decade, including Heavy Liquid and 100%. His multiple-Eisner-winning story, Batman: Year 100, immersed the dark knight in the same kind of near-future dystopia that makes his creator-owned work so thrilling. If you saw The Dark Knight this summer, you saw a motorcycle that looks remarkably similar to the one Paul designed for Year 100.

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by A.J. Focht

Technology is advancing all around us, and it’s not always easy to be for it when it continually changes so many facets of everyday life. I recently purchased a Kindle, after several days of convincing myself that it was ok. You see, I have complained about them for years, never intending to buy one. The concept of getting rid of my paper books was more than appalling, and the English major inside me died a little every time I saw someone with one.

Then things began to happen that made me reevaluate the idea of a handheld reader. Kindle announced its 3G Wireless model with access to Wikipedia from anywhere (little did I know it was actually full internet access). Soon after this announcement, I moved into my current apartment. It didn’t take me long to realize that I have too much stuff. My book collection takes up its own case as well as three other shelves. As I tried to shove all of my books into the tiny living space, I found myself considering the advantages of a handheld reader for the first time.

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by Auren Suicide

“I’m becoming the artist that I’ve always wanted to be.”
– wiL Francis

Best known as the lead singer of Seattle’s enormously popular bandz Aiden, wiL Francis has embarked on his first-ever solo project under the pseudonym William Control. After several years of success with Aiden, he found himself on the precipice of personal disaster. But instead of succumbing to drink (he’s sober), suicide, or worse, shitty emo ballads, he has unleashed his inner drum machine and transferred his anguish into a record filled with deliciously dark, undeniably ’80s, four-on-the-floor dance hits.

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by Nicole Powers

The 2011 Coachella lineup has just been announced. Headliners, though somewhat predictable, will doubtless please many: Kings of Leon (Friday), Arcade Fire (Saturday), and the Strokes and Kanye “Foot in Mouth” West (Sunday).

Delving further down the bill is where the true gems can be found. Cee Lo Green leading a Coachella-sized crowd through choruses of “Fuck You” will likely be a highlight of Friday’s schedule. Conversely, waiting for Ms. Lauryn Hill to hit the stage will probably have folks cursing for a whole other reason.

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by Brett Warner

The first copy of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger I ever saw was an aged, ominous looking mass-market paperback sitting gravely at the top of my mother’s bookshelf. Its cover was a very solemn looking burgundy with gold font announcing its title and author. No picture on the front, no plot summary on the back – this book just simply existed. My mother, having passed on her uncanny hunger for books of all types and sorts, once shared the story of how my grandmother lost her shit when she found out her daughter was learning about this filth in school. I knew then I had to read this book right away.

For six decades, The Catcher in the Rye has been both the most ardently taught and fervently banned book in American literature. Along with James Dean and rock & roll, Salinger’s stream of conscious tale of angst and alienation invented the American teenager and, by extension, changed the way we create and market everything from clothes to music and movies. Its hero is a sixteen year-old, anti-social fuck up named Holden Caulfield, who has been kicked out of at least three private schools, has no qualms about going to New York for the weekend to have a few drinks and pick up some girls, and sees through all the insincere, “phony” bullshit that constitutes ninety-nine percent of our sad, pathetic adult lives.

Caulfield’s attitudes and viewpoints remain evocative of their time and place, when the ever-increasing gulf between childhood and adulthood had nearly imploded and the infuriating restraints of proper society threatened to strangle an entire generation. Yet, his anger and his fear resonate more than half a century later, those immortal words echoing through the dividing, massively constructed social schematas in which we live and breathe with little alternative. Is The Catcher in the Rye still meaningful in 2011? If anything, the book’s message is more imperative now than ever before.

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by Carrie Borzillo

“If you fuck with me then that’s it.”
– Sharon Osbourne

Sharon Osbourne has been a lot of things over the years. She’s been a tough-as-nails manager, a famed rock wife, a concert promoter, a cancer survivor, a mother of three complex children (and leader of a pack of sometimes unruly dogs), a television personality with multiple shows, and now she’s added the title of headmistress to her bag of tricks.

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