by Nicole Powers
“I don’t want to be culturally irresponsible.”
– Janeane Garofalo
“I do try like hell to not be ashamed. But, sometimes I am, I have to admit,” says New Jersey-born comedienne, actress and activist, Janeane Garofalo. We’ve been talking for close to 45 minutes – mostly about TV, politics, the media, and the toxicity of contemporary pop culture. As I switch the tape recorder off and the conversation winds down, we briefly discuss what Garofalo herself turns to in order to unwind, which is the source of her current state of angst.
“Sometimes I fall dreadfully short, behavior-wise, activity-wise. Sometimes I’ll watch bad television, sometimes I’ll read crappy magazines and I’m ashamed, because I’ve done it,” she admits. The New York resident, who recently released a new stand up DVD entitled If You Will, is currently living outside of her comfort zone in a Los Angeles hotel while filming the Criminal Minds spin-off Suspect Behavior (which also stars Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker).
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By Malloreigh
I started trying to write this article about ex-vegans over a week ago, but I found it really difficult. I couldn’t come up with a clean explanation for why I think people give up on veganism. I’ve talked about this with people for most of the seven years I’ve been vegan, and yet no pattern has made itself evident. In the process of trying to write the article, I interviewed about ten people who once followed a vegan lifestyle and don’t any longer; their answers were varied, sometimes defensive, sometimes apathetic, often apologetic.
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by Nicole Powers
“The actual point of politics is lost.”
– 3D (a.k.a. Robert Del Naja)
‘You’re only paranoid if they’re not out to get you,’ is an adage that’s self-evidently true. With that as a given, Massive Attack mainstay 3D (a.k.a. Robert Del Naja) has every right to feel more than a little suspicious and mistrustful, especially when it comes to matters of internet privacy, security and surveillance.
After the FBI passed on a list of 7,300 UK credit card numbers associated with various porn sites (some legal and some of an illicit nature) to UK authorities, 3D was swept up in the excessively wide net of an indiscriminate police sting in 2003. Though allegations of any wrongdoing were unfounded, the repercussions were severe for the outspoken graffiti artist, vocalist and music producer. His home was raided, and all his computers and hard drives were confiscated for several months. To compound the situation, despite the fact that no charges directly relating to the police operation were ever filed, the furor that surrounded the investigation and baseless accusations (which were leaked and sensationally reported by a tabloid newspaper) meant that touring plans to promote Massive Attack’s fourth studio album 100th Window had to be put on hold. The situation was all the more ironic considering the title of that album referred to a book that exposed the flaws in computer security and the rampant misuse of information in the internet age.
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By Matt Dunbar
In a depressingly pointless attempt to integrate the two activities occupying most of my time these days – Politico and Hulu (yes, I’ve excluded pin-up sites and pornography) – I’ve created a crib sheet for the political sympathies of the characters on The Office. Reflecting on the exercise, I am not only ashamed at how unnecessarily nuanced the analysis is, but also extremely disheartened that I actually spent a good hour designing a ven diagram representing Andy’s politicial socialization at Cornell.
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By Edward Kelly
The Night House was not a place we had a name for. I started calling it The Night House about 30 seconds ago when I decided the place I’m about to describe needs a name, otherwise I’m going to keep calling it “the house” or “that place.” The Night House was, quite obviously, a house – technically. As a kid, I lived in a small community, a relatively idyllic suburb in upstate New York. Most of the houses in my neighborhood were less than five years old. I think the term for it is “tract housing” but that might be wrong. What it meant is that they were constantly building new houses at the end of our estate so new families could move in. And without fail we, that is my friends and I, always had a Night House — a house at the end of the estate that looked like a skeleton home, all angular wood jutting out at weird places, made even creepier at night with its ghoulish pockets of utter darkness, window holes cut out but not yet illuminated by the warm incandescence of electricity.
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