Author Archives: Felix

I’m a fan of the New Yorker on Facebook. So I should be able to read the Jonathan Franzen essay about David Foster Wallace and Robinson Crusoe, no? No. Turns out that TNY’s clever gimmick about opening the essay up … Continue reading →

My name has been pronounced many weird ways over the years, but never quite like this:

People have opinions, and it’s kinda hilarious to see conservatives try to simultaneously complain that Weigel had erroneously been counted as one of their number while at the same time complaining that he wasn’t “objective”. I do believe that Weigel resigned rather than was fired, and it’s easy to see why he’d want to do that after reading the absolutely horrendous column by their lame, sad toady of an ombudsman today.
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Thanks, Petunia, you were delicious!

Old friends of mine might remember a question about umbrellas I had back in the 1990s. Has Mark Hurst come up with an answer (page 25)?

The University of Cambridge is celebrating its 800th birthday this year, and so all around the town are banners like this one: The obvious question, of course, is what is the significance of those dates? … The problem is that although the timeline includes no fewer than 80 different years between 1209 and 2009 (not including the ones at both ends), only one of them coincides with the seven in-between years on the banner: 1446, which marks the founding of King’s College.
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We waited in a very long line which did not move for almost one hour, and yet I was completely content drinking a beer patiently (generally not my greatest virtue) while arguing whether or not we were in East Williamsburg or Bushwick as a very loud garage punk band entertained the crowd. Rockstar butcher Tom Mylan carved up the most gorgeous roasted pig while a team of folks assembled tacos for distribution. … Bring it on… large juicy mounds of pork wobbled around on the flimsy plates as we snatched the goods and found a corner to merrily eat in silence.
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In the days leading up to today, Stefan was obsessively checking the forecasts and the satellite pictures, looking at an enormous thundercloud, at least 1,000km across, which was right in the way and which would make the eclipse a total wash. … Just as the eclipse was approaching totality, the sun started peeking out from between the clouds, and at one point there was an astonishing sight where you could even see what was left of the sun in the middle of a tiny swatch of blue sky, with sunbeams streaming down between almost-black clouds.
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Looking at the people who judged the taste and not just the price of the wine, the results were close, but unambiguous: the best wine was C, the Massiac — more people judged it their favorite than any other wine, according to a show of hands I asked for, and it also got the highest average rating. … Wines A and C — the two French wines, which were also the most and the least expensive wines respectively — both got 13 (out of 44) votes as being the most expensive wine, and both got 4 votes as being the cheapest.
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