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New York

For Your Calendar: James Joyce’s Nation Of Ulysses

By Jason Diamond on

It is a book that can go from completely confounding to illuminating in the span of one sentence. It is one of the (if not the) great masterpieces of modernist literature, and also a book that has given many college English students nightmares. Some say it is one of those books that you must read, while others will tell you that you’re just better off reading the mounds and mounds of criticism written on the tome. At some points it is absolute brilliance, and at others it is one of the most challenging, and sometimes annoying, books written in the 20th century. The fact is that there are very few books in the English language that can generate the type of dialogue that James Joyce’s Ulysses still does to this very day. … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Garage Rock Gods In Brooklyn

By Jason Diamond on

Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, the compilation of 1960s garage rock assembled by Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records, and Lenny Kaye (later of the Patti Smith Group), first released in 1972, is still a cause célèbre. If not for Nuggets, would people flock to hear Jonathan Toubin spin wild soul 45s at Brooklyn Bowl? If Mick Collins never heard the singles featured on the compilation by bands like The Seeds and Count Five, would he have even started The Gories, let alone agreed to play a reunion show with them a few hours before Toubin’s insane dance party (which Collins is guest DJing at), also at Brooklyn Bowl? If you didn’t have Nuggets, you might not have the Black Lips, King Khan, Ty Segall, and at least a quarter of all bands ever awarded “Best New Music” by Pitchfork. Punk rock might have never even happened if not for a handful of outcasts digging the Electric Prunes, thanks to the most important rock and roll compilation ever put out. … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Reactions To Matthew Barney’s Work

By Jason Diamond on

“What does it all mean?” a fellow visitor to the Morgan asked her companion during my weekend visit to the Madison Avenue library and museum. She was playing right into my hands, as I was looking to test this theory I have: if you stand around something created by Matthew Barney long enough, somebody will inevitably ask some sort of variation on that same question. Sure, art should provoke that sort of response from people, but there’s just something about Barney that makes it all the more visceral. … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: When The World Came To Queens

By Jason Diamond on

To know Queens is to truly love the borough. It isn’t Manhattan, and it doesn’t have the cool tag that Brooklyn has had latched onto it in the last decade, but anybody that has spent a good amount of time in the easternmost of the five boroughs knows about the great buildings, the wide array… Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Cocktails, Pork, and Philip Glass

By Jason Diamond on

You know that summertime is closing in when you can’t keep track of all the things New York has to offer over a weekend. Thankfully that’s what we’re here for, and this weekend is full of so many great things, we had to boil it down to three that you really can’t miss. … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Young and Old Punks

By Jason Diamond on

Here’s an idea for your Saturday: stop by the Metropolitan Museum for PUNK: From Chaos to Couture, to take in how the punks from around 1977 dressed, then go see a band that can trace its lineage back to those fashionable nihilists that hung out on The Bowery and Kings Road. … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Fran Lebowitz Being Fran Lebowitz

By Jason Diamond on

Some people say Woody Allen, others still cite Carrie Bradshaw; some people move to New York intending to see if it’s actually anything like a Velvet Underground song, while others think they can arrive as a modern-day Holly Golightly — but before anybody moves to New York, most have one or two people, real or fictional, that they hold up as the best example of how one should look, act, and talk when living in the Big Apple. I call this the New York Spirit Guide, and before I made the move to New York a decade ago, mine was (and still is) Fran Lebowitz. Although it is very un-Fran Lebowitzlike to admit something like this in a public forum, I feel that with her upcoming PEN World Voices event,where she’ll be speaking with the very great novelist A.M. Homes this Friday, a little Fran appreciation is due. … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Sonic Youth Detox With Lee Ranaldo Band

By Jason Diamond on

It wasn’t exactly the day the music died, but for people who grew up thinking Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s marriage was an indestructible artifact from the glory days of the alternative 1980s and ’90s, Gordon’s revelation to Elle of what caused their marriage to crumble was pretty devastating: … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: The New Golden Era of Zines

By Jason Diamond on

It makes sense that zines became a big part of the punk-rock movement in the late 1970s, because like punk rock, zines are tough to define. The definition given by Wikipedia to explain zines is even a bit murky: “most commonly a small circulation self-published work of original and/or appropriated texts and images usually reproduced via photocopier.” … Read More

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New York

For Your Calendar: Downtown Literary Festival

By Jason Diamond on

New York is a paradise for book lovers. You’ve got the rich literary history stemming back to the founding of our country, big-time magazines named after our city like The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, over a hundred really important writers living here, and tons of literary journals and blogs popping up from Crown Heights to Harlem. … Read More

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