Jon Reiss

A Guy Watching Mad Men: The Real Bob Benson (“The Quality of Mercy,” S6/E12)

June 17, 2013 No Comments

Last night’s episode of Mad Men could have only been topped if the whole gang attended a wedding where Joan was to be married to a partner at Gray, only to be ambushed and slaughtered by a battalion of Gray copywriters in the name of J Walter Thompson resulting in Don and Joan’s death. Instead Don Draper, after helping his neighbor’s son avoid a court martial, slept with his neighbor’s wife in front of the all-too-mature eyes of his daughter. […]

Books, Conversations, Featured, Interviews

Wave Pools, Escapism, and The Creation of “Fight Song”: An Interview With Joshua Mohr

February 26, 2013 3 Comments

Sometimes it seems like there’s a breed of writer that the current literary world just doesn’t engender anymore. The kind of writer I’m referring to is the type that many of us clung to when we began channeling aspirations that we ourselves could one day be writers. For those of us that didn’t grow up loving books from the start — those of us who, in school, only sunk our teeth into the Orwells or the Huxleys or the writers […]

Books, Conversations

Private Schools, Medication, and Gossip Magazines: A Conversation with “Accelerated” Author Bronwen Hruska

November 12, 2012 1 Comment

If you’ve ever been told that your C in 3rd grade Social Studies isn’t going to look good on a college application, you probably have some sense of how accelerated the private school world can be. Yet, in New York City, where everything is inherently accelerated, the private school system can be even worse. Bronwen Hruska’s novel Accelerated (Pegasus) follows a newly single father, Sean Benning as he juggles his kid’s private school, his job at a gossip rag, and his aspirations as an artist. Sean must […]

Books

Talking With Other People 100 Times: A Conversation With Brad Listi

August 28, 2012 No Comments

On August 29th, the Other People Podcast will run its 100th episode. Host Brad Listi is an author and the founder of The Nervous Breakdown. His show stands out from book talk media outlets both in content and tone, and Listi’s interview style tends to be more candid, personal and often bold than the rest. I caught up with Listi to talk about his favorite moments from the show so far, and about what writers are really like.

Books, Film

Five Books That Should Be Adapted For Film

July 18, 2012 No Comments

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, written by Stephen Chbosky, successfully bridged the young adult to adult literature gap in a way that few have. The film version of the book is now being slated for release in September, well over a decade after the fact. The film is set to star Paul Rudd, Mae Whitman and Emma Watson, and is being produced by the team behind Juno. It is being adapted and directed by Chbosky.

Books, Featured, music

Baseball, Indie Rock and Yo La Tengo with Jesse Jarnow

June 11, 2012 No Comments

Big Day Coming is the new book by music journalist/WFMU DJ Jesse Jarnow that tells the story of indie rock as it evolves through the lifespan of Yo La Tengo. Jarnow paints a picture not only of a band’s lifespan or of a genre’s inception, but of multiple decades of rock n roll history, music journalism, and the city of Hoboken, New Jersey. Yo La Tengo, being a band so inextricable from their home venue, Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the place […]

Band Booking, music

Band Booking: Andrew Jackson Jihad

April 19, 2012 No Comments

As Andrew Jackson Jihad, Sean Bonnette (with partner Ben Gallaty) exists in a unique realm of decidedly punk rock musicianhood. With each consecutive album, the band manages to gain slightly more attention from the larger independent music listening world. AJJ is known for their bare bones, agressive folk sound that utilizes acoustic guitar and upright bass, but also with each conescutive release, they’ve began incorporating horns, more strings and even on the last record, Knife Man, kazoos. Most immediately striking about […]

Books, Featured, Film

Adaptation: Five Books That Must Never Be Adapted For Film

March 23, 2012 7 Comments

When David Cronenberg turned William Burroughs’s masterwork Naked Lunch into a somewhat linear, entertaining narrative, literary fans everywhere were pleasantly, if not resentfully surprised. Cronenberg, in doing so, proved himself not only a master storyteller, but able to do something that few directors could, adapt dense, postmodern classic novels into solid films. On the other hand, when director Gary Walkow attempted to turn William Burroughs’s seminal novel Queer into a film by combining it with the story of Burroughs’s wife’s […]