AltWeeklies Wire
Profiles in Fearnew
Long after education and life experience have bestowed upon me a much greater understanding of the psychology of race-related fear and the racial profiling that happens inside people's heads on a daily basis, I am still vulnerable to the old impulses.
Metroland |
Stephen Leon |
12-04-2014 |
Commentary
Tags: racial bias
Growing Uncertaintiesnew
Climate change is forcing farmers in the Northeast to rethink their seasonal strategies.
Metroland |
Amy Halloran |
08-03-2012 |
Environment
Tags: Climate Change
From These Tiny Grainsnew
The Kneading Conference gathers the expert and the eager to celebrate and scrutinize bread—and to talk about building community by relocalizing food production.
Metroland |
Amy Halloran |
08-03-2012 |
Food+Drink
Tags: Locavore
The 99 Percentnew
On the ground in Albany, and in the air everywhere, signs that a movement has changed the conversation about inequality.
Peaceable Offendersnew
New York State Police are cracking down on Occupy Albany protesters in Lafayette Park, but Albany County's District Attorney won’t prosecute.
21st Century Situationists
Framed inaccurately by the press, The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is best understood as a contemporary extension of the French Situationist movement of the ’60s, a mass inversion of rhetorical logic, meant to break the spectator’s passivity toward the spectacle and turn the obscuring force of mass media back on itself. Using pop cultural references and superficial Internet memes like the double-rainbow guy and “Hide ya kids, hide ya wife...” in the context of a once-powerful political forum was a Dadaist attempt to wipe the slate clean, to rise above the fruitless tit-for-tat schoolyard shouting match to which our political discourse has been reduced by the 24-hour news cycle and corporate spin-doctoring.
Accessibility's Rainbow: Thomas Pynchon's 'Inherent Vice'new
A mere three years after the infamously reclusive author released Against the Day, a 1,000-plus-page world’s fair of themes, characters and pastiched genres, Pynchon may have thrown us his strangest curveball yet by delivering a novel that is accessible, readable, and relatively short: that is, rather un-Pynchonesque.
Tags: Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
Evangelism Goes Online and Streams to You Live with LifeChurch.tv
Between this year and last, LifeChurch.tv's congregation swelled by more than 5,000 regular attendants at its 13 campuses, including locations in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona and Florida -- and the one here in Albany.
Ultra-Low-Budget Horror Flick 'Paranormal Activity' Hits the Marknew
How does a film from a first-time director, with a budget that matches what some studios would spend on a single ad in a trade magazine, manage to connect with so many people? Simple: It's scary.
Post-Punk Pioneers Mission of Burma Still Have Fuel to Burnnew
They've been together now longer than they were the first time around and they're back to making music that's equal parts forceful and fun -- they sound like no other band but themselves.
San Fran Bedroom-Pop Brats Girls Deliver a Killer Debut Discnew
Indie pop is the new indie rock, as evidenced by the recent popularity of bands like the Postelles and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Add to that list the San Francisco band Girls, who wrap their bedroom pop in many-colored paper without obscuring the classic sunny-day melodies underneath.
Pearl Jam Steps Back, Goes Pop -- and Makes One of the Best Albums of its Careernew
With Backspacer, the "grunge" godfathers seem intent on rewriting their story. It's their best record since 1998's Yield, thanks to the presence of producer Brendan O'Brien, who was allowed by the band to have a hand in picking apart the songs. The result is an economical and wholly replayable Pearl Jam album.
The Flaming Lips Return with a Dazzling Double Albumnew
The Oklahoma psych-rock vets have finally made their Dark Side of the Moon, and yet there are no obvious singles among the 18 tracks. In other words, Embryonic is a true Album, in that no one track can easily be taken out of context.
New Big Star Box Set is a Supermarket of Pop
Keep An Eye On The Sky brings new insight and appreciation to the Memphis power-pop band's catalog.
The Beatles: I'm Looking Through Them
Rediscovering something that wasn't lost: A few words on the Beatles remasters.
