Music snobs are the worst; usually, I’ll stay as far away from music blogs as I do from rabid wild animals. In both cases, I fear for my safety: Make the wrong move, say the wrong word and—bam!—there goes that needed limb. Regardless, the Spanish site El Diablo Tun Tun is different. There is no […]

Gentlemen, there are two easy ways to impress me. The first is to do things I can do way better than I can do them, even though I can do these things reasonably well (like ordering just the perfect item on the menu or laughing at inappropriate times). The second is to do things that […]

I will admit that even though my father gave my sister and me each a copy of Suze Orman’s The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke this past Christmas, reading about finance has never been something that I have taken to with relish or—on a more elementary level—comprehension. The words themselves don’t process […]

The other week I read that ad pages at The New Yorker are down 26 percent and that in the last issue there were only 10 pages of ads in the entire issue. This news hit me in the gut because I was suddenly faced with the prospect of what our reading landscape would look […]

I am not in the habit of hawking the commercial sites of major companies. But times are so tough that I am even feeling a little pain for The Man, and don’t feel as bad about giving AutoZone a shout-out as I might have in the past. Plus, AutoZone has a pretty great website. Especially […]

I think that it is fair to say that amidst all the wonderfulness that was the week of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, one of the single most moving moments was that of Pete Seeger (along with Pete’s grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger and Bruce Springsteen) at the “We Are One” concert on the steps of the […]

I haven’t done the math, but my best guess is that the odds of starting a successful new magazine are about a kajillion times worse than the odds of starting a successful new restaurant. And that’s in a good economy. The odds are probably even worse now that long-established magazines are folding and nobody reads […]

The moments I most love the Internet are not when I laugh at a stupid something or come across an odd fact or find yet another something I want to buy, but when—against all logic and intuition—I feel as though the Internet has somehow brought me closer to understanding the human condition. Really good sites […]

So, it’s the day before New Year’s Eve and, frankly, I am dreading tomorrow night. It is supposed to be an evening of wild debauchery and revelry, but if I see another alcoholic beverage within 20’ of me, I feel like I’m going to want to run screaming in the other direction. I am holiday-ed […]

Trivia is a highly valued commodity in our culture. Just think of all the pastimes that revolve around it: “Jeopardy,” trivia nights at bars, Trivial Pursuit, um…yeah. Regardless, I firmly believe that we prize random facts if for no other reason than to satisfy the basic desire within us to impress the people we want […]