![This Barbie Doll ad showed up in the New York Times this morning. Prominently positioned in the A-section on page 7. [Feb. 18, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BARBIE-ad-NYT-2-18-2014-640-200x200.jpg)
‘The strenuous exertions of this copywriter sweating blood to extract meaning from airy plastic nothings made me quite breathless.’ — Heathcote Williams
Two New Poster Cards from Cold Turkey Press
!['An Iron Fish Rusts' by Malcolm Ritchie [Cold Turkey Press, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IRON-FISH-RUSTS-Ritchie-1x-200x200.jpg)
Just in: ‘An Iron Fish Rusts’ and ‘The Condition’
The Poet Sinclair Beiles Spoke of Being ‘Dispossessed’
![Sinclair Beiles 'Dispossessed' [Cold Turkey Press]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1-Sinclairs-Dispossessed-640-200x200.jpg)
Last week I took an astral trip. I left my body and cavorted about the universe. I needed a rest. It’s tiresome living in the same body all the time I needed a change of scene. I was very careful.
It’s a Day for Taking Your Valentine’s Pick or Prick . . .
There’s the Valentine Victorian … … and then there’s the Valentine Mustillian.
When Excessive Rudeness Pays Off
Something worth remembering … The Buddha and the Pork Chop Apparently the Buddha met his end Thanks to an excessive degree of politeness. Though he was vegetarian, someone prepared him a meal And the Buddha felt obliged to eat what he’d been offered. Due to its being a bad pork chop, the Buddha died. Clearly […]
William ‘Cody’ Maher: ‘Nightmare Entering the Country’
Border security and immigration are so much in the news these days that my staff of thousands was desperate for comic relief. Then this scenario came over the transom from Cody Maher. Bingo!
‘The Intercept’ Launch: Whistleblowers Welcomed
This is not a Wanted! poster, but it might as well be. You can be sure these journalists are or will be targeted by intelligence officials. The Intercept is a whistleblowing enterprise created by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras. The site was launched today by First Look Media. Our short-term mission is limited […]
Personal History: My Father Was a New York Cabbie
!['An Angel Rides Disguised as Cabbie' by Gabriel Pressman [New York World Telegram & Sun, ca. 1952 -'53]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Angel-Rides-Disguised-as-Cabbie-NY-World-Telegram-Sun-52-or-53-copy-200x200.jpg)
My father drove a cab at night. This was the early 1950s. A Brooklyn-born New Yorker, he knew the city’s streets the way a junky knows his veins. I thought of him because of a headline in today’s New York Times: American-Born Cabbies Are a Vanishing Breed in New York. Dad also knew doormen, theater […]
You Are There: Where Burroughs Once Lived in Mexico City
In more than 50 years not much had changed. Although the narrow street had been gentrified and renamed, the “run-down white apartment building” was still there looking like time had stood still for it.
A Poem by Heathcote Williams: ‘It’s a Barbie World, or …’
Walter Benjamin said, ‘There is no cultural document / That’s not at the same time a record of barbarism…’
Centennial Conference on Life & Myth of William Burroughs
William S. Burroughs was born 100 years ago today. A centennial conference will be held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as part of a month-long WSB@100 Festival in April. The conference, sponsored by The Center for Humanities, “will explore the life and myth of one of the most innovative […]
Clayton Patterson on Jewish History of the Lower East Side
!['Jews: A People's History of the Lower East Side'Edited by Clayton Patterson and Mareleyn Schneider [New York, 2012]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jews-a-peoples-history-of-the-lower-east-side-200x200.jpg)
Nobody I know is better versed in the history of Manhattan’s Lower East Side than Clayton Patterson. And I’d be willing to bet that nobody at all is more devoted to, or more articulate about, the history of the Jews who lived on the Lower East Side. He was interviewed a year ago — Feb. […]
Whom Do You Believe? Clapper or Snowden?
![The lineup: U.S. intelligence officials testified yesterday in an annual hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Clapper is the center figure. [Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/clapper-testimony-200x190.jpg)
You won’t see Edward Snowden being interviewed on American TV. But you will see the nation’s top intelligence official James R. Clapper Jr., all over the news this morning accusing him of damaging national security.
Setting the Stage for Barry Miles’s ‘Call Me Burroughs’
!['Call Me Burroughs -- A LIfe' by Barry Miles [TWELVE Books, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/call-me-burroughs-a-life-240-200x200.jpg)
I asked Barry Miles, author of the newly published biography “Call Me Burroughs: A Life,” how he felt about the review he got in this week’s New Yorker.
Beautiful Hand-Made Paper Gems from Hanuman Books
![Willem de Kooning's Collected Writings [Hanuman Books, 1988]. This is a 1990 second printing.](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/de-kooning-in-hand240-200x200.jpg)
Describing his appreciation of early Cubism, Willem de Kooning points out that it became a movement. It didn’t set out to be one.
Liam O’Gallagher’s Psilocybin ‘Chinatown Trip’
My staff of thousands came across an old movie that Michael McClure once made of Liam O’Gallagher taking psilocybin, in 1962, on a San Francisco rooftop.
What Martin Luther King Jr. Said About Jazz
Spike Wilner writes the electronic newsletter for Smalls Jazz Club, where he’s the congenial manager and one of the owners. The newsletter is always informative. Never sinks to mere PR. Which makes it one of the best around. (Wilner doesn’t just write the newsletter. He’s a first-class jazz pianist. Click the photo or this link […]