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The World According to Garp Was Never Meant to Be This Timeless

In 1978, when Garp was published, I thought I’d written a period piece. Garp is an angry and a comic novel—a feminist novel and an ode to the women’s movement, which is at once exalted and satirized—but, above all (I thought), Garp is a period piece. I was wrong. The World According to Garp isn’t prescient, but sexual hatred hasn’t gone away. It’s not good news that Garp is still relevant. We should be ashamed that sexual intolerance is still tolerated, but it is.

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posted by kirkaracha at 2:31 PM PST - 34 comments

Debt: A Love Story. In exchange for anonymity, one couple lays out the brutal details of their life in the grip of an epic cycle of debt. Reactions are...mixed.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:08 PM PST - 171 comments

Vardø, Norway, makes Salem look like a walk in the park. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:49 AM PST - 18 comments

"We will have drawn a line in the sand and then watched a rising tide erase it." Bill McKibben updates us on climate change. (SLNewYorker)
posted by doctornemo at 11:26 AM PST - 52 comments

Did the makers of The Deadpool Before Christmas steal their Princess Bride-framing device idea from a cartoonist who tweeted that exact idea to Ryan Reynolds nearly a year ago? [more inside]
posted by UltraMorgnus at 10:23 AM PST - 51 comments

If you want a break from turkey (or the store ran out), you can check out 15 alternative Thanksgiving meat recipes from Babble, or 33 vegetarian main dishes for Thanksgiving. For a broader view, look beyond the more traditional "western" cuisines, and consider multi-cultural meals -- Turkey And Tamales: People Of Color Share Their Multicultural Thanksgivings (NPR), in which Malaka Gharib notes that For many immigrant families, Thanksgiving is a time to take part in an American tradition, but it's also a great excuse to gather and eat the foods of their culture with friends and family. For some POCs, that's the best part of the holiday — a time when you can literally mash the cultures together on your plate....
posted by filthy light thief at 9:51 AM PST - 15 comments

Debuting in July 1991, Wizard: The Guide To Comics quickly became the comic-related magazine of the nineties, often outselling the periodicals it covered. Disparaged then and derided now for fanboy puerility, critical irrelevance, and oh-so-important price guide, it nevertheless provided many readers with their first introduction to what came to be known as 'Alternative Comics' via Palmer's Picks, featuring interviews, profiles, and reviews of indy/alt/lit creators and comics. Now, Tom Palmer Jr. is posting his past columns online, along with commentary. [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:07 AM PST - 16 comments

15 Patents from the Art Deco era. Radios, vacuums, toasters, clocks, etc.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:45 AM PST - 3 comments

Updated 03/01/2000, but Not Online _{right now} but you can MESSAGE ME ANYTIME or sign our guestbook that would be great This site is best viewed with Netscape. Download v4.7.2 by clicking
website designed by Sammy (I'm Dino's cousin) here
(c)2016 Dino's Tomato Pie
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:20 AM PST - 34 comments

The Addams Family — led by father Gomez (the late and much-missed Raul Julia) and mother Morticia (Anjelica Huston), and expanded by the additional presence of newborn son Pubert (Kaitlyn and Kristen Hooper) — may be socially mal-adjusted, but they’re also genuinely affectionate in ways that screenwriter Paul Rudnick intended as a sharp contrast with the behavior of conservative Americans who rallied behind the George H.W. Bush-era slogan of “family values.” In time for the 25th anniversary of Addams Family Values ’original theatrical release, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to some of the film’s key collaborators about family values, heavy makeup, and dropped eyeballs.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:18 AM PST - 41 comments

"We need to stop treating Fox like a normal media company and start treating it like any other business devoted to actively harming the public. It should be boycotted."
posted by Lycaste at 5:36 AM PST - 83 comments

Inside the booming business of background music
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:57 AM PST - 36 comments