John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead should be hailed not simply as a fabulous piece of writing but as a landmark debut of a new genre, invented by others but perfected here.

Is a no brainer when I live up the street. It’s my favorite theater in NYC (and not just for proximity). Get it!

Just because you’re going to have to need to read this.

The trend towards oligarchy in the polity is already clear. There are 250 millionaires in Congress. Their median net worth is $891,506, nine times the typical US household. Around 11% are in the nation’s top 1%, including 34 Republicans and 23 Democrats. And that’s before you get to Romney, whose personal wealth is double that of the last eight presidents combined. All of this would be problematic at the best of times, but in a period of rising inequality it is obscene.

The issue here is not class envy, hating rich people because they are rich, but class interests – cementing the advantages of the privileged over the rest. The problem is not personal, it’s systemic. In the current climate, it means a group of wealthy people in business will decide which wealthy people in Congress they would like to tell poor people what they can’t have because times are hard.

via The Awl

Shaun White, in achieving the first-ever snowboard SuperPipe perfect score in Winter X Games history, demonstrated the aesthetic and athletic ideals necessary to produce such a feat. The third part comes when you realize he could have skipped the run altogether and still win gold—his fifth consecutive in the event. Yes, Shaun White did what no snowboarder has ever done at the time he least needed to do it: with victory already assured.

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