- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
posted
May 8, 2013
The latest scandal in the world of literature isn't much of a
scandal, even by the standards of post-Vidal book-chat, but it has
the Arts sections of online magazines talking, and it's a little
bit interesting to me.
It con ...
- Important Community BulletinsBy George W Cockburn
posted
Jan 24, 2013
Dear Editor,
I have just finished reading the column "Reasons I did not get
flu shot..."
I am amazed, upset and appalled that the contents of this
article. For Brett Yates to insinuate that the responsible and
product ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
posted
Oct 10, 2012
The first presidential debate I ever watched was one of the
Clinton-Dole events, when I was eight years old. I probably didn't
stay up to watch the whole show, and I don't remember a single
thing either candidate said - sure ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
posted
Sep 26, 2012
We're in the middle of Oktoberfest, which is an annual festival
originating in Bavaria - and which, yeah, mostly takes place in
September (one of those nonsensical things like how Boxing Day
doesn't have anything to do with ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
posted
Sep 13, 2012
In case you don't know, "xkcd" is the greatest webcomic of all
time. Equal parts hard science, pop culture, and whimsy, it's drawn
by a guy named Randall Munroe, who worked as a roboticist for NASA
before "xkcd" became profi ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
updated
Mar 28, 2012 02:52 PM
For some reason, I can always remember the year in which a movie
came out - I can do this even for classic movies, made eons before
my birth - but I can never remember in which year a particular song
appeared.
This is a li ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
updated
Feb 15, 2012 01:38 PM
The Oscars are coming up, which means that it's time for us to
start thinking about how much better our taste in movies is than
the Academy's. Since 2009, the Academy has put forth nine or ten
Best Picture nominees instead o ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
updated
Jan 18, 2012 08:08 AM
About a month and a half ago, I bought an iPhone 4S. I upgraded
from a Samsung SCH-a870, which is one of those old clamshells
that's only half a step more advanced than the brick-phone that
Zack Morris used to carry around o ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
updated
Dec 21, 2011 10:20 AM
Christmas is pretty popular, and not just among right-wing
evangelicals. It's celebrated around the world, on all seven
continents (especially Antarctica, which is where all the really
cool Christmas parties are happening th ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
updated
Dec 19, 2011 07:59 AM
I've never eaten raw, unseasoned pumpkin - because that would be
disgusting - but at times, while carving jack-o'-lanterns, I've
been almost curious enough to try it. Without the cinnamon and
nutmeg, would pumpkin really be ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
updated
Nov 23, 2011 10:18 AM
I've just passed the one-year mark in my Facebook membership,
and still I have only 136 friends. This is a pitiful sum - really,
a source of ceaseless embarrassment - so if any of you readers out
there want to 'friend' me an ...
- Columns
> Generation YBy Brett Yates
updated
Nov 9, 2011 10:44 AM
Televised weddings tend not to lead to successful marriages.
It's a stunning observation, I know, but I just thought I'd throw
it out there in case some of you readers are about to get hitched
and are wondering how you might ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
updated
Oct 12, 2011 01:37 PM
I don't know if you watched the legendary Andy Rooney's farewell
segment on the October 2 edition of "60 Minutes," but in case you
missed the 92-year-old essayist's touching retirement speech, I've
taken the time to transcri ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
updated
Sep 28, 2011 08:59 AM
On September 18, the CEO of Netflix, a guy named Reed Hastings,
sent to his customers one of the weirder letters you'll probably
ever get from the CEO of a billion-dollar company.
It began with an apology for the enormous ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
posted
Sep 22, 2011
Like many Americans, I spent September 11, 2011, watching
football - which seemed to me not an especially noble way to occupy
myself on the tenth anniversary of our nation's greatest tragedy,
but then again, for most of us, ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
posted
Sep 1, 2011
The first chapter of Richard Brautigan's short novel "Trout
Fishing in America" (1967), a book that people used to like a lot
and now remains an interesting footnote in American literature, is
a description of the cover of " ...
- by Brett Yates
updated
Aug 16, 2011 12:17 PM
In 1999, two years before her death, TIME's film critic Richard
Schickel referred to his fellow critic Pauline Kael as "an almost
demonically possessed little woman." The comment is unfair, as well
as vaguely sexist and cond ...
- by Brett Yates
updated
Aug 3, 2011 08:27 AM
It's commonly known that the NFL running back Ricky Williams
used to smoke marijuana - indeed, it may be the most commonly known
fact about Ricky Williams. When he violated the NFL's substance
abuse policy for the fourth tim ...
- by Brett Yates
updated
Aug 2, 2011 07:32 AM
What, exactly, is a vegetable? What I was told as a kid was that
vegetables were edible plants (or plant-parts) that didn't have
seeds - which, of course, always seemed really dumb, since this
definition excluded half of the ...
- by Brett Yates
updated
Jul 5, 2011 12:48 PM
As all bibliophiles know, world literature is as diverse as the
world itself. Yet there is one inescapable commonality in classic
fiction, from the middle of the 19th century onward. Here is the
truth, once and for all: ever ...
- by Brett Yates
posted
Jun 20, 2011
1. Everything in Paris, from dental floss to refrigerator
magnets, is enormously overpriced, particularly with the lousy
exchange rate. After a while, your notions of "cheap" and
"expensive" will bear no resemblance to your ...
- Columns
> Generation Yby Brett Yates
posted
May 12, 2011
I'm traveling in Europe this spring and summer. I'm very
fortunate to be doing this, and I want to make the most of the
opportunity. By this I mean that I'd like to understand, to some
degree, the sights I'm taking in - to h ...
