THOUGH IT WAS SOCRATES who said “Know thyself,” I say, as my advice to the incoming class, “Know the history of thy university.” While still uncertain whether or not “thine” was the correct pronoun for that last sentence, I can say with certainty that I’m extremely uncertain as to the history of our University. From the [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Martin Marks’
July 14, 2010
HUFFINGTON POST: Lauren Conrad Interviews Joan of Arc.
AFTER A SIX SEASON RUN, MTV’s The Hills sadly came to a close last night. We can’t believe it’s only been two short years since the star – perhaps you’ve heard of her? – Lauren Conrad stepped off that plane at Charles de Gaulle Airport, wearing a chic oversized beige trench coat loosely hanging from [...]
May 28, 2010
PIN-UP: The Family That Redecorates Together.
PIN-UP Magazine, Spring/Summer 2010, The Family That Redecorates Together. Text Martin Marks Illustration Brian Fee CHRISTIAN TRADITION HOLDS few places more sacred than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—site of the Calvary, the rock of Golgotha, the tomb, the death, and the Resurrection. Unfortunately, the church itself runs a mere 175 feet wide [...]
April 1, 2010
Gentleman of Leisure: Gentleman of Leisure.
Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks’s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why. I want to tell you about an object or service or good of questionable importance and presumably little market value — though I personally believe the object or service or good is pretty nifty, and think [...]
March 26, 2010
A Series of Pranks.
Hoteling This one requires a bit of planning, and a very messy friend. You’re at your messy friend’s apartment. Somewhere towards the end of the night, you notice that he’s so messy, he hasn’t made his bed. Taking special care to sneak into the bedroom, lock the door behind you. Then, make his bed. But [...]
March 4, 2010
The Department of New Words// Pantsy.
PANTSY (pron. pæn(t)s-EE) A combination form of the truncated noun Pantaloon, orig. from French c. 1600 CE Panteleon (see Fericunde’s apocryphal apocalyptical text “La Mort des Jours”) previously witnessed in non-distinct Old French and Latin forms (see Divius’ “Song of Seasons”), referring to a garment bound tightly at the hips and buttocks, then leading to [...]
February 22, 2010
Close Encounters of the Aquatic Kind.
WE HERE at the Fictionarium: South Florida Campus certainly do encounter quite a lot of wildlife’s finest – sharks, foxes, egrets, not to mention the most loathsome fauna of them all, the feral iguana. Unfortunately, seeing something and getting people to believe that you saw something are two different matters entirely. And so, yesterday, when I [...]
February 10, 2010
My Desk from last Fashion Week.
ONCE AGAIN, WE FIND OURSELVES AMIDST the glamour and excitement that is New York Fashion Week—the shows! the clothes! the parties! the celebrities! the grinding out of four to six articles per day, for eight days running, after having dosed oneself with enough Venti Soy Cappuccinos to fell a bull elephant. Or, at least, so be the evidence [...]
February 9, 2010
It’s Cadbury Creme Egg Season, Once More. (!!!)
LATE LAST NIGHT, while wandering the aisles of CVS during one of my pre-bedtime candy constitutionals, I made what may prove to be this month’s best confectionary find. Riding fresh on the heels of late January’s Great Fresh Cola Mentos Discovery, I was extremely happy to stumble upon, and am now excited to report, that Cadbury Crème [...]
February 2, 2010
Found: A Speculative Reading of Lost.
WITH COURSEWORK COMPLETED in Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Egyptology, Creative Writing, Ceramics, Behavioral Biology, and Archeology, it seems that I’ve created the perfect storm of over-education, thereby allowing me to figure out the ending to the show. This is not a joke. What Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry was to William Blake’s poetry, or John Irwin’s Doubling and Incest, [...]
January 26, 2010
Fresh Cola Mentos.
Yesterday, I discovered what may prove to be the greatest candy find of this new decade: Fresh Cola Mentos. With all the fresh-making joy of Mentos, all the flavor of those Haribo Gummy Happy-Colas, it seems as though the treacly bonbon deities are finally smiling down upon us from their Good Ship Lollipop—though by us, I definitely mean [...]
January 20, 2010
Gentleman of Leisure: eBaying Under the Influence.
Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why. Ah, January! A new year, fresh beginnings, resolute resolutions (not all the adjectives can be good), and, of course, the start of National Sobering Up Month here at the Gentleman of Leisure Institute for [...]
January 14, 2010
The House that Bernie Built.
I’ve often said that Palm Beach isn’t just any old island. It’s a place where 20 carat diamonds are termed “manageable,” where people spend an emperor’s ransom on beachfront estates and then never set foot on the beach, where, for some inexplicable reason, very few of its citizens wear socks. The island is also civilized [...]
January 10, 2010
Fifty Words or Less// The New Yorker.
The January 11, 2009 New Yorker, in 50 of my words, 13 of their words: Some people in Chicago were wrong about most everything; indeed, everyone wants everything but nobody fully understands Shakespeare; we won’t know anything about Justice Sotomayor until we know something about her; art stopped existing after February 22, 1987; and fiction containing the phrase, “By [...]
December 31, 2009
Mahalia Jackson, for the Last Night of the Decade.
I love Bert Stern’s film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, even writing about it here, and thought, what better way to close out a decade than with the last musical act from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Mahalia Jackson performing “Everybody Talkin’ ‘Bout Heaven” and ”Didn’t it Rain,” and then closing out the festival with the Lord’s Prayer. In many [...]
December 23, 2009
HUFFINGTON POST: Bushenschadenfreude.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal’s Anthony Paletta, in his article “George W. Bush Is Out of the Picture,” made note of the fact that very few critics had latched onto the newly released film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for any references to the policies of the previous presidential administration. “For eight [very, [...]
December 16, 2009
Gentleman of Leisure: Goods 4 Good 4 the Holidays.
Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why. With the holiday season upon us, I am reminded that by familial disposition I am both a really lousy gift-giver and in a perpetual state of geographic dislocation. During the rest of the year, [...]
December 13, 2009
HEMISPHERES Magazine: Diary.
I’M WRITING THIS not from my apartment in New York but from my parents’ South Florida living room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Why? Because three days ago I needed to do laundry and wanted to go for a nice, long run on the beach. Read more at HEMISPHERES Magazine. Source: HEMISPHERES Magazine.
