Oh, Wolverines!
Wildlife artist cultivates the skills of a wilderness tracker and trapper in his hunt for the elusive ‘woods devil’
Tar-colored sludge concocted from the potent glands of skunk and beaver produces an alluring stench
He still hasn’t painted a wolverine
Up here on the pass, traversing a corniced ridge, the wind is howling, full of thick, sideways-flying icy flakes, and you can hardly make out the pack bouncing in front of you. We are traveling in single-file, like intrepid grade-schoolers. Hatchets in hand, hunched under the weight of a decaying deer leg, we hike. Our snowshoes plunge into the fresh January snow, as we take turns at the brutal task of leading, breaking trail in the deep powder. For the rest of us followers, the sequence goes like this: brace… lean into the wind… study the faint, snowshoe-sized hole left by the traveler in front of you… leap into it… balance… repeat. This is how you walk on the moon. This is how you stay alive.
Despite a lifetime of wandering on foot, I remain a clumsy hiker. When it’s my turn to lead, I make a wrong step and disappear to my armpits in a nondescript drift. I flail for a moment, then give in, my …
Edward Van Halen RIP
Put some respect on his name
The Boy Who Never Grew Up was the master of the mysterious “brown sound” emitted from his amp
Life is a finite series of notes, wrung from a precarious position
For the past 46 years, guitarists around the world have tried to replicate the tones they’ve heard coming out the speaker cabinets of Edward Van Halen’s overdriven amp. Edward referred to his tone as the brown sound, and for nearly half a century, a debate has raged among guitarists about how best to emulate it. Where does this tone come from? Some say it’s the amp. Some say it’s the pickups. Others argue about tone woods, about trem blocks, about pedals and the batteries in those pedals. The truth is that it’s everything: the strings and the pickups; the guitar’s neck, body, hardware, and appointments; the cable that connects the instrument to the amplifier; the effects pedals and the amp and the tubes in the amp and how it’s EQ’d; the speakers in the cabinet that the amp runs through and the room the amp’s played in; the furniture in that room and the human bodies that absorb, dampen, or …
THE CURTAIN CALL IS COMING
Donald Trump’s Cardinal Sin Wasn’t Fascism. It was Exposing the DC Kayfabe
American politics are nothing more than professional wrestling for people with college diplomas
Shave Kamala’s head
For all the ink spilled analyzing Donald Trump’s success in US politics over the last nine years, nearly everyone in legacy media has missed the obvious. More than anything, Trump’s return as the once and future king of our national stage signals the complete professional wrestlization of our democracy, with the White House now becoming the arena for both of America’s favorite pseudo-sports.
If you watch Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity’s cable news shows and think of “Mean Gene” Okerlund doing his iconic 1980s promos with “Macho Man” Randy Savage or the Ultimate Warrior, the entire spectacle of American politics makes much more sense. The “journalist” plays the part of a solemn straight man, but in reality is nothing more than a glorified prop assisting the scripted theatrics of their outlandish subject, who rants and raves on cue. Behind it all, there’s no substance whatsoever. Cheer for the …
