L.L. Bean Breaks the Sacred Covenant
The trusted brands of yore now make crap destined for a landfill
Private equity is to blame
Peaches optimized for Instagram feeds last a disturbingly long time, during which they never actually ripen.
Inheritances can come in the form of cash, property, heirlooms, genetic predispositions, and also stories. A story I’ve been told since I was old enough to sign my application for the Junior Mayflower Society is that I’m directly descended from William Bradford, the longtime governor of Plymouth Colony. My grandparents were the ones who presented me with the application. It turned out to be the only legacy I’d receive from them — a packet of authenticated paperwork, like I was an American Kennel Club show dog.
Needing to know more of my family history than this one exalted detail, I turned to Ancestry.com. Anyone who has ever paid for a premium membership to Ancestry understands its addictiveness, combining the dopamine rush of playing a slot machine with that of scrolling social media (you never know what ancestor you’ll uncover next!). It was during one of my Ancestry binges that I …
Cool Hand Luke
Kids dream of being rock stars. Grown-ups dream of being session men.
From first-call guitarist to leader of the biggest and most often-criticized rock band on the planet.
Growing up in Studio City in the 1960s was no joke.
How hard is it to imagine yourself as Mick Jagger, strutting at the lip of the stage dressed like Captain America, in a top-hat and tails? Or maybe your dream is to be Bob Dylan, circa D.A. Pennebacker’s Don’t Look Back, hiding behind black shades and contemptuous of everyone except Joan Baez? Or Robert Plant, the blonde king of Valhalla, with his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, making all the girls cream their panties? Or John Lennon, strung out on heroin while fronting the Plastic Ono Band in some crappy public park in Toronto while delivering some of the most merciless lyrics that any rock star dared to put on paper, tearing apart his own stardom to reveal the wounded child within in front of a crowd of other stoned children who believed him to be a living God?
Right on. Who hasn’t imagined not just witnessing any these performers in person, but of merging with their essence, …
Losing My Edge
Upper-class digital nomads roam the desert like some long-lost plains tribe
Sad-dude sentiments meet lyrical playfulness in the dust
Indie Man Turns 30
My neighbor likes to park his vintage hot rod on the curb out front of his house. On Saturday mornings he removes the mesquite pods that drop onto the windshield from a nearby tree and he rinses the dust from the exterior with a garden hose. He opens the doors and wipes the seats with a microfiber cloth that’s been sprayed with a solution. He cleans under the wipers and around the hubcaps before he dries the exterior with a towel. Then he goes back inside his house. The hot rod is a turquoise Mercury Comet.
I live what Don Delillo calls “a quiet life in an unassuming house in a suburb of Phoenix.” I have lived here for three months, or 24 years, or since God breathed life into dust. I know my neighbor never takes his Comet out for a drive because my baby daughter and I observe it parked on the curb from the big bay window in our living room, in one-to-three hour intervals, every day, from 6:00 AM …
