The Trespassers is a story told by sixteen-year-old Doran Satterfield, a North Carolinian spending July and August 2004 in New Jersey. Doran befriends a group of slightly older teenagers who occupy themselves during the long summer days by breaking into long-abandoned factories and taking photographs. MORE
And what is this novel ‘about’? It is about seeng the invisible, or, rather, seeing into the invisible: discerning hidden beauty not in inviolable perfection, but in the violations of imperfection, in things old and discarded and forgotten and broken. To tell it as succinctly as possible: The Trespassers is a work of art.Cynthia Ozick
“My homecoming was wrecked by the yellow police tape strung across the entrance. A padlock and iron chain and a keep out sign wheat pasted to the doorway reinforced the point. Fine print on the notice rehashed the dangers of abandoned buildings, and warned those who'd been inhabiting the factory that they were subject to fines. Well, go on, Mr. Policeman, shake me upside down; make the spare change bounce on the sidewalk. Spackle over every crack in the city, smooth it all out, knock down the hiding-places and force me into plain view; monitor my unruly head.”
so i will tell you why
because of the beats because of the rhymes because melody is radical because auto-tune is tasty because of sun high against the skyscrapers of miami in april and it’s forty two degrees back in newark and the world knows the single but i am hearing the album for the first time, just shaking hands with the year, the marlins have a new ballpark and traffic on the causeway is moving like we’re in one of those japanese future cities where the cars are all automated and the breeze smells like citrus and everything is swell because of may in the pine barrens, speeding through… MORE
Before we dive into this annual madness, a few general observations. While there were no shortage of long comments and smart-aleck questions this year, the essay-length kvetching in the negative categories has dried up like the Aral Sea. A few of you even scolded me for keeping them on the Poll. Thing You Felt Cheapest About Liking drew the most blank stares. You are all shameless and regret nothing. I admire this.
Not everybody votes in every category, which is probably for the best. That would guarantee that I wouldn’t have this up on the site until April. The popularity of the categories has shifted over time, and it’s… MORE
A man woke up one dismal day and the All-Music Guide had doubled its stars. Once there was a single column of red stars. Now, there’s a parallel column of stars in a puke terra-cotta. I am the man, by the way, and the dismal day wasn’t so long ago. Or maybe it was; I could be confusing it with other interchangeably dismal days on a dismal Internet where the sun never comes out anymore. I will take the gross booger color of the new stars as a tacit indication that All Music knows that it has made a dreadful mistake and undermined its own authority. I will take it… MORE