Grant James sifts through new releases each week to bring us some of the good, the bad, and the Evanonsense. These are his five favorite 2012 releases for Hip-Hop and R&B. They are all available at Radio-Active Records and Sweat Records. 5. Brandy, Two Eleven Brandy Norwood’s comeback was one of the more silent victories of 2012. [...]
Times are changing for the National Book Awards — at least according to the New York Times. They have achieved a new level of glamour complete with a red-carpet entrance to the awards ceremony at the glitzy Manhattan restaurant Cipriani. Apparently the National Book Foundation, which awards the prize, is sick of playing second-fiddle to the Booker Prize. While [...]
While everyone loves a good mystery, it’s a genre overrun with writers, which makes it hard to decide who’s worth your time. To assist you, we’ve compiled a list of five mystery writers, both debut and established, who are participating in the Miami Book Fair this weekend and worth checking out. No matter what you’re [...]
Here’s the deal: sore losers residents in all 50 states have filed secession petitions through the Obama administration’s “We the People” program. This program dictates that the White House will respond to any petition that manages to reach 25,000 signatures in 30 days. Obviously this would be a ridiculous North Korea-style disaster, but Texas has [...]
Natural disasters have a way of changing people’s outlook, at least temporarily. As we see the wreckage left by Hurricane Sandy, we face a stark reality: people lost their lives, homes were destroyed, cities and towns throughout the Atlantic corridor crashed to a halt and are only inching back to normalcy. It’s also a time [...]
Much to our dismay, most people don’t consider consuming alcohol an intellectual activity. Sure, we can go to a wine tasting and act fancy as we mull over how a certain Zinfandel complements a creamy sheep’s milk cheese from France and differs from the floral essence of a semi-dry German Riesling. But that’s not how [...]
In keeping with his humble role as America’s modern King Solomon, Donald Trump has recently offered to broker a trade on behalf of this Godly nation’s two contenders for the highest office: If President Barack Obama releases his college transcripts, says Trump, then perhaps Gov. Mitt Romney can be persuaded to release his taxes. I lack Donald [...]
Our society is obsessed with true crime. The current John Edwards case is a prime example. We have a politician, a mistress, and the illegal exchange of money. The only thing that’s missing is a murder. Although many would argue (and I’m inclined to agree) that cheating on your dying wife isn’t that much higher [...]
One of the most fascinating things to me about the memoirs of musicians (besides the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, of course) is the amount of people who read them who normally wouldn’t crack a book. A guy who had recently read Keith Richards’s 2011 memoir Life cornered me at a Christmas party last [...]
You already know this: while earning your college degree was informative and pleasant enough, plenty of us head in a different direction. Or maybe the experience wasn’t so awesome or helpful, but we’re sticking, steadfast and stubborn, to what we set out for in the first place. Joshua Miller, the executive director and founder of [...]
Venezuela has been in the media lately: following the death of Hugo Chávez, his chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, beat challenger Henrique Capriles in the current election for presidency. It was a miniscule margin of a win—about 50.7%–and as of this write-up, a contested verdict. But if you’re the average United Statesian, you are less aware [...]
