We were gathered in the publisher’s corner office just off Park Avenue on a snowy afternoon in February, looking at the intriguing series of ads that had been coming in over the past few months. Professionally photographed, seductively styled, they showed a shiny steel apparatus encircled with golden buds of weed damp with the resins […]

By Rex Weiner –  December 31, 2012 On a brisk December day in 1972, the SS Statendam left New York Harbor with an extraordinary passenger list. Theoretical physicists, science fiction writers, a handful of paying passengers, a reporter from the New York Times, media personalities, and a couple of distinguished literary figures, including Norman Mailer. […]

By Rex Weiner   November 29, 2016 Here’s the pitch: Titus Andronicus in outer space. You might have forced a smile, sitting through a meeting with Steve Bannon during his Hollywood years in the early nineties. Today, as Trump’s chief advisor, the world’s second-most-powerful man designate has other scenarios to sell. But before Bannon was merely […]

Alan Shenker, an artist known among the underground cartoonists of the late sixties as Yossarian, died last week, in New York, at the age of sixty-seven. Born in Levittown, he was a downtown habitué and his work was published in the East Village Other, among many other publications of the era. A kind of ruthless […]

Juan and Manuel Salvador Orozco Cadena, a pair of fishermen from Baja California, Mexico, pushed off from Punta Lobos on the morning of November 4, 2015. Earlier, the Orozcos had repaired the transmission of their outboard motor, but then it broke down again. As night closed in, the brothers floated helplessly in their open panga […]

Published by Capital & Main on February 24, 2016 Hollywood insiders scanning the #Oscarsowhite lists of this year’s Academy Award nominees have not failed to notice that the five candidates for Best Cinematography are all male and all white—and to no one’s surprise. While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced changes in membership […]

Published in Capital & Main on September 14, 2016 How do you get the best quality health care in the University of California’s renowned public medical system? Approaches vary, according to the campus, but at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center it’s a gold-colored wallet card with a personalized number to call. When flashed from a gurney in the ER […]

Published by Capital & Main on August 9, 2017 We don’t block, slow, throttle content” flashed the bright blue GIF on my Twitter feed. Huh? Oh, right — it was July 12, Net Neutrality Day of Action, and the animation begging my attention was sponsored by Comcast, the largest provider of Internet service in the U.S. and […]