BY MAVIS LINNEMANN Tomatillo salsa, or salsa verde, is a workhorse in the Mexican kitchen and a fiesta for your taste buds, so why not try making it from scratch? A tomatillo looks like a little green tomato, but it’s actually a member of the gooseberry family. It has a papery thin husk that’s easily removed before eating.Tomatillos can be found in most American supermarkets, or in your local Latino or Mexican market. I usually pick mine up at the small Latin grocery store around the corner. Look for fruits that are bright green with a nice firm skin. They have […]
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NEW COLUMN: Meet The Kitchen Bitch
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN Welcome to the world of the Kitchen Bitch. What makes me a kitchen bitch, you ask? Well, when I’m not working as a freelance writer and editor, I spend pretty much all of my time in pursuit of my next gastronomical adventure, whether its cooking, baking, gardening, dreaming up new meals ideas, sampling new foods in Chicago and abroad, or lazily watching the Food Network. And once I’m in the kitchen, I usually designate a friend or family member my “kitchen bitch” for the day—my sister Paige often gets the honor (and she happens to love it, […]
PASSPORT: I Went To Africa And All I Got Was LOVE
BY MAVIS LINNEMAN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT I recently traveled to Ghana, West Africa, with a group of 13 students, all members of a St. Louis University-sponsored nonprofit group called Students United for Africa. SUFA has been working with the people of Manyoro village in Ghana for over five years to both restore a decrepit school building and to build a brand-new primary school for the village, which has the highest school enrollment in Ghana’s Upper East region. 1,679 children attend the school, although there are only 18 teachers. * We flew for 36 hours from St. Louis to get to Accra, […]
Q&A: Armed America Photographer Kyle Cassidy
Dan and his Mossberg Model 88, Bushmaster AR-15, Rock Island Armory / Sendra M16, Remington 700 PSS, Springfield XD, FN Five-seveN, H&K USP, Sig Sauer P226, Colt Commander 1911, and Glock 22 by KYLE CASSIDY Kyle Cassidy has been a freelance writer and photographer since 1999. His photographs have been published in the New York Times, Barron’s Financial, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He writes frequently about technology and has been an outspoken voice in the area of practical modern photographic theory. Largely known for his fashion and portrait photography, he became interested in photographing gun owners during the 2004 Presidential […]
AUTHOR, AUTHOR: The Bard Of Main Street USA
[illustration by ALEX FINE] Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls, spoke to PHAWKER about what spurs him to write about small-town life, class and it’s relation to geography in his new book, Bridge of Sighs, and his newest screenplays. He will be speaking at the Free Library tonight. PHAWKER: How has winning the Pulitzer changed how you live and write? RICHARD RUSSO: Well I got caller ID. [laughs] That’s one way it’s changed how we live. I think it changed my writing more; it was just such a wonderful thing to happen that I kind of […]
AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Rick Moody Q&A
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Rick Moody tackles the hallucinatory pathologies of American paranoia in Right Livelihoods, a collection of three thematically-connected novellas. Each story centers on a paranoid protagonist who serves as unreliable narrator and as a result, the reader spends an awful lot of time wondering just what the hell is going on — which only adds to the ultra-vivid realism and disconcerting familiarity of it all. Add to the mix varying degrees of alcoholism and a drug that helps you recover memories, thwarted obsession and intra -office subterfuge, and a bomb that flattens Manhattan from The Hudson […]
DAYS OF FUTURE PAST: William Gibson Overdrive
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC William Gibson, acclaimed sci-fi author, noted futurist and coiner of the term “cyberspace,” will be the first to tell you that all his books have actually been about the present — the fact that they feel like the future only points out our chronic alienation from the moment we are in. You see, it’s our fault, not his. His new novel, Spook Country, is actually set in the recent past, 2006 to be exact, and focuses on the edgy exploits of rock star-turned- journalist Hollis Henry, who has been assigned to do a piece on […]
HOT DOC: How I Became A ‘Repellant Racist’
—————————- Original Message —————————- Subject: Saira Rao Posting. From: “Rao, Nita” REDACTED@usmagazine.com Date: Mon, July 23, 2007 11:25 pm To: feed@phawker.com —————————— I’m writing because on Monday, July 23rd, the writers, editors, and art department at Phawker posted an interview about my sister Saira Rao’s novel, Chambermaid, and the experiences inspiring her book. The critic, Mavis Linneman, raised observant, provocative questions. There was no nipping, as if at Dorothy Parker’s heels. But the overall tenor of the piece was still quite agreeable.The deep shame of it — for Phawker, not Saira — was that all was utterly undone by the […]
AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Q&A With Saira Rao
BY MAVIS LINNEMAN BOOK CRITIC Last week, TV producer-turned-lawyer-turned-author Saira Rao published her first novel, Chambermaid. It is the story of law student Sheila Raj’s clerkship (a must-do for all law students) with a revered 3rd Circuit judge in Philadelphia. Her dream come true turns into her worst nightmare when she realizes the judge is an insufferable tyrant who can’t even get her name right and who could care less about clerks or her regular employees. Think The Devil Wears Prada in judge’s chambers. As Laura Weisberger did for fashion assistants, Rao sheds light on the exacting and often outlandish […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Yiddish Policeman’s Secret Ball
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Michael Chabon throws down metaphors like a deejay dropping beats, skillfully teasing out the intersections of character and the circumstance that bend, break and, eventually, make them. As author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay and the critically acclaimed book-turned-movie Wonder Boys, Chabon has proven himself time and time again as a master storyteller. His new novel, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, is no exception. Lovers of film noir will appreciate Chabon’s protagonist, Detective Meyer Landsman, for his Bogart-like qualities. Like Bogey in The Big Sleep, Landsman is at once a ruthless, […]
BONNAROO: When The Music’s Over
[Click image for slideshow] EDITOR’S NOTE: All weekend long, assistant editor EVA LIAO and her trusty sidekick, book critic MAVIS LINNEMANN, hung out with guys named Dude and That Other Dude, consumed mind-bending substances and blogged photos and scene reports straight from the primeval muck of Bonnaroo to your mind’s eye. Hope you appreciated that these chicks were sweating their tits off in Vietnam-like conditions so you didn’t have to. I sure did. BY EVA LIAO AND MAVIS LINNEMANN LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY — We’re here at the airport, waiting to catch our flight back to Philadelphia. Frankly we don’t have the […]
LIVE & DIRECT: Bonnaroo Day 3
BY EVA LIAO AND MAVIS LINNEMANN MANCHESTER, TENN. — We got a late start yesterday, spent the morning recovering. Some asshole started blaring Jay Z from his car at 7:30 in the morning. We all moaned and grumbled. 6 p.m. Ben Harper opened with a killer jam to “With My Own Two Hands.” Harper showed the audience a side they don’t usually hear on his albums. Known for his impassioned guitar skills, though not always evident in his recordings, his work on the slide guitar really highlighted his raw ability. John Paul Jones made a special appearance for a balls-to-the-wall, […]
LIVE & DIRECT: Bonnaroo Day 2
[Click image for slideshow] EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker has two of its best correspondents on the ground at Bonnaroo. All weekend long, assistant editor EVA LIAO and her trusty sidekick, book critic MAVIS LINNEMANN, will be hanging out with guys named Dude and That Other Dude, consuming unknown substances and blogging photos and scene reports straight from the primeval muck of Bonnaroo to your mind’s eye. Hope you appreciate that these chicks are sweating their tits off in Vietnam-like conditions so you don’t have to. I sure do. BY EVA LIAO AND MAVIS LINNEMANN MANCHESTER, TENN. — Friday went like this… […]