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MIKE MILIARD

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Phoenix critic wins grant

Cook gets to eat
It was announced earlier this week that Phoenix contributing writer Greg Cook's art blog, the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, has been awarded a $30,000 endowment from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, which rewards "commitment to the craft of writing and the advancement of critical discourse on contemporary visual art."

By: MIKE MILIARD | December 02, 2009

Review: Strongman

It’s hard to be a champion all day
Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun is a lumbering, mumbling tree of a man.

By: MIKE MILIARD | December 03, 2009

Glenn Beck's unhinged Sweater saga

Knit Twit Dept.
Hello, America. A special Glenn Beck Program tonight: I'm speaking to you from somewhere in the North Pole, and let me tell you [adopts cartoonish yokel voice with rubbery exaggerated shiver] it is coooooooold up here.

By: MIKE MILIARD | November 24, 2009

We're killing the oceans

Is it too late to save the seas that sustain us?
I meet world-renowned undersea photojournalist Brian Skerry at Legal Seafoods, across from the New England Aquarium, where he's the explorer in residence. He orders a chicken Caesar salad.

By: MIKE MILIARD | November 18, 2009

Revisiting the greatest Harvard-Yale game

Crimson Bowl Over Dept.
It takes some doing to make Harvard look like an underdog in anything. But Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29 — Kevin Rafferty's 2008 movie (out now on DVD) and new book (released this past month) about the famous football rivalry — does just that.

By: MIKE MILIARD | November 18, 2009

They can handle the truth

Rugged Writing Dept.
"We're supposed to show up for our wives and kids in a way that prior generations frankly weren't," says Brookline resident Tom Matlack.

By: MIKE MILIARD | November 11, 2009

Review: Pirate Radio

Richard Curtis’s boat rocks
A rusty, red-painted trawler bobs in the waves of the North Atlantic. Inside is a claustrophobic warren of rooms: tiny, brine-smelling bunks, a well-stocked bar, and, crucially, a broadcast booth, its shelves crammed with the latest 45s and LPs, its turntables manned in shifts by a motley squad of hirsute rogues.

By: MIKE MILIARD | November 16, 2009

Hoop nightmare

Len Bias’s death was more than just a basketball tragedy.
It wasn’t quite the world-shattering, where-were-you-when moment as the space shuttle Challenger exploding into cottony plumes earlier that year. But I still remember my naive and dazed disbelief upon hearing that basketball star Len Bias had died of a cocaine overdose on June 19, 1986

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 28, 2009

Monkey Business

Boston's an academic city, even for capuchins who attend Brighton's Monkey College, where they're trained to be lifesavers for the disabled
Craig Cook remembers when friends tried to draw him out of a deep depression — by offering to get him a monkey.

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 21, 2009

No alternative

Authentic Journalism Dept.
“I got very tired of being called an ‘alternative journalist’ for so many years,” says former Phoenix reporter Al Giordano. “Alternative to what?"

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 14, 2009

Graphic Traffic

A sweet crop of graphic narratives
Comics. Graphic novels. Sequential-art books. Call them what you will, but there are more of them than ever.

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 16, 2009

Lie of the land

Lying liars, and the end of accountability
In his new film, The Invention of Lying , Ricky Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a pudgy everyman who lives in Anytown in a utopian world where lies don't exist — until he tells one.

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 07, 2009

Comic writers go nuclear — they think Amazon's the bomb

Gone Fission Dept.
It was reported last week that "Iran has agreed 'in principle' to an international proposal that could significantly reduce its stocks of uranium."

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 07, 2009

Review: The Invention of Lying

Gervais not inventive enough
In the world of this debut effort from Ricky Gervais, there are no movies. There’s only Lecture Films, a studio that produces pictures in which actors read from accounts of historical events.

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 09, 2009

It's hip to be icosahedral

In a new book, Ethan Gilsdorf tracks his global quest to visit the holiest nerd-world sites
Be they beer geeks, comic-book geeks, or music geeks, nowadays people flout their geekdom proudly, even wearing it like a badge.

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 05, 2009

Hans Rickheit versus the novel

Exploding Cow Dept.
In high-school English class, we're taught that literature features three basic types of conflict: man versus man, man versus environment, and man versus himself.

By: MIKE MILIARD | September 30, 2009

Fallon Upward

Local Laughs
Boston is thoroughly dominating NBC's fall line-up.

By: MIKE MILIARD | September 16, 2009

Interview: Uli Edel

The Baader Meinhof Complex director talks about terror and glamour
Edel talks about terror and glamour

By: MIKE MILIARD | September 11, 2009

Storied treasures

Arts and Crap Dept.
How much would you pay for a nutcracker James Dean used — precisely how, we can't guess — to pleasure himself? Or a cow-shaped creamer that once belonged to Norman Rockwell during a particularly dark period of his life?

By: MIKE MILIARD | September 10, 2009

High dives

It's harder than ever to find a bar with soul in town these days. But it's not impossible.
Dive bars. Where the drinks are cold and stiff. Where the air wafts with the unmistakable but not-altogether-unpleasant tang of suds long since spilled. Where the neon shines bright and true and the jukebox plays good and loud.

By: MIKE MILIARD | August 31, 2009

Interview: John Oliver

The British comic and Daily Show correspondent on Glenn Beck, gun nuts, and the National Health
John Oliver is English. There's no getting around it, really.

By: MIKE MILIARD | August 27, 2009

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