Harold Ramis has died. From Stripes to Ghostbusters to Groundhog Day, he was responsible for literally every one of your favorite comedies. (At least one of your Hazlitt editors insisted when he was three years old that his parents refer to him only as Egon for almost a year.) “I really [didn’t] want to get drafted. So I went down to the physical and checked every psychological disorder and drug on the medical-history form. … I’d also taken the precaution of taking a massive dose of methamphetamine before I went.” “I have no trouble selling out—I’m a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.” “I’m still the guy most likely to say ‘fuck’ at the dinner party. That’s kind of pathetic, I know. These are minor victories.”
Suzannah Showler writes long and lovely on cryptozoologists and their wild, or maybe very civilized, but either way quixotic pursuit of animals that may not exist and who, if found, may kill them.
Here’s Emily Nussbaum on the shallowness of True Detective. “Marty’s wife, Maggie—played by Michelle Monaghan, she is the only prominent female character on the show—is an utter nothing-burger, all fuming prettiness with zero insides.”
The selfie is no longer about looking cute. (Long live the Claire Danes Cry Face.)
Jeopardy! champ and ire of the Internet Arthur Chu gives you the inside scoop on what it’s like to be on the show, and how Alex Trebek is just the nicest guy in the world.
Here is a long oral history of Reality Bites, in case you have dozens of minutes to read an oral history of Reality Bites.
“It’s time to end the long history of feminism failing transgender women.”
Can fan-fiction crack mainstream publishing?
If there’s anything to learn from the four most popular OKCupid accounts in New York, it’s that being traditionally attractive definitely has its perks.
“In his teenage years, there was a brief period when Kunda ceased his Rocky role-playing, growing out his hair to embody another Stallone construct, Rambo. Before long, though, he was back to Balboa as a sort of security blanket-meets-tribute.” Take a nice long look into the life of Mike Kunda, the man who would be Rocky.
Joe Boyd, the music producer (and author, of the memoir White Bicycles), possessed some of the best ears of the ‘60s; here he writes about Eric Von Schmidt, the would-be, should be Llewyn Davis.
“Langer pushed the government to test his cows for hydrocarbon exposure. When government scientists came to his farm, they tested the cows for venereal disease instead.” Stories of Albertans who abandoned their homes due to the effects of toxins from nearby tar sands mining sites, and the disturbing indifference of officials.
Henry David Thoreau may have been a lot of things—”schoolmaster, abolitionist, pencil-maker”—but stop calling him a hermit.
“Like the kids who listened to it, grunge hasn’t aged well. Most of the music is plodding and dull, orcs on methadone yelling about being misunderstood.”
Here’s a video of a husky just losing his goddamn mind in a pile of leaves. (Remember leaves? Trees used to have them before they were covered in ice.)
