PicoBlog

Back in 2016, A-WA—an Israeli band that fuses traditional Yemenite melodies with funk, hip hop, reggae, and other dance-centric grooves—released their single, “Habib Galbi,” which became something on an international sensation.  “It is an amazing song that completely changed my life,” Tair Haim, A-WA’s principle vocalist says about the song’s immense popularity (she cofounded the band with her sisters, Liron and Tagel, in 2015). It helped get the band featured on major U.

Around this time last year, my life changed. I realized that it isn’t “Up on the housetop, reindeer paws”, and I confess that I realized this because I snobbishly thought, “How could someone write a song about reindeer without knowing that they have hooves, not paws?” Then I figured out that the reindeer pause on the rooftop. I lived my life differently after that. The name for this type of mishearing is a ‘mondegreen’.

In February 2021, a trend on TikTok known as the album cover challenge began making waves on the app. Users caption “Proof that anything can be an album cover" over personal videos. Within the twenty-second clips, they pick a frame, add a filter, followed by a parental advisory sticker, and voila, an album cover appears. To the trained eye, the majority of the covers are lackluster, but every once in a while, the outcome isn’t half bad.

Of all the life-enhancing practices I know, regular meditation is without question the most powerfully transforming. And as the months, years and decades go by, it just keeps getting better and better! If you are a lapsed meditator or completely new to the practice, curious about (re-) starting your practice, this post is for you! I have recorded a twenty minute video with all that you need to get going. You don’t have to become a member of anything, sign up anywhere or commit to anyone - except yourself.

The inscription, from the real M. Butterfly, reads: “Mme. Joyce, I think of you and hope we will be friends forever.” Then he sued to stop publication of my book.I came across an old pearl bracelet the other day. It was given to me thirty-five years ago by Shi Pei Pu, the most notorious seductress of the 20th century. Or should I call him a seducer? There was some well-planned confusion about this.

It’s another new Star Wars book day – and this time, we’re celebrating a short story anthology set in the era of The High Republic. The High Republic: Tales of Light and Life is out now – and this spoiler-free review should tell you everything you need to know before picking up a copy for yourself. Up until now, The High Republic has only published short stories in Star Wars Insider issues and the bound collections of those stories Titan has since released or will soon release again.

Occasionally, we must admit we belong to an older generation with worldviews shaped by our specific generational experiences. This, at least, was what crossed my mind while reading the text of a young Swedish writer considering the question of whether our present-day culture wars could be the result of an elite overproduction in the form of an educational glut from a flawed educational system; often leading its actors into the fiercest battles, not infrequently unfairly waged, for the remaining high-status jobs.

It had to be the strangest call from a publicist ever. Would I like to do a phone interview with James Brown, then serving a six year sentence at the State Park Correctional Institute in South Carolina? On Sept. 24, 1988, James Brown had a very bad day. Native to both Augusta, Ga., and the nearby black community across the river in South Carolina, Mr. Brown, as he preferred to be addressed, was accused of waving some guns around an insurance seminar in Augusta in an office building he owned, or once owned, then led a chase over into South Carolina, where state police officers shot out his tires.

The fall cookbook I’ve been looking forward to reading the most is Company: The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others by Amy Thielen. Of course I’ll be dipping into it to make a number of the recipes I’ve already tagged with bright pink Post-Its, but I say “reading” because Thielen’s lyrical writing style makes me want to settle in to my well-worn leather club chair to read it cover to cover as it if were a novel.