Jason Diamond

Owning a David Hockney painting is, well, costly. Unless you’ve got millions — and sometimes 10 of millions — of dollars sitting in your bank account, there’s a pretty good chance one of the English artist’s paintings won’t be hanging on your apartment wall anytime soon. There is another option, however. One that won’t even require you to nail holes into your wall. Taschen just published Window to the World, a collection of 120 of Hockney’s iPhone and iPad drawings printed in large format. Like…

From Planes, Trains and Automobiles to The Ice Storm, the holiday sums up the joy, anxiety and complexity of America, and great filmmakers understand that.

Cocktail trends come and go, but the simple sophistication of a martini — however you take it — will always endure

One of the pinnacles of internet prankdom was reached in 2014, when comedian Jon Daly convinced the unsuspecting masses that the Red Hot Chili Peppers had released a song called “Abracadabralifornia” in anticipation of the band’s upcoming Super Bowl performance. It was a low-stakes joke, a funny way to sum up what one of the quintessential 1990s bands had turned into in the 21st century: a mishmash of Anthony Kiedis word-soup set to music that, in hindsight, sounds like it was played by a Chili…

I was always “too cool” for the Chili Peppers. But upon reading their superb memoirs, I’m now wondering if I missed out.

A new book juxtaposes the photographer’s saturated visions of American wealth with earlier, more modest tableaux

I like to know what professional eaters truly love to eat. I’ll gladly watch Padma Lakshmi eat her way across America or Anthony Bourdain explain the world through food, but it’s when I learn what those people eat away from the camera that I tend to focus on an item and associate it with them. Bourdain went to a lot of places, but there’s something about his childhood hot dog stand in New Jersey, Hiram’s, that sticks out to me most of all his journeys. One day I’d like to make sole meunière beca…

New books from John Lurie and Marc Ribot are the latest entrants into a decorated canon

Every reader goes through phases with their selection habits. Last year, for example, I wanted as little to do with the modern world as possible, for reasons I’m sure you can understand. I didn’t want to read anything set in the last decade and I certainly didn’t feel like reading any dystopian novels written to reflect an ominous future. I wanted out of these times and, for about nine months, out of this place as well. Escapism. Nostalgia. My fiction intake was a pretty steady diet of P.G. Wode…

Seasoned newspaper writers like Carl Hiaasen and Laura Lippman understand something that can’t be learned in an MFA program

There is no character quite as reliable as the city. Whether it’s Edward Hopper’s paintings or some television show with Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta or Miami in the title, the city is always filled with intrigue, danger and inspiration. But there are also untold layers to every urban area. You’ll never peel them all back, because new ones are compiling at a rate that will always outpace you. Cities reinvent themselves over and over, and all we can do is stand and bear witness to it. There’s no…

The comedian and longtime radio host’s new memoir is a reminder that the funniest people we know are rarely immune to sadness

As I talk with Tom Scharpling, there’s a little voice in my head telling me that I should apologize. But this isn’t about me; it’s about him and his new memoir, It Never Ends. For the unfamiliar, Scharpling is one of the comedy world’s most beloved cult figures. I feel bad using that term — “cult,” like he has a handful of die-hards who are obsessed with him and his work — because his following goes beyond the people that have been tuning into his radio show, The Best Show With Tom Scharpling…

When I saw Nobel-winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel was out earlier this year, I was obviously intrigued, but I decided to sit out picking up Klara and the Sun, at least immediately. Ishiguro is one of the rare “must read” writers, the type for whom I’d usually drop everything I was doing, but this time around was a little different. Even though I loved his last few books that were in similar fantasy/sci-fi territory as his latest, in 2021, I’d rather save anything that includes “dystopian” in th…

From the novels of PG Wodehouse to “The Fresh Prince,” the man who is quietly working in the background always knows more than he lets on

What do you picture when somebody mentions “noir” to you? There’s likely a private detective who’s much more brilliant than he lets on, a woman (or a dame, or a bird, or whatever you want to call her) with a dark backstory she doesn’t want to tell, and, maybe most notably, drinking. Booze plays a big part in the noir setup, from Philip Marlowe drinking Gimlets in The Big Sleep to how every classic film-noir seems to involve an ensemble cast of functioning alcoholics. Think of Key Largo from 1948…

The cruelest joke nature ever pulled on me arrived a month after I ordered a hair-removal solution from Australia called Nad’s. Just as I was conspiring to smite out the little sprouts that had popped up on my shoulders, I noticed the first clump of hair from my head falling out. I was losing it on the top and gaining it on my back, arms and belly in equal measure. Some might say it’s genetics, but I’m certain I brought it upon myself. I never quite got used to my body hair until around 30, t…

Hirsuteness hasn’t always been desirable. In the ’90s, one man helped change that.

I was trying to describe David Coggins to a friend recently and ended up arriving at the theory that Coggins deals in the evolution of wisdom. That is, he understands that accruing it is a twofold pursuit: you learn more about the world and your place in it with age, but you also have to continue cultivating the knowledge you’ve long held close. If you don’t use it, you lose it, so to speak. In his writing, one never gets the impression he’s trying to reinvent the wheel, but that’s sort of the p…

There are two parts to the career of Jonathan Ames. Actually, no. There are like 10 parts. He’s been a journalist, essayist, actor (including a dalliance with full-frontal nudity), amateur boxer and a few things I’m probably leaving out. He’s also written a handful of novels. But when I talk about the two parts, I’m talking about his fiction. Read his earlier novels The Extra Man (1998) or Wake Up Sir! (2004) and you’ll notice the influence Evelyn Waugh and F. Scott Fitzgerald had on his…