Inaugural Issue of loupe Launches
Welcome to the first issue of loupe. Each calendar quarter we look forward to providing you with cutting-edge non-fiction. Even moreso, we look forward to you reading it.
This quarter, Phil West is your tour guide to Las Vegas and the realms beyond in search of what happens when the sun rises on the world's fakest city. In more polite circles, we would call what Claudia Sherman does to Tom Green "deconstructing". However, we have taken vows never to say things like that. And Scott Woods finds out, completely by accident, that golf may not be so bad if you get to say "skanky lie" with a straight face.
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Viva: The Socially-Condoned and Yet Still Mildly Transgressive Art of Loving Las Vegas
by Phil WestThe sunrise in Las Vegas is not like sunrise in the rest of the world. Which is quite fortunate for the rest of the world.
You see, for most of the world, sunrise is the most purposeful time of day. For most of the world, save for the poor souls working night shift, morning is get-at-it time. The first few lemon-yellow rays appear in the east, the twittering machine of birds starts up, lights click off as punctuation. They’re all signals to get moving, to start a new day, to brew coffee and read the paper and embark on whatever rituals we’ve adopted in the dubious but crucial goal of getting from a prone position on a bed to an upright position in an office. [ Read more ]
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The Backwards Man: Tom Green and Dualism as the Nature of Comedy
by Claudia ShermanBeing a true comedian necessitates a level of self-loathing, of contempt for one's own human-ness, tempered with an equal amount of compassion for humanity at large. The delicate balance between the two allows a comic both to ridicule human action and, at the same time, to render it funny instead of merely cruel. Aristotle reminds us that "comedy is an imitation of persons who are inferior; not, however, going all the way to full villainy, but imitating the ugly, of which the ludicrous is one part. The ludicrous...is a failing, or a piece of ugliness which causes no pain...the comic mask is something ugly and distorted but painless." [ Read more ]
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Learning Golf from the Top Down: The 2004 Ryder Cup From the Couch of a First-Time Viewer
by Scott WoodsI’m not into sports to any macho extent, and of the sports that stoke my interest, golf has held the least appeal for me. Football is massively entertaining, the most gladiator-like of all major sports today (not counting the crowds at soccer games). Baseball is the most American of sports; even when it drags, it does so with Western swagger, tobacco spit on its heels and downed hot dogs on its breath. Basketball is funky, all rhythm, tattoos and court cases at every turn. But golf? Golf is stoic in stereotypical ways; its shirts buttoned up to its neck, its pants spray starch-shiny and nerd-pleated. [ Read more ]