by Brett Warner

The first copy of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger I ever saw was an aged, ominous looking mass-market paperback sitting gravely at the top of my mother’s bookshelf. Its cover was a very solemn looking burgundy with gold font announcing its title and author. No picture on the front, no plot summary on the back – this book just simply existed. My mother, having passed on her uncanny hunger for books of all types and sorts, once shared the story of how my grandmother lost her shit when she found out her daughter was learning about this filth in school. I knew then I had to read this book right away.

For six decades, The Catcher in the Rye has been both the most ardently taught and fervently banned book in American literature. Along with James Dean and rock & roll, Salinger’s stream of conscious tale of angst and alienation invented the American teenager and, by extension, changed the way we create and market everything from clothes to music and movies. Its hero is a sixteen year-old, anti-social fuck up named Holden Caulfield, who has been kicked out of at least three private schools, has no qualms about going to New York for the weekend to have a few drinks and pick up some girls, and sees through all the insincere, “phony” bullshit that constitutes ninety-nine percent of our sad, pathetic adult lives.

Caulfield’s attitudes and viewpoints remain evocative of their time and place, when the ever-increasing gulf between childhood and adulthood had nearly imploded and the infuriating restraints of proper society threatened to strangle an entire generation. Yet, his anger and his fear resonate more than half a century later, those immortal words echoing through the dividing, massively constructed social schematas in which we live and breathe with little alternative. Is The Catcher in the Rye still meaningful in 2011? If anything, the book’s message is more imperative now than ever before.

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by Brett Warner

Throughout the course of human history, men and women have done a lot of crazy things for love. Orlando Bloom caused the Trojan War, Cleopatra and Latin music sensation Marc Anthony both committed suicide, and I’ve sat through at least three episodes of my girlfriend’s favorite reality show, Jersey Shore.

The ongoing misadventures of carrot people Snooki, Pauly D, JWoww, The Situation, Vinny, Ronnie, and Sammi (my spell check just lost its friggin’ mind typing all of that) broke MTV records to become the highest viewed program in the cable network’s decreasingly illustrious history with 8.45 million viewers. Still, watching these unfathomably successful people preoccupy themselves with fighting, fucking, hot-tubbing, and other asinine, “who gives a shit?” circumstances that reality television twists into a botched, Frankenstein version of what the Greeks used to call drama always seems to engage that part of the brain that’ll start flashing sirens when you smoke a cigarette, huff a tube of industrial glue, or take a nap with your head inside the oven – I know this is really bad for me, but I’m going to do it anyway.

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by Brett Warner

It’s a brand new year, and if you’re anything like me – young, broke, and sitting on a dust-gathering fine arts degree – you’re probably thinking: okay, this is the year I start/finish my (insert writing project here). A lot of us have them – those nest egg ideas, gestating deep in our brains, waiting for just the exact perfect moment to materialize in some quantifiable, word-countable form. Sure, there’s a lot of reasons not to write nowadays: we’re job hunting/working, seeing somebody, going back to school, finally getting into Lost on DVD, etc. Nevertheless, 2011 is as good a year as any to finally take that secretly amazing television pilot idea (The West Wing meets George Washington’s first term in office), Star Trek fan novel, or earth-shattering poetry collection out of the realm of “maybe someday” and into the nitty, gritty real world.

Every writer works and thinks differently, but just about every professional will tell you that writing successfully is work – damn hard work, usually, and needs to be approached as such. In the spirit of aggressively engaging your long put-off writing projects, I’ve compiled a list of five off the wall methods that have helped me over the past few years. A few standards, one or two drastic measures – these not-fucking-around variety techniques have pulled me out of many a blinking cursor bind and, who knows, might help others do the same.

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by Brett Warner

Every other Friday night, T.J. Byrnes Restaurant and Bar in Manhattan’s Financial District hosts a modestly produced karaoke night. The small, unassuming Irish pub is tucked away behind a towering housing project, and on any such night, nearby residents might hear the echoes of drunken laughter or the faint opening bass notes of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.” For Rutgers professor Fred Solinger and bookstore manager George Carmona, though, this is not just about getting plastered and mumbling through a semi-coherent rendition of “Copacabana”— it’s turf warfare.

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by Brett Warner

It’s 9:33 PM at the Detroiter Truck Stop in Woodhaven, Michigan and I’m inadvertently playing Duran Duran for the black metal band Goatwhore. Standing bored behind the gift shop checkout counter half an hour before closing time, I had plugged my iPod into the small external laptop speaker display model sitting quietly to my right, humming along to the first couple tunes on 1993′s The Wedding Album. Halfway through Warren Cuccurullo’s guitar solo on “Ordinary World”, I look up to see four very big, very pierced and very tattooed gentlemen standing directly across from me, waiting to purchase a few pairs of winter gloves. Recognizing their spooky font logo, I proclaim in the manliest voice I can muster how my old roommate was a big time fan. It’s too late, though – my metal cred is gone forever. I’ve been outed.

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by Brett Warner

It has always been a bitter irony that death is the most commercially viable thing an artist can ever do. From Vermeer to Van Gogh, Nick Drake to Notorious B.I.G., nothing attracts dollar signs and revisionist cultural significance quite like a tragic demise. Despite what the gargantuan pharmaceutical industry might suggest, people are secretly enthralled by the romance of death – it’s why The Dark Knight made more than a billion dollars, it’s why Nevermind, not OK Computer, is the most important record of the ‘90s, and it’s why Sony Music’s new release Michael (in stores now) will sell a shit ton of copies despite not being a real Michael Jackson album in just about every possible way.

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by Brett Warner

This Friday, auteur filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s latest psychological and emotional rollercoaster Black Swan will be dancing across a handful of movie theater screens for a limited release. The film stars Natalie Portman as a hard working young ingénue who lands the lead in a new production of Swan Lake only to find herself haunted by her more sensual competition (played by Mila Kunis) and — in true Aronofsky fashion — lots of other creepy shit. The two stars were coached and choreographed by Mary Helen Bowers and New York City Ballet principal Benjamin Millepied respectively and underwent months of rigorous training necessary to replicate an art form that — for professionals — requires years of intense, borderline obsessive dedication. (I’ve dated two former ballerinas – trust me, they don’t fuck around.) Black Swan should have Aronofsky fans geeking out to the nth degree, though it’s not exactly the first film about a ballet company to deal with themes of obsession, jealousy, sexuality, and, well… other creepy shit.

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