Sarah Silverman in Los Angeles, October 11th. Photograph by Martin Schoeller / Corbis The comedian Sarah Silverman exerts a kind of mesmeric control over an audience. She doesn’t laugh at her own jokes, and when she smiles it is deliberately inappropriate. The expression that lingers on her face is…

In his 1995 book In the Blink Of An Eye , film editor Walter Murch recalls a conversation with a friend of his wife. He asks what Murch does for a living, and when Murch tells him that he edits movies, the friend replies, “Oh, editing. That’s where you cut out the bad bits.” That’s a succinct…

What if a stalker had an army? Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend was obsessed with destroying her reputation—and thousands of online strangers were eager to help. By · 4/28/2015, 5:45 a.m. Print Zoe Quinn. (Photograph by Jason Grow) The first thing Eron Gjoni said after sitting down across from me at Veggie…

Letterman Prepares to Sign Off Damon Winter/The New York Times In a single bound, David Letterman seemed to leap the full length of the stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater, racing from backstage as if he’d been thrust forward by the fanfare played by his longtime bandleader, Paul Shaffer, and his CBS…

As of Tuesday morning, exactly three days have passed since a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook Nepal, killing thousands and leaving millions in need of help. In disaster response, the end of the first 72 hours is often considered an inflection point: the unofficial moment when the most acute phase…

ATLANTIC CITY – Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the fourth boardwalk casino here to close this year, was pronounced dead at 5:59 a.m. on a Tuesday, which in and of itself seemed an insult. In the end, the 30-year-old onetime hotbed of glamor looked like it had smoked too much, had drunk too hard and…

Jim Bourg / Reuters Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city's publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor…

T he Hulk is sitting in a half-full subway car on a Monday afternoon, wearing thick-rimmed glasses, not taking up too much space, definitely not smashing anything. Just another New Yorker — nothing to see here. He’s riding the 1 train up to Central Park in search of an early spring, and his fellow…

These days the entertainment landscape has shifted to all-digital all-the-time, and it can leave a person thirsty for a real world waste of time. Pinball is one great solution to getting yourself out into meatspace and it’s seen a resurgence of popularity in the last few years. Players find each…

"I had the idea that we should contact the Chia Pet company and talk them into making a 'Dave Chia,'" Photo: Gluekit The Lost Laughs of Letterman The departing host and his former writers share the greatest jokes he never told. Illustration by Gluekit My first day at Late Night With David Letterman,…

Paul : I’d like to talk about Cards Against Humanity , one of our hobby’s biggest breakout successes. The best way to describe Cards Against Humanity is “Lego for jokes”. It gives its players setups and punchlines, all ready to click together in one-step assembly. It’s easier than microwaving food…

This weekend’s New York Times Magazine story about the failure of the ZPM espresso maker Kickstarter reminds me to say: Kickstarter is a tool for managing risk . Kickstarter specializes in creative projects, but creative projects are inherently risky. They are risky in an artistic sense: creativity…

With Moore’s permission, below you can find his keynote in its entirety: 1. My number one guiding principle in making documentary films is essentially the “Fight Club” Rule. What is the first rule of “Fight Club”? The first rule of “Fight Club” is: “Don’t talk about ‘Fight Club.'” The first rule of…

Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, with their baby Frances Bean Cobain, at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards. Photograph by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Sensitivity, like a superpower, can be a glorious and terrible gift. In Brett Morgen’s revelatory documentary “Kurt Cobain: A Montage of Heck,” which airs…

After I made The Celebration , I felt that I had finalized a way of making films to such a degree that I couldn’t go further, that it would be pathetic to repeat it. So I took the rules of Dogme 95 and burned them. Which was a stupid thing to do. I betrayed myself by looking at my next film as a…

It’s rare, but sometimes less is more in hip-hop. That’s always been the case for Redman, who appears literally covered in dirt on his second and third album covers, and who has spun a career out of rhymes about “grimy shit” and dressing “bummy for low profile.” All of which made him the least…

It was all good just a month ago. #ff @Grooveshark — Rembert Browne (@rembert) March 30, 2015 This day was like many other days. Every few months, the same scenario would present itself. A song would pop into my head — a song that was not on Spotify, not on iTunes, and occasionally not even on…

Episode 161 Show of Force Play Pause Category History Date 04.21.15 Producer Add to Queue Remove from Queue Download During World War II, a massive recruitment effort targeted students from the top art schools across the country. These young designers, artists, and makers were being asked to help…

I’m far from the target audience for the simulated teen drinking party I attended last weekend—that audience being freaked-out parents who want to see what really goes on at the hormone-fueled ragers their children are just starting to attend—but let me start by saying that the whole thing was very…

Comedy with a message can easily turn didactic or smug, but Schumer’s show feels built to withstand this pressure. Photograph by Martin Schoeller / AUGUST “I really need to stop making so many white girls,” God, played by Paul Giamatti, groans, on Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer.” In this…

Component is a section of Aux.Out. for one-off pieces, special editorials, and lost orphans of the music discussion. Today, Gary Suarez fails to complete his assignment, an oral history of 10-year-old Travis Morrison solo album Travistan . Instead, he wrote something better. ~ Photography by Philip…

Are chart-topping retro-style hits honoring the past or simply retreading it? On a recent drive , I flipped on Z100 and had a curious case of déjà vu. Each song the station played was technically “new” — the hottest product on the market in 2015. But many of the sounds blaring through my speakers…

When you are a registered sex offender in America, you lose the right to choose where you want to live. By law. Your backstory doesn't matter. Nor does the nature of your crime or your excuse. You are exiled from society, and only a few places will welcome you. Like this place in South Florida. The…

Let’s be honest: there’s always been something a little bit seedy, from a grownup’s point of view, about Chuck E. Cheese, the national party-space chain. Perez Hilton has an entire category of his Web site devoted to dodgy happenings and strange behavior at the restaurants: cars driven into walls,…

“Thank you all very much,” Update 57 concluded, by way of goodbye. “Working on this project was the most ambitious and meaningful undertaking any of us have ever attempted. Getting to know all of you, and working to create some seriously cool technology, was one of the most rewarding things we’ve…

COLORADO SPRINGS — AT 6:45 p.m. on Jan. 23, I was delivered to a Colorado state penitentiary, where I was issued an inmate uniform and a mesh bag with my toiletries and bedding. My arms were handcuffed behind my back, my legs were shackled and I was deposited in Administrative Segregation — solitary…

The music tech business is a graveyard littered with ideas that seemed cool at the time Ask almost any music startup founder why they started their company, and you’re likely to hear a variation of the following: “I love music! I’m such a passionate fan and music changed my life.” Which, on one…

By Paul Bruinooge/PatrickMcMullan.com (Left); © Gotcha Images/Splash News/Corbis (Center); By Bobby Bank/WireImage. Tom Hardy loves dogs. He has owned them, co-starred with them , posed shirtless with them , cried with them , hugged them , and kissed them . He has also spoken about them—at…

SAN DIEGO — In a typical last-minute scramble, Jannette Navarro, a 22-year-old Starbucks barista and single mother, scraped together a plan for surviving the month of July without setting off family or financial disaster. In contrast to the joyless work she had done at a Dollar Tree store and a KFC…

By A staged photo of U.S. Marshals protecting a witness. Photo credit: U.S. Department of Justice, Wikipedia Gerald Shur was struggling to convince his witness to testify. The year was 1961, and Shur, an attorney focused on organized crime at the Department of Justice, was talking to the owner of a…

*Correction: This post has been updated reflect that the 90:10 rule applies to the percentage of a for-profit college’s revenue that may be made up by federal financial aid, not the percentage of an individual student’s tuition. Also, Everest did assign Brown an internship, but she wasn’t able to…

One question I get asked once in a while as a football writer — especially by friends who don’t really follow or enjoy football — is whether I think there will still be a sport for me to cover in 20 or 30 years. This is my seventh season writing about football for a living, so I can’t say whether…

You are butt-naked in total darkness. Sopping wet and totally alone, the space you're in is so small that you can't stand. The only sound is the thud of your heart. You are a mewling human baby in a mechanical womb. This might sound like scary nightmare torture, but I'm describing "floating," an…

Microsoft's latest purchase has remarkable cross-generational appeal Back in June of 2011, David Pakman’s son and daughter, at the time age eight and 10, asked him for a copy of Minecraft. “I didn’t know what that was, so I checked it out, thought it was kinda like digital Legos, and agreed to get…

OAKLAND, Calif.—The people here were out of step with America. In the hours after the attacks of September 11, 2oo1, they were angry at the terrorists who flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. They wanted the attackers brought to justice. They mourned the victims, cheered the…