TNB TV
Please consider the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

T.C. Boyle 
The American author poses on a flight of stairs.

TNB TV
Now bear witness to this primal scream therapy session.

“Sailor” 
Please enjoy this Vladimir Tatlin painting from 1911.

BERLIN, GERMANY –

I have long held the contention that German is comprised of merely 50 root words, endlessly rearranged and combined to make it one of the most complicated and difficult languages known to man.

Example:  The two syllable darling known in English as a “matchbook”  gets expanded to the whopping five syllable “Streichholzschachteln”  which literally translates to something along the lines of “box of wooden sticks that you strike”.

Seriously.

But if you break these impossibly long words down into their smaller components, you can easily suss out the definition based on the roots.

Here are a few examples.

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“The Spanish Well, Purbeck” 
Please enjoy this 1945 painting by artist Frances Hodgkins.

TNB TV
Learn your Middle Eastern geography the fun and easy way. Sing!

TNB TV
Mark Crilley teaches us how to draw feet.

“Os Noctìvagos” 
Please enjoy this 1928 painting by Otto Dix.

BROOKLYN, NY-

It is a phenomenon that began the first month we were “trying.” While on vacation this summer in Quebec we were seated in a restaurant and my husband started laughing – above my head hung a large, rather grotesquely vivid painting of hugely pregnant woman in a red dress. As I anxiously awaited the day when I could pee on an informative stick, they only seemed to multiply. One would be standing beside me in the elevator, another would follow me onto the subway. It didn’t help that we live in a neighborhood that seems, in certain seasons, a kind of hothouse experiment in human fertility. There it was – there were pregnant women everywhere.

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THE DEEP SOUTH-

The ragged old hatchback pulls slowly into the circle drive, its tailpipe secured by a coat hanger, scraping against the asphalt at the curb.

A man, late-twenties, eases from the driver’s seat in a blue work shirt, untucked and stained with grease. The patch at the pocket reads “Sam’s Tire”. He gazes around at the neon and steel of the city, stretching and grinding his knuckles into the low part of his back.

The scrawny white legs of a straw-haired woman flop out onto the pavement from the passenger side. She pulls herself up by the door and smiles at her man, their fingers locking across the top of the car.

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SHANTOU, CHINA-

I travel by rickshaw these days, which is odd. I mean, to be comfortable with rickshaw travel is not something I ever expected. But the fresh air, the cruising under the night sky just a little buzzed after a stop at Shantou’s finest wine bar where elbows were rubbed against those of the budding bourgeois. Sometimes I think of the rickshaw as a time machine, transporting me back to a moment when the triangular straw hats and tattered short pants of the driver were no less obsolete than… rickshaws. Despite the allure, I think I’m witnessing the last days of rickshaw culture here in Shantou. Traffic is getting a little too car oriented and I can’t imagine this mode of travel making it very long in such a fast growing city. There are other bits of local culture in Shantou, however, that seem perfectly safe for the forseeable future, and one of those was exactly what I set out to explore on the back of my rickshaw last Saturday night. (more…)

Voltaire 
A portrait of one of the Enlightenment’s greatest writers.

TNB TV
Dr. Andrew Weil talks about the worst diet in the world.

LONDON, ENGLAND (Gatwick Airport) –

As I was being driven to Schiphol airport today, my driver told me a joke.

What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

Trilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks one language?

I winced; dreading the punch line.

An American.

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“Eagle” 
Please enjoy this sculpture by Alexander Calder.

TNB TV
Rick Rosner is featured in an episode of Errol Morris’ terrific series, First Person. This is the first part.

LOS ANGELES-

Driving around Los Angeles yesterday with my wife. Running errands. Sunday. We pass a pet store.

WIFE: I was in there the other day. The guy who owns it used to be a producer.

ME: I think you mean LA Dogworks, the daycare place.

WIFE: It’s the same.

ME: Same owners?

WIFE: No. Just the same situation. An ex-Hollywood guy who quit his job and started up his own pet store.

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SAN ANTONIO, TX-

Can you pay my bills

Can you pay my telephone bills

Can you pay my automo’bills

I don’t think you do

So you and me are through

(Bills, Bills, Bills, 1999)

In the traditional machine-child model of hetero relationships, a woman remains childlike in her dependence on a man to provide for her financially.

The typical female response to male financial failure, under the old model, would be repression of anger, crying, withdrawing and withholding of physical affection.

Beyonce does not smother her emotions. She expresses them forthright. And ends the relationship.

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