Jonas as a “mahvelous novelist” is a bit of a stretch, however. Jonas as a Jew — and not just a Jew but one who affects a Yiddish accent to sing his demented version of a shtetl folk tale — is even more of one. “The Schmuel Song,” as the shtetl number is called, is … Read more
RENO, Nev. — The blank canvas of desert wilderness in northern Nevada seemed the perfect place in 1992 for artistic anarchists to relocate their annual burning of a towering, anonymous effigy. It was goodbye to San Francisco’s Baker Beach, hello to the Nevada playa, the long-ago floor of an inland sea. The tiny gathering became … Read more
A-prawn-calypse now. As if the 2023 Burning Man Festival wasn’t apocalyptic enough, the event was recently crashed by a biblical plague of three-eyed “dinosaur shrimp,” which wriggled to the surface of the Nevada desert to join the party. Also known as tadpole shrimp, or triops, the prehistoric critters had been lying dormant in subterranean egg … Read more