james parker

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Writers celebrate Barry Hannah, the biggest literary badass you’ve never heard of

Gene Kwak first came across the work of Barry Hannah while studying journalism at the University of Nebraska.
Captain Maximus R.I.P.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | October 29, 2010

The Phoenix cleans up at NENPA

Was 2009 a good year for newspapers?
Tooting Our Own Horn Dept.
By LANCE GOULD | February 12, 2010

2009: The year in books

Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best books the Phoenix reviewed in 2009.
True stories - fact and fiction
By JON GARELICK | December 25, 2009

When I interviewed Nick Cave for the Phoenix three years ago and he told me — drolly, languidly, literarily — that his next writing project was about “a sexually incontinent hand-cream salesman” on the south coast of England, I assumed he was taking th
Nick Cave’s bad Bunny
By JAMES PARKER | October 09, 2009

Review: It Might Get Loud

Some guitar teachers will tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to play the guitar. But Davis Guggenheim’s rousing new documentary, It Might Get Loud, reminds us that that’s not true at all.
Davis Guggenheim films his essay on the electric guitar
By MIKE MILIARD | August 28, 2009

Boston Phoenix makes Greil Marcus-edited Best Music Writing 2009

Former Boston Phoenix staffer JAMES PARKER -- who now covers SpongeBob for some up-market liberal r...
By Carly Carioli | May 26, 2009

Engine notes

The big question with Top Gear, the popular British consumer-car show (in perpetual reruns on BBC America), is this: will it succeed in denting my colossal lack of curiosity about cars?
Top Gear hits heavy traffic
By JAMES PARKER | May 08, 2009

Big pictures

Watchmen is that too rare work of popular entertainment, one that succeeds on many levels and that rewards your attention to every level it employs.
From the Phoenix archives: All things are Watchmen
By M. HOWELL | March 04, 2009

Interview: Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen

The winner of several "Best Comics Writer" awards on both sides of the Atlantic, he's best known in America as the author of the DC Comics series Swamp Thing and, of course, Watchmen.
From the Boston Phoenix archives: the watchmaker speaks.
By M. HOWELL | March 04, 2009

Review: Watchmen

Watchmen 's brutal alternative history
As a reimagining of the past, Watchmen is at times jaw-dropping.
By A.S. HAMRAH | March 03, 2009

Phoenix group harvests 17 regional press prizes

The New England Press Association (NEPA) annual newspaper contest has always been good to us.
Bragging-Rights Night at NEPA
By CLIF GARBODEN | February 11, 2009

Dirty democracy

Breathe deep, politics fans. What is that odor?
Sexual politics have never been more — perhaps because there's so much sex in politics. A sexpert sorts us out.
By JAMES PARKER | December 17, 2008

Medicine men

What if a poem had the power to heal loneliness?
Two Boston poets use their art for the good of the tribe
By BY JAMES PARKER | November 25, 2008

A smoker’s tale

Somehow one is surprised — if one is a semi-conscious literary journalist like me — by the discovery that Will Self has continued to produce books.
Will Self’s The Butt
By JAMES PARKER | October 08, 2008

Going local?

I have always enjoyed the Phoenix ’s coverage of the local goings-on with our consistently inept and mostly corrupt elected leaders at City Hall and the State House.
Letters to the Boston editor, October 3, 2008
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | October 01, 2008

Baby fights the blues

Evening slants in over the spires of Harvard, and Juliana Hatfield is watching me across the table.
Juliana Hatfield is still standing. How a hometown guitar hero dodged the bullet, and then wrote a book about it
By JAMES PARKER | September 17, 2008

Blood sucks

With regard to this whole nouveau vampire thing, this revitalized appreciation for the undead, I should declare myself at the outset a more or less complete philistine.
HBO does the ‘Southern Vampire’
By JAMES PARKER | September 02, 2008

The truth is up there

The sky’s on the move again, he can feel it.
Clouds, sun dogs, and the dream of an atmospheric education . . . How one former TV reporter brought his sky gospel to the people
By JAMES PARKER | August 20, 2008

Beijing sting

Greetings, faithful steward of information!
Exposed: A top-secret government memorandum, obtained this past week by the Phoenix, gives the games away
By JAMES PARKER | August 06, 2008

Beijing sting

Greetings, faithful steward of information!
Exposed: A top-secret government memorandum, obtained this past week by the Phoenix, gives the games away
By JAMES PARKER | August 06, 2008

Campaign lies

It’s impressive that your editorial in favor of the national popular vote did not even hint at any possible downside.
Letters to the Boston editor, August 1, 2008
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | July 30, 2008

Visions from Lilliput

In a sense, every successful portmanteau word represents a narrow escape.
The rise of the minisode
By JAMES PARKER | July 28, 2008

Me and my tattoos

I know that most people get their first tattoo when they’re drunk, or infatuated, or when there’s a race war on their cellblock and they have to quickly join a gang — but not me.
One Man’s Inky Voyage Toward Meaning
By JAMES PARKER | July 23, 2008

Chris + Don: A Love Story

When Christopher Isherwood spotted the teenage Don Bachardy on a Santa Monica beach in 1952, he did not hesitate to enact the most hallowed of gay archetypes.
The faithful and imaginative love story of Isherwood and Bachardy
By JAMES PARKER | July 16, 2008

Shrink wrapped

Gamma rays got you down? The doctor will see you now.
By DR. ROBIN S. ROSENBERG | July 09, 2008

Our superheroes, ourselves

Is there a breed of person more tenderly optimistic, more winsomely hopeful for the best, more loyal to the possibility of good, than the American summer moviegoer?
What the current crop of comic-book action movies tells us about America's identity crisis
By JAMES PARKER | July 09, 2008

Judgment night for Doomsday

Two men circle the middle of a 24-foot-wide, black chain-link cage in Allston’s Wai Kru gym.
Roxbury-born fighter John Howard is climbing the ranks of mixed martial arts, one chokehold at a time
By JONATHAN SEITZ | June 25, 2008

Gimme some truth

Can it be a coincidence, I ask rhetorically, that we have all of a sudden become very interested in watching highly trained men smack the shit out of each other?
In praise of Ultimate Fighting
By JAMES PARKER | June 25, 2008

Testosterowned

Thirteen years is a long time in heavy metal, but as the eerie distended melody of Only Living Witness filled the Middle East downstairs on Saturday, time flickered and then collapsed.
Only Living Witness at the Middle East Downstairs, June 21, 2008
By JAMES PARKER | June 24, 2008

30 ways to have fossil-free fun in Boston this Summer

It’s tough to maximize your summer fun when, every time you start your engine, you realize that you’re strangling the last few breaths of life out of the planet’s 17 (or so) remaining white rhinos.
Pahk your damn cah
By MIKE MILIARD, JAMES PARKER, AND SHARON STEEL | June 11, 2008

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