Have a drink with: Spirit Photographers Ray? When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes. Ask them about: Selfies with your dead relatives In 1848, two sisters from Hydesville, New York spread word that they heard mysterious rapping noises on the walls and furniture of their home, and could speak with spirits…
Have a drink with: The Gideons Rocky Raccoon checked into his room, only to find… Ask them about: Getting into your hotel room Now Rocky Raccoon, he fell back in his room, Only to find Gideon’s Bible. Gideon checked out, and he left it, no doubt, To help with good Rocky’s revival. – The Beatles…
Have a drink with: Astronauts Charlie Brown & Snoopy Just don’t ask about kicking a football in zero-G. Ask them about: getting America in the mood to fly again I’ve got space on the brain. There’s New Horizons doing its Pluto drive-by, and my toddler running around with a plastic pail on her head insisting…
Have a drink with: Dr. Seuss Would you, could you, fight the war? Ask him about: why Yertle the Turtle just might be Hitler. We know Theodore Seuss Geisel as a children’s author, a playful champion of absurdity and literacy who gave us green eggs, cats in hats and an absolute lock on what to…
Have a drink with: Maria Altmann and Elizabeth Taylor Art lovers, ladies of style, legal pit-fighters. Ask them about: goddamn Nazis. Behavioral advertising is like unexpectedly running into an ex: it seems to know an awful lot about you in ways you forgot you made possible, but for the most part just makes you feel…
Have a drink with: the Yale Bowl Stadium, immovable earth beast, cradle of American football Ask it about: what it wants for its 100th birthday. In 1914, Yale University celebrated the completion of one of its largest and most famous construction projects, the Yale Bowl. More than a stadium, much more than an Ivy League niche…
Have a drink with: Bruno Schulz Writer, artist, cultural property puzzle, cult superstar Ask him about: making hipsters’ heads explode. My husband recently bought a bag from a company whose gleeful tagline was, “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead.” If post-mortem squabbles are really how you know you’ve hit the big time, Bruno Schulz is…
Have a drink with: The Monuments Men Artists, soldiers, detectives. Ask them about: giving Dwight Eisenhower an art tour in a salt mine First things first: why make a movie about these guys? Was art looting really a big deal in WWII? It was a really big deal. It’s easy to assume that the scattering…
Have a drink with: Harold Lloyd Movie star, pin-up artist, comedy pioneer, adrenaline junkie. Ask him about: that time he hung off a runaway trolley car. My grandpa told me to watch Harold Lloyd movies for a damn good reason. One of the biggest movie stars of the early 20th century, Lloyd inspired generations of…
