Posts in Culture
Ernest Hemingway

As significant as his writing was, Ernest Hemingway is remembered just as much for the life he lived beyond the page. Everything about him was oversized—war service in Europe, big-game hunting in Africa, all-night benders in Paris.  Hemingway embodied a full range of traditionally masculine experiences few others have. He even had a dictum that summed up his approach: “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk.”

His appetite for adventure only persisted later in his life, which ended tragically in 1961. If Hemingway’s literary output slowed during this final postwar decade, his celebrity spread far and wide. He wrote dispatches on bullfights and marlin fishing for popular magazines, and was the subject (sometimes willing, sometimes not) of numerous awed profiles...

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National Lampoon's Animal House

You have four years to be irresponsible. If you’re ambitious, five. Then it’s over. And if you did it right, you spent money you didn’t have, slept through classes you didn’t love, and drank too much. Some of it should be a blur. Ideally, you forged bonds that will never be broken and memories that will never be forgotten. That’s college. Few films capture that...potential...quite like National Lampoon’s Animal House. Released in 1978, it is considered one of the greatest comedy films ever made. In fact, in 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed Animal House “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National film Registry...

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29th Annual Harriman Cup

Those who go, know. The Harriman Cup is all about the tailgate. More importantly, how you tailgate. Awards for this stuff are handed out you know (along with Best Outfit, Best Dog, Best Hat, and a few awards for actual sporting achievement). Maximillian Sinsteden knows this. In fact, he's banking on this (he was snubbed last year but still walked away with Best Outfit). Max arrives with a U-Haul carrying his beloved beat-to-hell Oriental party rug, ten box hedges he rented from a company in New York, five crates of liquor, two bartenders, and an open bar.

Now it's a party...

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16th Annual Mashomack Int'l. Polo Challenge

Millbrook, New York in the summer is God’s country. We're convinced of it. We catch the 7:48am Metro-North Saturday morning and half-consciously witness the city fade into wide open spaces over the next three and a half hours. And then time just stands still. We meet Cooper at Smithfield Farms, Karen and John Klopp’s place. Hospitality is one of their many virtues. The two story house is buzzing with family and friends while still nudging you to get lost in a novel. It doesn’t take long for us to realize this might be the most heavenly escape from the city possible...

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28th Annual Harriman Cup

It's become our Labor Day, our summer's end, our last ditch effort to let it all hang out of our seersucker trousers—the annual Harriman Cup. Rain or shine, throngs descend upon the Meadowbrook Polo Club from Manhattan and surrounding bed and breakfasts. We roll in off the LIRR in a blaze of vintage Lilly, Ralph Lauren, and Brooks Brothers—the usual suspects. Usually falling on or around the last week of summer, this alumni polo match between Yale and the University of Virginia is the tailgating event of the summer for the prep set (last year's Cup was a ball...

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CultureFrederick Castleberry