Game Film: Medora
The basketball team wasn’t the only thing best described as scrappy.
Its name means “everyday” in Swedish, but there’s nothing plain-Jane about Vardagen, a rustic-cool boutique taking advantage of the bumper crop of Indiana-made T-shirts over the last few years. Hoosier-pride designs by People for Urban Progress and United State of Indiana complement Vardagan’s own label, best-known for a collection based on Christmas-sweater motifs. 8684 E. 116th St., 317-572-5570, shop.vardagen.com.
If the soreness of one’s writing hand is a gauge of literary success, Indy-based novelist John Green is on a tear. He recently inscribed every copy of his new young-adult book, The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton Juvenile), out this month, and needed steroid treatments to sign all 150,000 autographs. “When I did a bad one, I wrote a secret URL on the page that takes you to a video of me apologizing for the bad signature,” says the 34-year-old, who has a huge fan base online. Half a million people subscribe to his YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, on which Green and his brother Hank do stuff like perform Star Trek parody songs and discuss the travails of the writing process. Like Twihards and Gleeks, their fans even have a nickname: Nerdfighters.
[A] NORTHERN INDIANA ART & EARTH TRAIL 148 stops • artandearthtrail.com >> Seven themed loops, one in each county on the trail, lead to attractions such as Indiana’s largest cheese factory (Shipshewana Loop) and Molly Bea’s Ingredients (Dunes Loop), an emporium known for grind-your-own peanut butter. [B] BARN QUILT TRAIL 50+ stops • visitmarshallcounty.org >> […]
“I’m a city person,” artist/designer Vito Acconci says one late-spring afternoon as he watches workmen build his first Indianapolis project, a complex series of lights and pipes in and around the sidewalk beneath the Virginia Avenue parking garage downtown. “If I see a street, I understand it.”
I recently visited the office of a former employer to retrieve some photos of the 1987 Pan American Games for our coverage in the August issue of Indianapolis Monthly. When I looked at the slides, I recognized the handwriting identifying each image—it was mine. I can remember writing those IDs, and with that realization, a slew of memories came flooding through the streams in my mind like new water through a dry riverbed. But what struck me the most wasn’t the memories—it was the fact it has been 25 years since we were there.
I guess you could say that when it comes to my outward appearance, I’ve resigned myself to acceptance. Acceptance and a redefinition of personal heroes. David Foster Wallace has been replaced by David Crosby, Bruce Springsteen with Bruce Willis. Robert DeNiro? Yes, I’m talking to you. Take a hike. Robert Duvall is the new method man in my heart. You too, Captain Kirk. Off to Deep Space Nine; Captain Picard gives the orders around here now. They’re brilliant men all. For they wear their baldness with swagger and style. I only wonder what clipper number they use.
As basketball season begins this month, Zeller—ranked 15th in the nation among freshmen by Rivals.com—will need to stand out. But don’t expect the happy-go-lucky teenager to take any of it too seriously. At a freshman rally in Assembly Hall the first week of classes, Zeller addressed a full house. No doubt, many of the students came hungry for 20-win predictions. But Zeller gave them only his carefree smile and a vague pro-mise. “I told them it’s going to be an exciting year,” he says. Hoosiers fans certainly hope so.
