Emdashes. Modern Times Between the Lines.
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Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: ads, books, Canada, cartoons, Charles Addams, Edward Sorel
Ed Sorel reviews the new Charles Addams bio by Linda H. Davis (for the New York Observer), and what do you know, so do I (for Newsday). It’s called Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life, and the illustrations alone are worth the price. Later: Janet Maslin is getting in on the action and reviewing it, too (for the NYT, natch).
Film Forum now has a podcast.
I would never bash a Canadian if I could avoid it, but this CBC commentator must have been living on Mars since 1925 to write these words:I opened a recent New Yorker, a men’s magazine whose front section is annoyingly insular and almost hick and whose back half has some good reporting. Staring at me was Steven Spielberg, a 59-year-old man in a baseball cap, who makes movies for the child in every adult. He was shilling for the Gap. “Gap is collaborating with (Product) Red® and the world’s most iconic brands to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.”Also, it really says “T-shirt top”? That seems unlikely.
Readers were told that if they bought a “Gap (Product) Red® item, half the profits will go directly” to the AIDS fight. Then came 28 Gap ads in a 97-page magazine with slogans including “Can a T-shirt top change the world?”
About us
Hello! We're a small band of culture writers, editors, and artists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, which spent its formative years as a New Yorker blog, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Reviews: theater writing (for Time Out Chicago)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
With whatever (faint) praise I could summon for Mallick’s years at the Globe & Mail, I can’t see any more obvious thrust behind this column than an unerringly moronic fumbling at pop relevance. It pains me to be a hater, but I think she was reaching here for the pouting, hip-wiggling strut more in keeping with MySpace than the CBC, let alone a certain men’s magazine.
The Canadians are a pox, that much is clear.
Hey! Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! Some of my best friends are Canadian…including me!
I’m quite surprised that Mallick would write such idiotic comments regarding the New Yorker; I’ve usually enjoyed her stuff in the past.
Mea culpa!
Oh, I love all things Canadian, don’t get me wrong. That’s why it hurts to call out one of our northern friends for infelicitous phrasing. But “men’s magazine…almost hick” just pushed me too far!
I was actually responding to Jeff’s comment about us Canucks being a pox.
I know you love us. You really love us!!
Btw, Emily, your new blog is the bee’s knees. Fantabulous. I’m overwhelmed with its wonderfulness, really. Congrats!
Aw, thanks! I blush! I’ll tell the (brilliant) designers, my co-captains, too.
Patricia! Mea culpa. I do love Canadians. Being one, I am congenitally unable to do otherwise. ;)
I was actually attempting a little inside baseball with Emily, whose fond regard for Canadians is—what can I say—a credit to her worldly good sense!
Worldly, perhaps. Good sense, questionable!
O, Canada: my spiritual home, almost my native land.
Incidentally, for any fellow html dorks, it looks like you have to do a non-breaking space symbol if you want to do line breaks in the comments—a little Glitche Gumee trivia for you. I’m going to try it now.
It works!
I have a very low opinion of Mallick, so I can’t really credit her for the buried brilliance in this series of sentences. But it can easily be metabolized, for example, into fine, if grossly-overdone blog comedy, something like this but, you know, better:
I opened a recent New Yorker (a men’s magazine published in New York), and staring at me was Steven Spielberg, a 59-year-old man in a baseball cap. He makes movies for the child in every adult, and his latest venture is an effort to end AIDS in Africa by selling Gap t-shirts.
Actually the best part is “a 59-year old man in a baseball cap”. I can probably guess what Mallick was getting at, but as a description for Steven Spielberg (Steven Spielberg: A fifty-nine-year-old man in a baseball cap.) Or, better, on its own, it’s such a precisely ambiguous sentence. I don’t really know what it means, it just stands there plaintively: is it glassily looking at a subway map, or standing mute, in a mall, in Bermuda shorts ?
No probs, Jeff. Sorry for the misunderstanding. And thanks for the Glitche Gumee trivia, Emily!