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Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: Ben McGrath, Bruce Eric Kaplan, cartoons, Jack Handey, monkeys, music, pigeons, Sasha Frere-Jones
Happy 50th column, Sasha Frere-Jones.
By the way, there have been a lot of primates in the magazine lately. Here’s SFJ:The opera, perhaps to the relief of those encountering sung exposition for the first time, begins with images. On a thin scrim in front of the stage, the Chinese ideogram for “monkey” appears, followed by a series of crisp animations by Hewlett that echo the opening sequence of the Japanese television series: a stone egg perched on top of a mountain lights up, wobbles with pending life, and rolls down a hill, where it breaks open, revealing the monkey king, who emerges with a loud “Eeeeeeeeeee!” Then the scrim lifts to show Monkey, played by the Chinese singer and acrobat Fei Yang, surrounded by his subjects, also monkeys (and acrobats), who scamper up green bamboo poles.What with the bonobos in the same number and at least two other bits of monkey business in recent issues—this BEK cartoon and Jack Handey’s hilariously cruel nature documentary—it’s a veritable barrel full of ‘em, and hey, I approve. Martin, how about a brief departure from The Pigeon Files to do a quick monkey memo from the archives?
Update: More monkeys, in Ben McGrath’s “Muscle Memory.” (The bionic prosthesis technology is being tried out on them: “We have video of monkeys, actually controlling arms, working in 3-D space,” [said Colonel Geoffrey Ling].) Monkeys, shine.
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Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, 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
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- 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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- Carolita Johnson
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Comments
Post-haste!
My first search — “monkey” — returned 292 hits, so it’ll take a few days to get a handle on it.
God bless opposable thumbs!
I winced at “Poachers, whose smoked-bonobo carcasses can fetch five dollars each in Kinshasa’s markets …”
I winced at “I once saw five female bonobos attack a male in Apenheul, in Holland…They were gnawing on his toes. I’d already seen bonobos with digits missing, but I’d thought they would have been bitten off like a dog would bite. But they really chew. There was flesh between their teeth.”
Yegads!
(signed, Ape-Face Johnson — add that to the TNY monkey count! ha!)
Look! more monkeys!
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/08/06/toc_20070730