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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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Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: 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)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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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