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Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: apostrophes, Lou Reed, Walter Kirn
Martin Schneider writes:
Oh boy, my favorite parlor game.... also called "How Emdashes generates posts."
1. Last night I saw Jason Reitman's movie Up in the Air, and I enjoyed it very much. It certainly did seem like a movie that teed up its subject perfectly and then whacked it, which I'm not sure is quite the same thing as being a great movie, but ... I'm quibbling, it was very good. I've spent a lot of time in airports recently, so I had to see it before all that useless knowledge wore off.
Connection: The movie was based on a book by Walter Kirn, who had a story published in The New Yorker in 1997.
2. Lou Reed and Ben Syverson designed and programmed an iPhone app called Lou Zoom. I installed it on my iPod Touch. What does it do, you ask? Why, it takes your Contacts list and renders it in much larger type. This accomplishment does rank below revolutionizing American avant-garde rock and roll, but not many things are as monumental as that. Plus it has to be the coolest way ever to tell the world, "I'm OLD! I can't read this small type anymore!" (And you know, I think the app is very good. I do prefer looking at it to the default Contacts app.)
Connection: The New Yorker published excerpts from Lou Reed's tour diary in 1996.
3. Oh man, is this picture great:
Connection: The New Yorker hardly ever misuses apostrophes, making this sign the anti-New Yorker.
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Emdashes, founded in 2004 by Emily Gordon, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.
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Some writing by Emily Gordon
- Review: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for Newsday)
- Annotated slide show: a wet, festive 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for nycgo.com)
- Proposal: A better-looking MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: Does a redesign of The New Republic mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: four online obsessives and visual cataloguers, Kate Bingaman, Nicholas Felton, Ellie Harrison, and John D. Freyer (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Interviews: winning New Visual Artists Eleanor Grosch, Zigmunds Lapsa, Christian Cervantes, and Kate & Camilla (for Print)
- Profile: lindy hop legend Frankie Manning (for Newsday, with Robert Fouch)
- Feature: Rea Irvin, illustrator, bon vivant, and The New Yorker's first art director (for Print)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (for Newsday)
- Review: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Report: The New Yorker's redesigned website (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
- Interview: Matthew Diffee on the appropriately inappropriate cartoons of the The Rejection Collection (for Print)
- Interview: Roz Chast on Brooklyn, pysanky eggs, and animation (for Newsday)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Interview: Edward Gorey (for Newsday)
More clips.
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.
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Founded by Emily Gordon, edited by Martin Schneider, designed by House of Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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Comments
Nice post, Martin. I haven't seen the movie, but I gotta read Kirn's story.
With regard to the sign, I had to look up P.K.'s -- and it surprised me that they made the list, as did "racist's" (sic), though I think anyone writing about The New Yorker counts as "high fullutent."