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Challenge: Connect Random Stuff in My Head to the Magazine
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, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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
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."