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I'm Picking Out a Thermos, Filled With Snausages

Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: banjo, Ben Bass, dogs, film, movies, music, New Yorker Festival, Steve Martin

Martin Schneider writes:

This is great. When our friend Ben Bass was in New York for the most recent New Yorker Festival, he told me about Michelle, this good friend of his who is...pretty much the biggest Steve Martin fan in the world, in the sweetest possible way. Even our own Emily must take a back seat to Michelle when it comes to Steve Martin adulation. And Emily really likes Steve Martin a lot.

So a while back Steve announced a fun little fan contest, to create a video for a jaunty piece of banjo music he had written, "Wally on the Run," inspired by the frolics of his own dog Wally. The only constraint Steve imposed was that the video ought to involve a dog frolicking in some way. And...well, just go to Ben's smile-eliciting post at Ben Bass and Beyond for the fuller story (and all relevant videos), and then come back here.

(Back? OK. Two things I feel the need to say. First, I love how Steve—perhaps the most polished TV performer of all time—even he comes off just a little dorky and wooden when he's just shooting a quick little video for the internet. And second, I think I liked Michelle's video better than the "Laika" one.)

I love this story. I love the internet. Good day to you.

1 comments

Comments

Elegantly summed up as usual!

Ben BassDecember 22, 2009

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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)

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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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