Martin Schneider writes:

I was just riffling through my inbox (such a tactile metaphor), and the following event at the 92nd Street Y jumped out at me. From the Y’s latest press release:

Tuesday, June 10, 8:15 pm, $26
The Lamentations of Ian Frazier
Whether flat-out funny in his Shouts and Murmurs columns in The New Yorker (most recently, the column about the man who bought and is renovating Wyoming), thoughtful and moving in books like On the Rez or far-ranging and perceptive in essay collections like the upcoming Lamentations of the Father, Ian Frazier is an American original. A mix of journalist and comedian, heir to Mark Twain and James Thurber,

General Excellence, over 2,000,000 circulation: The New Yorker, David Remnick, editor, for the February 19 & 26, August 13, October 8 issues. Congratulations to everyone at The New Yorker, including Blake Eskin, who was rightly nominated for leading the extraordinarily dedicated and creative group at newyorker.com.

Three elated cheers, too, for my former colleagues at The Nation—where I first learned about em dashes and a heck of a lot more—and, especially, to our scrappy gang at Print, my friends and role models, who were honored with the General Excellence award for magazines with a circulation under 100,000. Coincidentally, both David Remnick and Print captain Joyce Rutter Kaye are celebrating ten years at their respective magazines. It’s a nice way to cap the decade!

Martin Schneider writes:

The details for the New Yorker Conference are here—everything that’s scheduled for the two days of events on May 7 and 8. The dedicated website also lists bios of the participants, and more. As always, Emdashes is proud to be able to provide comprehensive coverage of the event, so stay tuned!

Here’s the schedule:

…the Hulk would win, according to a charming and confident young man of ten I met yesterday in a brief tour of the Comic Con, where I focused on book publishers and sightings, as with a bird book, of Gothic Lolitas, hipster dads, and redheaded gentlemen. I was hoping to get a chance to see Caroline Kelly (animator, artist, and daughter of Walt), whom the Fantagraphics folks said was nearby, but I had to skedaddle.

Back to the contest above. I’m very far from being an expert in this field, but as I asked the young man in question, why would Superman bother with the Hulk in the first place? And would the Hulk be smart enough to bring Kryptonite?

Which leads me to the next point, which is, don’t miss Nancy Franklin’s recent piece on The Hills and other dwelling places of muscular but dim specimens of easily enraged, tightly clothed, questionably gifted, and sometimes amusing humankind.

I had to go buy two pristine copies of the magazine this morning for something I’m working on, and at the newsstand around the corner (on Madison and 30th, should you be stalking me), there were two copies left. “You’re lucky I have two!” said the proprietor of the small magazine shop. (Not to be confused with the little-magazine shop, Niko’s on Sixth Ave. at Eleventh St., where, years ago, a young Russian employee responded to the news that I was leaving The Nation for Newsday with the booming review, “From the socialists to the technocrats!”)

Are people buying magazines and newspapers these days? Yes, he said, but not as many, and definitely fewer newspapers. “Even the porn magazines, the foreign magazines, the tattoo magazines?” I asked, looking around the inventory. Yep, he’s selling fewer of all of the above. “But The New Yorker sells out?” “Every week, every copy.” So, you see, the news isn’t all bleak.