Each Friday, the Emdashes summer interns bring us the news from the ultimate Rossosphere: the blogs and podcasts at newyorker.com. Here’s this week’s report.
Adam Shoemaker:
This week in “Notes on Politics, Mostly,” Hendrik Hertzberg notices a few unexpected deviations in the news world. First, he applauds the Washington Post‘s decision to repudiate, unqualifiedly and unapologetically, John McCain’s accusation that Barack Obama demanded media cameras follow him into an Army medical center in Germany. Hertzberg also offers a modest suggestion for newsgatherers facing the newly breached promise by Chinese officials for uncensored internet access during the Olympic games. Finally, he puzzles over the recent off-road trek of a Republican “word technician” on Fox News who bravely veered away from Obama-bashing while host Sean Hannity desperately attempted to retrieve him. The post provided one of my favorite valedictions ever: “Thanks a load, toad.”
Sasha Frere-Jones spent the week at his blog considering free mixtapes and Czechoslovakian-infused rap. He also shares a music video from Richard McGuire, New Yorker illustrator and creator of “compact puzzles of funk.” I am converted. Still, the center of my heart remains dedicated to that burgeoning genre of sometimes atrocious, sometimes sublime hip-hop mashups, and one really can’t do better than this fusion of M.O.P. and “Sesame Street.”
In The New Yorker Out Loud, we hear from Kelefa Sanneh, who wrote in this week’s issue of The New Yorker about the early dissent of radio commentator Tavis Smiley from the “magical” promise of Barack Obama for the African-American community. Sanneh notes that for some black leaders, Obama’s position outside the traditional African-American political trajectory has raised concerns about his commitment to the historical imperatives of the Civil Rights movement. They wonder what it means to be “moving beyond the politics of grievance.” Together, Sanneh’s article and this interview provide a fascinating look at the decisions African-American leaders and voters are facing on the course from primary season to November’s general election.
Rounding out the roundup, Andy Borowitz writes in the Borowitz Report about the swift revenge of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who just released (we wish) their own attack ad on John McCain after the senator compared them to Senator Obama. While I’m not truly surprised that the “notorious party girls” support offshore drilling, I never really thought of McCain as “pasty white.”
Taylor House:
“Earthquake!” cried Postcard from Los Angeles. Dana Goodyear gives us the lowdown on the shakeup (which, admittedly, wasn’t very shaky). No serious injuries or building damage, just a lot of ponderous thoughts about preparing for “the big one” that in the event, will likely be every bit as unexpected. Yawn, maybe tomorrow.
More bad news for newspapers. The L.A. Times is now forcing cutbacks on its weekly book review section–downgrading it from a Sunday insert to space in the general arts section. How bad will it get, and is anyone brave (or stupid) enough to swim upstream?
Anyone recognize Senator Patrick Leahy as the gentleman telling off the Joker in The Dark Knight? Steve Brodner did, and illustrates the effect quite nicely over at Person of the Day.
David Remnick and Hendrik Hertzberg commend Obama’s speech in Germany but debate his shifting position on the war in this week’s The Campaign Trail podcast. And how does it look from McCain’s side of the street? Not great, but not without hope.
Sarah Arkebauer:
This week’s Cartoon Lounge contained some real gems.
Farley Katz penned a humorous Grover Cleveland-themed cartoon on July 29. The antiquated-cartoon theme continued with Matthew Diffee’s post on the 31st. Also worth noting is the delightfully bizarre email-duel by Achewood cartoonist Chris Onstad on July 31 about sandwich shops. The article is a continuation of an earlier interview between Onstad and CL contributor Zachary Kanin.
My favorite new series in the Book Bench is the “Bookspotting” segment. The July 28 edition contained an excellent sighting. I was also pleased to see that (the poetry of) Frank O’Hara made an appearance on the season two premiere of Mad Men. This might be just the impetus I need to start following the program. In other news, a new book of American slogans, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, is forthcoming, and the people behind the Booker Prize have announced this year’s shortlist. Salman Rushdie is the favorite.
Meanwhile, Goings On posted two promising videos. One is an epic video of acclaimed pianist Lang Lang playing a Chopin etude, not with his fingers but with an orange. The second video of note is a “hilarious, surreal interview” that David Letterman did with Tom Waits (who, we learn, was born in a taxi). Both posts have provided me with valuable new anecdotes with which to astound my friends–always a worthwhile endeavor.
For this week’s New Yorker Fiction Podcast update, I turned to the May 3, 2007, recording in which Richard Ford reads John Cheever’s short story “Reunion.” The story is remarkable both for its brevity and for its richness, and the podcast is worth a listen even if you’ve already read the original.
Previous intern roundups: the July 25 report; the July 18 report; the July 11 report.
Author Archives: Emdashes
The Wavy Rule, a Daily Comic by Paul Morris: Surfer Math
Paul explains today’s brainy “Wavy Rule” (click to enlarge):
In the July 21 issue of The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote about roaming physicist-surfer Garrett Lisi, the author of “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.” The fantasy of someone coming out of the woodwork (or the surfshop) to announce the fact that they’ve figured out all of the secrets of the universe remains very much alive–which inspired this cartoon. Oh, and graphic design students are all mad as snakes.
More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.
The Wavy Rule, a Daily Comic by Paul Morris: All That and a Side of Frey
In today’s “Wavy Rule,” Paul addresses the question: What does a James Frey novel smell like? Click to enlarge!
More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.
The Wavy Rule, a Daily Comic by Paul Morris: Tmesis Junction, What’s Your Function?
Paul writes about today’s “Wavy Rule”:
What’s tmesis exactly? Well, as one definition goes, “a tmesis is the separation of a word into two, for the purpose of inserting another word between the separated parts…” (John Carey, Latin Prosody Made Easy, 1808, p. 195). The word “tmesis” comes from a Greek word meaning “to cut,” and the figure of speech is found in ancient Greek and Roman poetry. But as a linguistic phenomenon, its use has continued, finding its way in Ned Flanders’ “Wel-diddly-elcome” and the “La-dee-freakin’-da” of Chris Farley’s Matt Foley character. Both examples were provided by the Wiki-freakin’-pedia article on the subject, found here.
More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.
Unique New York, Unique New Yorker
At/on/in/with/from/for Radar online, Choire Sicha compares this week’s New York and New Yorker.
The Wavy Rule, a Daily Comic by Paul Morris: Get Me Rewrite!
Paul explains today’s “Wavy Rule”:
Last week, Benjamin Chambers posted here on the anniversary of the publication of Shirley Jackson’s 1948 story “The Lottery,” which caused an outcry and controversy across America, for reasons you should remember from English class. What if Jackson had been asked to do a rewrite? Click to enlarge!
More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.
Holt’s New Book: Not About “Shy, Bald Buddhist”
Martin Schneider writes:
You can divide the world into people who understand that headline and people who don’t.
Yes, yet another book whose origins can be traced to the pages of The New Yorker. Jim Holt has expanded his April 19, 2004, book review into a laughable, if not risible (wait, those are pejorative), in any case highly amusing volume about the nature of the joke. It’s called Stop Me If You’ve Heard This, and Norton is the publisher (no, not Ed, nor Jim neither).
If Amazon had any wit, they’d pair it with James Wood’s How Fiction Works.
The Wavy Rule, a Daily Comic by Paul Morris: Mitty and Bodwell Smackdown
Paul explains today’s inspired “Wavy Rule” (click to enlarge):
They’ve remade that jewel in the crown of our American heritage: American Gladiators, a show that fed the minds and muscles of countless kids from 1989 to 1996. I’m not sure what the point of that show was–maybe how to educate children on the proper use of skybikes and atlaspheres, or how to play Breakthrough & Conquer, a combination of football and freestyle wrestling. A veritable blast.
Here’s my own remake of the show, with James Thurber-like characters. Instead of Turbo and Nitro, I say we pit Walter Mitty and Bodwell (a character in Thurber’s story “The Night the Ghost Got In”) against one another. Thurber humor and Super Powerballs–who can say no to that?
More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.
“The 405” and “the B.Q.E.” Both Mean “40-Minute Delay”
At the Washington Monthly website, Kevin Drum once raised the question of the (relatively) recent New York discovery of the taco (here is our contribution); now he is investigating a regional linguistic quirk: why is it that Angelenos are the only American city dwellers (save those living in Toronto/Buffalo, apparently) who habitually refer to local thoroughfares as “the 5,” “the 405,” “the 10”? Here in New York, you take “95” to get to Connecticut and “87” to get upstate and “287” to get across Westchester and so on.
(A friend of mine may have cracked the case, by the way. In Drum’s third post on the subject, he asks why the prevailing academic explanation—scale of traffic system—does not also obtain in New York City, which also has a high number of highways. Answer: in New York, if you say “the 1” or “the 3,” you’re probably referring to a subway.)
I called up my trusty Complete New Yorker, with the sneaky hope that some prescient gem about the “prepended the” would be contained therein. I found nothing about this definite article business. But I found gems nonetheless.
For some reason they are concentrated in the year 1966. That year, in the October 1 issue, the magazine ran “The Ultimate City,” a Profile on Los Angeles by Christopher Rand. Let’s start with that beguiling Steinberg art, a clear precursor to the famous “View of the World from Ninth Avenue” cover, only from the Los Angeles perspective—and ten years earlier. I zoom out to present the page layout (click to enlarge):
Dedicated as the Profile is to the futuricity of the city, many of the statements therein lend themselves to hindsight evaluation, and the recent spike in gas prices make 2008 an especially good year to excavate it. In dogged, unfussy, even mundane fashion, Rand hits on the main infrastructural features/challenges/problems of Los Angeles you would expect a typical educated representative from the east coast to notice: cars, water, earthquakes, brush fires, freeways, smog. He gets them all.
Rand mentions that the fashionable term for suburbs in the area is “slurbs” (60). Did this term stick? Does anyone say this? Does anyone remember people saying this? Much later (104), Rand writes two sentences that are suggestive from the vantage point of the energy-drained present day. “One wonders what would happen if gas and tire rationing struck L.A. now, as they did at the time of Pearl Harbor.” Indeed, one does wonder. And then: “As for mass transit, it is now talked of as if the city were serious about it.” Surely the skepticism in that sentence is built-in. But having never visited Los Angeles, I leave it to natives to debate whether 1966 was or was not the year the city finally got serious about the subway and bus system.
On page 109 the article mentions “sigalerts,” which term I had only first seen in one of the Washington Monthly posts. I had not realized that the term was so entrenched. In any case, it dates from no later than 1966. For anyone interested in the development of Los Angeles, Rand’s article is a fascinating and essential snapshot.
A few months earlier, in the June 11 issue, The New Yorker ran a cartoon, by Whitney Darrow Jr., with only glancing resonance to Drum’s “Highway Linguistics” series. Here it is (again, clicking makes big):
Staten Island Yankees Catch Irvin Fever
Martin Schneider writes:
Yesterday I went to see the Staten Island Yankees host their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Cyclones, at beautiful Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George. (The Yankees won, 4-1.)
I couldn’t help but notice that all visitors are greeted with a big blue blast of Irvin type (or something close). I asked my friend Seth Davis to snap a few shots for evidence; they are presented below.
