Emdashes—Modern Times Between the Lines

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Before it moved to The New Yorker:
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Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule

 

You may be here seeking my sentences. I’ve started a writing portfolio for my copywriting and journalism. My Twitter (and Instagram) handle is @emdashes, and I compile the Tumblrs The Beautiful Sentence and Obscure Controversies. Here’s my LinkedIn profile. These days, I’m a scholarly publicist and editor at the Yale School of Management and am working on a book about cavemen. Will I ever blog about The New Yorker again? Probably not. Will I start blogging about something else? It’s not impossible. In the meantime, I’m getting ready to refresh this site so it’s a little easier to find things, so if you’re here, thanks and check back again in a few months!

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Not in the literal sense. But certainly in a spiritual sense. I’m happy to say I began work this week at Oglivy & Mather as its Newsroom Editor. As for here, I don’t know how Emdashes will evolve in the future, in this, its tenth year. To judge from my radio silence, I’ve been drawn to other magnetic things, among them the Tumblrs The Beautiful Sentence and Obscure Controversies, as well as Peekskill Rocks, a city site I founded with the punk-rock developer Joe Sepi. But I would never, ever let go of my dearest place online.

So, I’ll return, tweed-clad and pipe in hand, and tend to this overgrown plot when I can. (I see, for instance, that there’s some messed-up code up there on the right rail. And I know, how minuscule is that type in the header and footer? What are we, tarsiers?) If you’re reading this, hi! Thanks for reading. Thanks for everything. This blog has opened so many incredible doors and continues to do so. The explanation “It originally started as a meta-superfanblog about The New Yorker” makes sprockets spring out of some people’s ears. But luckily, enough people have shared my obsessions that it made obsessing all the more delightful.

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Martin Schneider writes:

Seeing Larry David and the cast members of his show Curb Your Enthusiasm (Susie Essman, Cheryl Hines, and Jeff Garlin) as well as a sneak preview of the first episode of Season 8 (it airs on HBO this Sunday) at 92Y of all possible places felt a bit like seeing— the mind gropes for comparisons. The Pope in Rome? Prince in Paisley Park? Oprah in Oprahland?

In other words, the adoration from the audience was total. Indeed, the whole thing was even better because (no spoilers) the episode has a lot to do with Judaism, and this highly Jewish audience (I didn't say "self-loathing") lustily ate it up.

The surprise MC was Brian Williams, and he couldn't have been more perfect or more mock-awkward. His first words were, "Welcome to 'Let's Find a Catholic to Moderate This Event,'"

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Martin Schneider writes:

Last night the IFC Center in New York had a special event for the tremendous new documentary My Perestroika in which director Robin Hessman and the Meyerson family, three of the movie's subjects, fielded questions from the (it turned out) largely Russian-fluent audience.

My Perestroika retrospectively tracks a handful of Moscow elementary school chums from the 1970s to today. Hessman's subjects are, for lack of a better word, "ordinary" Russian citizens, which fact must present a hell of a challenge for a documentarian. These people are noteworthy for not having gaudy and

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Martin Schneider writes:

Emdashes is very pleased to feature an events report by a new friend of the site: Ethan de Seife, professor of film at Hofstra University and author of the delightful "Cultographies" book on This is Spinal Tap. He also has a forthcoming book on the director Frank Tashlin.

With no further ado, we turn it over to Ethan:

The big red LED clock at the back of the Times Center auditorium last Wednesday had just blinked precisely 9:00pm as I and the rest of the crowd filed out, having witnessed precisely 90 minutes of "conversation with music," in which American music icon Emmylou Harris was interviewed by

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2008 Webby Awards Official Honoree