tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141463812024-03-07T13:15:46.806-05:00I Hate The New YorkerOr at least that's what I say when I'm moved to hurl the magazine across the room. Still, I'm a loyal reader, and I invite you to gripe about the always liberal, but never radical, New Yorker magazine. Review the reviews, read the news and complain about all the pretentious nonsense.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.comBlogger384125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-61867656975509677512013-02-07T09:33:00.001-05:002013-02-07T09:33:20.312-05:00Anniversary Issue! I've been reading the magazine now and then for the past year, but not in a very immersive way. More like in a Yes! No! Like! WTF! kind of way. Denby, television reviews, election politics, k-pop, that contract killer in Detroit, Hillary, germs. You know. I just found a draft of a post that said: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank," Jamaica, Brazil and its President, Guatemalan Murder, Anthony Lane on John Le Carre. Jamaica? That I don't remember. <br />
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Last night I read all of that thing about the prof who shot a bunch of colleagues at a faculty meeting. Even when I'm at my busiest and most distracted and distractable, I read true crime front to back, start to finish, soup to nuts. Been reading Janet Malcolm on the case of Mazoltuv Borukhova in the NYRB all year, it seems like.<br />
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I really like this year's Tilley cover. Though of course it's ridiculous; 2013 and TNY <i>starts</i> poking fun at Brooklyn. I also really liked Barry Blitt's "Herding Cats" cover which was lovely even before I recognized the president and got the joke and what have you...<br />
<br />zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-88682929395365786422011-11-30T15:58:00.003-05:002011-11-30T16:12:40.992-05:00carte blanche is no way to run a cultural lifeYou tell 'em. Anthony Lane made me laugh with joy in the bathroom:<br /><br /><blockquote>There’s only one problem with home cinema: it doesn’t exist. The very phrase is an oxymoron. As you pause your film to answer the door or fetch a Coke, the experience ceases to be cinema. Even the act of choosing when to watch means you are no longer at the movies. Choice—preferably an exhaustive menu of it—pretty much defines our status as consumers, and has long been an unquestioned tenet of the capitalist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cultural life (or any kind of life, for that matter), and one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience, from the Athens of Aeschylus to the multiplex, is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will. The same goes for the folks around us, whom we do not know, and whom we resemble only in our private desire to know more of what will unfold in public, on the stage or screen. We are strangers in communion, and, once that pact of the intimate and the populous is snapped, the charm is gone. Our revels now are ended.</blockquote><br /><br />This sounds Guattarian to me, in both it's tone of celebration, and in its basic argument, "at the movies, one pays to be invaded."zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-29363402763825141772011-11-30T14:40:00.003-05:002011-11-30T14:52:35.661-05:00Hasenpfeffer IncorporatedDo I have any idea who this Whitney Cummings person is? Does my television even work? Have I ever seen more <span style="font-style: italic;">30 Rock</span> than the awful pilot? No, no, and no. So thank you, Emily Nussbaum, for so quickly and smartly painting a vivid picture of what's going on this year with women and funny and so on.<br /><br />I can wait to find out what Denby thinks of Michelle Williams as Marilyn.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-85499415623545124532011-10-11T18:29:00.009-04:002011-10-11T19:30:05.136-04:00Grunge! Rinse. Repeat.Courtney Love and Johnny Depp all in one issue? Is it <span style="font-style: italic;">Sassy</span>? Is it 1991? No, it is this month's <span style="font-style:italic;">Vanity Fair. </span><br /><br />But I always stop reading articles about Johnny Depp about half-way through. He's never really as interesting as the interviewer seems to think he is (even when that interviewer is <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/29/110829crat_atlarge_mendelsohn?currentPage=all">Rimbaud-lovin' Patti Smith.</a> Also, that was just in April!). You'd think this problem would be endemic to interviews with really attractive people, but it never hits me so hard as with old Johnny Depp. At this point, let's just say I admire his acting. I was also tickled, and completely convinced, when <a href="http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2011/03/man-on-the-street-johnny-depp-2.html">Tom & Lorenzo suggested that Johnny Depp has a body double do his airport appearances in Japan.<br /></a><br />The Courtney Love thing, though, is amazing, in part because of herself, in part because the author, Nancy Jo Sales, is an amazing narrator. She just wrote that whole thing about the <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2011/01/quaid-201101">Quaids' conspiracy theories for VF</a> and I'd read that, and that becomes part of this, and I'm pretty sure that celebrities with drug problems <span style="font-weight: bold;">are </span>a target for swindlers but I'm not interested because I'm sympathetic to these poor, defrauded celebrities. I'm interested because . . . I'm interested. A while back, <a href="http://gofugyourself.com/fugs-and-pieces-may-27-2011-05-2011">Go Fug Yourself linked to Courtney Love on her own addictions</a> and that was pretty compelling too.<br /><br />I almost always like Nancy Jo Sales and the very wry attitude she takes towards her subjects. In my imagination she wrote a thing about the Hilton sisters and their mother and how awful she is for <span style="font-style:italic;">The New Yorker</span> in the late 1990s and it appeared with <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/10/18/1999_10_18_250_TNY_LIBRY_000019386">a photo of the two girls in a (literally) chintzy hotel room.</a> But, apparently, <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2000/09/hiltons200009">she wrote the article for VF in 2000</a> and <span style="font-style:italic;">The New Yorker</span> ran the photo in 1999. And in that interview with the Hilton family, Paris claims to like Hole.<br /><br />So, yeah. <span style="font-style:italic;">Vanity Fair</span> has me and my very serious reading material pretty well figured out.<br /><br />And all this during Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Retrospective week. It's like I'm back in that middle-school carpool listening to NPR.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-16655277661932609562011-09-21T18:13:00.004-04:002011-09-21T18:27:23.870-04:00Over the RimbaudI found Mendelsohn's "Critic at Large" piece on Rimbaud completely enjoyable. I loved the way Mendelsohn wove together the best one-liners from critics, and reviews of the (not so recent) biographies of Rimbaud to create his own lively narrative of <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/29/110829crat_atlarge_mendelsohn?currentPage=all">"The Brief Career of Rimbaud."</a> I also liked the way we landed, ever so gently, yet somewhat cynically, on Mendelsohn's personal experience (and others') of reading the poet. And it ends with a fine pun. <br /><br />Free, but worth more to me than the stack of magazines I paid to have delivered to my apartment.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-14608737199204633752011-07-07T14:41:00.005-04:002011-07-07T14:59:39.783-04:00Ouch.Anna Faris = Feminist Masochism. Her life, her work, the article itself. Makes you want to go cold turkey and enter some sort of upstate separatist enclave.<br /><br />Failing that, spend a moment or two with this <a href="http://oscarinaland.com/">amazing new comic from Carolita Johnson, "Oscarina."</a>zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-70545211534804728142011-06-27T14:06:00.006-04:002011-07-07T14:59:39.784-04:00Films People Walked Out On Summer 2011If you're not inclined to see <span style="font-style:italic;">Tree of Life</span>, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/the_tree_of_life_malick">Anthony Lane's review will bring you up to speed. </a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/meeks_cutoff_reichardt">David Denby on <span style="font-style:italic;">Meek's Cutoff</span></a>, "a pleasureless, anti-sensuous aesthetic." !!?? Whose experience does he mean? That of the characters? Or the audience? Or the filmmaker? In each and any case, I don't agree. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/04/true-west-meeks-cutoff.html">Richard Brody is better</a>, but his <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/04/meeks-cutoff-mind-and-matter.html">second take</a> on the film is odd too. <br /><br /><blockquote>In his review of Kelly Reichardt’s Western “Meek’s Cutoff” in the magazine this week, David Denby refers to the movie’s “new kind of feminist and materialist realism.” I don’t think it’s new, but it is materialist, and it’s a kind of realism that plays into an ongoing cinematic fallacy: the notion that poor people facing physical travails lack inner lives, as if having a life full of stories, dreams beyond survival, religious beliefs, and a thick tangle of social and emotional connections were a sort of luxury—and as if spending too much screen time finding and depicting them would be a form of disrespect or indifference to the characters’ immediate practical and economic difficulties.</blockquote><br /><br />Me? I love blankness and don't need a full-fledged 20th c psychological subject from every film I see. Especially if the film is about ye olde pioneer women in the 19th century . . . <br /><br />He ends up, "The politics and the sympathies of <span style="font-style:italic;">Meek’s Cutoff</span> are liberal; its aesthetics are not just conservative, but reactionary."<br /><br />Which is funny, right? Because <span style="font-style:italic;">Tree of Life</span> is so ideologically reactionary, but it tries to be aesthetically experimental. <br /><br />I also read about Osama and Acai. <br /><br />And you did see this, the funniest thing in <span style="font-style:italic;">The New Yorker</span> ever? <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/05/02/110502sh_shouts_hanson">"New App on the Kindle 2GO"</a> Directions to T.S. Eliot's house, "Arrive around 7:30. Our phone is 917-555-0133. Much appreciate if you could bring a dessert—keep in mind that I’m lactose-intolerant."zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-50543197322767141912011-06-10T09:59:00.006-04:002011-07-07T14:59:39.785-04:00The Trial of St. JoanDid you really think I was going to let that slide? <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/03/110103crat_atlarge_denby">Denby and "The Case for Joan Crawford."</a> <br /><br />Denby seems – rightly – rather scared of Joan Crawford. Not because she is all the intimidating and vaguely unflattering things he says she is, but because she is an amazing artist and he is . . . a man with opinions. I feel a conflict of interest here. He should recuse himself from passing judgment on Crawford. <br /><br />This turn of phrase occurred to me as I was bitching about the article in the car – the magazine was not at hand. Imagine my surprise, then, when I started this post and read the following, from Denby, “Any call for justice to Joan Crawford, however, runs into a dead end . . .” Oh, we’re at dead end alright. I’m not sure evaluating Crawford as a date “the date who raises your blood pressure, not you’re your libido” is going to work out that well.<br /><br />But he’s right, Crawford did “place herself at the vanguard of current erotic taste”- this is definitely my take on her adorable boyishness in <span style="font-style:italic;">Our Dancing Daughters</span> “in which [according to Denby] she is pleasure-loving and wild yet candid and friendly, a straight shooter who gets the guy.” Well-put. And she develops and changes this basic persona to suit changing erotic tastes, and maintains it. <br /><br />Also cute: how he describes her early commitment to her own celebrity as “dress-up-to-go-grocery-shopping.” <br /><br />And I liked, “If you look at pictures of her at any age, the whites of her eyes show not just above the irises but below them, too. Her eyes are so wide open that she seems to be devouring the future.” The first is objectively true, the second is lovely. <br /><br />Again with the eyes, on her amazing performance as Daisy Kenyon, “with an open-eyed stare and a hardened voice.” I like this wide-eyed image that isn’t innocence. And his take on the brilliant match between her tough elegance and Warner Brothers is easy to agree with. <br /><br />I wasn’t that taken with his attitude towards the contrast between Crawford “bittersweet” and “melancholy” as the pushover stenographer in <span style="font-style:italic;">Grand Hotel</span>, and Crawford “determined to show the audience how big a bitch a woman faced with few choices can become” in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Women</span>. He’s right about the contrast between the two performances, but that right there is the brilliance of her artistry. Not all femininity is charming in its desperation. And not all desperation is charming. And that’s the difference between performing femininity for women and performing it for men. Yes indeed, “She was always a bigger hit with women than with men.” <br /><br />I also dislike the idea that there’s “nothing flexible or playful” in her performances and that just doesn’t make sense to me. Denby seems fully aware that <span style="font-style:italic;">Johnny Guitar</span> exists. And what about when she lifts the lid on that canary in <span style="font-style:italic;">What Every Happened to Baby Jane? <br /></span> That film is every kind of brilliant. <br /><br />And finally, do we, does Crawford, does anyone, need to be “rescued from camp?” If he's her self-appointed advocate, that's not working either. Thanks, but no thanks.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-14898780078876411392011-06-03T12:49:00.004-04:002011-09-21T18:28:16.554-04:00where intelligent classy well-educated women who say "fuck" alot meet..."Christ, What an asshole!" <br /><br />Apparently, one of the earliest uses of the word "asshole" in TNY involves no less a powerful and artsy triumvirate than Janet Malcolm, Ingrid Sischy and Rosalind Krauss. <br /><br />And a bathtub in the kitchen and a bowl of chopped tomatoes. <a href="http://emdashes.com/2011/06/when-janet-malcolm-broke-the-new-yorkers-profanity-barrier.php">Check it out.</a>zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-65915539600386392332011-06-01T18:29:00.003-04:002011-06-01T19:09:08.314-04:00geez louiseI read full articles on Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Taylor in <span style="font-style: italic;">VF</span> this past weekend. I was at the beach, right? I've always loved Taylor's looks, at every age, in every way. But she's not that interesting, apparently. Except for the part about her using her celebrity to support early HIV/AIDS research.<br /><br />In addition to The Fug Girls, I also read <a href="http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2011/05/katy-perry-for-vanity-fair-magazine.html">Tom & Lorenzo now and then and it annoyed me</a> that they didn't realize that Katy Perry on <span style="font-style: italic;">VF</span> cover (and, I think in one of the inside photos), was supposed to look like Liz Taylor. Not even like Liz Taylor, like photos of Liz Taylor in that very issue of <span style="font-style: italic;">VF</span>.<br /><br />And Hills. I constantly disagree with her political positions, but I admire her a bit.<br /><br />But really, this post is about profanity at <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Yorker</span> - <a href="http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004263.php">stop briefly at old favorite languagehat</a> and continue on to <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/new-yorker-profanity">The Awl.</a>zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-65341258856322348502011-05-03T00:46:00.007-04:002011-05-23T14:37:51.098-04:00untidy thoughtsI've got a new subscription to <span style="font-style: italic;">Vanity Fair</span>, which means I read part of Rob Lowe's autobiography. Yup. I've also got a subscription to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Nation</span> and boy do I love their arts and lit coverage. And I can't find my issue of TNY with the Anna Faris profile. I also read Elizabeth Kolbert in a <span style="font-style: italic;">National Geographic </span>at the doctor's office.<br /><br />If I don't get up early enough in the morning (and I've been getting up pretty darn early), my cat shreds a <span style="font-style: italic;">New Yorker</span> to wake me. Seriously. What else?<br /><br />This <a href="http://scepticalexpat.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/why-i-hate-the-new-yorker/">Sceptical Expat</a> has a great list of what bugs her about TNY. I like especially point number<br /><br /><p></p><blockquote><p>6) The way so many articles end abruptly. The first couple of times I encountered this I thought it was refreshing. No conclusion, no final aphorism or take home message – OK, not everything lends itself to a neat closing summary. Now I regard it as another smug idiosyncrasy of the house style.<br /></p><p>...<br /></p><p>It reminds me of my erstwhile supervisor’s critique of a colleague’s formless research papers: ‘He always says that that’s just how the material is. But that’s how <em>all </em>material is until you find something to say about it.’</p></blockquote><p></p>zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-5742360861179388792011-03-16T23:19:00.002-04:002011-07-07T15:02:43.134-04:00Understatement of the WeekDenby on <a href="http://ihatethenyer.blogspot.com/2006/07/function-of-optical-illusion-and-spare.html?showComment=1246138328806"><span style="font-style: italic;">Jane Fucking Eyre</span></a>: "This fervent, angry novel gave a strong impetus to both feminist fiction and romance novels."<br /><br />Feminist fiction <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> romance novels. You don't say.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-37685959245980243912011-02-26T10:48:00.004-05:002011-02-26T11:28:22.873-05:00and jon stewart doesn't bake a linzertorteI just saw that Daily Show from January where <a href="http://ihatethenyer.blogspot.com/2010/12/solipsistic-and-desultory-reading-of.html">Jon Stewart</a> doesn't quite have the time to bake a <a href="http://ihatethenyer.blogspot.com/2010/12/solipsistic-and-desultory-reading-of.html">linzertorte</a>. Huh.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-2103051146603017512011-02-17T20:14:00.003-05:002011-02-17T20:17:18.649-05:00motherhood, feminism, groundhogsJust a few of the recently recurring themes here at the blog. <br /><br />If David Sedaris won't do it, <span style="font-style:italic;">New Yorker</span> poet Ellen Bryant Voigt will. Confirm the bureaucratic nature of groundhogs, that is. The beginning of her beautiful poem,<br /><br />Groundhog<br /><br />not unlike otters which we love frolicking<br />floating on their backs like truant boys unwrapping lunch<br />same sleek brown pelt some overtones of gray and rust<br />though groundhogs have no swimming hole and lunch<br />is rooted in the ground beneath short legs small feet<br />like a fat man's odd diminutive loafers not<br />frolicking but scurrying layers of fat his coat<br />gleams as though wet shines chestnut sable darker<br /><br />...zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-41643032662241511362011-02-13T21:24:00.014-05:002011-03-08T20:41:09.189-05:00I'll get you, my little pretty!"This is the infuriating thing that dawns on you one day: even if you would never sleep with or even flirt with anyone to get ahead, you are being sexually adjudicated." That is, of course, Tina Fey in TNY.<br /><br />Apparently, about a year ago Fey was subject to some sort of "feminist" backlash. I can see where the quote above could - if you're blaming other women for this problem - come from a comic persona that spends too much time pointing fingers <a href="http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/04/14/tina_fey_backlash">"in a field of slutty, slobby, neurotic [female] morons."</a> But here she tries not to.<br /><br />And I don't watch <span style="font-style: italic;">30 Rock</span> but the article as a whole actually helped me explore a feeling of solidarity with mothers that I don't always feel. And isn't solidarity the better part of feminism? So, paradoxically, the above <a href="http://flavorwire.com/149668/the-best-quotes-from-tina-feys-new-yorker-piece-on-motherhood">gets my vote for best quote of the piece.</a><br /><br />Unless it is the delicious description of the difference between childish and adult pleasures: "Covered in slivered almonds and soaked in booze, Italian rum cake is everything kids hate."<br /><br />And also, most little girls love and admire witches, right? So what is she's worried about in the first place?zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-22561550718116973242011-02-11T11:23:00.003-05:002011-02-11T11:51:14.358-05:00Tiger Moms and House CatsAlthough I had no idea this public kerfuffle was going on, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/01/31/110131crbo_books_kolbert">I'm glad Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about it for TNY.</a> She took the whole thing fairly seriously, in its personal and political dimensions. <br /><br />I'm also in the middle of Haggis v. Scientology. But, to quote (roughly) a recent caption contest runner-up, <br /><br />"Let's make this brief. I have to go back to staring out the window."zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-53494605163311451582011-02-05T19:48:00.004-05:002011-07-07T15:02:30.958-04:00this is why we have a subscription<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/22/101122fa_fact_lee">Magical Dinners is right.</a> Korean food, Thanksgiving memories, subscribers only! I loved this, especially the part about licking the mini blinds. <br /><br />Vanity Fair/Sanity Air. <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/12/wolcott-201012">Just in time for Valentine's day, a love letter from James Wolcott to NPR.</a> Wolcott puts a finger on why so much NPR (ie, Ira Glass) bugs me - no spleen! But then he moves on to the good stuff. He calls our attention to "a feminism so integrally wired into the basic circuits that it can be taken for granted, until you start listening/watching/reading someplace else." Yes, it's a seventies feminism, but it's very important. And there's something very nice about the way he segues to reflecting on this feminism from his discussion of NPR as a sound medium.<br /><br />And I just read the Munro story about the pair of college sweethearts.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-60089509663872093102010-12-03T15:14:00.006-05:002011-02-26T11:01:54.309-05:00solipsistic and desultory reading of TNYAs opposed to what? Keywords: Linzertorte, Kanye, Hathaway, Ballet, Groundhog<br /><br />1. <a href="http://ihatethenyer.blogspot.com/search?q=linzertorte">You know I love linzertorte.</a> Long story short, A. Goodman?<br /><br />Don't used blanched nuts, hazelnuts are traditional, almonds are fine.<br />Don't neglect to mix plenty of lemon or alcohol in the jam.<br />Don't strain the seeds and don't sweat the lattice.<br /><br />But the correct proportion of jam to crust is crucial, and highly subjective. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/allegra_goodman/search?contributorName=allegra%20goodman">And the illustration is insulting.</a><br /><br />2. I can't believe Sasha Frere-Jones didn't mention the Kanye tweets as cartoon captions thing. He asks, instead, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2010/12/06/101206crmu_music_frerejones">"Which Kanye did you follow this year? The newcomer to Twitter, who liked to talk about expensive chairs and Mark Rothko, and sometimes tags his tweets “Greatesttweetofalltime”?"</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2010/08/kanye-west-new-yorker-cartoons.html">Bob Mankoff commented on the whole thing</a> awhile back, but (am I in an extra-ornery mood?) he's wrong. The mix of Kanye Tweets and New Yorker cartoons are <a href="http://ihatethenyer.blogspot.com/2010/08/kanye-copyright-and-new-yorker-cartoons.html">NOT really incongruous</a>, nor do you need to know that Kanye penned the caption to find the squirrel image+paparazzi caption funny.<br /><br />3. Strange but true, I fully enjoyed <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/12/06/101206crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=2">Denby on <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Swan</span> and </a><span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/12/06/101206crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=2">Love and Other Drugs.</a> </span>Indeed, I spent the whole of my Thanksgiving holidays praising the "vivid and generously expressive" Anne Hathaway and surveying the uneasy marriage of media found in "ballet films."<br /><br />4. On Jon [oops!] Stewart, David Sedaris told us that he wanted to include a groundhog story in his collection of animal tales, <span style="font-style: italic;">Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk</span>, but his editor wouldn't let him because "we have no preconceived notions of groundhogs," or some such. Benj and I were saddened by this, because we always think of them as bureaucratic, and behind on their paperwork, and we had hoped that someday a famous comic author would confirm this for us. But now we'll never know. In any case, the stories in the collection are also strange, but true.<br /><span> </span><div><div style="overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;"><span><br /><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 153);" href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2010/12/06/101206crmu_music_frerejones#ixzz176RBOacn"></a></span></div></div>zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-76580333557384790852010-11-04T14:45:00.005-04:002011-02-05T20:03:00.700-05:00strange fruitI'm reading a John Le Carre spy novel from 1989, <span style="font-style: italic;">Russia House</span> - I heard him interviewed on Democracy Now - and, when I'm in the bathroom, I'm reading a clever essay on hipsters, in <span style="font-style: italic;">New York</span> magazine, "adapted from <em>What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation</em>, by the editors of n+1, published this month."<br /><br />Oh, I also read the profile of fightin' Harry Reid in TNY.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-30653879178613728902010-10-17T22:21:00.003-04:002010-10-17T22:25:32.708-04:00whatsernameI read that thing about the little tween fashion blogger. Interesting enough, I guess. Oh, and I actually loved the cover of the fashion issue, the one with the animals in furs. I liked the style and the weirdness of the concept too.<br /><br />Also, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Oh Sting, Where is thy Death?" </span>zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-18392727257666403572010-10-02T13:07:00.002-04:002010-10-02T13:11:32.181-04:00there's a time and place for everythingGeez. Another one of those annoying throw-away Proust references. Who wrote this?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/13/100913fa_fact_barthes">Oh, Roland Barthes. On the death of his mother.</a> Er. Nevermind.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-81571152733533185702010-09-17T15:39:00.002-04:002011-07-07T15:01:42.224-04:00Ms. The BoatI got the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all"><span style="font-style: italic;">New Yorker</span> with Jane Mayer on the Koch brothers</a> and I thought to myself, "Yawn. Libertarian bazillionaires convincing the public to vote against their own interests? What else is new?? I'm so not reading that." Well, I guess didn't have to. Cuz it got plenty of coverage from Maddow and Goodman and the NYT in the ensuing weeks. Sometimes I am just so clueless about what is important news.<br /><br />Speaking of Maddow and Goodman, I was feeling overwhelmed by their hysterical economics coverage when suddenly, via the New Yorker's <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/09/13/100913on_audio_politicalscene">Political Scene podcast</a>, I heard a nice, level-headed conversation taking place in (mostly) dulcet tones, between Dorothy Wickenden and John Cassidy. Deep breath of fresh air.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-27932434149478313722010-08-11T11:21:00.002-04:002011-07-07T15:04:35.742-04:00what did you think?<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_toobin">Charles Schumer.</a> Toobin, cute, but no biggie. (subscription only)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer">The Senate, in general, by George Packer.</a> Funny, sad and easy to read. (avail)<br /><br />David Sedaris on airline travel, and hate. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/11/steven-slater-jet-blue-fl_n_676139.html">Hits a nerve.</a> (subscription only)<br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande"><br />Hospice by Atul Gawande.</a> The title for this in the paper TOC was so dull - "rethinking" something or other . . . But the article was amazing and I was reduced to tears on a bright summer's day. Lagusta warned me! (avail)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/16/100816fa_fact_friend">John Lurie. Tad Friend</a> really captures the weirdness. (subscription only)<br /><br />Nicholson Baker on video gaming. Oh My God. He was born to write this. (subscription only) <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/08/09/100809on_audio_baker">I'll probably even listen to the podcast, eventually.<br /></a><br />Also, Gil Scott-Heron <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> Agatha Christie.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-24154008545422424092010-08-06T19:47:00.004-04:002011-07-07T14:59:39.785-04:00A.O. ScottLot of people love him, lots of people mock him. But does he always write with such insistent internal rhymes, I ask you?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On Sitting Down to Read <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/movies/06other.html?8dpc=&pagewanted=1">A.O. Scott's Review of The Other Guys</a>,<br />Once Again</span><br /><br />He sings of angry populist satire<br />Of a British weasel-for-hire<br /><br />Of topical provocation<br />Of whatever worldly anger and frustration<br /><br />we may be harboring.<br /><br />With the crow of an inflamed bantam rooster,<br />and the eyes of a combustible milquetoast,<br /><br />gullible,<br />irresistible,<br />less comprehensible<br />than sensible.<br /><br />Vixens, lions, tunas, scams,<br />hedges, bailouts, Ponzi schemes,<br /><br />A mooning goofball<br />A spoofing fireball<br />A going-out-of-business sale at the comic video boutique,<br />brought to you by the infinitely fungible voice of Will Ferrell.<br /><br />Not so.<br />Macho.<br />After all.zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14146381.post-147611206844208272010-08-05T14:36:00.004-04:002010-08-06T19:47:13.984-04:00Kanye, Copyright and New Yorker Cartoons<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-lee/copyright-and-remixing-ka_b_670789.html">You saw this, right?</a> (Huffington Post)<br /><br />James Thurber's Seal Barks and Kanye West's Tweets united in holy matrimony by some <a href="http://www.paulandstorm.com/archives/new-yorker-kanye-tweets/">comedians named Paul and Storm</a>.<br /><br />The funniest thing to happen to New Yorker cartoons since the advent of the Anti-Caption contest. Or maybe ever.<br /><br />Everyone's saying how funny it is but no one is saying why. When I am choking to death laughing it has something to do with the WASP-y asshole privilege lampooned in the original cartoons mirroring the hip-hop asshole privilege of the tweets . . .zoe p.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02535684589288030978noreply@blogger.com0