New Yorker magazine alert thread

plus, when people were younger and had 4 or 5 kids, they could afford to mess a few of them up. people don't have that luxury now. they are really serious about getting it right even if they get it really wrong.

"get it really wrong" aka "kids these days" aka nothing to worry about really

Scott otm. But Mordy,, slightly less so. That's the free range kids theory, that we worry too much about predators that don't really factor, statistically. However, I do worry about cars running over my kids, which is why we walk together or one takes the bus.

But yeah, Scott otm.

one thing i've learned, kids can survive a LOT. if there are kids who can survive terrible horrible neglectful parents then they can survive over-attentive micro-moms. white people problems in a way. they have too much stuff! they are spoiled! their parents tie their shoes for them! these kids will obviously grow up to be serial killers.

i'm really paranoid about cars. and my kids. i can't help it. i hate cars. too many fucking yahoos around here going 60 in a 30. idiots. i don't trust anyone driving a car, basically.

the movie they keep describing him trying to make sounds sooooo bad, like "Bruce Almighty 2" or something.

Ha ha, yes exactly. I loved the Stiller profile though. It was a great portrait of a certain mindset: the hugely wealthy and successful funnyman who desperately wants to be taken seriously and drives everyone nuts. Even his wife was making fun of his intensity. I'm fascinated by people who seem to have everything and yet are incapable of being satisfied and believe (wrongly) that happiness is just one more movie away.

(My UK sub arrives later so I always seem to be one issue behind on this thread)

its funny too cuz i didn't feel that way living in a city for years. felt safer there as far as traffic. harder to get to 60 in city traffic.

the shit about how Stiller was going to make a Truly Great Original Groundbreaking Film This Time was hilarious, as though a person with no precedential display of that kind of talent could just will it to be true.

i go to birthday parties now and there are ten parents there drinking wine and talking. my parents never would have done this

This is key. There's sometimes more alcohol at kids birthday parties than at adult ones.

"a lot of New Yorker audience is urban too, and you'd have to be crazy to let your 5-year-old walk to school alone in NYC"

Really? That's sad.

Glad I'm not the only one who loved the Stiller profile. for exactly the same reasons as ^^.

(Stillsr also sounds like he would be a great studio head.)

if you don't think it would be crazy to let your 5-year-old walk to school alone in NYC i'm going to guess you probably don't have a lot of experience with large cities?

Pedestrian safety is enough of a reason not to let them do it, even assuming no other risks.

plus they end up spending all their lunch money on 3 card monte.

Www.freerangekids.com

do they deliver to canada

They have to find their own way there.

all parents and children are terrible

Was that Tolstoy?

Dr. Seuss

happy children are all alike; every unhappy child is unhappy in its own way

"if you don't think it would be crazy to let your 5-year-old walk to school alone in NYC i'm going to guess you probably don't have a lot of experience with large cities?"

I live in and grew up in a medium large city (let you guess) and I walked to school by myself everyday from 7 on certainly.

lagos?

I grew up in Legoland actually.

his main worries were playmobile pedos from the next town over

there must be studies on older parents. wonder if there is unconscious desire among older parents to keep their kids kids longer. the older you are the more you've been through.you have buried friends and family. parents. grandparents. so on some level you aren't in a hurry to let go of people. people complain about the older kids coming back and living at home after college or whatever, but the parents have kinda set their kids up to come back! kids are kinda like pets for a lot of people now. they like having them around and they don't really mind cleaning up the messes.

kids are kinda like pets for a lot of people now. they like having them around and they don't really mind cleaning up the messes.

^^^^^ truth bomb

Sometimes it seems like the older parents I know - ten years older than me, with kids the same age - can't wait to be empty nesters. They are so tired.

Also, older parents more likely to have multiples, or kids with medical issues, so that's more work.

i think i'm some weeks behind but ezra klein on the health-care mandate was fantastic

"if you don't think it would be crazy to let your 5-year-old walk to school alone in NYC i'm going to guess you probably don't have a lot of experience with large cities?"

I live in and grew up in a medium large city (let you guess) and I walked to school by myself everyday from 7 on certainly.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, June 29, 2012 1:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just gonna state the obvious here and say 7 is not 5

7 or 8 seems abt right depending on the area, i dont actually posses any children, might feel different i suppose, tho I did used to be one but that was in a different era of parenting schemes

Sometimes it seems like the older parents I know - ten years older than me, with kids the same age - can't wait to be empty nesters

they'll have to keep waiting; empty nests are becoming rarer these days.

<3 john mcphee

what he said

"just gonna state the obvious here and say 7 is not 5"

True, but I still wouldn't say that it's categorically "crazy" even at 5. It depends on the kid, depends on the neighborhood, depends on the distance to the school, ya know.

When I was trying to break into pro writing a few years back I found there was a night school course dedicated entirely to getting your prose into the New Yorker. It was run upstate and staffed entirely by ex-New Yorker writers, the failed and the fired. I guess their job was to teach how they got in, but not how they got kicked out.

Well, I did badly want to be a New Yorker writer myself at the time. In fact that idea dominated pretty much all my waking hours. I'd be washing the dishes and find myself thinking: "I'd rather be writing a New Yorker article." Or I'd be walking the dog and wondering how I'd render his little sniffs and tics into New Yorker-esque prose: "Biffo paws desultorily at a pale piece of fossilized dogshit like a jaded gourmet forking shiitake."

Was that good? Would it get past the desk editor? That's what I needed to know. That's what made it worthwhile boarding the night bus and traveling to the little town of Sidney NY, where the course was happening. They have an airport up there, but I figured I wouldn't be able to afford the commute from LaGuardia until I was actually, you know, cashing those New Yorker paychecks. And by then, of course, I'd be halfway to teaching there myself.

It was a weird experience. Lessons didn't start until 2am. The journo-profs were a semi-phosphorescent caliphate, turbidly hardboiled, recognizably post-damascene. I won't reveal too much here; I'm working this up into a piece I think the New Yorker might really go for. Wish me luck!

I misread what you wrote as "when I was trying to break into pro wrestling ..."

Hahah same here.

nancy franklin teaching the crippler crossface

That fuckin jerkoff John McPhee article.

not for us, mr. bancquern

lol that took me a second

i feel bad that i can't really read mcphee. feel like i would be a better person if i could appreciate his litanies of tree and shrub names. i always start his things with good noble intentions and i start to drowse off during a description of wood grains or something and i stop and never finish. i think i'm just blighted. like a conifer infected with Amillaria root rot.

The article would've been better if it'd had that level of particularity and focus. Instead, it was his freewheelin' recollection of (1) the eff word and cursing at nyer (in 2012, when the world needs it most), (2) a bunch of stuff about William Shawn (in 2012, etc.), and (3) a bunch of stuff about another guy who came right after Shawn (in etc.), all with a lot of references to other things John McPhee did that he's not doing now and several John McPhee quotes of nyer articles you're currently not reading.

Sometimes when the nyer is so consistently annoying and disappointing and a waste of $7, the best I can say is at least it's not The Atlantic.

are you buying newsstand copies? craziness

just i'm sure in some recess of my brain the knowledge that what i'm reading cost me almost nothing is reassuring, subscriptions are so rad

60 bucks a year for digital or print. 47 issues. someone do math.

kindle subscription was just 36 bucks a year until now