New Yorker magazine alert thread

btw that stroller cover was the first actually funny one in a long, long time imo

i enjoyed the toobins thing in this week's, though maybe because it's the first law thing i've read for a while. some really distressing case details referred to in passing. the contributors panel at the start of the magazine says he's working on a follow up to the nine, too.

Who are y'all's favorite cartoonists? Haefeli had one in the last couple weeks that had me IRL LOLing.

Pretty good article on reality tv this (last?) week: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/05/09/110509crat_atlarge_sanneh

Btw, I always get my print copy half a week after the online version goes up (i.e. usually around Thursday). Is it because the Pony Express has difficulty reaching me on the West coast?

I will definitely get the iPad version at $20. Part of the frustration with the dead tree edition was having nothing come for weeks at a time and then three mangled issues show up on the same day. Also, fuck information delivery through deforestation -- it's 2011 for the luvva god.

ipads are made from the tears of factory workers iirc so neither delivery method is perfect

true

:: is properly chastened ::

think i was just feeling defensive on account of just having re-subscribed to the paper edition, & gotten one through. it's an upgrade from reading online with my old login and printing at work, which was really not the best of either world

$60 a year ON IPAD, it turns out. still half the price of an international subscription.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20110508/apple-brings-conde-nast-aboard-the-subscription-bandwagon-starting-with-the-new-yorker/

Still more than I've ever had to pay for a US print subscription, though.

wondering if it 'll be easier or harder to ignore ON IPAD

u+k: "Very important: Conde says print subscribers will get iPad access for free."

^^^yeah that is awesome. thinkin baout an iPad tbh

pay $10 more to kill millions of trees

also this:
http://i.imgur.com/YUo0k.jpg

made me go back and read this 5-year old thing on the Death Metal kid who turned Al-Qaeda operative last nite:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/22/070122fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all

really enjoyed.

"Introducing Oasma to the Mortgage Crisis" ?

Enjoyed the Malcolm Gladwell article about Xerox and the Anthony Lane piece about Pixar tho both seemed (surprisingly?) poorly thought thru. Anthony Lane didn't seem to have much of a point beyond 'look at how weird/cool this company is -- maybe too cool???' which isn't really a problem since his writing is great and Pixar seems legitimately bizarre and magical. The Gladwell article's organizing theory was even more hamfisted than they normally are. You can either be incredibly inventive, build the model perfectly, or execute it perfectly but for some reason can't do all 3 -- it's not clear WHY that is tho. also apparently fighting a war in the Middle East is comparable to Steve Jobs bringing the PC to the market. still i didn't know the Xerox/Apple story and the narrative stuff was really interesting.

yeah you got the impression that pixar offered nyawker an exclusive and they sent lane and he didn't have shit to say but he thinks they're pretty cool

Last week must have been a busy one at America's leading crypto-newsweekly. The announcement of Osama bin Laden's death last Sunday hit the New Yorker at the worst possible moment in the publishing cycle, when bin Laden–free issues were already off the presses and in the mail. (Nice show of gratitude, Mr. President.) So this week's table-of-contents promotional email feels a little frantic—there was the foreign news to be caught up to and seriously grappled with, but the regular news-and-culture calendar could not wait. So:
David Remnick on Osama bin Laden; Steve Coll on the making of a modern fanatic; Lawrence Wright on Pakistan; and Jon Lee Anderson on Afghanistan. Plus: Malcolm Gladwell on the mouse; Judith Thurman on Alexander McQueen; Anthony Lane on Pixar; John Seabrook on snacks in the age of obesity; James Surowiecki on Dropbox; Joan Acocella on Paula Fox; Joyce Carol Oates on Margaret Drabble; Sasha Frere-Jones on Stevie Nicks; John Lahr on "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures"; Anthony Lane on "Everything Must Go" and "Thor"; fiction by Michael Ondaatje; and more.
Eh, OK, that sounds resoundingly fine. Nothing wrong with falling back on muscle memory in a crisis. But how much more exciting would it be to open the mailbox if Remnick had shaken up the assignments a little? Anthony Lane on Osama bin Laden, for starters. I would read that immediately. How about:

• Malcolm Gladwell on Margaret Drabble.
• Sasha-Frere Jones on "Thor."
• Michael Ondaatje on snacks in the age of obesity.
• Jon Lee Anderson on Alexander McQueen.
• Joan Acocella on the making of a modern fanatic.
• James Surowiecki on Pixar.

And definitely, definitely David Remnick on Stevie Nicks.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2011/05/09/reassignment-memo-the-new-yorker-shuffle.aspx

Jon Lee Anderson on Alexander McQueen.

I crossed 17th Street, unescorted, to meet with Sarah Burton. As her assistant brought us bottled San Pelligrino water, she spoke of McQueen's recent death.

Don't you mean Judith Thurman?

michael...

o michael

Sorry, groggy...

I would love to read a JLA piece on McQueen; shit would be very informative, poignant and yet damning.

it's weird how one of the paragraphs in Lane's article on Pixar begins by referencing the criticism that they haven't featured enough leading female characters, and ends by wondering how Bob resists banging Helen in the Incredibles, especially given that she has elastic superpowers and wears hot thigh-highs

i love anthony lane but he is sometimes gross about women. maybe i'm mixing him up with denby, but i feel like he wrote a review of Baby Mama that made a huge deal of how Tina Fey wasn't pretty enough to play that role and it was pretty o_0.

"There is, of course, another skill that she could master with her natural sinuosity, but that is never mentioned. Back in 2004, some of us in the movie theatre wanted to shout, 'Bob, she's wearing a black mask and thigh-highs. What are you waiting for, man?' For the sake of the kids, though, we kept quiet. Bedrooms, in Pixar, are places where you chat to monsters, or horse around with your toys: not perspiring rumpus rooms, where Mr. and Mrs. Incredible play adults-only Twister."

ew

what an odd thing to say

like what was the purpose of even bringing that into it?

'in kids movies, there is very little talk of conception, as if children have not yet developed the ability to reproduce'

when will old dudes learn that they should stop writing about sex

Anthony Lane didn't seem to have much of a point beyond 'look at how weird/cool this company is -- maybe too cool???' which isn't really a problem since his writing is great and Pixar seems legitimately bizarre and magical.

Still working through the Pixar piece, but there were some very awkward sections in it, syntactically, I thought.

It's part of the logical progression introduced at the start of the piece: Hollywood makes movies for kids, the kids company makes movies for adults, ergo, Pixar should be making adult films.

The article about Libya from the week before last was pretty amazing. I almost skipped through thinking it'd be a bland news piece, but it was some serious first-hand man on the ground reporting, with a heart wrenching human angle.

Yeah, that Libya piece was great. That Lane Pixar piece almost felt like a teaser for something more in-depth, or else it was just chopped to shit before it got published.

Anyone mind if I lower the level of discourse here by mentioning how hot Amy Davidson and Susan Orlean are?

Also, per Richard Brody, Terrence Malick once co-wrote a "Comment" for NYer (sub req'd): http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1968/04/13/1968_04_13_035_TNY_CARDS_000290020

ariel levy (who is also hot, if not interested in leee's glances) on silvio berlusconi's italy is pretty lol/wau/wtf

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_levy

The June 6 issue is fantastic -- the best this year. Highlights:

- Ariel Levy's batshit article on Silvio Berlesconi's pornocracy as well as a larger rumination on the culture of Italian machismo.

- Sy Hersh's latest article on Iran

- The history of Romneycare and the former governor's (and Bush administration's) enthusiasm for it in 2005 and 2006

ariel levy (who is also hot, if not interested in leee's glances)

I deserved that. :I (Started the Berlusconi article, o_O indeed.)

here is the ad described in the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJNjJjNP3c

I couldn't make it through the Iran article because of the weird imposing sense of Seymour Hersh deja vu. The Italy one I struggled with for a different reason: it's just too depressing. I mean, there's sexism, and then this brand of Italian sexism to the bunga bunga degree. It posits Berlusconi as endemic of a pretty horrible, more-than-merely-macho culture.

oh nothing personal, leee -- i believe ms. levy is gay

The Bunga Bunga Degree is my favorite John Grisham novel

My old buddy (and Atlantic journo) Stephan Ferris (cousin of Anna Ferris, haha) is based in Italy and takes heat for calling out Italian misogyny. Fish in barrel, I know--but Euros always think USA is worse despite all evidence.

reading the acai article from a few wks back, really wanted a 'resulting paste' sighting

They eat the resulting think purple pulp with fish or game, or by itself, like soup.

also wtf w/ analogies to miley cyrus cmon dude

REPEATED analogies!

lol yes

i thought that article was a mad stretch because i'm not really seeing the "fall" part of the rise and fall and neither was the author--still kind of interesting to learn abt acai cause i knew nothing about it.

yeah, unnecessary framework