New Yorker magazine alert thread

That Slate essay about the car dealer convention had some more private gig tales.

I haven't read the article yet so I don't know if it gets into this, but it exists on much more modest scales too. I know somebody who went to a friend's backyard birthday party in Connecticut some years back and the entertainment was Marshall Crenshaw. The guy's friend told him it only cost $3,000 to book him — granted this was 15-plus years ago, but still. (For stuff like that presumably you have to live within easy driving distance of whoever it is you're hiring.)

the idea that musicians only play shows that are open to the public and are ticketed (or for a non-profit, block party, whatever) seems kind of ahistorical

whether you’re a sell-out seems like it’s contingent on who is paying and the makeup of the audience

I am told that Mozart was a total shill for Hieronymus von Colloredo, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.

Iirc that history/distinction is addressed in the New Yorker piece.

Even geniuses have had to navigate a certain servitude to their sponsors. Mozart fumed about the Archbishop of Salzburg, who “treats me like a street urchin and tells me to my face to clear out, adding that he can get hundreds to serve him better than I.” But some learned to cultivate the sources of capital. In 1876, Tchaikovsky was an unhappy professor at the Moscow Conservatory when he received a letter from Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, the lonesome widow of a railway tycoon. Madame von Meck asked him to expand one of his pieces, which, she wrote, “drives me mad.” He obliged, and before long she had put him on a salary and installed him at a villa in Florence. Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother, “N.F. asked me when to send the June remittance. Instead of replying ‘Darling, for goodness’ sake at once!’ I played the gentleman.” But the relationship soured, and the composer had to find new sources of income; he wrote glumly, “It has all turned out to be a vulgar, silly farce of which I am ashamed and sick.”

You don’t have to be a musician to wonder if musicians are held to an unfair standard in an era when painters unabashedly sell work to barons of insider trading, when former Presidents (and almost-Presidents) get hundreds of thousands of dollars for Wall Street speeches, and when college athletes license their likeness to the highest bidders.

One of these is not like the others (and the others suck ass).

George W. Bush sold out, man

hey, all those wall street dollars went to my nonprofit foundation. we do important things, like flying me to other speaking engagements

MCU theme

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/12/how-the-marvel-cinematic-universe-swallowed-hollywood

“Keep glowy orb away from bad guy” lol

https://www.newyorker.com/news/persons-of-interest/what-if-were-thinking-about-inflation-all-wrong

that's a good one, thanks

oh hell yeah Agnes is back at jt

Every time Agnes Callard writes an article about how something sucks, it’s actually just something her husband wants to do against her wishes, but instead of telling him that, she uses national media to argue why a mundane desire like “wanting to travel” is morally reprehensible

— ‏تمار 🌴 Tamar 🌴 תמר (@tamars) June 24, 2023

link to the actual article here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel

there are a few bits that tease around the fact it's not specifically travel she's uninterested in, but the idea of experiencing places, art, etc as a communal experience

it really does read like someone trying to explain that travel is bad because they do not like the way their spouse wants to travel, or are at odds with the way other people like seeing how others react to the things they've enjoyed

I feel like the Onion should mint a new columnist to exploit this.

they should just publish her columns tbh

one of the most embarrassing magazines

what are the others

I freely admit that I hate traveling*, and my spouse loves traveling. We work out a compromise.

* = let me be clear: I don't hate being in an art museum on a different continent. I love walking around a medieval cathedral or ancient pyramid or whatever. I have been quite happy on sugary white beaches facing a teal-colored sea.

What I DO hate is the 14 hours of airports and shittles and taxis that have become the required price of travel.

Plastic stanchions and nylon straps. The line for this, the line for that, the line for the next thing. Hurrying breathlessly to an airport so that you earn the right to... wait for six hours in an airport.

What group are we in? Group 8? Sigh, okay, fine. Oh, I've been randomly selected for secondary screening? Okay, fine. Shoes off? Okay. Belt off? Gah, okay.

Oh look, we've gotten through to the next phase. Oh look! Stanchions and ropes again.

Wait, what? Give a saliva sample and get a prostate exam? Sigh, okay, whatever, get it over with.

Magazines that are hobby- or task-based offering tips how to introduce new practices or products to knit better, remodel your home, maintain your extensive car collection while reading about how other people have restored cars aren't really embarrassing even if they're corny or partially exist as validation that your practice is valid.

Which is funny because one of the postulated ideas in Agnes's writing (I'm not going to call them points, she's not making any points) is that tourist-style activities are useless if you're looking at works of art for 15 seconds and travel for work or a specific task is justifiable. What, exactly, is the utility of writing this travel article? It's either an attempt to validate her own views, or it has a specific goal in mind (telling spouse not to travel).

Both are the things she complains about

xp yeah the entire process of travel can suck, but hilariously that's not really mentioned because it's necessary for the travel she likes

words that do not appear in the piece: train, airport, luggage, expense, cost

It's either an attempt to validate her own views, or it has a specific goal in mind (telling spouse not to travel).

Since I just wrote something that a bunch of people are reading I thought it might be a good time to do a 🧵explaining my approach to public writing.

TL; DR: it's Socratic.

— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) June 24, 2023

centrist jordan peterson

YMP OTFM

I was about to write out what's probably a repost about my friend who would do these socratic-style debates for fun with his friend at home in the late evening while they were in college, with the kicker that both were very stoned

and this appears to be that type of socratic debate

if tourism is dumb and tourists do things that are nonsensical to you then do the things that make sense to you

that anecdote about going to a falconry thing because she was told that was "what people do" is very funny

Reading Callard you understand why Socrates had to be killed.

So-crap-tic

that friend I mentioned also had a tattoo of socrates drinking hemlock iirc

This was a wince inducing read. Never considered it before and am in the definitely not camp after reading this. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/03/the-perils-and-promises-of-penis-enlargement-surgery

Don't know anything about this person, but I thought this was a good response to that travel article:

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/think-less-agnes

Ha Ha the less you know about him the better

oh boooooooy

https://www.discogs.com/release/1045737-P-Br%C3%B6tzmann-Group-Fuck-De-Boere-Dedicated-To-Johnny-Dyani/image/SW1hZ2U6NTcxNTUwMA==

I imagine many of these insufferable professional thinkers are as full of baggage as they are full of shit, but yeah, I'm the first to admit I don't know who many of them are! One person's academic/intellectual boogeyman is another person's, I dunno, Snuffleupagus.

DeBoer's had confrontations with several ILXers over the years.

Ah! Doesn't surprise me, lol. I'm sure I've stumbled across them, I just can't remember. Someone should compile an ILX canon doc.

read that penis enlargement article Dan posted earlier this week. harrowing, I’ve seen several complications from similar procedures. these people are barely doctors

The combination of the unapologetically opinionated Agnes Callard piece, and the unapologetically opinionated Freddie response piece, reminds me a bit of Hamilton Nolan's anti-exercise-equipment piece:

https://variety-spot.com/weve-been-led-to-believe-something-weird-about-exercise-hamilton-nolan/

...a presumably cathartic piece that just was probably fun to write but basically just states a point of view, and unapologetically waves its metaphorical penis at everybody who might disagree.

If this is the current and/or future state of opinion writing, I am for it. Not because I will always agree, but because I like people just going ahead and saying what they mean.

counterpoint: ppl shd hang back and then obfuscate

A lot of these think pieces seem to be about metaphorical penis enlargement.

I will never click on a FdB article and that's my vow

(unless it's really funny in a cringe way)

mark s., I look forward to your forthcoming literary magazine, in which half the issues' content involves people refraining from saying what they mean, and the other half contains people obuscating about what they might have said, but decided to refrain from.

what would be his influences

think pieces where the writer comes off as a serious dick without meaning to

xxxp

on second thought, FdB writing about Agnes is probably good because most of his work is in the "inventing a type of guy to be mad at" genre

If Agnes Callard did not exist Freddie de Boer would have to invent her