New Yorker magazine alert thread

http://www.slate.com/id/2290801/

all aboard the grann wagon

groann

Started Lost City of Z and seriously, crack on paper.

Did anyone else notice one of the entrants to this week's caption contest?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/826480/Photo%20Apr%2019%2C%209%2057%2002%20PM.jpg

from the ipad edition, remnick's latest sounds like a must-read.

I feel like there are a few Franzen haters around here, but I'm surprised to find myself enjoying his article about the island, Robin Crusoe, and DFW.

read that malcolm x thing yesterday. it was aight.

its just a book review.

haha joe

xxxp yeah i liked it ok...i generally like franzens fiction but not really his non-fic; he def jazzed it up & had a legit point but i was v much groaning at his blackberry/Blackberry analogy

Did anyone else notice one of the entrants to this week's caption contest?
ha, yeah. gonna assume that it's THE roger ebert?
Franzen essay was excellent despite some of the cringiness.

Oh yeah, I cringed a couple of times, plus the whole conceit started out a little "oh, poor life of famous author on the road" (not at all to take away from losing a friend) for me, but it was still a good read.

only so many r eberts in chicago i'd imagine

ipad app dece?

it is him. he posted about it on his blog: he's been trying to get into the finals round for years and years

his caption wasn't that good iirc

no it wasn't.
cartoon was a pair of people standing in the middle of a wasteland under a mall parking lot sign with an "F" on it and Ebert has the woman saying "Guess which word I'm thinking of now."
har har
video games aren't art btw

ipad app dece?

― thetan is cheatin (cozen), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's ok, pricey, would be better if you got access with a subscription. i just loaded it up to check the price of each issue when i saw that "remnick on remnick" gaffe.

"That might play big in Chicago, but the New Yorker has a different set of standards."

xp

"we prefer film critics with senses of humor, ebert. you know, like david denby."

lol

tbf anthony lane used to be kind of funny

lane is kinda funny, but i don't think he's that great a film critic

he's very funny!

I haven't actually read a Lane review in a while but some of his takedowns of hollywood blockbusters are classic. It can feel a little cheap though.

whole travel issue was pretty enjoyable imo. the astana and chinese people touring europe articles in particular

didnt know that that dope 2-part travelogue about siberia from summer 09 had been expanded into a book:

http://www.amazon.com/Travels-Siberia-Ian-Frazier/dp/0374278725

I loved the Franzen/Robinson Crusoe thing.

Haven't read the cover story ("Middle East of the West?") but I can tell from the subhead that it's going to be one of those UuuuuuNnnnnnngggggghhhh stories to read.

just like the story they ran on energy efficiency recently (which suggested that there's no point to pursuing efficiency measures because lol Jevon's paradox, uuuuuuuuunnnnggghhhhh). <3 new yorker but their energy stories blow. elizabeth kolbert rulez, however.

^thus concludes my new yorker minute

whole travel issue was pretty enjoyable imo. the astana and chinese people touring europe articles in particular

Kazakhstan article indeed very entertaining, and all without making a single Borat joke.

wasn't the chinese people touring europe article done recently in another magazine? i feel like harper's ran an article on the same topic maybe 3 months ago.

yeah the atlantic did one too a few months ago...but the new yorker guy went UNDERCOVER, embedding himself with an actual chinese bus tour! he spoke chinese and everything!

i was really bracing myself for a borat reference the whole article too lol. The last sentence does describe men in small swimming trunks, but i guess that doesn't quite count

"We spoke in Chinese, but when he was surprised he’d say, “Oh, my Lady Gaga!,” an English expression he’d picked up at school."

There's a remote possibility that the harpers guy ended up interviewing the new yorker guy as part of his story without even realizing it! Journalists interviewing undercover journalists, the Journalistic Centipede, pt. II

yeah texas arson thing was awesome, looking forward to re-reading it when my copy of the book comes.

learning this was a little bit of a let-down tho: http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2009/10/willinghams-last-words.html

― gr8080, Tuesday, April 5, 2011 4:22 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just started working my way through the book and read this piece for the 2nd time since it first got published.

interesting to note that the passage that appears/appeared in the New Yorker:

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body.

appears in the book with an extended sentence:

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching; whatever calm he had obtained was lost, and with his last breaths he cursed her. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body.

also the context being that though she divorced him she always defended him until towards the end when, having not seen the new evidence she suddenly changed it up and declared him a murderer.

well yeah i dunno after 14 years in prison for a crime i didn't commit i'd maybe lose my cool if i saw her on the other side of the glass too i guess.

the closing paragraph remains the same though.

Yeah and it is problematic, but I don't think it changes the strength of the piece which isn't really "look Willingham is really a great dude and therefore totally innocent" and more "the evidence that convicted Willingham is a joke and the state of Texas killed an innocent person because the safeguards that should exist to prevent that from occurring are also a joke."

What really drove me crazy about the Chinese tourists was that they didn't try the local cuisine and went out of their way to find Chinese restaurants/McDonald's (having also experienced the exact same thing when I went on a canned tour).

Has anyone tried commenting on the website before? Do comments get quarantined until a moderator approves them first?

Been reading the Eagleman brain timing article. Gets very ilx friendly when Brian Eno shows up. Also had to enjoy the reed krakoff article since I work for him.

yeah the part with the drummers is pretty fun

I had a hard time visualizing what that amusement park ride of near death was supposed to entail?

that article was pretty cool but eagleman seemed kind of annoying as a person

otm

like he had cool ideas but wnkiw

*unless brian eno came

actually brian eno is probably really annoying too

first clue is his radical occupation of the 99th percentile of the "food as fuel" spectrum

actually all the clues are clues

For years, Eagleman was a confirmed bachelor and “serial dater,” as one of his friends put it, with a tidy bungalow that he liked to call the Eagle’s Nest.

“I knew I had some intellectual horsepower,” he says. “But I didn’t know where my tires would catch purchase.”

Liked the Chinese tourism article a lot, although I thought there was an irony in that the article exposes all these ways in which the Chinese tourists have their views about Chinese superiority subtly reconfirmed by the tour guide's framing of everything, and yet in the end the writer seems to be pushing a view that, actually, America will remain superior because of CREATIVITY or something.

that's the same spin some of the anti-tiger mom articles take--"Maybe our kids will write some music that your robots will perform"