Click on the image for a detailed view!]]>
Click on the image for a detailed view!
]]>On the New Yorker site, Richard Brody talks about movies to watch on St. Patrick's Day for the feature called "The Front Row."
Brody recommends a movie called Rocky Road to Dublin (1967). A documentary by Peter Lennon, the re-released film includes some goodies and extras for your visual enjoyment.
The Talk of the Town for the March 25, 1933 issue of The New Yorker offers this St. Patrick's Day-themed anecdote. An "observant and conscientious gentleman," glancing at the storefront of Altman's on Fifth Avenue, sees an array of dresses, none of which are green-colored.
Of the dresses, "fully half of which were orange." The gentleman calls Altman's and gets in touch with the stylist. The stylist is grateful for the gentleman's call.
That very night, "the display had been changed to include a liberal sprinkling of emerald..."
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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Click on the image for a detailed view!
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Click on the cartoon to enlarge it! ]]>
Click on the cartoon to enlarge it!
]]>More to the point, New York has been my home. It hasn't always been an easy place to live, but if I was ever bored it was]]>
I'd call him the Wolcott of Williamsburg, but even better to note that anyone writing, on or off the Internet, would do well to aspire to be the Edroso of their environs. Roy Edroso of Alicublog and the Village Voice—profiler of Emdashes, tormentor of conservative bloggers who can't keep up—announces the imminent shift of his operations to Texas, into the arms of a "girlfriend." I'll just pretend it's Jerry Hall, in light of the way Edroso has lived the life of New York:
More to the point, New York has been my home. It hasn't always been an easy place to live, but if I was ever bored it was my own fault. Here I've been chased by cops in the Tompkins Square riot, and heard Allen Ginsburg [Yeah, yeah, Ginsburg, schminzberg] read poetry there some days after ("Look, I'm wearing a tie -- am I a yuppie?"); fretted with my Williamsburg neighbors as the ruins of the Twin Towers smoked on the horizon; walked over the Williamsburg Bridge during a blackout; spilled a giant thug's beer in a basement after-hours, apologetically bought him a new one, and been rewarded with fat lines of coke; read poetry at St. Mark's Church; played CBGB so many times I forgot it was a shrine; been advised by Jimmy Breslin on how to talk to cops, handed a flyer by Jean-Michel Basquiat, advised on my music career by Lieber and Stoller, given a tour of Terry Teachout's art collection, yelled at by Hilly Kristal and several members of the NYPD. And at the Voice I held a desk next to Tom Robbins. Everywhere I met remarkable people, because this is one of the places they like to be, and saw and did remarkable things, because here they happen all the time.
Of course, New York is the most provincial city of all. So often it "dulls the mind and blunts the instrument" (PDF, and worth it) by convincing that it doesn't. Like those fat lines, it gives a foolproof high by making you want only one thing—it. Edroso doesn't say exactly where he's going—giving pursuers a lot of ground to cover—but I'll say the advantage of being anyplace that's not "the capital of everywhere" is that the smart people, by definition, have to be interested in the wider world. They should be in the capital, too, yet so many aren't—and, in truth, aren't exactly too searching about the capital either.
But Edroso is right about the remarkable people and things, of course, because he is one. And you can tell he has made the most of his New York days, because he's so cold-eyed about the city, he easily laps its suburban would-be ill-wishers.
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Click on the image for a detailed view!
]]>John may have been getting up there in age by the time I caught up with him, but he was more animated and on the ball than any twelve youngsters combined. He was always going out to exhibitions, learning about some new technology, or improving himself via activities like judo. One of his most recent passions was taking up the uke. He had five models last time I remember. He'd watch Youtube clips and learn from the masters. I know he drove Sam and Sid nuts with all of his uke talk as there was usually something happening in that realm that he was very enthusiastic about. After lunch we'd walk down to the subway and talk music shop or just shop about guitars. He always had a unique theory he was thinking about or a new way of experiencing something that he'd often share. More often than not, I'd come home from The New Yorker luncheons, thinking I was one of the luckiest bastards in the world to be in the court of these fascinating gentlemen. Eventually our friendship became quite solid and if I didn't make it one tuesday for lunch, either John or Sid would get ahold of me to ask me what the hell happened. I can't really express how much that meant to me.But read the whole post. It really captures the person John was, and the person we will all miss whether we were friends, acquaintances (like me), or fans of John's dynamic, lovable, slightly unhinged cartoons. ]]>
I was very sorry to hear from illustrator and cartoonist Derek Van Gieson that John Kane passed away a few days ago. John, a New Yorker cartoonist, was also a dedicated musician and devotee of that small instrument with a big heart, the ukulele. He sent me many ukulele links and had a YouTube channel dedicated to them; I'll find it to link to, but right now, the thought makes me too sad.
Here's Derek writing eloquently on what made John so special.John may have been getting up there in age by the time I caught up with him, but he was more animated and on the ball than any twelve youngsters combined. He was always going out to exhibitions, learning about some new technology, or improving himself via activities like judo. One of his most recent passions was taking up the uke. He had five models last time I remember. He'd watch Youtube clips and learn from the masters. I know he drove Sam and Sid nuts with all of his uke talk as there was usually something happening in that realm that he was very enthusiastic about. After lunch we'd walk down to the subway and talk music shop or just shop about guitars. He always had a unique theory he was thinking about or a new way of experiencing something that he'd often share. More often than not, I'd come home from The New Yorker luncheons, thinking I was one of the luckiest bastards in the world to be in the court of these fascinating gentlemen. Eventually our friendship became quite solid and if I didn't make it one tuesday for lunch, either John or Sid would get ahold of me to ask me what the hell happened. I can't really express how much that meant to me.But read the whole post. It really captures the person John was, and the person we will all miss whether we were friends, acquaintances (like me), or fans of John's dynamic, lovable, slightly unhinged cartoons. ]]>
Emdashes will be represented--along with The Comics Curmudgeon (Fruhlinger), The Old Hag, Jezebel, Politics Daily (Lizzie Skurnick), Loud Poet (Guy Gonzalez), and Wordyard (Rosenberg). We'll talk about books, too, because Skurnick has published two--including Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading (which I have read more than twice, since I've read both the book and, several times each, the Jezebel posts that started it all)--and Scott Rosenberg has published the brilliantly titled and equally brilliantly written Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters.
Here's the description. Please join us; it's going to be a rollicking powwow, and full of enthusiasm and energy--a good mood to be in for the rest of the day. See you there and come introduce yourself! If you're not already following Emdashes on Twitter, we are, of course, @Emdashes.
Why Keep Blogging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple
Now that we think in 140-character strings and live through Facebook, it's tempting to throw out the blog baby with the bathwater. These seasoned bloggers explain the vitality of this still-revolutionary medium--the resources, community, continuity, and space for real ideas that only blogs can provide--and its infinite future potential.
--Emily Gordon
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Click on the image for a detailed view!
]]>At the site of Britain's Royal Philharmonic Society, you can read Alex Ross's March 8 lecture, "Hold Your Applause: Inventing and Reinventing the Classical Concert."
At the New Yorker site, you can read Ross's 2008 piece on the subject, "Why So Serious?".
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_Pollux writes_:
What species is Eustace Tilley's butterfly?
Back in "May 2009":http://emdashes.com/2009/05/sempe-fi-on-covers-forgotten-l.php I posited the suggestion that Tilley's nameless butterfly, which to me symbolizes creative inspiration, is a
"Clouded Sulphur":http://www.mariposasmexicanas.com/colias_philodice_eriphyle.htm, whose scientific name is _Colias philodice_. The Clouded Sulphur's range includes New York. Is it possible Rea Irvin had a specific butterfly in mind? ]]>
Pollux writes:
What species is Eustace Tilley's butterfly?
Back in May 2009 I posited the suggestion that Tilley's nameless butterfly, which to me symbolizes creative inspiration, is a
Clouded Sulphur, whose scientific name is Colias philodice. The Clouded Sulphur's range includes New York. Is it possible Rea Irvin had a specific butterfly in mind?
Perhaps not. Tilley's Butterfly, of course, is a symbol rather than a literal depiction of a specific butterfly species, but it's fun to play the amateur lepidopterist.
What do you think?
At Emdashes we like to speculate and theorize about things like this. It gives us wings. If any professional lepidopterists are reading this, we'd also love for you to share your thoughts.
]]>"But how so transparently charming a novel can also exercise a peculiar allure and even emit disturbing danger signals may serve as an entrée into post-war American culture..." So writes Stephen J. Whitfield on his landmark commentary on Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
Stephen J. Whitfield's article for the December 1997 issue of the The New England Quarterly, called "Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye," is considered one of the Journal's most popular articles.
And, in light of Salinger's recent passing, Louis Menand will be interviewing Whitfield in a new podcast.
Read Whitfield's fascinating article, listen to the podcast, and join the discussion today!
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Click on the image for a detailed view!
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Click on the image for a detailed view!]]>
Click on the image for a detailed view!
]]>There is a fantastic event coming up at the 92nd Street Y this month—New Yorker literary critic James Wood does a "First Read" of David Foster Wallace's adventurous, uneven, maddening, delightful, never-boring short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The event is on Monday, March 22, at 8:15pm, and has a hipster-friendly pricing policy: $19 admission, but only $10 for those 35 and younger (ID will be checked, people, so no funny business).
I had the great pleasure of seeing Wood speak at the 2008 New Yorker Festival, and his intelligence, gentleness, and patience were extraordinary. As a longtime fan of Wallace, I'm genuinely excited to hear what Wood has to say about BIWHM (and by no means do I expect it to be entirely positive).
The announcement of this event induced me to discover that, in case you have not seen it already (I have not) and are a Netflix subscriber, John Krasinski's 2009 adaptation of the collection is currently available to be streamed on Netflix.
Expect a writeup of the event after it happens! And meanwhile, here's a lengthy account of the enthralling 92nd St. Y event with Frank Rich and Jane Mayer from last spring.
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