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My friend Jay recently mentioned in passing a 2010 story in The New Yorker, "Sleeping With Weapons" by Tad Friend, about the totally batshit feud between the actor and musician John Lurie and his protege John Perry. It's like 8,000+ words of mayhem and mental illness and I can't believe the magazine ran it or that I'd never read it, especially since there was a whole controversy afterward, including a hunger strike. It reminded me that there's just an endless array of weird old stores from 10 years ago, from 50 years ago, from last year, and you can just mainline them in one subway ride for no money. I always go back to stuff like Nancy Jo Sales on the Pussy Posse or the Golden Suicides, or Chris Heath's Fiona Apple cover story for Rolling Stone from 1998, or Tom Wolfe's "The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!" or Ta-Nehisi Coates on MF DOOM. (Use Pocket to get around paywalls.)
Nov 9, 2022
Related Recs
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When I was a kid I was obsessed with making funny captions for the images on the back of The New Yorker. There was a competition where you would send in your funny caption and there was a chance it would appear in the next issue. I never won.
My love for this magazine was reignited recently when I read an excellent profile piece on Fiona Apple. It was published just prior to the release of Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020) and written by one of my favorite TV critics, Emily Nussbaum. Piece can be found in the attached link.
More recently I've been going through the lists what the magazine considers the best media of the year. Movies, books, records, most of them are good. It's great to get out of an internet bubble where all people do is listen to shit posted on /mu/, and bolded on rym; to listen the experts as it were.
Dec 15, 2023
I really like reading the New Yorker and have done so for about a decade. I no longer live in New York but I still read the Tables For Two section excitedly first thing every week and try to get through the majority of the articles. However, there are sooooo many more in the backlogs and the iPhone app is actually quite optimized with previous published pieces so I like to sift through the internet to see what people recommend from the past, and also use their Sunday Archive emails to delve into old writings. It's cool to see people like J.D. Salinger or Truman Capote writing articles for them back in the day. One I recently loved was the original publishing of the Brokeback Mountain short story in the fiction section. As a Wyoming native I found the descriptions of the landscape and energy to be so richly written.
Sep 24, 2024
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so many banger articles in here - a percival everett interview, reports on the return of classical education, AI doomer cults in the Bay Area
Mar 22, 2024
Top Recs from @joe-coscarelli
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I try to wear almost only all black (or dark gray), no shorts and no logos โ mostly for aesthetic simplicity, though shout out to Naomi Klein and reading Adbusters at suburban Barnes & Nobles โ but I'm softening. My friend Bryan, in a nod to his British and Mexican heritage, started rocking old school semi-shiny black Umbro shorts a few years ago and pointed out that they're cheap on Amazon (sorry Naomi Klein). I only have one pair but they're extremely durable and I wore them all summer: around the house, at the beach, to play softball, to go out. People love to remember Umbros. My other major go-to exception is keeping a small pile of Polo chino hats in various colors as a nod to Young Dro (Atlanta's Cam'ron) and because the various little bears on the hats are all wearing Polo themselves, on some mise en abyme-ish shit.
Nov 9, 2022
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I subscribe to a bunch of shit, share log-ins for others and get sent some screeners, but nothing compares to being asked by a friend to illegally locate the third movie spinoff of a Danish sitcom or a German TV documentary about Michael Jackson for free online. It's hunting and gathering for millennial men. The big streaming platforms suck so bad anyway, they flatten most coolness out of culture and they try to trick you into watching stuff in the basest ways. At least I feel accomplished when I do some "Hackers"-style Googling, hit half a dozen dead links and then have to close a swarm of popups like I'm catching flies out of thin air just to watch four innings of a Yankees game.
Nov 9, 2022
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Ask anyone: I was into rare and extreme snack variations before the usually-poorly-executed Big Flavor Explosion of the last few years, in which Oreo makes a Swedish Fish cookie just to go viral or whatever. Since the choices now are so hit or miss โ Ruffles Spicy Dill Pickle is the latest limited-edition smash, IMO โ I've found myself defaulting to simpler options, rather than just thirsty novelty. I snack basically every day โ spicy/savory followed by sour/gummy โ and nothing tastes like Herr's ketchup ripple chips: tangy, sweet, solid base, well-distributed flavor powder. And while they should be more widely available, I do kinda like that I can only ever get them at one "gourmet deli & bakery" by my house that happens to make the worst sandwiches and has horrible coffee.
Nov 9, 2022