The Washington Post just committed suicide today. Unfortunately, the Post isn’t quite yet aware of that fact. Former Post reporter Mike Allen, now at Politico, is the messenger, informing us of one DC’s most remarkable invites: “Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate,” says the one-page flier. “Underwrite and participate…
Alas, Poor Farrah!
If poor Farrah never quite mastered the giddy bicycle of Success, it wasn’t for lack of trying. But if she had been smart, I think she would have stayed with Jill Monroe. Once an Angel, kid, always an Angel.
Alas, poor Michael—you were really disgusting
Michael Jackson was a pathetic and finally repulsive case of arrested development, marinating in his obsessions with lost innocence, which led him to violate the innocence of any number of children who often enough were all but thrown at him by their corrupt and greedy parents. Years ago I wrote a long piece on Michael’s…
Wolcott Gibbs
Wolcott Gibbs is practically unknown today, except to that small and no doubt dwindling band who know a great deal about the early days of the New Yorker. Founder/editor Harold Ross once told James Thurber “There wasn’t anything the three of you [Gibbs, Thurber, and E.B. White] couldn’t do. You could have got the magazine…
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDITING NEW YORKER ARTICLES
The average contributor to this magazine is semi-literate; that is, he is ornate to no purpose, full of senseless and elegant variations, and can be relied on to use three sentences where a word would do. It is impossible to lay down any and complete formula for bringing order out of this underbrush, but there…
The Customer Is Always Wrong
by Wolcott Gibbs Just as the advance agent for a circus is not likely to be disturbed by even the largest elephant, so his metropolitan equivalent, the Broadway press agent, can look on the most succulent actor and still remain composed. This is a natural condition, since both actors and elephants, observed for any length…
Joe Lovano—“Lonely Woman”
Joe Lovano playing the classic Ornette Coleman tune. According to “derricksax,” “thats actually not a soprano saxophone, its called a tarogato, and I believe it is a Bulgarian instrument – cross between the fingerings and wood construction of a clarinet and the tone of a soprano saxophone.” With annoying voiceovers from bassist Esperanza Spalding and…
Garry Wills, also important
In his reminiscence of William F. Buckley, Garry Wills writes the following: Later, he sailed or skied with John Kenneth Galbraith and Walter Cronkite (I sailed with both), not because they were celebrities but because he liked them and admired their minds.
Very Clever, Those Armenians
Back in the day—way, way back in the day, in 1960—I first saw It Happened One Night, at age 15 on a 17-inch TV. When the walls of Jericho finally fell, I wondered to myself “Well, since they know how to make good movies, why aren’t they all like this?” Forty-nine years later, I’m still…
Musette Explosion—“Gitan Swing”
The Musette Explosion performing at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture on October 30th, 2008. “Gitan Swing” composed by Tony Murena. Will Holshouser, Accordion, Matt Munisteri, Guitar, and Marcus Rojas, Tuba. Django, one might say, lives. Afterwords Not enough tuba, eh? And what’s with the ragged cut-off, Brooklyn Public Library? Anyway, it’s…