Tuesday, April 26, 2011
281 Times
... is the total of attempts that Roger Ebert has filed in the New Yorker Cartoon Caption weekly contest before finally winning. Geeeezzz! I entered the 1st one and then followed with an inconsistent 20-25 or so without a bite of even placing among the weekly 3 for the final round. If it took the much wiser and wittier Mr. Ebert 281 times... Well, I feel better knowing that and have commenced self-deluding myself that I'm on the cusp.
Ha!
Ha!
Labels: 2011-Peaking Over the Mole Hill, New Yorker
Monday, January 18, 2010
Theodicy
In a New Yorker piece penned by the prohibitively intelligent George Packer, he notes at one point, "In Robertsonian theodicy - the justification of the ways of God in the face of evil - there’s no such thing as undeserved suffering: people struck by disaster always had it coming. " Without first googling "theodicy", as I should have, I assumed that Mr. Packer was cracking wise at the ever self-immolating Robertson's expense by concocting a new word, "theodicy". What a great word!! One that combined the words "theology" and "idiocy". A delcious new word it would be to succinctly pigeonhole Robertson and his favored practice.
Much to my deep dismay and deeper disappointment, "theodicy" has been around quite a while, pre-dating Robertson's religious ilk. Curse you Internet! Curse you Google! I could have happily resided in my little Internet hovel cackling over the "theological idiocy" of one Pat Robertson!
Much to my deep dismay and deeper disappointment, "theodicy" has been around quite a while, pre-dating Robertson's religious ilk. Curse you Internet! Curse you Google! I could have happily resided in my little Internet hovel cackling over the "theological idiocy" of one Pat Robertson!
Labels: New Yorker, Reviews
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Best of 2008
As per Brian Parks, from the Village Voice (is he the only writer still there?), the best New Yorker cartoon of 2008 was Bruce Eric Kaplan's from the Sept. 8th issue.
.
I'm not sure if I'd agree with that cartoon, although I quibble not with his choice of any of Mr. Kaplan's 2008 cartoons.
.I'm not sure if I'd agree with that cartoon, although I quibble not with his choice of any of Mr. Kaplan's 2008 cartoons.
Labels: New Yorker
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
30% say ,"Who is on First"
Updated and much shorter version of Who's on First, for the pollster set is here.
A sample (courtesy of Bruce McCall and The New Yorker):
"Yet, in answer to the question “Would you go before a firing squad to protect higher pollen counts?,” fewer than .03 per cent of those who identified themselves as likely McCain voters understood the question. By a plurality of four to one and counting, not counting those who did not, the Undecideds squared off in a donnybrook with the Don’t Knows, broken up by the Have No Opinions Worth Mentioning. The I Forgets stood on the sidelines."
While I'm on Abbott & Costello, a little YouTube on the math that must have been used over at Freddie's and Fannie's.
A sample (courtesy of Bruce McCall and The New Yorker):
"Yet, in answer to the question “Would you go before a firing squad to protect higher pollen counts?,” fewer than .03 per cent of those who identified themselves as likely McCain voters understood the question. By a plurality of four to one and counting, not counting those who did not, the Undecideds squared off in a donnybrook with the Don’t Knows, broken up by the Have No Opinions Worth Mentioning. The I Forgets stood on the sidelines."
While I'm on Abbott & Costello, a little YouTube on the math that must have been used over at Freddie's and Fannie's.
Labels: New Yorker
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Cover
There have been enough comments, editorials, denials, espousals, and babies and bath water thrown out regarding the New Yorker cover. I won't throw my own two cents into the overflowing fountain of copper coinage. But, I would like to express some displeasure with The New Yorker.
Personally, I love Mr. Blitt's cover commentary. This cover was hilarious, as was this one, this one, and, well, this one, especially. In this week's New Yorker blog entry by the estimable Hendrik Hertzberg, it's noted that "The target (of the cover) was the grotesque pack of lies about the Obamas that have been widely disseminated, not only by the marginal right-wing Web sites and the sicko viral e-mail campaigns but also by such nominally respectable outfits as Fox News."
I have two issues with the New Yorker. The first would be the the usage by Mr. Hertzberg, a writer whose New Yorker pieces always seem to be well thought out and presented, of the words "respectable outfit" in conjunction with "Fox News". At first I thought he was being sly about it but a repetitive reading made it clear he was being sincere. I'm not one to pile on Fox News.....o.k. I am. But the point is I expect a nuclear meltdown before I see the words "respectable" and "Fox News" lying close to each other in connubial bliss.
My second issue with The New Yorker is their weekly issue, or the lack of delivery of such within a reasonable time. There it was. The big New Yorker Cover Scandal on Monday morning. Monday evening. Tuesday morning.... I had to go to the New Yorker site to catch a peak when I should have been able to stare at my own issue on Monday morning. What's with The New Yorker delivery process? I could swear I got my issue on Saturday or, at the latest, on Monday. It's not as if I live in the boondocks. There are lawyers, dentists, and doctors living and working on top of each other here in upper Delaware. I mean their offices require the latest New Yorker decorating their client waiting room. These days, I'm lucky if the current week's New Yorker arrives by Wed., usually it's Thursday.
Ever since I started sending my subscription payment out to their office in Denver a few years back, this latter part of the week delivery status has set in. Hey! I want my (paid)controversy to arrive on a more timely basis! Hear me, Mr. Remnick!
n.b.: NYT opinion page from Missoula, Montana worth reading.
Personally, I love Mr. Blitt's cover commentary. This cover was hilarious, as was this one, this one, and, well, this one, especially. In this week's New Yorker blog entry by the estimable Hendrik Hertzberg, it's noted that "The target (of the cover) was the grotesque pack of lies about the Obamas that have been widely disseminated, not only by the marginal right-wing Web sites and the sicko viral e-mail campaigns but also by such nominally respectable outfits as Fox News."
I have two issues with the New Yorker. The first would be the the usage by Mr. Hertzberg, a writer whose New Yorker pieces always seem to be well thought out and presented, of the words "respectable outfit" in conjunction with "Fox News". At first I thought he was being sly about it but a repetitive reading made it clear he was being sincere. I'm not one to pile on Fox News.....o.k. I am. But the point is I expect a nuclear meltdown before I see the words "respectable" and "Fox News" lying close to each other in connubial bliss.
My second issue with The New Yorker is their weekly issue, or the lack of delivery of such within a reasonable time. There it was. The big New Yorker Cover Scandal on Monday morning. Monday evening. Tuesday morning.... I had to go to the New Yorker site to catch a peak when I should have been able to stare at my own issue on Monday morning. What's with The New Yorker delivery process? I could swear I got my issue on Saturday or, at the latest, on Monday. It's not as if I live in the boondocks. There are lawyers, dentists, and doctors living and working on top of each other here in upper Delaware. I mean their offices require the latest New Yorker decorating their client waiting room. These days, I'm lucky if the current week's New Yorker arrives by Wed., usually it's Thursday.
Ever since I started sending my subscription payment out to their office in Denver a few years back, this latter part of the week delivery status has set in. Hey! I want my (paid)controversy to arrive on a more timely basis! Hear me, Mr. Remnick!
n.b.: NYT opinion page from Missoula, Montana worth reading.
Labels: Humans, New Yorker
Thursday, July 26, 2007
That Old Canada Rag
Lunch time at work usually means escaping to one of the 6-7 eateries in the area. Our lunch room is relatively puny in comparison with the amount of people who work here, so if you’re in need of quiet or escape, you must drive to another menu venue. Most days I cart along the NYT, WSJ, or some magazine or printouts from the daily postings of Michael Blowhard, Whisky Prajer, or Mr. Sgazzetti. God forbid I’m dining alone with no reading matter! Wasted time!Today was a most confusing day in the morning so I drove to an eatery sans paper. Luckily my vehicle, specifically the trunk area, is well-stocked with the important stuff, namely quarts of oil, liters of water, metric and inch socket sets, 2 complete changes of clothes, including shoes, a collapsible chair, 3 umbrellas, a blanket, enough maps to launch an expedition, and books. Paperbacks, really, which were duplicates of hardcover versions stored in the house. Please, don’t ask. It’s a long story; well, actually, it's a series of long stories.
So, as I was troving through the different bags in the trunk, I came upon Thin Ice, an engaging autobiography by Bruce McCall. I’d read this book about 8 years ago and I’ve picked it up on quite a few other occasions to re-read certain passages or chapters I’d "post-it"ed on my first run through. The first ¾ of the book is outstanding. My interest wavered through the last 60 or so pages as both the author and I lost our wind. But the first 120 pages or so? Absolutely devine. Bruce McCall of the Norfolk County, Ontario McCalls is quite funny and insightful as he illustrates his youthful days in Simcoe, Ontario, just over the border from the US of A., before he becomes a grown-up and ventures south to eventually wind up as a writer and illustrator for the New Yorker magazine.
If you’ll excuse me, here’s a lengthy excerpt from the book (all painstakingly typed by yours truly so throw me a bone by reading it through. Or, why don't you just print this out and go to lunch. Go on. You need the break.
"I grew up in a world where the average Canadian would rather be trampled by the R.C.M.P. Musical Ride than be found publicly admitting anything American to be superior, or even much good. Nobody, not even the most rabidly anti-American Canadian nationalist, could or would deny the economic and cultural facts of life that all but swamped our nation in Americana. But that didn’t mean Canadians had to like it. That would mean accepting and even liking Americans, and wait just a minute, eh? If the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be "Oh, shut up." The Americans talked too much, mainly about themselves. Their torrid love affair with their own history and legend exceeded-painfully the quasi-British Canadian idea of modesty and self-restraint. They were jammed permanently in extroverted high gear, confident to the brink of, if not over the edge of, arrogance; strident, take-charge, can-do----fatiguing. There was about the American style something, indeed plenty, that jarred the Canadian love of calm. Americans spent far too much of their vaunted energy out at the extremes of feeling. They were forever bursting in spasms of insufferable yahoo pride or all too publicly agonizing over their crises.
The patriotic Canadian should keep his distance, then. Snuggle in the warmth and safety of British institutions and customs and attitudes that have always underpinned Canadian life, lending it dignity and order, helping shield it from the obnoxious blowhards forever yelping and banging and partying, way past bedtime.
This was the view of the Americans I had breathed as part of the very air of Simcoe and Canada since infancy. Evidence that ours was a superior civilization was obvious, at least to us: We had the Imperial gallon, two-dollar bills, Mounties, the more scenic part of the Niagara Falls, grade thirteen in high school, a governor-general, Eskimos, three downs in football, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens, our Deanna Durbin in Hollywood and our Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, in London, and permanent private pipeline to Buckingham Palace.
And yet,
even by age eleven I was beginning to secretly backslide. I had begun to find myself privately questioning my faith and putting it to the test. I was beginning to wonder if, despite all the evidence, Canada was really so inherently superior and the way of the USA really so inherently intolerable. I was feeling the first pangs of envy arising from a strong and growing suspicion that not all that far away, over the border, the average eleven-year-old American kid was having lots more fun. From all appearances, indeed, being first in fun was part of the American boy’s birthright.
Reminders were as plentiful as the comparisons that inevitably followed. American kids got whistles, rings, glittering prizes in their cereal boxes; all we got was cereal. They could goggle at page after page of color comics---"Prince Valiant", "The Katzenjammer Kids", "Smokey Stover"---in their Sunday papers; we didn’t even get Sunday papers. The comic book, that archetypal American expressive form---splashy, loud, rowdy, and manic, boiling with superheroes and super-villains, a TNT charge to the boyish imagination---had only a pallid, pathetic Canadian counterpart. The few Canadian comic books were black-and-white, vapid, and hopelessly wholesome. American kids, as I vicariously feasted along with them via the comic-book ads, guzzled Royal Crown Cola, rode balloon-tired Schwinn bikes with sirens and headlights or deluxe coaster wagons or futuristic scooters. They shot pearl-handled ca guns drawn from tooled-leather holsters or Daisy (It'll shoot your eye out) air rifles, wore aviator goggles, flew gasoline-powered model airplanes. American kids even had their own exclusive boys' mail-order department store in the form of the Johnson & Smith catalog. Rushed to your front door C.O.D. from Racine, Wisconsin—-ventriloquism kits, genuine onyx signet rings, whoopee cushions, treasures Made in the USA.
But not for me; not for Canadians. In the fine-print legalese, in the radio announcer’s dream-smashing disclaimer, four words would serve to keep every son of the Maple Leaf empty-handed and brokenhearted, with his nose pressed enviously to the glass that separated him from the delirious ongoing American carnival of plenty and fun: "Not Available in Canada." "
(from Thin Ice, pp 7-8)
Labels: Books, Canada, New Yorker
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The New Yorker: Where's the Fact Check Dept.?
This week's issue has the following cartoon on page 4. In fact, it's the first cartoon in the magazine. Notice anything?
Click! for a larger image.
That's right! The Arctic-Americans in this country are being mis-represented. As everyone knows, all the species of penguins live south of the equator.
We're talking Anarctic-Americans, here Mr. Glen Le Lievre! As we all know, it's the vanishing and going-down-the-road to extinction polar bear that can qualify as an Arctic-American if one chooses to saunter down from the icebergs up North and cross Canada to come here.
Click! for a larger image.
That's right! The Arctic-Americans in this country are being mis-represented. As everyone knows, all the species of penguins live south of the equator.
We're talking Anarctic-Americans, here Mr. Glen Le Lievre! As we all know, it's the vanishing and going-down-the-road to extinction polar bear that can qualify as an Arctic-American if one chooses to saunter down from the icebergs up North and cross Canada to come here.
Labels: New Yorker
