Month: September 2005

  • Does It Suck, or is it Just Me? Or Both?

    I was surprised to see last week’s New Yorker, the Style Special, for a couple of reasons. First it was poly-bagged with a supplement called “Fashion Rocks” (more about this in a moment), and second, because it contains what I first thought to be one of the bigger flubs in New Yorker history. Considering that…

  • Rilke, Badly Mangled, With A Line Stolen Outright From Stevie Smith

    I live my life in shrinking orbits, which move inward from the things of the world. Perhaps I can never fully silence my heart, but that will be my attempt. I am shadow boxing with God, around and around this small, dark room, and I have been plodding in circles for a thousand years. And…

  • That Will Be Fine. I Think That Will Be Just Fine

    Time stands still And we and things go whizzing past it, Queasy and lonely, Wearing dogtags with scripture on them. —James Galvin, “Two Horses and a Dog” We’ll be all right if nothing goes wrong with the lighting. —Robert Frost, from “It Bids Pretty Fair” All day words were swirling, assembling themselves, unbidden, in inspired…

  • Funny-Ha-Ha Versus Funny-Weird

    Amid all the news of the End Times, you may not have noticed that the New York Times Magazine introduced a new department last Sunday. They are calling it “The Funny Pages.” They are not funny. The most obvious attempt at what would normally be called humor was Elizabeth Gilbert’s confessional essay on yoga, in…

  • Chaos Theory

    I see where there is a new biography of Mark Twain, and I intend to clean out the office to see if it might have arrived while I wasn’t looking. It is my shameful practice to deal with most of what I receive here in the mail by stacking it in small pillars that lean…

  • Ken Baker

    It all started when celebrity journalist Ken Baker saw Saddam Hussein getting a dental exam on TV. “I thought, Hmm. You don’t see people getting their mouths examined on TV very often. Then I thought, What just happened? This is weird.” Hussein’s capture, carefully packaged for television and announced just when missing WMDs were becoming…