Best Talk: “Nuke Rebuke,” Steve Coll. Of course, the Picasso story shouldn’t be missed.
Best entertaining thing before “The Critics”: Lauren Collins’s “Mink Inc.”
Best frightening thing before “The Critics”: Michael Specter’s incredible “The Last Drop.”
Best thing in “The Critics”: John Lahr, when he writes, tends to win this category.
Best poem: Let’s make a pact, fellow sonneteers and others (that means you) in need of metrical sustenance: Read first, then judge. I liked Brad Leithauser’s “Son.” Why aren’t the poems ever online? I’ve asked this before.
Best cartoon: discussed here.
Best Critic’s Notebook: You don’t read these too regularly, I sense that, and that’s a crying shame. Excerpt from Sasha Frere-Jones’s “Brut Force”: “Eddie Argos, the leader of the London band Art Brut, likes to get right to the point. In a song about a brand-new girlfriend, he sings, ‘Got myself a brand-new girlfriend, so many messages to send, got myself a brand-new girlfriend.’ Another song, about forming his band, leaves equally little room for interpretation: ‘We formed a band, we formed a band, look at us, we formed a band.'” I like all the critics at this length; they get to do something fun in the space, and it’s often just what you wanted to know.
Best note in GOAT (that’s Goings On About Town): “Some guitarists are bent on cramming together as many notes as possible.” Tied with: “Walking underneath it prompts a nice pleasure-fear frisson.”
Best ad: Much as I genuinely love advertorials, and I’ll be revisiting those in the magazine in months to come (there’s a new writer for the Hawaii ad-icles, did you notice?), I must say the mirthful mummies in the Queen Mary 2 ads freak me out and hold me captive. Vaguely Tilley-ish type on those. I’d like to know what face that is—gotta befriend this Gert Wiescher guy. Actually, I’m going to write him and see if he’ll give me an interview. Won’t that be fun?
Hey ho, looks like the intrepid Matt Dellinger and his hearty crew have done something new on newyorker.com: linky bios for the current issue. Nice idea. Aw, poets too!