Here’s a useful take on Hendrik Hertzberg’s sound Comment about the Larry Craig debacle (debacle of misappropriated police resources and legislative energy, that is); if you’ve seen any good takes on Hertzberg’s piece, please post them in the comments.
I just started reading How Starbucks Saved My Life, so I’ll write about it when I’m done. For context, here’s today’s New York Times profile, with a photo slide show, of Michael Gates Gill, the self-sufficient and contented man, well-respected barista at a Starbucks store, son of Brendan Gill, and former ad executive, in approximately that order. As a rule, I don’t like Starbucks that much, but I’m touched.
Christopher Hayes praises my friend Katha Pollitt’s new book, Learning to Drive: “A few of the personal essays in this book appeared in the New Yorker, but there’s some wonderful new stuff as well, including an absolutely spot-on hilarious chapter about a Marxist study group she used to belong to. As always, Pollitt writes like a dream.”
I’m reading it now, and I’m planning to buy it for half a dozen others. It should be required reading for every humanist, capitalist, true lover, skeptic, feminist, deep thinker, and humor appreciator this side of the exosphere. You’ll remember the New Yorker essays “Webstalker” and “Learning to Drive”; they’re in there, all right, and so are a whole bunch of other pieces you’ll be delighted to discover.
Cartoon news: This blogger has some caption-contest suggestions; cartoon editor Bob Mankoff comments on a cartoon controversy.
A nice reflection on what makes good readings so good; the writer recalls readings by John Hodgman, Marisha Pessl, and Sean Wilsey, among others.
This piece about ideas of privacy includes this story: “In another well-known case, The New Yorker magazine was sued by a hermit whose privacy was shattered when a James Thurber story disclosed that many years before he had been a famous child prodigy.”
Finally, remember the Talk of the Town by Lauren Collins about Barbara Hillary, the 75-year-old woman who wanted to be the first African-American woman to reach the North Pole? She did it!

…thanks, Jason!
This will be a post of truncated sentences, since I have birthday cocktails to attend to. Here’s some more pre-festival excitement.
The headline says it all: Calvin Trillin always remembers his roots.
A cinematic, soulful photo essay about the Coney Island we’re about to lose.
Here’s a ruckus you’ll want to jump into one way or another. “Boy is everyone up in arms about Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece in this year’s food issue. Okay, by ‘everyone’ I mean anyone insulted by his just-this-side-of-snide implication that locavorism is a weird little fad practiced only by the privileged, nostalgic, and naive.” Read all about it! I loved that piece, by the way. Gopnik’s account of setting up a chicken hit and returning for his slaughtered fryer (I typed “pullet,” but that doesn’t seem right), only to find that the aghast farmer had misconstrued his request, is one of the drollest and most skilfully written in the issue, or several issues. (Judith Thurman’s stories of the mysteries within us is a very close second.) Really nicely done.
Princetonians drink bee juice.
The good citizens of Salon discuss Shouts and whether it’s funny. And whether women are funny (but that’s not much of a discussion—we all know they are).
Hey, art dept., it’s not too late to not overlook the considerable talent of this adorable man.
And look at some of the gorgeous work of the travel photographer Samantha Appleton, whose work has been in The New Yorker.

Several excellent New Yorker artists have been singled out for shows and profiles recently. I liked this passage from a piece about Anita Kunz:

The Canadian artist did her first magazine-cover illustration for a Toronto business magazine in 1979, but Kunz had her sights set on the New Yorker, currently the only wide-circulation publication that runs free-standing illustrated covers. Since her first effort in 1995, she’s had a dozen covers published in that magazine. Her most recent, “Three Visions” (“Girls Will Be Girls”), which appeared on the July 30 issue, shows a trio of women sitting shoulder to shoulder on the New York subway. The first is completely shrouded in a burka; the second is a young woman in a crop-top, flip-flops, and another garment so short it’s impossible to tell whether it’s shorts or a skirt; the third is a nun wearing coke-bottle glasses with a large gold cross hanging from her neck.

“Based on their clothing,” says Kunz, “none of those women are physically free.” Kunz says she got about 40 letters in response to that painting. “I’ve had lots of reaction that baffles me,” she admits. “I’ve been called anti-woman, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American, you name it!”

I may have mentioned this already, but the program of animation influenced by Saul Steinberg, at the Ottawa International Animation Festival this month, sounds absolutely amazing.

On September 27, longtime cartoonist Dana Fradon will speak at Western Connecticut State University. From the story in the Newtown Bee:

Among Mr Fradon’s most readily recognized cartoons is the uncaptioned scoreboard of a mythical “Realists vs Idealists” baseball game that shows the Idealists taking a drubbing from the Realists in the run counts for nearly every inning – yet the game total inexplicably shows the Idealists have prevailed by a 1-0 score. In another drawing of a crowned king addressing his royal cabinet, the monarch declares, “Gentlemen, the fact that all my horses and all my men couldn’t put Humpty together again simply proves to me that I must have more horses and more men.”

I just got an excellent tip: At Bookforum, there’s a lovely piece by Radhika Jones about Alex Ross’s book collection. Thank you, tipster!

Moreover, at Gary Panter’s groovy site, there’s a blog! Not only that, but a 29-point platform! #28: “Lower human population and increase frog, lizard and turtle populations. Snakes are on their own.” This also came from a tipster. It’s good to hear from you, neighbor.

There’s a terrific exchange between Nick Paumgarten and John Colapinto, all about the U.S. Open and the graceful Roger Federer, on newyorker.com. I hope there’ll be more of this sort of thing—Slate doesn’t own the format—and, of course, more YouTube.

Speaking of which, a few very brave people have been parsing poor Miss South Carolina, who herself may have lacked a map at a crucial juncture.

Scientists who study bees may be zeroing in on what’s wrong with the troubled colonies, and as the Knight Science Journalism Tracker points out, Elizabeth Kolbert got there first. If you didn’t hear Matt Dellinger’s audio interview with reporter-beekeeper Kolbert, listen to it now. There’s also a honey of a slide show. The hive really is bear-proof!

Speaking of Nature, check out this sneak preview of a global warming-related ad that’s running in the September 10 New Yorker.

Here’s an approving write-up of a Dana Goodyear reading.

The abstract of Judith Thurman’s story, from the food issue, about fasts and colonics (not online—hence the abstract) must be unique in the history of things Tilley, don’t you think? I can’t wait to read the piece—I’ve read most of the food issue, but we’re finishing up a grueling close at Print, and nearly everything else has been sacrificed. I have a friend who’s on a lemon-juice-and-maple-syrup fast; he’s three days in and is feeling a little strange. Here’s one loyal, academic New Yorker family’s reaction to Thurman’s adventure.

Finally, from a profile of illustrator Bruce Kleinsmith, a.k.a. Futzie Nutzle, this funny tale from ’70s New Yorker cartoonland:

After years of practice in the local fly-by-night papers, by the mid-’70s Nutzle’s mastery of his medium and a sequence of serendipitous introductions earned him his coveted spot in Rolling Stone. “That was my opportunity to really get sharp, because I knew I would be in the public eye,” he says.

But he’d been trying for ages, without success, to place his drawings in The New Yorker, which he calls “the pinnacle of cartooning—at least until 10 or 20 years ago.” Accustomed to inhabiting various seemingly incompatible worlds—hanging out with surfers, musicians, hippies, poets, drug dealers, manual laborers, artists and academics, but never belonging to any particular camp—he saw no contradiction between his outlaw lifestyle and his desire to be a part of the nation’s most prestigious mainstream magazine.

“When I went to New York in ’79 and met the New Yorker cartoonists—not all of them but some of them, over lunch—it was really interesting because they were into one-upmanship,” he remembers. “Cartoonists really are square, but these guys were ultrasquare, and they were looking for a one-liner that’s gonna crack up the whole table. We’re drinking martinis, and I think this was a Wednesday afternoon; they all go down to this bar after they’ve been critiqued at The New Yorker and they’re like little puppies with their ears back, but after a few martinis they’re really rollin’, and they’re chesty, and they’re comin’ up with all these one-liners.

“And I’m going, ‘Is this what it’s like? I can’t be an artist with The New Yorker, I can’t do this!’ I really liked some of those guys. Anyway, I pulled out this huge joint, from California, and I said, ‘Would any of you guys like to try this?’ And they looked at me like, ‘Oh my god, narcotics! Jesus Christ!’ It was like, ‘Holy shit, put that away!'”

Finally, he says, “they got me so mashed on martinis, they had me so whacked, they literally tied my briefcase to my wrist, because I had all my drawings in there, and I thought, I’m so mashed I’m gonna lose all this stuff if they don’t tie it to my arm. Man, those guys are too much. They were still slammin’ ’em down when I left the bar.”