We knew New Yorker art reviews were huge, but this huge? Via the Tomorrow Museum, news of an ersatz Peter Schjeldahl art review, “Canal Street Swoons,” with classic New Yorker layout (more or less) and all, on a Brooklyn building. C-Monster, whose Flickr link this is, writes,

Proving that there’s never any shortage of excitement in the small and entertaining world of New York City street art, some super-meta conceptual type decided to paste a fake New Yorker critique about street art on the side of some building in Brooklyn. The prankster even attributed the “review” to the magazine’s art critic, Peter Schjeldahl.

I’m all for spoofing mainstream media, but, sadly, this piece doesn’t live up to its promise. For one, anybody who is gonna spoof the New Yorker better be able to deliver on the turn-of-phrase. This does not. (Sample sentence: “There is no sacrifice to putting this work on the street. That’s the street game, duh.”) On the content side, things don’t fare too well either. Someone risked arrest to let us know that there’s a visual kinship between the work of Swoon, Gaia and Elbow-Toe.

I was very excited, however, to see that a long-time New Yorker staple–the European beret advert, at bottom right–made it into the piece. I like to believe that everyone who works for the New Yorker wears one of these when they write.

And now, Christoph Niemann the Great on his subway-obsessed kids. If this doesn’t become a children’s book soon, the numberless Arthurs and Gustavs of the five boroughs will have a tantrum that will stop the system in its tracks.

Thanks to J.M. and J.G., respectively, for these links. They are fabulous.

In a typically petulant, amusingly frivolous bleat, a White Whiner complains on the tongue-in-cheek Tumblr log that some New Yorker articles are online before the printed magazine arrives, making him feel “penalized.” Another of the satirical squadron of the privileged carps about an address label right in the middle of some trenchant cover satire.
I found both through a simple yet vexing Google search. Why can’t Tumblr have its own internal search function? Now there’s a whine nearly worthy of the site.

Michael Leddy at the site Orange Crate Art (clearly, someone I would enjoy talking to) wonders if the author of a 1953 Talk of the Town about pencil use at the Eagle Pencil Company might, by virtue of the story’s eloquent phrasing (“We ducked as lead flew about us”) and its attention to pencils, have been longtime editor William Shawn. In fact, according to the Complete New Yorker, it’s by E. J. Kahn, Jr. Here’s the abstract.
Leddy also notes the sad passing of Mona Hinton, the wife of Milt Hinton and a friend of Leddy’s family, who died on May 3rd. He quotes the Hinton website:

The Hintons first met at Milt’s grandmother’s funeral in 1939 and were inseparable for the next 61 years. Mona traveled extensively with Milt throughout his career. She was the only spouse on the road with the Cab Calloway Orchestra in the 1940s, where, according to Milt, she was extremely helpful in finding rooms and meals for band members especially when the band worked in small towns during the Jim Crow era. During the ’50s and ’60s when Milt was working day and night in the New YorkWi studios, Mona kept the books and made often complicated transportation arrangements. And during the last two decades of his life, Milt and Mona got to travel to jazz festivals and clinics around the world — first class.

Martin Schneider writes:
S.L. Harrison at Editor & Publisher digs Robert Benchley’s “The Wayward Press.”
Software engineers find Atul Gawande’s checklist useful.
Malcolm Gladwell is one of the five most influential “business gurus” in America, per WSJ. (Related: Where are the women?)
Forbes appreciates Calvin “Bud” Trillin’s London election coverage.
Ten talented cartoonists, essays and drawings, and Sex and Sensibility, a book Emily has celebrated.
And the headline source:

You’ll want to listen to the playlist that Daniel Radosh has helpfully assembled to accompany his list for Paper Cuts, Dwight Garner’s Times book blog, of “10 great Christian rock songs. Really. I know what you’re thinking.”
And speaking of saviors, there’s a lovely story in the Washington City Paper today about Julie Tate, ace news researcher for the Washington Post and former fact-checker at The New Yorker. I love behind-the-scenes pieces about magazines and newspapers, and this is a good one. Whatever is to become of the daily paper, reminding readers how essential classic reporting and researching skills are, and introducing them to the people who make those skills an art, will help the profession change forms more gracefully and (I hope) with more accuracy and honor.

Here’s an elegant appreciation of the subway-map-themed entry in the recent Eustace Tilley retooling challenge. Benjamin Kabak writes: “Drawn by flickr user panutfla [Alberto Forero], the Tilley subway map evokes New York and the subways in all its glory. It is the quintessential image for The New Yorker, and while he magazine didn’t honor the underground veins of the city by placing this image on the cover, it is by far one of the most New York-centric images from The New Yorker I’ve seen in a long time.”
There’s no other way to say this—just obey me, please: Listen to Jonathan Lethem reading James Thurber’s short story “The Wood Duck.”
Also, were you wondering where my Pick of the Issue column went? Well, thanks! Me too! It’ll be back soon, with several weeks of picks, since there are several weeks of New Yorkers on your kitchen table, anyway. Don’t worry, I’m not teasing you. I have a number of issues of various magazines in my apartment, and I’ll get to them eventually. Happy weekend!

Read this fascinating post, with photos, by Debi Bender of Monkey Sox, who, if I’m not mistaken, entered at least one drawing into the Eustace Tilley contest. Bender’s discovered a monocle-wearing, dandy-channeling performer named Vesta Tilley from early in the last century (but when, precisely? This obviously calls for further Eustace Googling, perhaps a little later since I’m going outside). Rea Irvin was an actor, so he may have run across V.T. in his theatrical circles, or perhaps he happened on one of the terrific photos that Bender shares in this entry. She writes:

Coincidental surname? Vesta Tilley, a famous and very popular (and happily married) English male impersonator, often played a dandy, singing and acting in theaters in New York.

Chorus on the playbill in which Vesta Tilley sang this ‘dandy’ number:

“He has the latest thing in collars, the latest thing in ties,
The latest specimen of girly girls with the latest blue blue eyes,
He knows the latest bit of scandal, in fact he gave it birth,
But when it comes to getting up of mornings, he’s the latest chap on earth.”

Think it’s all a saucy hoax? No indeed—she’s real (I couldn’t help it). Thanks to Bender for bringing it to light! And V.T., née Matilda Powles (1864-1952)—who reportedly began performing at age 4 as “The Great Little Tilley”—gives a whole new twist to gender-bending contest entries like this one (“Eustace Revealed”).

Meanwhile, happy Tilley winner Peter Emmerich (who, says his bio, “worked as a Character Artist for the Walt Disney Co. for a little over six years”) writes:

My Frankenstein Eustace Tilley was selected as one of the winners of The New Yorker contest. The image will appear on The New Yorker website for a year and (supposedly) will be printed in their 83rd anniversary issue. From what I understand they will not be able to print them all. Either way I was glad I did it and it was a lot of fun whether I was a winner or not. I am grateful to have been selected.

I’ve been enjoying seeing how each artist takes on Irvin’s typeface on the cover, and in some cases, how they rearrange, deconstruct, or replace it altogether. Here’s a Tilley made entirely of Edwardian script. Clever!

Today at Largehearted Boy, Jeffrey Frank, New Yorker senior editor and author of the new novel Trudy Hopedale, picks a bunch of tracks his characters—”Trudy herself–a woman of a certain age who loves giving parties and has local talk show–and Donald Frizzé, a young historian who’s probably best known for appearing on television rather than for anything he’s actually written”—might have as their soundtrack. Frank has a little riff on each choice, from Elvis Costello to Sam Cooke to the great Alison Krauss. If this were a podcast, I’d download it—for now, I’m reading the book. Here’s the David Sedaris blurb: “Another triumph from one of America’s most reliable and inventive comic novelists. Trudy Hopedale is understated, cunning and relentlessly funny.”
More reviews: The Imperfect Parent considers the beautiful new children’s book by Christoph Niemann, The Police Cloud. At the Chicago Tribune, Christy Lemire has a welcome meditation on the movies coming out this summer by women directors, and why there still aren’t enough of either.
Finally, in his Bakersfield, California, newspaper column, Herb Benham takes a new switch to the old “New Yorkers are infesting my house” horse. Someone could assemble a tiresome anthology of identical postwar, post-Wolfe pieces twitting the magazine’s insular elitism (I’d like to see Katherine Boo’s report on Louisiana mothers or George Packer’s investigation into the dangerous lives of Iraqi translators in a magazine matching the world Benham sketches: “Pour me a Boodles and tonic and open up my place at the Hamptons”), even as the frazzled subscriber curses his habit. Volume two would be devoted to the irony-impaired.
You’re never going to win me over comparing The New Yorker to a cockroach, even if the little bugger is “as much a fashion accessory as it is a literary magazine, suggesting that the subscriber might be a person of sophistication and breeding,” as Benham writes of the magazine. After decades of family conditioning and fearsome resistance, I’ve seen the light, and know no one should keep stacks of magazines in their house; organizing manuals advise clipping the pages you want and recycling the rest. (This is also one of the many arguments for getting hold of The Complete New Yorker.) Meanwhile, it’s just not that hard to keep up with the gist of each issue at the very least; time on public transportation helps, but Benham probably has to drive a lot. May I recommend the audio version?