I couldn’t be more grateful not to have to attempt this myself, especially because it must have irritated so many people in the process. (I prefer to avoid conflict.) Leave it to the Observer to ace it. It’s so Spy-in-its-heydey (right down to the cutout heads), impish yet necessarily respectful, and I commend them. Here you go:

Officially, there is no such thing as the New Yorker masthead. The New Yorker is so averse to having a masthead that The New Yorker will not even comment about why it chooses not to have a masthead.
…
The New Yorker declined to supply the names of any of its staff, but a spokesperson agreed to confirm names and to provide missing titles. The result is almost certainly approximate and incomplete. Still, it exists.

Go here, pronto, for the full story and PDF.

A Friend Writes: ‘Who Is Running The New Yorker?’ [NY Observer]
The First Rule of ‘New Yorker’ Staff is “There Is No ‘New Yorker’ Staff” [Gawker]

Rock on, Tony Scott. From his review of Beauty Shop:

The success of these pictures—Are We There Yet?,” “Hitch,” “Guess Who,” “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”—can no longer be described by the tired pop-cultural term crossover. This is what the mainstream looks like now.

I haven’t seen Beauty Shop yet, but Hitch is funny and good. Just see it. Don’t think about it. Just go. Jude Law will magically disappear from your mind as soon as you see Will Smith in a wetsuit. Or a regular suit. Or just talking.

Haircuts That Come With Fried Catfish and Sisterhood [NYT]
“Beauty Shop” Shows Latifah Can Cut It as a Star [LAT]
“Barbershop” review [Charles Taylor, Salon]
Will Smith interview [BBC]
“Hitch expert en séduction…” [Le Cinema; photos; fun French practice!]

There’s much to celebrate about Chandler Burr’s recent piece on creating a new perfume for Hermes. My own favorite part is near the beginning:

Most perfume houses are based in France, and, as a result, the French dominate the industry. It is an insular and secretive business that remains governed by the solemn idea of the “purity of art.” This is spoken of with equal parts pride and cynicism. “French perfumers come from the Sixteenth Arrondissement, and they all have degrees in poetry and commerce from some chic school,” one Parisian perfume executive told me.

Why didn’t my chic poetry school have commerce classes? I knew I got fleeced there somehow. The accompanying archive piece from 1930, “Perfume and Politics” by Hippolyta (! if I once knew who this was, I’ve forgotten), is equally fascinating and pleasingly purple. For example:

Racial female taste furnishes quaint statistics; for instance, American women like middling-passionate fantasy odors and no posy smells, whereas the chillier, land-loving British dames require only the chastest invented odors and pure garden bouquets. Blunt amber and heliotrope, most passionate of beast and blossom odors, intoxicate all the Spanish-speaking senoritas. Amber and rose in their rarest forms, considered by perfumers to be the peak of their art, please the French.

Fantasy odors and posy smells pretty much sums up most fashion magazines, or The New Yorker during the Dark Ages of Tina. No longer, of course—scented issues are out with skeleton fashion layouts (it’s hard to say that without implying I’m talking about models, but remember that spread? Scarring). But wait, they’re still in the magazine, at least in words. On the penultimate page (just before “The Back Page”)—tucked within the Conde Nast information and the warning that the magazine is not responsible for damage “or any other injury” to your cowering unsolicited manuscripts and artwork—is this notice: “To receive your issues without scent strips, please e-mail scentfree[@]newyorker.com.” Hey, may I request my issues without the beastly whiff of Caitlin Flanagan or poems by John Updike? And may I have double the pure garden bouquet of contributions by Nancy Franklin, Donald Antrim, Lorrie Moore, Steve Martin, Wislawa Szymborska, and John Lahr? Hooray!

I’m not against perfume in magazines—I usually find a way to use it—but those pages are too often that overthick paper that gets in the way of efficient page-turning. Since ad inserts insist on annoying and interrupting us, I prefer those that have a present as a reward: beauty magazines’ tiny foundation samples, the real silk scarves and Christmas cards that used to come in Interview. Imagine a nearly flat vial of spring water or liqueur somehow tucked into the pages, or a tiny new candy. (I’m finally reading Hilary Liftin’s delightful Candy and Me: A Girl’s Tale of Life, Love, and Sugar.) I suggested to Paul Newman when I met him at the offices of The Nation years ago that he find a way to include samples of his popcorn and salad dressing within the magazine. It hasn’t happened yet, but who can deny the power of a bit of flavor?

The Scent of the Nile [New Yorker]
Perfume and Politics [New Yorker, 1930]
More perfume reading from the New Yorker [Now Smell This]

A story about sour notes in Australia’s Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra—

The TSO lacks entrepreneurial vision, has a mediocre marketing strategy, dull programming, a greying audience and a chief conductor who fails to excite the broader community. Furthermore, Ms Giddings and Mr Heyward just don’t seem to get one simple fact: around the world, orchestras are being reduced and are having to reinvent themselves and use innovative strategies to attract new audiences.

—quotes Alex Ross with hopeful news and a nifty marketing idea:

Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker, described the future of classical music and orchestras superbly in a speech in January this year. “I wish that for every story in the media about troubled orchestras there was a matching story about a new composer-led ensemble, a new chamber series, a new program of professional musicians working in schools and so on,” he said. “There are more professional musicians than ever before. More people are going to live concerts of classical music than ever before. There are far more composers writing music—10, maybe 20 times as many as 100 years ago.

“But musical life lacks a centre. It exists off the radar screen of the major media. It’s actually kind of exciting when you think about it. If I were in the business of marketing classical music to younger audiences, I’d make a virtue of this. Classical music is the new underground.”

Change of tune needed for the TSO and all state orchestras [On Line Opinion]
Listen to This [Ross, The New Yorker, via his blog: “When people hear ‘classical,’ they think ‘dead.’]
Kafka Sings [Ross, The New Yorker]
March 6, 1989, cover (strings) [John O’Brien, Cartoon Bank]
Life Without Mozart [Mick Stevens, Cartoon Bank]
Andante Sostenuto [William Steig, Cartoon Bank]
Culchah Cornah: My least favorite kind of music review [Blue Mass. Group]

An archived post from Jay Rosen’s PressThink about Philip Gourevitch’s talk at NYU is still great reading, but especially interesting in light of the Jeff Gannon hoo-ha:

Cheesy package tour. That was Gourevitch’s first impression about traveling with the campaigns. You sign up. You get on the bus. It hits all the major sights. Crowds of people get off at each one. Then they get back on. The campaigns tell you what the schedule is. The campaigns tell you where the pick up will be. The campaigns feed you, get you to the airport, take you from the airport.

“Right there they have you,” Gourevitch told our crowd of about 50 journalism students and faculty. “Outside the bubble you cannot go because then you’re dirty again and have to be checked by the Secret Service.” Under these conditions, he said, “no spontaneous reporting is possible.”

That’s chilling imagery, isn’t it? Too bad all the people inside the bubble aren’t wearing their ethical bunny suits. As Gannon himself put it, “How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”

Glad you asked, Jeff! For starters, by acting on what we read by writers like Gourevitch, who, thank heavens, can both report and write well about politics. The catnap-pack journalism of dullards may be clean, but it sure is painful. There’s a way to make every story riveting if you can write worth a damn. As Rosen notes, “Gourevitch was effective in reminding us that it was always possible to break away. The bubble is contractual.” Listening, snoozies?

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat [PressThink]
Newshounds [New Yorker]
Ancient Hard-Drive, Guy in Bunny Suit [Boing Boing]

Seeing as that island of sinners is deemed more worthy of a Monday magazine than the good people of Brooklyn, I’m coping as best I can with the help of the online edition, which features a bold graphic of a fed-up-looking lady decisively tossing out what must be the print edition. New online, in their words:

Q. & A.
What Would Jesus Teach?
This week in the magazine, Peter Boyer reports on how a lawsuit by a teacher who claimed he was discriminated against as a Christian caused an uproar in California. Here, with Matt Dellinger, Boyer discusses the gray area between church and state. [With a great Edward Sorel illustration!]

Q. & A.
Hollywood’s Hustlers
This week in the magazine, Tad Friend [greatest name ever] writes about Dave Wirtschafter, the president of the venerable William Morris Agency and an exemplar of a new breed of Hollywood agent. Here Friend talks to Ben Greenman about Wirtschafter, his agency, and how the role of the agent has evolved.

ONLINE ONLY
The Hard Drive
Past Q. & A.s, Cover Galleries, Web Sightings, and more. [Don’t miss All-American Boy, an interview with Calvin Trillin about last week’s gruff, heartbreaking story about Brian Slavenas, a 30-year-old lieutenant killed in the Iraq war.]

ONLINE ONLY
The Film File
A decade of New Yorker Film Notes, from Goings On About Town.

EVENTS
The New Yorker Near You
A list of readings and other magazine-related happenings.

If you’ve never checked out the Film File, it’s low-commitment and lots of fun; it’s just the short Notes, not the full-length reviews, so in theory you could consider renting a movie and…search for one. They should really sort by reviewer, though, as well as alphabetically. Speaking of mini-reviewers of yore, what happened to, say, Michael Sragow? I’m sure someone out there knows. And not job-hunting or anything, but it would be nice to see a woman’s name back in tiny italics again around the Goings On golf course. I’m not sure why it goes back only ten years, but unfortunately—I won’t say conveniently, because why would the magazine be so spiteful?—it misses the end of Pauline Kael’s tenure with a few years to spare. Oh, well; there are her books for that, and truly, they’re worth it.

Interpreting the Work of Sandy Skoglund: Food as an Art Medium [Getty ArtsEdNet]

Categories: NYer, Issue, Movies

I have to admit that I like New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones’ blog. I’ve wavered on his articles—shy hosannas when they’re good, Gladwellishly dry when not. But the blog is cool, in the most fundamental sense, and spare and genuinely modest too. Most of it is photos, and interesting ones; I like his records of graffiti and signage especially. Most appealing are his acknowledgments of his own peculiar stature and posturing: “Liz Maynes-Aminzade let me cuss in this short profile for the Columbia Spectator. My wife maintains that profanity looks dumb on the page, and that I should give it a rest. This is probably true.”

(The Spectator profile is quite a bit better than I remember the paper being when I was an undergraduate, besides, of course, the radical takeover of the arts section by Jordan Davis, Max Winter, Tim Griffin, and fellow Kochophiles.)

Speaking of S/FJ (as he calls himself in his title bar—a little silly, but it must be tough to have a complicated last name), I noticed as I was reading his piece on ring tones today on my laptop that my mind kept wandering, and not because the piece was boring. I always get mad at people who say they can’t read onscreen, who inevitably say “I’m a paper person,” as if I’m not! But I know I would have given it more attention, and retained more, if I’d been reading the magazine. Or maybe it was because I was in Atlas Cafe listening to “Maneater,” which may literally be the first pop song I ever listened to in full and consequently the beginning of my early-adolescent top-40 rampage, and glancing at an appealingly scruffy guy who was talking on the phone about writing something for New York. I’ll be there again tomorrow, stranger.

As that weren’t enough epiphanies, tonight I heard a reading of collaborative poems by Shafer Hall, Daniel Nester, Maureen Thorson, Shanna Compton, Jen Knox, Ada Limon, Erica Kaufman, and John Cotter (several of whom will be reading at the April 17 Feast—see sidebar over yonder for details). It melted my socks, as my high school band teacher used to say. I won’t say there’s hope for poetry after all, since, contrary to stereotype, poets have considerably more hope than most people I know. I’ll say it gave me hope for humanity, which could use a good dose of it just about now.

The 6X7 interview: Sasha Frere-Jones, writer [Gawker]

Une grande chat, originally uploaded by emdashes.

Because I know that information wants to be free—free as the wind blows, free as the grass grows, where no walls divide it, free as the roaring tide—and because I never said I was the only petunia in the flowerbox, I share with you the blog of a brother in arms who posts a weekly update on the New Yorker contents. Greg Allen (I know this from his bio) is a filmmaker and writer, and sometimes he even posts commentary. Check it out! (Seems the March 14 issue isn’t up yet—go over there and poke him. And while you’re at it, get on me to post my updates on this week’s mag, of which I have a bunch. Thanks, Darren!)

Susie Bright lives up to her name:

We [at the Good Vibrations store in the early ’80s, which made a collection of erotic fiction] had a great, insightful group of authors, and it became this massive hit. That got me into all kinds of things: I started a sex magazine called On Our Backs, I got asked to do Best American Erotica, then one day I got a phone call from Penthouse Forum, and they said, “Would you like to be our new erotic-movie reviewer?” And I said, “You mean your porn critic?” And they said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Do you have any idea what I do? Like, what my opinions are? I’m not going to be writing stories about, Debbie’s Double D is just the hottest thing ever. I’m going to be real. Are you ready for the Pauline Kael of pornography? Because that’s what I want to do.” And this editor was very open-minded. He wanted something new. He just said, “Yeah. Go for it.”

In the meantime, I wasn’t a complete nerd! I mean, I did have lovers! I learned a lot from personal experience, and I’m glad I had entrée into a counterculture where you could experiment, and you could really dispel the romantic headlock in your own personal life. And by romantic—that word can have so many meanings. I am romantic when it comes to flowers and chocolates and valentines and kittens and being sentimental and crying easily. But when it comes to “You’re going to wear a white dress and get married and then everything’s going to be perfect”—ooh. I still want to smash that with a hammer.

Bright Ideas [Boston Phoenix]
The gay attacks on Pauline Kael [Salon; excerpt from Craig Seligman’s Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me]

Categories: Movies, Kael

Steve Martin’s Shouts & Murmurs this week, “C.I.A. Unveils Old Bin Laden Tape”: risky, good.

Soldier: Glory! We’re off on Thursday! Let me give you the phone number where I’ll be.
Osama: Great, give it to me.
Soldier: You don’t have a pen.
Osama: I can remember it.
Solider: You don’t want to write it down?
Osama: No, I can remember.
Soldier: O.K., you would dial zero zero six nine five three eight four twelve twelve six two fourteen ten four seven seven one eight nineteen eight six seven.
Osama: O.K., I got it.
Soldier: You’re sure? You want to say it back to me?
Osama; No, not necessary; I got it. Regular bunch of numbers. Now go! Virgins!

What do you bet that number was fact-checked?

About Steve: Romance: Anne Stringfield [The Compleat Steve]
Steve Martin on Life on the Stage and the Page [NPR interview]