“Blogging” refers to a technology, no more and no less. Like all technologies (radio, television, books, newspapers, magazines), it’s created a few public cultures. There are celebrities, villains, temporary heroes, scandals, longing and envy, sweetness, cruelty, community, unexpected starbursts of connection; there is paranoia, conspiracy theory, self-censorship, external censorship, snobbery, loathing, self-loathing, obsession, exhilaration, truth and consequences, bravery, “innundo” (as Dinah Lord would say), mini-fortunes made and lost.
Meanwhile, millions of others, using the same technology, do a staggering variety of other things, all the more freely since most of it doesn’t pay a nickel. It’s hard not to follow what’s happening on the big stage, the same way it was hard not to have an opinion about the Taylor/Fisher/Reynolds drama, especially if you were in the wings or the first few rows. Sometimes, it’s hard not to emulate it, or even want to take part. But if you’ll turn your attention to the smaller stages, you’ll find public—just less public—cultures that may be more to your taste. So don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Don’t throw out the bathwater with the baby, either.
Category Archives: Personal
In Praise of Potty-Mouthed Panda Saviours
The funny U is in honor of Georgina Sowerby and Brian Luff, whose incomparable podcast “The Big Squeeze,” now known as “It’s Sowerby & Luff,” is three years old this week. These Crouch Enders, who have become my friends and houseguests (not to mention Will Franken and Eliza Skinner admirers), have some exceptional associates, from Thesaurus Walrus and Candy Carrot-Cake to Doctor Rabbit and Nursey Lamb to the Queen herself, not to mention legions of fans in London and far, far afield. Raise a pint to them, won’t you?
Extra!
General Excellence, over 2,000,000 circulation: The New Yorker, David Remnick, editor, for the February 19 & 26, August 13, October 8 issues. Congratulations to everyone at The New Yorker, including Blake Eskin, who was rightly nominated for leading the extraordinarily dedicated and creative group at newyorker.com.
Three elated cheers, too, for my former colleagues at The Nation—where I first learned about em dashes and a heck of a lot more—and, especially, to our scrappy gang at Print, my friends and role models, who were honored with the General Excellence award for magazines with a circulation under 100,000. Coincidentally, both David Remnick and Print captain Joyce Rutter Kaye are celebrating ten years at their respective magazines. It’s a nice way to cap the decade!
Joyce Rutter Kaye and David Remnick, generally excellent. Click to enlarge.
Of Gentle Soul, to Human Race a (Tad) Friend
It’s Tad Friend’s turn on Mediabistro’s running interview feature; Julie Haire does the honors. I like this quote, among others: “Some people write by polishing each sentence as they go, like a jeweler. I tend to spend lots of time painstakingly making an outline that I realize, a dozen paragraphs in, makes no sense, and then I put my head down and type nouns and verbs and quotes in a kind of grumpy blur, hammering out an extremely rough, totally un-publishable draft that I then go over and over and over before I hand it in.” Some of his observations about research and reporting techniques sound a lot like Susan Orlean’s in the terrific recording An Evening with Ira Glass and the New Kings of Nonfiction, which is most definitely worth buying.
Hey, it looks like Friend and I might have lived in Buffalo at the same time. (He wouldn’t have been quite old enough to babysit me.) I was going to cite something about blizzards, one of which I certainly remember, but found this great pro-Buffalo-weather propaganda instead. I passed through the city recently, for the first time since my family moved away in the mid-’70s, and had dinner at a lively microbrew restaurant whose name I can’t remember, where college kids danced to a rooftop DJ; the cab driver who took me to my long-ago street (and to the zoo, and the park, and the museum—it was the kind of nostalgia joyride you see in the movies) told stories about white flight and floundering department stores as we glided past the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and pockets of prosperity. I’m of the opinion that you should go home again, given the shortness of things.
You’ll See the Honor We Have Gained By the Wearing of the Webby
Emdashes is a Webby Honoree! I hereby blow kisses to the whole scrappy gang: designers/programmers Patric King and Su at House of Pretty and illustrator Jesse Ewing at Inkleaf, of whom I am in awe; writers Martin Schneider and Benjamin Chambers, gentlemen and scholars who donate their righteous labor for the cause; and everyone else, including readers, guest contributors, and New Yorkerites, who makes this go. I owe you guys an Old Fashioned, and more. And congratulations to Webby nominees Design Observer, SVA, and Dwell! (You can vote, too.)
“How Much Are Construction Deaths Worth?”
That’s the sober question asked by Lost City in a clear-eyed, affecting editorial about the East Side construction-crane disaster that caused seven deaths a few days ago. (I was introduced to the site today by the indispensable Manhattan User’s Guide.) Brooks ends the post:
In a column in the New York Post, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer compared the accident to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a bellwether of the last century the brought on sweeping changes in corrupt citywide labor laws. He invoked the disaster as a way of indicating that vast changes at the DOB are called for in the wake of the crane accident. Will such changes occur? Sadly, tragically, criminally, another crane accident is probably more likely.
Lizzie Widdicombe: An Ingenious Talk Technique
Widdcombe covered a festive book event (Not Quite What I Was Planning). Each pithy phrase is subtly witty: It’s no longer than six words. Appropriate for the book in question! I couldn’t make the party, sadly. But I did contribute a tale. Oh, you’d like to hear it? “Do as say, not as did.” (P. 180, in all its glory.) Another memoirist compiled a master list. Moved to write your short story? Show off your quick, dirty syntax.
Banned Words and Phrases: More Things That Are Not One Word
“Eachother,” “sortof,” “nevermind” (I know that’s how Kurt spelled it, but I’m afraid he was wrong), “highschool,” and especially “moreso.” All are in fact two words, not one. The last of these non-words appears frequently in my statistics tracker — people google “moreso one word?” — and I’m glad they’re double-checking, because, as you know, it is not. That’sall fornow. See how typing that way makes you sound drunk? (More banned words and phrases, including “moreso,” which I include again to underscore its two-worded state. It’s overused anyway, don’t you think?)
Happy Birthday to Us!
Today, Emdashes is three. Three cheers for three years of whatever it is we’ve been doing and will do here, God bless it. As Harold Ross might say, but he died long before the age of blogs, at which he might have looked askance. On the other hand, he might have been all for them. It’s hard to say. He’d probably blanch at Facebook. Have you read Genius in Disguise? I’m just finishing it up, and it’s a treat, whatever your level of interest in The New Yorker and the whirlwind it made. I’m simultaneously reading Victor Navasky’s funny and instructive memoir, A Matter of Opinion, and I’m proud to have worked with one of these noble men of magazines and upholders of honest journalism. That’s not to slight the women. To paraphrase Norman Mailer, every editor is a culture, and you enter deep into another culture, one that’s not your own, and you learn an awful lot from it. So three cheers for my own wise captain, too.
Live From the Site of Emdashes’ Conception
Yes, the honest, scrappy, and cozy/rockin’ (depending on the time of day) Williamsburg bar The Lucky Cat, which, three years ago almost to this day, was the site of my very first post here at Emdashes. Oh, the dough we haven’t made since then! But it’s been delightful, don’t get me wrong. Anyway, I’m posting not just out of nostalgia but to note that Heather Havrilesky at Salon has discovered and loves The Maria Bamford Show, as well as some other web shows you can read more about in her column. Here’s Jesse Thorn’s interview with Bamford for The Sound of Young America, where I first discovered her electric genius.