In today’s cinematic “Wavy Rule,” Paul imagines a moment at Rick’s Café Américain that somehow ended up on the cutting-room floor, but will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever signed for a bill, had a midnight inspiration, or fished through the workplace pen caddy for an empty promise. Notwithstanding both beautiful friendships and beautiful penmanship, ink, like love, can be poignantly impermanent. Click to enlarge!
More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

Each Friday, the Emdashes summer interns bring us the news from the ultimate Rossosphere: the blogs and podcasts at newyorker.com. Here’s this week’s report.
Adam Shoemaker:
This week in “Notes on Politics, Mostly,” Hendrik Hertzberg notices a few unexpected deviations in the news world. First, he applauds the Washington Post‘s decision to repudiate, unqualifiedly and unapologetically, John McCain’s accusation that Barack Obama demanded media cameras follow him into an Army medical center in Germany. Hertzberg also offers a modest suggestion for newsgatherers facing the newly breached promise by Chinese officials for uncensored internet access during the Olympic games. Finally, he puzzles over the recent off-road trek of a Republican “word technician” on Fox News who bravely veered away from Obama-bashing while host Sean Hannity desperately attempted to retrieve him. The post provided one of my favorite valedictions ever: “Thanks a load, toad.”
Sasha Frere-Jones spent the week at his blog considering free mixtapes and Czechoslovakian-infused rap. He also shares a music video from Richard McGuire, New Yorker illustrator and creator of “compact puzzles of funk.” I am converted. Still, the center of my heart remains dedicated to that burgeoning genre of sometimes atrocious, sometimes sublime hip-hop mashups, and one really can’t do better than this fusion of M.O.P. and “Sesame Street.”
In The New Yorker Out Loud, we hear from Kelefa Sanneh, who wrote in this week’s issue of The New Yorker about the early dissent of radio commentator Tavis Smiley from the “magical” promise of Barack Obama for the African-American community. Sanneh notes that for some black leaders, Obama’s position outside the traditional African-American political trajectory has raised concerns about his commitment to the historical imperatives of the Civil Rights movement. They wonder what it means to be “moving beyond the politics of grievance.” Together, Sanneh’s article and this interview provide a fascinating look at the decisions African-American leaders and voters are facing on the course from primary season to November’s general election.
Rounding out the roundup, Andy Borowitz writes in the Borowitz Report about the swift revenge of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who just released (we wish) their own attack ad on John McCain after the senator compared them to Senator Obama. While I’m not truly surprised that the “notorious party girls” support offshore drilling, I never really thought of McCain as “pasty white.”
Taylor House:
“Earthquake!” cried Postcard from Los Angeles. Dana Goodyear gives us the lowdown on the shakeup (which, admittedly, wasn’t very shaky). No serious injuries or building damage, just a lot of ponderous thoughts about preparing for “the big one” that in the event, will likely be every bit as unexpected. Yawn, maybe tomorrow.
More bad news for newspapers. The L.A. Times is now forcing cutbacks on its weekly book review section–downgrading it from a Sunday insert to space in the general arts section. How bad will it get, and is anyone brave (or stupid) enough to swim upstream?
Anyone recognize Senator Patrick Leahy as the gentleman telling off the Joker in The Dark Knight? Steve Brodner did, and illustrates the effect quite nicely over at Person of the Day.
David Remnick and Hendrik Hertzberg commend Obama’s speech in Germany but debate his shifting position on the war in this week’s The Campaign Trail podcast. And how does it look from McCain’s side of the street? Not great, but not without hope.
Sarah Arkebauer:
This week’s Cartoon Lounge contained some real gems.
Farley Katz penned a humorous Grover Cleveland-themed cartoon on July 29. The antiquated-cartoon theme continued with Matthew Diffee’s post on the 31st. Also worth noting is the delightfully bizarre email-duel by Achewood cartoonist Chris Onstad on July 31 about sandwich shops. The article is a continuation of an earlier interview between Onstad and CL contributor Zachary Kanin.
My favorite new series in the Book Bench is the “Bookspotting” segment. The July 28 edition contained an excellent sighting. I was also pleased to see that (the poetry of) Frank O’Hara made an appearance on the season two premiere of Mad Men. This might be just the impetus I need to start following the program. In other news, a new book of American slogans, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, is forthcoming, and the people behind the Booker Prize have announced this year’s shortlist. Salman Rushdie is the favorite.
Meanwhile, Goings On posted two promising videos. One is an epic video of acclaimed pianist Lang Lang playing a Chopin etude, not with his fingers but with an orange. The second video of note is a “hilarious, surreal interview” that David Letterman did with Tom Waits (who, we learn, was born in a taxi). Both posts have provided me with valuable new anecdotes with which to astound my friends–always a worthwhile endeavor.
For this week’s New Yorker Fiction Podcast update, I turned to the May 3, 2007, recording in which Richard Ford reads John Cheever’s short story “Reunion.” The story is remarkable both for its brevity and for its richness, and the podcast is worth a listen even if you’ve already read the original.
Previous intern roundups: the July 25 report; the July 18 report; the July 11 report.

Paul explains today’s brainy “Wavy Rule” (click to enlarge):
In the July 21 issue of The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote about roaming physicist-surfer Garrett Lisi, the author of “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.” The fantasy of someone coming out of the woodwork (or the surfshop) to announce the fact that they’ve figured out all of the secrets of the universe remains very much alive–which inspired this cartoon. Oh, and graphic design students are all mad as snakes.

More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

In today’s “Wavy Rule,” Paul addresses the question: What does a James Frey novel smell like? Click to enlarge!

More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

Paul writes about today’s “Wavy Rule”:
What’s tmesis exactly? Well, as one definition goes, “a tmesis is the separation of a word into two, for the purpose of inserting another word between the separated parts…” (John Carey, Latin Prosody Made Easy, 1808, p. 195). The word “tmesis” comes from a Greek word meaning “to cut,” and the figure of speech is found in ancient Greek and Roman poetry. But as a linguistic phenomenon, its use has continued, finding its way in Ned Flanders’ “Wel-diddly-elcome” and the “La-dee-freakin’-da” of Chris Farley’s Matt Foley character. Both examples were provided by the Wiki-freakin’-pedia article on the subject, found here.

More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

Paul explains today’s “Wavy Rule”:
Last week, Benjamin Chambers posted here on the anniversary of the publication of Shirley Jackson’s 1948 story “The Lottery,” which caused an outcry and controversy across America, for reasons you should remember from English class. What if Jackson had been asked to do a rewrite? Click to enlarge!

More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

Paul explains today’s inspired “Wavy Rule” (click to enlarge):
They’ve remade that jewel in the crown of our American heritage: American Gladiators, a show that fed the minds and muscles of countless kids from 1989 to 1996. I’m not sure what the point of that show was–maybe how to educate children on the proper use of skybikes and atlaspheres, or how to play Breakthrough & Conquer, a combination of football and freestyle wrestling. A veritable blast.
Here’s my own remake of the show, with James Thurber-like characters. Instead of Turbo and Nitro, I say we pit Walter Mitty and Bodwell (a character in Thurber’s story “The Night the Ghost Got In”) against one another. Thurber humor and Super Powerballs–who can say no to that?

More by Paul Morris: Our very own upside-down question-mark naming contest! Plus, “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

Each Friday, the Emdashes summer interns bring us the news from the ultimate Rossosphere: the blogs and “podcasts”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/podcasts at newyorker.com. Here’s this week’s report.
Sarah Arkebauer:
I was pleased to get the scoop on the making of Radiohead’s new music video for the song “House of Cards” in the July 18 Goings On. The video, in the experimental style so typical of Radiohead, was filmed without any lights or cameras. Both the music video and the making-of video are fascinating, and worth a look. Then, in a continuation of what I took to be “Multimedia Day,” the blog also posted a clip from Neil Young’s new documentary, CSNY: Déjà Vu. Ever multifaceted, Neil Young’s clip and the accompanying article do not disappoint.
On July 21st, the Book Bench shared poetic gems from Muhammad Ali; the original copy of one of his poems has just sold for $25,000. The Manhattan Children’s Museum right now has a display of Golden Books for children, which looks interesting. As a current student at Penn and lover of poetry, I was thrilled to see Jenna Krajeski’s July 22 post reference to PennSound, the Penn-hosted audio-archive of poets reading their poetry. Also worth noting: John McCain’s favorite author is Ernest Hemingway.
I am still laughing out loud at the Cartoon Lounge. This week’s blog posts included an interview with Dubai, and a portrait of Paul Giamatti as television’s John Adams, done by the perpetually funny Zachary Kanin.

In the archives of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast is Louise Erdrich reading Lorrie Moore’s wonderful “Dance in America.” First published in the magazine in 1993, and podcast on April 9 of this year, the story is at once poignant and hilarious. Erdrich explains, “[Moore’s] dialogue captures so much of the edginess and yet the kind of wacko quality of conversations between people.” Both the story and the podcast discussion are worth looking into.
Taylor House:
Steve Brodner bemoans the death of the modern newspaper over at Person of the Day. More ads, less news, and maniacal cost cutting have all contributed to their (untimely?) demise. He suggests nothing different, “except to repeat, again, the following: the loss of daily newspapers is a significant threat to the future of our democracy. It is far too important to be left in the hands of a bunch of clueless media moguls and their ‘chief innovation officers.'” Well, okay.
Mick Stevens draws from the euphoric afterglow of a great vacation and writes a lovely post on the nature of leisure. Sharks, lugnuts, and old hippies abound. Ends on a sad note–like most great vacations.
My other blogs have been radio silent this week, so here’s a weeks-old giggle from Dana Goodyear at Postcard from Los Angeles: comedian Zach Galifianakis lip-synching Fiona Apple’s “Not About Love.” Great song, great man, great synching.
Adam Shoemaker:
“It’s not always about us,” writes George Packer in his latest post on
Interesting Times. He’s talking about Prime Minister Maliki’s much-publicized endorsement of Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal of American troops, and Packer’s long experience with the insuperability of the Sunni/Shiite divide leads him to suspect that the statement is more a product of Shiite opportunism than of Democratic sympathies. He makes a convincing case that Maliki is staking out a position that would enable him to finish the “ethnic cleansing” of Sunnis from Baghdad while at the same time outflanking Moqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite faction. Grim. He also reports good news this week, in the promotion of (now) General H. R. McMaster, “a humanist, with a doctorate in history, who is allergic to the military’s culture of PowerPoint presentations.” McMaster, whose successful counterinsurgency strategy formed the basis of the 2007 Petraeus campaign in Iraq, is also an advocate of reality in the Pentagon. I know at least one other Ph.D. who will be buoyed by the news.
Notes on Politics, mostly stays true to its name this week as Hendrik Hertzberg continues his valiant fight to expose misconceptions about the National Popular Vote movement. The counter-arguments this time are of a better sort than those investigated a few weeks ago. Hertzberg gives small credence to idea that states’ individual characters should matter in the general election, and this Hoosier would certainly hail the end of “battleground states.” Even so, it at first seemed a little strong to imply that the 3/5 Atrocity continues to haunt us in the form of the Electoral College. Then I remembered that other close election.
Hertzberg also offers his own defense of New Yorker Irony, as incarnated on last week’s cover. He’s not worried, he reports, about that small section of America who might not get it. His concern is that it may have led to the perception that Barack Obama can’t take a joke.
Sasha Frere-Jones writes about what must be considered a great leap forward in the history of music reviews: LOLdogz. The marriage of icanhascheezburger with Pitchfork is surely an unholy one, yet I can’t help but cheer. In other news, the auction of James Brown’s personal belongings brought $857,688 into Christie’s this week, which seemed cute until I read that someone paid twenty-six grand for his diabetic bracelet.
In this week’s New Yorker Out Loud podcast, David Samuels talks about his article on the medicinal marijuana industry in California. I learned a lot…for instance, that 15-20 marijuana plants can pay for a mortgage. There are more than two hundred thousand licensed pot users in the state, a number that now includes Samuels (he assures us his is for reportorial duties only). This kind of legal consumer base and the dispensaries it allows have produced customers as discriminating as those at Whole Foods and connoisseurs as finicky as oenophiles. It’s a great listen, even if Samuels may not be quite as entertaining a guide as Nancy Botwin.
Finally, Andy Borowitz breaks the news we’ve all been waiting to hear—John McCain has at last visited the internet. He may still struggle with the mouse, but we can rest assured our potential commander-in-chief will now have the word of the people at his fingertips—via Yahoo! Answers, that is. All of which inevitably leads to this devoted Wikipedian to dream—Wales ’16?
Previous intern roundups: the July 18 report; the July 11 report.

The only thing I like about the McCain campaign is that it rhymes. In today’s “Wavy Rule,” Paul looks at the canine angle of an increasingly panicky political strategy. Click to enlarge!

More by Paul Morris: “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.

I’ll let Paul introduce this. I think it’s absolutely great. “The original Ograbme cartoon, visible here, protested the Embargo Act of 1807 (O-grab-me is “embargo” spelled backward). The ograbme was depicted as a snapping turtle detaining an American merchant by the seat of his pants. And now gas prices are doing their damage to both American consumers and businesses.”

More by Paul Morris: “The Wavy Rule” archive; a very funny webcomic, “Arnjuice“; a motley Flickr page; various beautifully off-kilter cartoon collections for sale and free download at Lulu.