CityLights interview with
Pauline Kael --
1::
2::
3::
4 (approx. 40 mins, NSI, 1982) Topics include Cecil B. Demille, Robert Preston, John Boorman’s Zardoz, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, James Bond films, and Lorenzo Semple Jr. More interviews from the National Screen Institute and Brian Linehan
here, including
John Candy,
Eugene Levy,
Christopher Plummer, and
Ian McKellen
posted by puny human
on Jul 8, 2010 -
13 comments
Frank O'Hara was a New York poet, even though he lived less than half of his 40 years in the city. He grew up in Grafton, MA, was a sonarman in WWII and roomed with Edward Gorey at Harvard before moving to the city he would forever be associated with. Naturally, there was am
article on him in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. We're lucky enough to have a number of
videos of O'Hara, including
a reading of the lovely "Having a Coke with You. There's also quite a bit of
audio of him, and I can't but recommend
this mp3 of John Ashbery, Alfred Leslie, Bill Berkson and Michelle Elligott reminiscing about O'Hara at the MOMA, where he worked. And there are quite a
few of his
poems available
online, as well as five of the
poem-paintings he did
with Norman Bluhm.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 15, 2010 -
16 comments
Fans know him as Tonéx. His eccentric style and vertiginous high notes helped make him one of the most acclaimed praise singers of the past decade, and, for a time, one of the most successful. ... This past September, the television host known as Lexi broadcast an interview [Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3] with Tonéx on the Word Network, a gospel channel, in which he made his clearest public statements about his sexual orientation. He is, within the church world, the first high-profile gospel singer in history to come out of the closet. Within hours, he started to realize what he had done. His relationship with the mainstream gospel industry was effectively over.
From a fascinating
article in the most recent New Yorker [abstract only].
This podcast [freely accessible] with the author of the article, Kelefah Sanneh, delves into the
rarely discussed "secret" in the black church that many gospel musicians have been and are gay. Sanneh touches on the stories of both
James Cleveland, the creator of the modern gospel sound who died of AIDS in 1991, and one of his backup singers, Carl Bean, who became famous for the 70s disco hit
"I Was Born This Way." One contemporary preacher and gospel singer that Sanneh discusses in relation to Tonéx is
Donnie McClurkin, a man made infamous during the Obama campaign for railing against homosexuals in Southern Black churches. McClurkin has admitted to
engaging in homosexual acts for 20 years but does not identify as gay and believes a strong Christian faith can deliver a person from the "sin" of homosexuality. He recently delivered a sermon directed at young black homosexuals in the church, specifically calling out Tonéx. [McClurkin sermon
Part 1 /
Part 2 /
Part 3]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates
on Feb 2, 2010 -
44 comments
Michelin inspectors have been anonymous as CIA spooks.
Until now. And
now. The New Yorker has a rare interview with one.
posted by converge
on Nov 18, 2009 -
33 comments
Such are the contradictions that seem to riddle not just Gladwell's thinking but the thinking on Gladwell's thinking, and perhaps even the thinking on thinking on that, and it is precisely these slippery but substantive contradictions that have allowed Gladwell to tout his revolutionary "big ideas" without couching them in anything so mundane as a logical, well-supported or otherwise sound argument. Gladwell for Dummies.
posted by defenestration
on Nov 5, 2009 -
102 comments
John McPhee writes about
basketball,
headmasters,
oranges,
tennis,
hybrid airships,
nuclear weapons,
bark canoes,
Alaska,
the Swiss Army,
the merchant marines,
dissident Soviet artists,
shad,
long-distance trucking, and - Pulitzer Prize-winningly -
geology (282kb PDF). He discusses his work
here.
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 30, 2009 -
32 comments
Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism. An essay in the latest
The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell. "Atticus Finch is faced with jurors who have one set of standards for white people like the Ewells and another set for black folk like Tom Robinson. His response is to adopt one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama."
posted by billysumday
on Aug 10, 2009 -
188 comments
Michael Savage
unplugged. Behind the
scenes. "This year, Savage is celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of his radio career. On the air one day, he marked the occasion in typically perverse fashion: by thinking of all the listeners who stuck around, and all the ones who didn’t. “Some were fifteen, they’re now thirty,” he said. “Some were five, they’re now twenty. They grew up on me. Their fathers are dead; the guys who had it playing in the car are gone. They’re still here, they can’t believe it. I’m their voice of freedom. I’m the last hope. I’m the beacon. I’m the Statue of Liberty. I’m Michael Savage. I’ll be back."”
posted by Xurando
on Jul 30, 2009 -
94 comments
The New York steak dinner, or beefsteak, is a form of gluttony as stylized and regional as the riverbank fish fry, the hot-rock clambake, or the Texas barbecue. Some old chefs believe it had its origin sixty or seventy years ago, when butchers from the slaughterhouses on the East River would sneak choice loin cuts into the kitchens of nearby saloons, grill them over charcoal, and feast on them during their Saturday-night sprees. - Joseph Mitchell, 1939.
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Jun 14, 2009 -
39 comments
Writer Dan Baum is twittering the epic saga of being hired at the New Yorker, after 17 years of trying, and then let go. It's an eye-opening and engaging tale for any writer. Baum, who wrote on a myriad of subjects, is perhaps best known for
his post-Katrina New Orleans coverage. Told (annoyingly, if innovatively) in 140-character spurts, his tale takes you into the New Yorker offices ("like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying,") reveals that writers at the august mag get $70k and no benefits, and outlines the cumbersome process of story pitches to mercurial editors. In a rare inside look at the biz, he links to the
pitches that worked, and those
that didn't, on
his website.
posted by CunningLinguist
on May 11, 2009 -
145 comments
Breakfast at Sulimay's with Bill, Moon, Joe and Ann:
1 featuring reviews of The Thermals, Joanna Newsom, The Decemberists, and Clipse. l
2 with The Knife, Deerhoof, and Paul Wall featuring 'lil Keke. l
5 with Asha, TI, Toby Mac.
6 with the Shins , !!!, and Common. l
7 with Bjork , Wilco , and Black Reble Motorcycle club. l
9 with Santogold, Portishead and Death Cab for Cutie!
more (v) yt
posted by vronsky
on Mar 12, 2009 -
19 comments
New Yorker fiction 2008. Annotated list of short fiction from the past year. "As perhaps the most high-profile venue for short fiction in the world, taking stock of the
New Yorker's year in fiction is a worthwhile exercise for writers and readers alike."
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 5, 2009 -
24 comments
Making It, in which a young, black, upstart politician rises through the Chicago political scene by having his opposition stricken from the ballot, turning against his endorser, and redistricting himself into a fundraising monster.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot
on Jul 14, 2008 -
32 comments
The Itch: The New Yorker's suprisingly interesting Annals of Medicine article which includes the story of a woman whose scalp itched so badly she scratched through it. And then through her skull.
posted by nevercalm
on Jun 24, 2008 -
88 comments
Tourists black out reflective retinas in snapshots before printing them, and millions of people refer to strangers they’ve never spoken to as friends, because they’ve connected through a social-networking platform. [...] It should come as no surprise, then, that singers sometimes choose to correct recorded flaws in pitch with modern software, like Antares’s Auto-Tune.Sasha Frere-Jones on auto-tuning, in The New Yorker.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Jun 10, 2008 -
98 comments
"The really disturbing thing about Lagos’s pickers and venders is that their lives have essentially nothing to do with ours. They scavenge an existence beyond the margins of macroeconomics. They are, in the harsh terms of globalization, superfluous."
The Megacity, George Packer in Lagos.
posted by afu
on Dec 11, 2007 -
25 comments
