A cover-to-cover parody of the New Yorker

June 14, 2016 7:13 PM

An astoundingly accurate and thorough piece of work.
posted by lattiboy (54 comments total)

The movie reviews are so accurate and bone dry that they would be enough.

Or the standard "NYC is all different now" article where they play it perfectly straight faced until you realize the city is different because it's swarming with superheroes.
posted by The Whelk at 7:20 PM on June 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

The hat ads were perfect.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:34 PM on June 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

If this were a real magazine, I would subscribe to it. Do Toronto Life next!
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:35 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I hope the back page ad for horse fear relief medication isn't a parody, because this horse fear is no joke.
posted by Atom Eyes at 7:36 PM on June 14, 2016 [6 favorites]

Chris Shea spent most of 1997 on meth.
posted by bukvich at 7:44 PM on June 14, 2016

That bank ad. So obvious, yet so effective. Bravo.
posted by droplet at 7:46 PM on June 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

Just thumbed through to look at the cartoons...
posted by jim in austin at 7:56 PM on June 14, 2016 [10 favorites]

Well, this is awesome.
posted by suelac at 8:07 PM on June 14, 2016

Oh my god this is wonderful. I'm going to be pawing through this for ages.

It's endlessly quotable, but a throwaway line from the Briefly Noted section struck a chord:
Few writers have attempted to distill the essence of New York City into a novel...

hehehehe
posted by ZaphodB at 8:10 PM on June 14, 2016 [8 favorites]

It even has the absurd hat ads! Er, as noted above.
posted by dis_integration at 8:19 PM on June 14, 2016

The craft of this is stunning. The ads are absolutely perfect. "Farmington Farms: over 50 acres for retirees to graze."
posted by leotrotsky at 8:39 PM on June 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Fetchhaven: treatment center for canine substance abuse."
posted by leotrotsky at 8:42 PM on June 14, 2016 [6 favorites]

Missing the military school and fat camp ads, though...
posted by leotrotsky at 8:47 PM on June 14, 2016

>> "Ballpark: the counterintuitive history of the power of guesstimates" by Sir Malcolm Gladwell

Flawless victory
posted by saturday_morning at 8:47 PM on June 14, 2016 [34 favorites]

"Like tight sweaters, sequels are hard to pull off..."
posted by ovvl at 8:53 PM on June 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

What if I know where Andy is, but don't want to tell?
posted by meinvt at 9:07 PM on June 14, 2016

Ass, what a Christhole.
posted by tzikeh at 9:12 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Outstanding.
posted by latkes at 9:38 PM on June 14, 2016

Did you catch the umlaut in Eürope?
posted by latkes at 9:39 PM on June 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

The cartoons were indistinguishable from the real thing.
posted by BinGregory at 10:04 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I miss Spy :(
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:12 PM on June 14, 2016 [3 favorites]

The cartoons were indistinguishable from the real thing.
posted by BinGregory at 1:04 AM on June 15

These ones were funny.
posted by ZaphodB at 10:40 PM on June 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

There was something like this published in hardcover print back in the day... long enough ago that we had a copy by the time I was in high school. The title is on the tip of my tongue...
posted by gusandrews at 10:41 PM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by ZaphodB at 10:41 PM on June 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I was laughing pretty hard just thumbing through the pages and pages of the article on knots, without reading a word of it.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 11:02 PM on June 14, 2016

Did you catch the umlaut in Eürope?

Yes, but they left it off in reëlect, opting for the hyphenate instead. So close!
posted by mochapickle at 11:07 PM on June 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I got into The New Yorker in the 90s, when I shared a place in Tanzania with a Peace Corps who had been given a subscription as a going away present. For two years, starved of reading material, I read each issue from cover to cover. Several times. This, despite never having visited New York.

This satire, parody and homage is just perfect in every way and about as surreal as reading the restaurant reviews and listings while deep in the bush.
posted by quarsan at 11:09 PM on June 14, 2016 [9 favorites]

The standard "NYC is all different now" article where they play it perfectly straight faced until you realize the city is different because it's swarming with superheroes.

See also "Metropolis In The Old Days," by R. Fiore (Comics Journal, December 1, 2009).
posted by Paul Slade at 1:00 AM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

“As 1980 drew to a close, New York found itself in the midst of a crime epidemic. Statistics from the era sketch a grim landscape: there were 1.6 switch-blades per adult resident in Manhattan, 3.3 sets of brass knuckles per household citywide. Children as young as five reported to kindergarten, if they reported at all, in tiny leather jackets, and were often found concealing lengths of chain in their lunchboxes. Three in five primary school students reported having at least one tattoo... Lou Reed was mugged for looking too healthy.”
posted by 1970s Antihero at 3:24 AM on June 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

This. is. AMAZING.
posted by NordyneDefenceDynamics at 3:37 AM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: I don't get this and also I hate it.
posted by Mayor West at 3:48 AM on June 15, 2016

gusandrews: Snooze still available at used bookstores everywhere!
posted by dannyboybell at 3:55 AM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Fine, fine, France!
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 3:58 AM on June 15, 2016

Heh, all the letters to the editor are from San Francisco and the caption contest entries are from Connecticut.
posted by thefool at 5:16 AM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Finally, a university run by Jeff. More info at www.jeff.edu"

For some reason that was the breaking point. It is NOT ok to snigger this loud at work. This... it's just so beautiful...
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 6:27 AM on June 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

Acela...the train for nieces oh my god I can't stop, I will just sit in this thread quoting every single ad. This is making me want to move back to New York.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 6:34 AM on June 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

The best parodies come from a deep understanding of their subject. Like this one.
posted by tommasz at 6:50 AM on June 15, 2016 [6 favorites]

What sold me were the three cartoon contributions by one of my favorite real-life comickers, Shannon "Too Much Coffee Man" Wheeler (pages 33, 37 and 69), who not only HAS had cartoons published in The Real New Yorker, but has published a collection of his cartoons rejected by them. I can imagine where these three came from (when life gives him lemons, he makes lemon meringue pie... and throws it).
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:32 AM on June 15, 2016

I'm not 100% sure the Canadian hat ad is not a real one.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:52 AM on June 15, 2016

"the infamous Bilderbear Group that controls the nation’s toy economy"

!!!!
posted by moonmilk at 8:44 AM on June 15, 2016 [12 favorites]

The tortilla chip cartoon. That one got me.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:11 AM on June 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

The crab cartoon is so spot on I feel like I owe someone money
posted by The Whelk at 9:18 AM on June 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I remember recalling some interview with someone from National Lampoon talking about how they had created a dead-on parody of The Atlantic Monthly, but then realized there was no point in printing it because there was no audience for a dead-on parody of The Atlantic Monthly.
posted by lagomorphius at 9:38 AM on June 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

Metafilter: an audience for a dead-on parody of The Atlantic Monthly
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:46 AM on June 15, 2016 [9 favorites]

The only thing missing is an ad for a Concertos of the Ancient Near East Teaching Company lecture series.
posted by theodolite at 9:48 AM on June 15, 2016 [4 favorites]

Wow. This is really, really great. Thank you.
posted by Fritzle at 10:49 AM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I skipped everything except the cartoons, just as usual.
posted by MtDewd at 11:00 AM on June 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Embarrassing perfection ..... embarrassing because I am so intent on reading the New Yorker sometimes (who am I kidding? most of the time) that I lose myself in its oblivious prattling and forget how self-parodic it really is.
posted by blucevalo at 12:11 PM on June 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oddly, even though I'm usually a sucker for a good superhero deconstruction/parody, that article was my least favorite part of this, in part because the writer not only doesn't seem to have ever read Watchmen (which covers a lot of the same territory much better), but doesn't seem to have heard of any superheroes aside from the Justice League and Spider-Man. But the rest of this is on point. It reminds me of when National Lampoon and Spy would do dead-on parodies of other magazines, such as Time or Playboy. I think it was Spy that did one of Details called "Retails" in which they had an article on the next hot town for hipsters, with interviews of residents who were quietly frantically insisting that their town wasn't at all cool, please don't tell your readers to come here.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:39 PM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is hilarious. It turns out that you can affect the New Yorker tone just by placing the word 'decidedly' in front of random adjectives.

e.g. "Featuring a decidedly non-diegetic score by Randy Newman."
posted by painquale at 4:59 AM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Early last year I was weaning myself off crappy magazines, you know the ones, I don't have to say it out loud, and someone at work had obviously got themselves a subscription to the New Yorker and was bringing them into work, there were about 30 of them and I read every single one in the space of about 3 weeks, it was a time of great solace and joy for me and I grew to love them, although I've not read a single one since and this, this is pitch-bloody-perfect, I am overjoyed and overwhelmed because I want to read it completely, right here and now, and yet it is long and dense and it will take me weeks, but I will do it, I will even revel in it by taking it slowly and thoroughly, devouring it and savouring it until I, too, can even hope to attempt to write something worthy of even coming close to deserving to be in such a beautiful thing.

I read the restaurant one in full.
posted by h00py at 5:02 AM on June 16, 2016

'One man asked him to make a blazer for a snake'.
posted by h00py at 5:06 AM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Acela, the train for nieces
posted by How the runs scored at 9:49 PM on June 16, 2016

I like the part about the 24-year old cycle courier delivering a single crêpe to a city worker's desk.
posted by gorcha at 6:09 AM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]