Why Me? Alec Baldwin’s disappointment, undimmed by success.

by Ian Parker

Issue: Sept. 8

You will have many opportunities in the coming weeks to talk about Alec Baldwin. Not only did he just win an Emmy for his work in "30 Rock" - which returns on Oct. 30 - he also appears in the new Dane Cook movie "My Best Friend's Girl."

Alec's the type of guy who has a house in the Hamptons, but wishes he had a different house in the Hamptons.

He's really only happy when performing in a play or driving his speedboat.

Toward the end of the article, Parker writes about joining him for a boat ride on Three Mile Harbor. Alec accelerates to 55 miles per hour and shouts, “This is why we do sitcoms in Queens!”

Enchanted

By Ariel Levy

Issue: Sept 1

Marc Jacobs used to be a fat dork who considered himself above all the hoopla of the fashion world. 

Then he got sober, lost a ton of weight, got a hot boytoy who tattooed Marc's logo on his arm, and suddenly started enjoying the life of a celebrity and all of the perks that come with it.

Moral of the story: you can always make nice dresses, but life is more fun when you are attractive.

Sole Sisters

By Patricia Marx
Issue: Sept 1

Shoes are good! And expensive! Here are some good ones!

I always look forward to Marx's On and Off the Avenue articles. Not only do you get to hear about what the people who can afford things you never could are buying, but you also get interesting tidbits about what King Louis XIV wore (6 inch red heels).

Marx has a way of injecting stories and humor into her articles that make them so much more interesting than the fashion blogs I usually read when I want to see some fancy shoes. (My two favorites are Fabsugar and You Look Fab. They're, uhhhh, fab...)

Now who wants to lend me $275 for the Cole Haan OT Air pump?

Stop, Thief!

By John Colapinto
Issue: Sept 1

Shoplifting has graduated from a junior high school past-time to a serious industry with serious consequences and technology and security teams to match.

There are retail-crime rings, individuals who resell on eBay, and operators who work with store personnel to de-tag or set aside merchandise. One guy was caught with a cool "booster bag" lined with tin foil and duct tape to thwart alarms.

The story covers security cameras that can move to track someone through a multi-level store (except for the dressing rooms), Target's efforts to stop theft, and what small retailers do (like putting razor blades behind the counter).

Then we follow a security team who has been tracking "Jeffrey," a department store employee who has been making false returns and giving out huge gift cards to his friends. They catch him and he confesses, but he doesn't give up his coworker, and they fail to get a middle-aged lady who probably stole jeans in a dressing room.

Fun and Games

By Anthony Lane
Issue: Sept 1

Women's fencing, and not Usain Bolt's insane bolt to the finish becomes the focus of this article.

Clear face masks allow viewers to see the fencers' faces better than the old mesh ones, and the effect is increased drama and emotion. Check out these photos from The Big Picture to get a sense.

Interesting fact: Synchronized swimmers use gelatin to keep their hair so controlled.
Another one: When Lane went to Beijing, he ate Snickers bars and McDonalds because he says the organizers didn't build any good restaurants in the Olympic zone.

The September 1st Issue

Ah, so much better. In this issue, you read about shoplifting, shoes, Marc Jacobs, and an immature midget (honestly New Yorker, of all the fiction submissions?).
Aren't you glad it isn't Aug 25th anymore?

The Talk of the Towns were a little lackluster this issue, but I always find it interesting to hear about the specifics of how artists work, so "Lost and Found" by Lauren Collins was cool. Painter Kehinde Wiley says that the people he painted in Nigeria (as opposed to in America) need "blues instead of browns."

Sonic Youth

By John Adams
Issue: Aug 25

Composer John Adams tells us about his struggles starting out and describes the process of coming up with his piece "American Standard" which put him
on the map.
You know what? Go read the New Yorker's abstract. It was a boring article.

And on top of that, there is nothing to listen to of his on the New Yorker site, so here is the Amazon page where you can sample some of his Harmonium album. That's the piece he made after being inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem of the same name and by John Donne's "Negative Love."

And here's "Negative Love" so you can compare.

Drowning: Can the Burmese People Rescue Themselves?

By George Packer
Issue: Aug 25

When George Packer first visited Burma in 1987 on a one-week visa - the maximum amount of time allowed - it was still called Burma. The country's official name became Myanmar in 1989. There were other changes. The junta is now called the State Peace and Development council and it is led by Senior General Than Shwe. You're gonna want to pronounce it "tawn shway."

Burma is in bad shape, but the people you're talking to are probably already aware. There was a recent monk uprising that became violent (September 2007), as well as a devastating cyclone (May 2008). So tell them instead that for the past two decades America has imposed sanctions on Burma. George Packer says he met many people in Rangoon who would rather America take a more active role. In fact, he met one man who delivered a note to the U.S. embassy that read, "bombard Burma."

Packer paints the Burmese as uniquely gentle and intellectually curious - "[t]he tradition of reading groups in Burma goes back to the nineteen-twenties." The article closes with the following visual: Hnin Se, a writer who was at one point imprisoned, is standing in the rain and serving cylcone victims three scoops of rice.

The Only Games in Town

By Anthony Lane

Issue: Aug 25

Watching the Olympics can be interesting. Talking about them, less so. Reading about them after the fact, not so much. That said, there were some cool parts of Lane's article.

News of the canine propaganda committee that seeks to improve the image of Chinese-Dog relations was funny.

So was London's hypothesized reaction to the opening ceremonies: "They had two thousand and eight drummers, all lit up. Yes, two thousand and eight. And what have we got so far? Elton John on a trampoline."

I'd watch that.

A Greenwich of the Mind

By Nick Paumgarten

Issue: Aug 25

There are always rich people, and they always want to live in Greenwich, CT. But they don't really want to pay 28 million dollars to live in a model home by the real estate stars the  "Antares Mansions" boys. 

13.75? Sure. 

But when Greenwich houses don't sell at undervalued bank foreclosure prices and even the rich are selling their homes, what do we do? 

Build towards the water.

The August 25th Issue

Honestly, this issue kind of sucked, so excuse us if our summaries do too. The articles just weren't that compelling, and Juliet told me that she thinks George Packer is phoning it in these days.

We'll bang these out and hopefully have more to say about the next issue.

One thing that was pretty good and interesting was the Talk of the Town by Richard Rayner called Bug Wars. It explained the biological pest control that was used in Beijing to get the trees green by the time of the Olympics. Parasites were bred and dispersed so they could infect and kill the moths that were destroying the trees.