The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
Somehow, The Onion manages to be pretty consistently funny on a weekly basis. But outside of TV, that's the only example I can think of. The Onion is working off the news, but then again so is "Shouts and Murmurs" sometimes. And I agree, it's only occasionally funny.
That said, I have occasionally happened on really good S&Ms by obscure writers. One, years ago, was so clever I ripped it out and saved it for years. Eventually I threw it away in a frenzy of organization and have regretted it ever since. It was an entire S&M written in the regular forms of words that we normally use only in prefixed forms. Not sure if those terms are right -- and I can hardly remember any examples, which is why I regret tossing it -- but basically it used "chalant" to mean the opposite of "nonchalant," "plussed" as the opposite of "nonplussed" and so on.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on October 22, 2014, 10:23:17 am ---That said, I have occasionally happened on really good S&Ms by obscure writers. One, years ago, was so clever I ripped it out and saved it for years. Eventually I threw it away in a frenzy of organization and have regretted it ever since. It was an entire S&M written in the regular forms of words that we normally use only in prefixed forms. Not sure if those terms are right -- and I can hardly remember any examples, which is why I regret tossing it -- but basically it used "chalant" to mean the opposite of "nonchalant," "plussed" as the opposite of "nonplussed" and so on.
--- End quote ---
I think I remember that "Shouts & Murmurs." Or maybe I just have a vague memory of some comedian somewhere doing a routine about the same subject (e.g., kempt is not the opposite of unkempt). The Oct. 20 article is by Paul Rudnick; I read it over lunch, and despite its author, I didn't find it very funny.
And I didn't quite know what to make of the Patricia Marx piece about "emotional-support animals."
Front-Ranger:
My NY came this afternoon finally so I had to sit down and read "Allen Bean Plus Four" by Tom Hanks. It was a breezy upbeat account of four madcap twenty-somethings who decide to make a figure eight voyage around the moon in their Rube Goldberg space capsule, just for fun. Kind of a Disney ride, science-fiction-lite saga. There were some interesting turns of phrase and the oft-expressed conceit that you can do anything with an iphone these days. Other than that, it was a bit of a waste of time, but at least I didn't end a NY fiction-reading session mired in existential angst as I so often do. :P
Jeff Wrangler:
Mine arrived today, too. I jumped right into the profile of Billy Joel. I didn't even notice Tom Hanks' name in the contents. :-\
serious crayons:
I am always the last person on the planet to get the latest New Yorker. :(
Well, I should amend that. Once I was talking on the phone to a friend in New Orleans. This was about a year after Katrina. I mentioned something in the New Yorker and asked if she'd seen it. No, she said, because they still weren't getting magazine delivery. :o
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