In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

Perhaps paradoxically, I found the May 12 "The End of Food" article to be a fun read over lunch.  The author mentions some things I haven't heard in years: Whatever happened to Metrecal? And then there was, "A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner." 

It's no wonder that Rhinehart improved physically when he started living on his concoction: He was clearly malnourished to begin with.

I wondered at first if I could lose weight if I switched to Soylent, but then it seemed probably not. I think I would like it with chocolate. Almost everything is better with chocolate. 

[serious crayons]

I've been reading a pretty good profile of Sam Shepard. It's from my pile of ripped-out articles -- when I want to clear a big pile of New Yorkers I keep individual articles that still look interesting and recycle the rest. Then, supposedly, I work through the pile at my leisure.

Halfway through the Shepard piece, I noticed it's from 2010. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I've been reading a pretty good profile of Sam Shepard. It's from my pile of ripped-out articles -- when I want to clear a big pile of New Yorkers I keep individual articles that still look interesting and recycle the rest. Then, supposedly, I work through the pile at my leisure.

Halfway through the Shepard piece, I noticed it's from 2010. 

Better late than never! 

[Jeff Wrangler]

OK, I gotta love Emily Nussbaum for coming right out and calling Bill O'Reilly a fathead (May 19).

[serious crayons]

OK, I gotta love Emily Nussbaum for coming right out and calling Bill O'Reilly a fathead (May 19).

I do love Emily Nussbaum, even when I disagree with her, which does not include this case. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

On my blog I posted a comment about Hilton Als' June 2 review of the monologue by Edgar Oliver, because it really struck me in a personal way.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Spoiler Alert!

Brady Bunch fan fiction in The New Yorker! 

I don't know what else you'd call it. The story "'Here's the Story,'" in the June 9 & 16 issue, is essentially a back story to The Brady Bunch. It's not a funny story, and it's also not too flattering of Mke and Carol (Robert Reed and Florence Henderson). I guess if you're a big-deal author you can write fan fiction and get it published in The New Yorker. 

In other matters, the magazine tells me that these first two weeks of June were wonderful weeks for ballet in the Big Apple. NYCB performed Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream the first week, and ABT is performing Sir Frederick Ashton's Cinderella this week (with the hotties Cory Stearns and David Halberg alternating as the Prince).

[serious crayons]

Spoiler Alert!

Brady Bunch fan fiction in The New Yorker! 

I don't know what else you'd call it. The story "'Here's the Story,'" in the June 9 & 16 issue, is essentially a back story to The Brady Bunch. It's not a funny story, and it's also not too flattering of Mke and Carol (Robert Reed and Florence Henderson). I guess if you're a big-deal author you can write fan fiction and get it published in The New Yorker. 

I haven't read it yet, but when I saw your post I glanced through it, and it looks a bit more ambitious than most fan fiction. No offense to fan fiction! Just that it seems -- on that quick skim, anyway -- to have more ambitious artistic goals. But now I'll have the fan fic fans and authors feeling insulted.

I'm trying to think of an analogy. I would say it's like calling GWTW a historical romance novel. But that's not really a good analogy, because basically that's what GWTW is.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I haven't read it yet, but when I saw your post I glanced through it, and it looks a bit more ambitious than most fan fiction. No offense to fan fiction! Just that it seems -- on that quick skim, anyway -- to have more ambitious artistic goals. But now I'll have the fan fic fans and authors feeling insulted.

I'm trying to think of an analogy. I would say it's like calling GWTW a historical romance novel. But that's not really a good analogy, because basically that's what GWTW is.

Well, I'm being snarky in calling it "Brady Bunch fan fiction," but if somebody else, an amateur writer, wrote a back story or prequel to the TV series, I think that's what it would be, fan fiction.  And they might even have the lawyers of the show's producers, or their heirs, after them for copyright infringement.    I assume this guy got any necessary permissions, or The New Yorker wouldn't have published it.

[Front-Ranger]

I finished the article about David Green, whose novel was turned into the movie The Fault in our Stars, coming out this month. And I also read several of the My Old Flame short pieces. Now, I'll delve into the Brady Bunch prequel. I never saw that series, and in 1967 I was just starting out in high school and didn't have time for TV, what with schoolwork, dating and such. At first place it seems to be a paean to late 1960s pop culture and there is an awful lot about Don Drysdale.