Manhattan, Get Ready

On the Same Page

Okay, apparently I am not a complete crank or freak on these two issues. Watching Charlie Rose over lunch, the tech reviewers are saying the same thing I have about the iPhone -- worth getting but wait six to 12 months. Okay, sometime in 2008.

And while Michael Moore's Sicko is getting some positive reviews, New York magazine did go so far as to call him a blow hard in their otherwise affirmative review, but the assessment in The New Yorker was to ultimately dismiss it as being "superfluous."

Last night, I was watching the Al Franken documentary called God Spoke that featured his encounters with the Fox News idiots and was reminded how much Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have in common with Moore -- biased blowhards who consider facts and journalistic accuracy to be mere pesky details for their "greater truth." True progressives need someone with more integrity and less ego than Moore. I'm sure that qualifies me as a card-carrying member of the liberal elite, but so be it. Integrity may not be chic these days, but it feels like the right fit to me.

Code Brown Warning: Lower Your Voice!

"Blogging isn't a particularly good training for writing. There's too much voice, in a way."

Tina Brown
New York Magazine
18 June 2007

New?

Is there really something afoot, or is it just me imagining it? For some reason, every item in the current issue of The New Yorker seems to be unusually relevant to me. It starts with the cover itself. I used to save every cover beginning as a pre-teen, framing some in my bedroom in fact in the early 1970s. But they might as well be brown wrappers these days. Something about this current issue took me back to my favorite issues of my early teens, always most fond of wintery images of the city with a twist of humor. Then the articles themselves all seemed to have a common thread in my life, from the pieces about composer Toru Takemistu and Ennio Morricone to contemporary cultural concerns ranging from Google to Sarah Silverman. Is the magazine actually changing or is it me? I've subscribed since 1969 at the age of 12, through ups and downs. It's one of those things like utilities that I don't even think about, I just pay the bill. But suddenly it seems unusually relevant again. Maybe it's just the pleasure of holding paper instead of a screen that grabs my attention.