Why you are NOT reading THE NEW YORKER anymore

 Despite the offer of a tote bag (and the threat from the government to ban plastic bags...someday), you are NOT subscribing to The New Yorker. 

Since dentist and doctor offices tend to be scrubbed clean of anything that might have COVID on it, especially magazines, and most libraries are still closed, you probably haven't even seen The New Yorker anywhere for free. 

And really, most everyone has better things to download off the illegal torrents than a clueless magazine that can't figure out if it should keep pandering to rich people, or to try and nab Millennials and what used to be called BUPPIES (Black Urban Professionals) but now fall under the title of "people of color." (As opposed to colored people, of course. Let's play semantic games, which could be deadly if you say the WRONG THING.) 

A random recent issue of The New Yorker? Let's start with the gruesome off-putting cover. What the FUCK is going on here? Is this BLACKFACE or some well-meaning attempt to publish a bad collage that somebody did while social-distancing at a progressive day camp in the Hamptons? 

Did this cover immediately entice African immigrants? Members of the Maya Angelou Fan Club? Whoever is planning to update "The Golden Girls" into the "All Black WOMEN?" 

Continue to pander, there's a piece on the haplessly idiotic presidential campaign of Kanye West and his running mate. WHY care about this? What next, John Lahr on the literary merits of "Keeping up with the Kardashians?" A long, long profile on why the world will never recover from the death of Kobe Bryant?

Is there ANYWHERE that is safe from looking at Kanye West's moronic pouting face? What else are we supposed to take seriously? Oh, God no...the SHIT that is called RAP MUSIC? Sorry, I'm not even going to start a sentence with SORRY, on this. I'm NOT sorry that RAP MUSIC is SHIT. That's what it is, and the only good thing I can say about it, is that it's forced its practitioners to at least TRY to learn how to read and write. Even if the result is some of the most inept rhymes anyone can drawl, 'yall, because in the Fall when urban sprawl bites yo' ass and you pass and step on the gas, then you realize with yo' eyes that time flies and nobody has time to always rhyme something. Know wuttum sayin'? 

The New Yorker takes this shit seriously and expects people to spend $8.99 an issue? 

Well, pull off my Jimi Hendrix shirt and call it a doo rag. Who wouldn't want to read about some rapper jerk with one of those corny names everyone thinks is cool? A rapper named Sheff G....yes, let's read all about HISTORY, and remember what MATTERS these days. It sure ain't Dylan no more. (Excuse me, no MO') 

However in their oh-so-politically-correct insistence on showing us what MATTERS these days, The New Yorker does make a few mistakes. Like, how come the lax security guard at the art museum is BLACK? Are you implying a BLACK security guard is not going to do his job properly? Listen, one false move like THIS could get you protests, looting, and rioting. How terrible if The New Yorker offices that once welcomed S.J. Perelman, Thurber and Woody Allen, got reduced to burnt rubble because of an OFFENSIVE CARTOON that is RACIST, ya'll.

Ah, the cartoons. Always, the excuse with The New Yorker was that you could always count on getting a laugh or two. Chas Addams. Peter Arno. Robert Day. Frank Modell. Wm Steig. (Ok, Steig was often confusing more than funny). Guess what. They're all dead. Trying to keep up the standard, which usually includes arcane references, is pretty tough. Here's The New Yorker hoping its aging subscribers will snicker because they "GET" that this cartoon is referencing "WAITING FOR GODOT." Ah, ha ha, and what IS he waiting for? How relevant to ask that question some 60 or 70 years after the fucking play was considered daring and new? 

One of the complaints about The New Yorker in the 60's and 70's, was that some cartoons weren't "funny, ha ha" as much as laments or whimsies. Saul Steinberg baffled some people, but if his work wasn't a "traditional cartoon" at least it was art. 

NOW, New Yorker cartoons that aren't remotely funny, are also not remotely artistic. A 12 year-old could draw some of the "things" that have appeared in print, including this sample issue. How in the world did THIS get published:

What kind of house is that, junior? Why are your figures so stuff and primitive, junior? Do you understand that a house generally has windows, junior? 

Also in The New Yorker are the whimsical little doodles to take your mind off solid pages of dry-as-Margaret Chase Smith's-vagina prose. Even THAT has gone downhill, like a NYC bus trying to go uphill. 

Can you say that YOU or your gifted child couldn't draw shit like this? 

FUNNY. What happened to FUNNY? 

You won't find it in the drearily titled "Whispers and Murmers" page, where some witless hack who keeps failing to win the cartoon caption, branches out into a full page of tedium. The item for this issue is...uh...somebody imagining if people centuries ago were talking like today. Or something. This isn't exactly Lord Buckley or Robin Williams doing faux-Shakespeare. It sure ain't Monty Python and the Holy Grail, either:

You can click that image if you want to see it bigger, and are in need of something to bore you in order to get to sleep. It does beat counting sheep. 

What else did you like about The New Yorker? No, no, it was NEVER the poetry. The poetry in The New Yorker always seemed like transcript droning from somebody on the psychiatrist's couch.  

It's poetry because it's shaped like poetry. 

Since there aren't any movie theaters open, The New Yorker isn't TELLING YOU what FILMS (they do not call them MOVIES) you should see. They did offer a look at some art galleries, and of course, there are book reviews, which in today's warped and reverse-racist thinking, have to be DOMINATED by women, women of color, or women with odd ethnic names. Men may make up half the population, but they are now treated like a minority in the world of books. 10% of the reviews may be from male authors, but THAT IS ALL, and try to make them males "of color." 

Every issue will try to have one or two non-fiction pieces, to balance the awful fiction pieces. You can tell these, because these are the ones that are illustrated with photographs. Pictures of nasty, ugly rotten mean racist vicious POLICE OFFICERS is always good for some woeful piece on the urban problem of not letting people of color simply walk around with weapons and not risk being frisked. 

Since The New Yorker is a weakly...most important riot and looting news is stale by the time it gets into the dry hands of a writer for the magazine. So instead of relevancy, you can usually count on The New Yorker to flog some bit of past history that you better remember or it will repeat itself like the onion and kale tart you should NOT have bought from Whole Foods. Oh, Joe McCarthy. Sure...

One of the big reasons, in the PAST, to get The New Yorker was, aside from nodding (but not laughing out loud) at the cartoons, and checking gallery openings and what films were playing, was THE ADS. How the hell do you buy a flexible brim hat, suitable for hiking in wooded areas of Westhampton or upstate, without a mail order ad in The New Yorker? How can you snap your fingers and realize that a fur coat IS exactly what granny would want? What completely useless junk can fill up your shelves JUST in case you EVER get a visit from William F. Buckley Jr? 

That was the old days. These days, even the ads suck. Here's part of a full page ad for back-to-school look-like-a-ghoul fashion? The girl looks so miserable, you might mistake her for 13 year-old autistic Swedish lecturer on the plight of tuna in Japan. (PS, there is nothing ANYONE can do about the way Japan is fucking up tuna, whales, and just about everything that China isn't fucking up). 

She looks like she lives in Ibsin's Doll House for the Insane. Or the Glass-Faced Menagerie of the Dysfunctional. (On the latter, you can write a thousand word essay on whether I'm referencing Tennessee Williams, Salinger's Glass family or BOTH. But don't send it to ME. Send it in to The New Yorker. They'll publish just about anything, as long as it's boring. 

Mort Sahl - "The Future Lies Ahead" by a Nose (prognosticating the proboscis)

Mort, at 93, was recently interviewed for a documentary on Robin Williams. It's very touching that when Sahl first began appearing at a tiny theater in Mill Valley, Robin arrived (via bicycle from his nearby home) to see him. He was the only one to come backstage after the show. 

Shy, with his head down, Robin told Mort, "I always wanted to meet you." And thus began a long friendship. 

Well, the little theater is of course closed due to the pandemic, and Sahl has not chosen to be one of those Facebook celebs to ZOOM a show from his living room, so we haven't heard anything new, or enjoyed the old anecdotes, for quite some time. Which leads to this bit of trivia filler: 

The great nose shortening. Mort did pretty well with his nose...Phyllis Kirk, Yvonne Craig, China Lee...there's quite a list. But there came a time for a change. Many wondered why he went for the nose job, but then again, people have long doubted Sahl's keen ability to predict the future, or anticipate what could become a total disaster. 

Back in 2004, NY Times critic Bruce Weber, in reviewing Mort's show downtown, alluded to Mort's blunter look by comparing him to Jerry Stiller!  

A few days later, Jerry Stiller (along with his wife Anne Meara) was at the show, and during the (atypical) Q&A session that ended the evening, he stood up. "Mort, I just want to say that I read the Times piece, and I think you are a VERY attractive looking man!" 

This got laughs and some knowing applause. Afterward, I took a photo of the two friends: 

Mort had a line, which he's probably re-used at the Mill Valley theater now and then, about how if you take up a consistent position in this country, "eventually you'll be tried for treason."

Plastic surgeons may tell you that there's nothing consistent about the human face, and that over the years, parts can sink or sag, making other parts (especially the nose) look a lot bigger. Since that photo from 2004. it's been proven that what may have seemed a bit odd at the time, was prudent. As Mort's aged in his 80's and 90's, and his features have gotten a bit smaller, his nose seems well proportioned!

As to what he would have looked like without the nose job, one "hesitates to speculate." Just to make it official, here's a screen cap from the Flushing Hospital website, and from Medline: 

The Pandemic...terrible, isn't it? Nothing much to do but wait it out, and instead of talking about Covid-19, we take our minds off it by discussing plastic surgery! It does confirm that on most any subject, including the future, Mort has insight. He knows! (He also doesn't stoop to puns. The only one I remember is when he talked about "a bust of Nixon -- who may be busted!" He immediately apologized: "That was a pun.") Anyway...onward.  

Rapist-Murderer Being Freed -- while Cosby is denied

 Find some logic in this one. An able-bodied 70 year-old who laughed after the rapes and murders of two women in a home invasion...is being freed. 

An 83 year-old blind man, who had a signed and sealed resolution to his case with both the victim and the prosecutor, remains behind bars. 

Ayala contributed nothing to this world. Nothing but pain, humiliation and misery. 

The disgraced Cosby had, and it can't be taken away or minimized, some 40 years of being an important figure in black history and the struggle for equality and the defeat of segregation. Generations of comedians were influenced by Bill, thousands benefitted by his donations to charity, and millions found their days brightened by his performances. 

And yet, the excuse for freeing Ayala is that COVID-19 might get him. So let him, what, go out and party on the beach now? Romp in the park? Continue living while two women never got that chance and spent their last hours terrified and tortured by him? 

And the excuse for keeping a wheelchair-bound legally blind 83 year-old in prison is...is what? That he'll live in blurry darkness under house arrest in his home, and remain shunned by almost everyone? 

Here's more on Ayala, the model citizen worthy of parole: 

Bill Cosby still in jail despite COVID concerns - while rapist Ibrahim Bouaichi was set free to KILL HIS VICTIM

Talk about a "Dangerous Sexual Predator." That would be legally blind Bill Cosby, over 80 years old and being ferried around prison in a wheelchair. 

While Covid-19 concerns have freed a variety of people currently incarcerated, Cosby doesn't qualify.

Why? The hanging judge who went after him over two trials branded him a "Dangerous Sexual Predator," despite a lack of violence in the case over which he presided.  

which seems to be taken very literally. Some of the most violent rapists ever to be locked up behind bars don't have "Dangerous Sexual Predator" attached to their name. Certainly not Ibrahim Bouaichi. He was in jail for rape, released due to Covid-19 concerns and...he killed his accuser. 

The dangerous sexual predator is generally considered to be someone with a knife, a gun, or a pair of clenched fists for whom rape is just part of the violence. 

The killer in this case, is some 50 years younger than Cosby, with perfect eyesight, and not walking with a cane, and not famously recognizable to EVERYBODY in America. 

If Cosby is released to serve the rest of this time (and he could be dead before the sentence ends), he would be in home confinement. Monitored. 

The killer in this case, was set free to kill. 

The Cosby case is currently on appeal, with the most salient point being how it's possible to arrange a deal with both the prosecutor and the victim, and then to have that signed and agreed upon outcome voided by an ambitious new prosecutor with the help of an obviously biased judge. 

While there have been cases of a widely loathed celebrity getting convicted on a lesser charge (Al Capone for tax evasion, O.J. Simpson for trying to get back some stolen memorabilia), none have been quite as flimsy as the situation with Cosby. 

Now with "disgraced" usually added to his name, Cosby, the "disgraced comedian" and "disgraced Jell-o pudding endorser" and "disgraced PhD" is not likely to do much if he's out of jail. Not when he's under house-arrest and has maybe a few hundred people on YouTube even bothering to follow him. 

Despite his unfortunately chosen title for his last stand-up show, "Far From Finished," Cosby is finished.  He's just not as finished as Karla Dominguez. And that tragedy is just an example of how warped and easily played the courts are. 

Limericks Ripped from Today's News #4959285902 the Nude Protest

What's the Social Justice Whore protest?

Trader Joe's says SCREW YOU to the PC Pussy Cats

I doubt it was my hilariously brilliant blog post of July 21st that had anything to do with it but...

TRADER JOE'S decided NOT to cave in to a thousand wussy morons in Oregon with too much time on their soft little hands.

DAMN right. There was nothing wrong with Trade Joe paying some respect by naming their Italian import products "Trader Giotto." Using the Italian word for Joseph was intended as RESPECT. So was importing actual Italian products from ITALY instead of fobbing off mass-produced junk pasta and crap-sauce on people. Too often the products we buy with homey-sounding names are coming from huge factories that bought the name and kept nothing else, not even the original recipes.

Who DOES own Ronzoni and Buitoni and Ragu these days? And who ever, EVER thought Chef Boyardee was authentic? If you want to know, the guy's name was Hector Boiardi and he was an Italian immigrant who sold out to American Home Foods way back in 1946. The company is currently owned by the Chicago outfit Conagra Brands, Inc.

Are Ronzoni products imported from Italy the way so many Trader Giotto items are? That company is owned by Riviana Foods Inc of Texas. Buitoni is now owned by Nestlé the same evil company that wants to buy up American springs and construct factories to siphon all the water and bottle it. They own Poland Springs, among others.

Ragú is run in America by the un-Italian-sounding Mizkan, and by Symington's in England and Ireland. Let's just say that Trader Joe's doesn't have THIS kind of question asked:

I haven't noticed any Italians sulking, rioting or looting because Trade Joe's sold "Trader Giotto" products. No, it was a bunch of wussy idiots with a petition. Italians haven't taken a knee over the outrages being sold by Ragu or the lack of "real Italians" making pizza at Dominos or 7-11.

Thankfully, Trader Joe's took a step back, realized it was a small, goose-farting bunch of bird-brains causing all the trouble, and that their vast millions of patrons are FINE with the way the place is run. No joining the goose-step of political correctness based on limp-wristed whimsy or the snivels and trembles of Social Justice Warriors who don't know what it's like to really be in a fight.

People only WISH there was a Trader Joe's nearby, and if their wish was granted, that it wouldn't have such long lines and be so fucking crowded!

Dead SCREW and limping AM METRO NEW YORK have something in common: CREEPY ADS

Until Internet porn (Craigslist, Twitter, Pornhub, anywhere whores and "free sex" flourish) SCREW was a success.

The reason was the back pages which were loaded with hooker ads. Once the whores could infest dating sites and and hook-up sites and crawl all over blogs and stink up forums, SCREW was through. Al Goldstein made a spectacular belly-flop into bankruptcy.

Back in the day, SCREW staffers would routinely find themselves in the same elevator with bottom-feeding and bottom-selling skanks and trannies and loonies, all getting off on the 4th floor to pay CASH for their ads. Well, that was SCREW.

For a while, tottering on the brink but not QUITE stooping too low, the Village Voice and New York Press got some hooker ads and, being sluts, gave their newspapers away. This didn't last long. While Al Goldstein struggled as a greeter at a second-rate smelly deli downtown, and got an apartment courtesy of being a veteran and then from the charity of Penn (the talking half of Penn and Teller), the masterminds at the Village Voice and New York Press found themselves in bad shape, too, and so did their smarmy and smug columnists who began to live La Dolce Fuckoff, because their writing wasn't going to get them work anywhere else.

AM NEW YORK and METRO, which had people hawking the free papers at subway entrances (the mouths of the dry-sewer) began to tremble. While they kept boasting of massive circulation, the truth was, in January of 2020, that they had to cling to each other to stay afloat.

Yes, and you can't make these names up, Schneps Media executive Cliff Luster was given the daunting task of leading the two rival newspapers into one giant rival to the struggling Daily Snooze and the New York (Left at the) Post. A guy named Pozarycki was allowed to stay on and go from amNewYork’s editor-in-chief to the head of the NEW AM METRO NEW YORK.

So what's happened. Yes, So What.

2020 has been a terrible year, so why expect that a merger of two newspapers would be good news? It hasn't turned out that way.

Sometimes, although the kiosks are usually empty, you can snag a copy of the paper. It's got a crossword puzzle. It's got the usual grim headlines about Covid-19. It's got a few readable items from the news services (rather than local writers). A wire service piece let New Yorkers know that John Cleese was going to let them pay $20 to stream a concert for tonight (August 2nd). Not exactly local news, but good news.

Not so good news is that the paper has almost NO ads. The ones it has, it shouldn't have. That includes the creepy "WANNA HAVE FUN" phone chant ad (dial a few numbers and the word PANTIES). Worse, are all the ads from "healers" and "psychics." Nothing tells you how low your readership is, than ads instructing gullibles to hurry and get help to "remove all kind of Black Magic, Witchcraft, Evil Spirits, Curse..." and learn how "one call one visit will change your life" thanks to some bearded character who will "stop divorce" and "reuinte lovers" and deal with "court cases."

Yes, this is a NEW YORK CITY newspaper, not something you find under somebody's birdcage in Jamaica or Haiti.

How CHEAP is an ad in the paper? ALL they can get are con artists and lunatics? They can't even get a Papaya joint or Gristedes or a massage parlor in Queens to take out an ad? ALL they can get are a bunch of sad "psychics" selling to the dumbest of the dumb? Maybe the people who pay for ads on behalf of Cohen Optical or Sephora or Morton Williams see this junk and figure, "Oh, this paper must really have a circulation that's tiny, and the readers have a tiny IQ to match. They're not customers we want!"

When I was editing RAVE, the most important person on the staff, aside from ME, was the ad manager. We needed and got those full-page ads from vodka companies, car companies, and from Panasonic and others. We had inventive gimmicks, too, like "infomercials." An advertiser sponsored the joke page, or the "bright new comic" page or a page on upcoming comedy films and stand-up concerts on cable TV. It's pretty sad that in today's climate, it's hard to find some business majors who can help out the English majors, and keep a publication afloat.

It saddens me to see what's going on with this sorry Schneps situation, and they must be aware of how tawdry it looks to have such scuzzy people buying ads and making their ad page look so foul. They've had some good writers and editors working for them, especially AM New York in the early days, and watching what is going on is like walking through the terminal ward at a bad city hospital.

A while back, the GAEBLER website published a list of brices for a column inch in some of the "also running" newspapers in town. $22.00 for the Brooklyin News, $50 for the Black Star News, $59.00 for the African-American Observer, $60 for El Diario...while the Daily News was demanding $435 and the New York Post $711 and the Nw York Times $1,196. The struggling New York Sun (long since out of business) was begging to get $57. AM New York, pre-merger, wanted $329. At this point, it's pretty clear that if the ONLY people who want to take out ads are running storefront hook shops, little stink apartments full of candles, or doing low-rent business in some slum location, then the paper is going to be printed in red ink soon enough.

It's damn depressing. The world of journalism...newspapers, magazines...and the world of books have taken a beating. There's competition from plagiaristic websites, from pirate blogs, from torrents that routinely give away everything in PDF and ePub and MOBI format, and of course we have such grand sources of entertainment and Fake News as TWITTER and Facebook with their idiot memes and the morons who believe them.

You get what you pay for, and if you don't pay for that free newspaper in the kiosk, and you don't pay for the "news" from the website that puts "for entertainment purposes only" in small letters on the page, you get what you deserve.

Under Wilhelm De Blasio (what WAS his original German last name), "quality of life" is so bad, you don't even need to sniff METRO NEW YORK to find a phony psychic. They chain up their A-frame signs to lampposts and bike racks and bus shelters and anything else, while 311 phone operators say "Uh, what's the problem? What law is being broken?" Fill in an online form and you'll get a response two weeks later from the police or Sanitation saying "we didn't see anything."

Do you suppose any of these clowns who advertise their services ACTUALLY can accomplish anything? To judge from the headlines about rape, murder, looting and mayhem in the DAILY NEWS and NEW YORK POST, it seems the EVIL SPIRITS are winning.