NYT = Sucks

A few weekends ago, we noticed that the NYT Sunday Mag was devoted (not in a really thematic way, but just, like, in a perfect storm confluence of forces (forces = editors' ages, ages rising, gray hair, etc) the mag was devoted to middle age/aging/old people. We hate old people. After last year's Shamu marriage article dominated the most emailed list, we figured something was up. But, like, lots of people are married: our friends (who are young) are married. But the two most emailed stories this morning on our personalized Google page were well you can see above.

That second-most emailed article, like, 1) totally ripped off Slate's "I'm fiftysomething, and I'm joining Facebook" article; 2) seems to make the ethical/pathetic (in the Greek root sort of way) appeal to the reader, but the reader can't help but notice that when the author's daughter says

“wayyy creepy,” it said. “why did you make one!”

she's, like, totally right; the author's daughter is; 3) besides creepy, pathetic.


We didn't even read the fucking menopause one. Jesus Christ. Periods, child birth, menopause. You'd think women want a fucking medal the way they always write/talk/advertise about these things. Men don't talk about nocturnal emissions, dodging baby mamas, and erectile dysfunction all the fucking time. (Well, the last one is out of mens' hands because of, like, spam; and men don't talk about problems getting it up, anyway.)

Even if the news coverage is good, from this point onward we refuse to read the NYT and their middle-aged, creepy, trend-piece-dominated, preoccupied-with-aging, perceived-as-liberal ass.

Well, we get our ideas from everywhere

[All the {well-educated, taste-making, media-controlling-parents-having, only-people-you-seem-to-hear-about} kids are doin' it.]






We were watching 30 Rock the other day, and there was this episode where Lemon (Tina Fey) totally owned Josh (generic Jewish funnyman) during the latter's contract negotiation. Besides making him do the worm, Lemon makes Josh list off ways that she's better than him. One of them, which made me laugh, was when he yelled out "You read the newspaper!" And she says, "Yeah, it's true." Who reads the newspaper anymore? Masochists we are, we picked up the Saturday NYT the other day to try to fill in correctly one or two pieces of the crossword. Of course, we had a hard time finding the crossword, for a paradoxical reason--the paper was so thin that we thought we lost a section. What did it have, about 15 pages total? That's a goddamn shame. Thinking about it, we decided we'd have been better served giving the dollar to the homeless, or, like, putting it toward a latte at Starbucks.




[Oops. Can't figure out how to insert more pictures]




Add that to the Times Select on-line wall, and you're left with a double-forked plan to kill readership (maybe?). You can't read everything online, but when you actually buy the paper you're inevitably disappointed because it's, like, a ten-minute read. If we wanted ten-minute reads, we'd totally read FP Passport and The Ag. Oh, what's that? Yeah, we do.



[See above.]



FP Passport collects various World News stories together in an intelligent fashion. For instance, we learned yesterday that we share a birthday with the Six-Days War. Interesting! Besides which, we were alerted that the G8 meetings are going to be a shitstorm, and that the next Cold War is on the horizon.





The Ag collects news and presents it in the cutesy Harper's Week in Review and Findings style. This style is awesome. NYT take note: what the people want isn't reliable reporting (over which point print can hardly claim superiority over Internets), they want conceptually interesting presentations or even re-presentations of the news. If the past is doomed to repeat itself, and every presentation is already a re-presentation anyway, etc., etc., then why not hire some of the Harper's editors and have them turn your publication into something interesting-on-the-page-to-look-at. Your both heart-run-dry-from-bleeding-so-profusely liberal rags anyway.

[Yeah we just took this photo from the article and put it here. Sue us.]

The NY Times extends its reign as the paper of record. Hard. Hitting. Report.

"But in general it is agreed that people kiss in private mainly because it is nice."

Foster Wallace + Serious Writer + Federer

David Foster Wallace cares.


DFW is the most talented living American writer. When he was younger he seemed a little too precocious and in love with his own ability. But his last few books show something new, something that he even proclaimed in his essay on Dostoevsky from Remember the Lobster. His writing now has a moral gravitas. And if you know me, you know that I'm all about moral gravitas. Something about recovering from sin. It's appealling. But, so. DFW maintains his technical genius while aiming it precise like a laser at Things That Matter.

His article on Federer, for example. It seems at first that he's writing about Aesthetics. As something transcendental, something that urges us to go past the bounds of language (a task in which we fail), this tack would seem aimed at something that Matters.

The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.

[...]

You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not.

[...]

he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow,

[...]

Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal way) reconciled.

Within this smattering of breathless talk about the Aesthetic value of Federer's game, DFW intersperses technical detail. No surprise. But if I'm correct in assuming that DFW decided early on (likely just after his debut, Broom of the System) that he wanted to be a Serious Writer, he realized something: There is nothing higher than the transcendent. The variety of descriptions one desires to use have the form of analogy, simile and metaphor. DFW uses these well. And I don't make a claim for his originality here, but I think he realized another avenue to the transcendent--exhaustion. He exhausts subjects with comprehensivness, vocabulary, descriptive overload and technical detail. Endless chains of chemical formulas and syntheses; in-depth descriptions of the inner workings of cruise ships; being a floating eyeball at a porn festival. Through exhaustion of subject matter DFW manifests something higher: boredom, ennui, loathing, frailty, desire, exhaustion itself. DFW makes through sheer persistence of assertion through structure a narrative framework that is itself unsupported yet self-sustaining. He manifests Ethical and Aesthetic problems and solutions.

(I'm running up against the limits of my language.)

At first I thought it was a DFWian trope. He has little ticks, little verbal-descriptive-narrative ticks. He early in the article described the final cointoss for the serve in the match between Federer and Nadal. A child who had overcome cancer tossed the coin.


Later, at the top of page 4 DFW interpolated a little bit of seemingly unrelated data about the child with the cancer. For a little gravitas, right. He uses this technique and it's pretty neat. He did it all the time in his 9/11 essay and his McCain essay and, well, all the time in Infinite Jest. Neat, an interpolation.

Another neat thing about DFW's style is the footnote thing. You might hate it, 'natch. But in this essay--wow. I quoted the body's final paragraph above, it's the last quote. It seems to wrap up the body-Aesthetic thing a little. It's a little bit of fluff. But the final footnote really ends the article. It ends it a few paragraphs before the article actually ends in the body.

DFW takes the same path that, say, Blake took in writing Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence. Little lamb, who made thee? Tiger, what immortal hand or eye formed thy fearful symmetry? The Big Thing: how could the creator of the lamb, so meek and mild, be also the creator of the Tiger, of burning bright in the forests of the night fame. This might not be that interesting of a question. But DFW makes the same move.

One wouldn’t want to make too much of it, or to pretend that it’s any sort of equitable balance; that would be grotesque. But the truth is that whatever deity, entity, energy, or random genetic flux produces sick children also produced Roger Federer, and just look at him down there. Look at that.

But there's more. The "just look at him down there. Look at that" reemphasizes the Aesthetic concern. White liberal guilt, maybe, necessitates such a concern, but: Why isn't DFW writing a prolix, verball impressive and sure to be widely-read article about children with cancer? Why is he at Wimbledon? In the lap of luxury? Watching a sport? As much work as it is to compete, watching sports is something of a leisure activity. Tennis? LaCoste? Isn't all a little bourgeoise?

But DFW almost anticipates this concern. It would be grotesque to think that, say, a million cancerous children equals one Roger Federer. But there is something transcendent to a Federer. Trying to get at this transcendental-ness, isn't this a worthy task? If you can't heal sick children, what better alternative is there than to give sustenance to the human faculty that values physical genius and spiritual rectitude? Even in a fluff piece on tennis, DFW continues to make a bid at being The Serious Writer. (Compare this piece to his piece on Michael Joyce from Esquire. But there is no comparison [as the saying goes]: It's the difference between a church and a stripclub.)

Middle Age + Single + G.E.D.

[Pictured above: Mr. Tom Ryan, rockstar, hat afficionado, uneducated and unmarried.]

This story in the Times, strangely compelling and depressing; it includes the life of Mr. Ryan.

Tom Ryan used to share a home outside Denver with a girlfriend but now lives alone, enjoying the ability to keep the house as he pleases. That includes a hat rack covered with dozens of commemorative baseball caps.

Mr. Ryan, 54, an electronics specialist who lives outside Denver, bought his ranch house with a girlfriend over a decade ago. He had to buy out his girlfriend quickly when the relationship suddenly ended — or else lose his home.

Mr. Ryan, who attended music college for a year and spent his 20’s singing in a local rock band, did not feel ready [for marriage].

He learned to enjoy the silence and the ability to be as fastidious at home as he pleased.

When he walks in the front door after a weekend trip or a run or a bike ride, he often puts a commemorative baseball cap on his coat rack, and now, about three dozen hats cover the rack, with no apparent space for a purse or a diaper bag.

Mr. Ryan, too, said he enjoyed being single. He stood talking in his kitchen on a Saturday when he had no plans other than a solo bike ride. It was a slow weekend day — his birthday, in fact — and though the phone never rang, he was free for dinner.

The man is "fastidious". This story deserves a daytime Emmy. And what's with the last line? "though the phone never rang, he was free for dinner"? If no one ever calls you, will you ever have plans? I would maybe replace 'expectedly' for 'though'.