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Writing We've Missed.
Dec. 12th, 2014 01:02 pmRead Number 50 of the year is in the can. The 51st is on my tablet, and a very different 52nd, which was featured on the Daily Show the other night, should be in hand by day's end soon- so I will make my book-a-week goal for 2014.
But there's always other written stuff to be consumed. If I'm eating by myself, I need something- a periodical, a cereal box, the ads on the diner menu. Two of my favorite long time fillers from the magazine world have been gone from the world for awhile, but one, I'm happy to say, has come back online.
New York magazine (not to be confused with the older, staider New Yorker) always had a back-of-the-issue focus on challenging readers' minds. They gave me my first-ever exposure to British-style crosswords, enough to know that I'd never be good enough toget them , but I always enjoyed the long-running New York Magazine Competition. Two issues out of every three, alternating with the crossword originally edited by Stephen Sondheim, were the very different form of wordplay originated by Sondheim's friend Mary Ann Madden and continued in the magazine through her retirement in 2000. They encouraged cleverness over correctness- often encouraging "higgledy-piggeldy" filled double-dactyls and "change one letter to...." submissions. The answers were always amazingly fun and creative, and the regulars ranged from Nora Ephron to the "SUNY Albany Physics Building."
And it's back, at least online! Every other week, you can dance with the double-dactyls again! They say they're posted alternate Mondays, but this one, with an October 29 deadline, was the most recent I could find:
Enter through the comment thread, or tweet with the competition's hashtag (that one's was #agingbands).
----
Still dead, alas, is the Esquire entrant into the world of clever. For a good 40 years or so, an early-month issue would feature the Dubious Achievement Awards for the year just ended. Each would present, straight, a brief news item from the year with the headline packing the punny punch. This feature also developed its regulars over time, from an almost-guaranteed headline of "And then they went to Elaine's" to a clever use of this Nixon pic captioned "WHY IS THIS MAN LAUGHING"-
The awards took 2001 off, as September made it hard for anyone to be funny, but they returned for a final run ending in 2008. Below the cut (but sadly brief) is the entire online content of that last hurrah for the Dubious, which gives a good idea of how they worked and why they stopped working:
( Read more... )
And then they went to Elaine's, but it had closed for good:(
But there's always other written stuff to be consumed. If I'm eating by myself, I need something- a periodical, a cereal box, the ads on the diner menu. Two of my favorite long time fillers from the magazine world have been gone from the world for awhile, but one, I'm happy to say, has come back online.
New York magazine (not to be confused with the older, staider New Yorker) always had a back-of-the-issue focus on challenging readers' minds. They gave me my first-ever exposure to British-style crosswords, enough to know that I'd never be good enough to
And it's back, at least online! Every other week, you can dance with the double-dactyls again! They say they're posted alternate Mondays, but this one, with an October 29 deadline, was the most recent I could find:
COMPETITION NO. 33: MY FAVORITE BAND'S GETTING OLD. Please rename a well-known band to reflect its advancing age. For example:
Matchbox 80
They Might Be Tired
Rage Against the Noise Level in This Restaurant
Mumford and Grandsons
Enter through the comment thread, or tweet with the competition's hashtag (that one's was #agingbands).
----
Still dead, alas, is the Esquire entrant into the world of clever. For a good 40 years or so, an early-month issue would feature the Dubious Achievement Awards for the year just ended. Each would present, straight, a brief news item from the year with the headline packing the punny punch. This feature also developed its regulars over time, from an almost-guaranteed headline of "And then they went to Elaine's" to a clever use of this Nixon pic captioned "WHY IS THIS MAN LAUGHING"-
The awards took 2001 off, as September made it hard for anyone to be funny, but they returned for a final run ending in 2008. Below the cut (but sadly brief) is the entire online content of that last hurrah for the Dubious, which gives a good idea of how they worked and why they stopped working:
( Read more... )
And then they went to Elaine's, but it had closed for good:(