#another dumb project

[oscaronthegloryroad]

I was given a Marshall Gold Back 12" speaker cone

And I couldn't think of a good way to test it so I just alligator clipped it to a speaker connector on my shitty little Fender Mini twin amp.

And it works! So now I am going to build a little 1x12 cab wrapped in blue denim. . . Because I can.

Which will mean buying a $56 hole saw.

[apairofcrepeswiththerarestape]

The New York Review of The New Yorker for March 30th, 2020

Hello! Welcome to the relaunch of the New York Review of the New Yorker, a series where I, humble New Yorker subscription haver TD Sidell, attempt every week to read and review the New Yorker! This is an old on-again off-again project done last in 2015 (I think) which always crops up whenever I have very little to do. SURPRISE being out of work and trapped at home leaves very little to do SO HERE WE ARE AGAIN! This issue was pretty much a bummer through and through and had waaaaaayyyyyy to many references to Camus' The Plague (I lost count after the 4th, jeez, READ ANOTHER BOOK NEW YORKER STAFF WRITERS) so let's get into talking about this bummer!

COVER

Hey everybody! New York is all cooped up in their homes! Busy landmarks are all but abandoned! This is what this very well executed but pretty banal cover says to me. Artist Eric Drooker has cursed this one poor human with sweeping all of Grand Central and if you haven’t been there, it’s huge. Pretty mean there, Eric. At least this unknown person has something to do all day instead of reviving old projects that were mildly amusing at best AND gets to be in quiet Grand Central which actually seems kind of nice. Ok, mixed meanness and nicesness there, Eric.

TABLES FOR TWO

During this project’s hiatus The New Yorker has gone through a lot of changes. Gone is the Financial Page and in its place is this restaurant column that also at one point had a bar section but that too has been done away with. Usually I read this section thinking “this place sounds nice” and then never eat there. Occasionally there will be an article reviewing a place I’ve gone to or know people who work at and then I’ll read it with glee or anger depending on the complicated algorithm of my opinion of the place/people who run it/people I know that work there and Hannah Goldfield’s. This week it’s more of a state of restaurant world in this time of pandemic told via the goings on at the Num Wah Tea Parlor, one of my favorite places in New York. Turns out EVERYTHING SUCKS!

TALK OF THE TOWN

The thing about talk of the town is that it usually follows a pretty simple formula: the first bit is about politics, the a little slice of life piece, then something about a celebrity or the internet doing something interesting, then something vaguely about the arts, and then a wildcard. Sometimes the order changes but generally these are the things, a few little articlets that are perfect for a short train ride or a wait in medical office of some kind. This week though, OH BOY, do they seem extra dumb.

The political piece, by David Remnick, is about how terrible the president is handling this whole thing, which is NO DOY! increasingly, in this time of ultimate bullshit, it becomes hard to read these types of articles with anything less than a shrug. Everything Remnick says is totally correct but what’s the fucking point? WE ALL KNOW WE HAVE A TERRIBLE PRESIDENT WHO IS TRULY TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING BESIDES PROMOTING HIMSELF. Having a columnist in a the freaking New Yorker point that out to me with specifics is a real snooze.

Next is a shortie about how terrible delivery people have it now. This is pretty hilarious because I've seen how people who read the New Yorker tip so I feel like 50% of the folks reading this little jammie would be like "yeah, that's fine"

After that a thingee about a kid from Mercer Island, Washington (an upper class suburb just outside Seattle) who made a covid tracking website (not the one I use, I'm all covditracking.com for my getting even more depressed by the second news) that got popular. Now, I grew up in Seattle and knew a bunch of kids like this AND THEY WERE INSUFFERABLE. Like calling cheap fouls while playing pickup basketball at the JCC insufferable. Also, Mercer Island sucks and is built on a landfill.

Then an extremely dumb meditation on toilet paper, the less said about it the better.

Finally a thing about a couple multimedia artists who made a thing where you randomly talk to people on the phone. I've relaxed my previous stance on multimedia artists recently (my previous stance was that they were pretty much awful) but it's hard to even get through even the first paragraph of this without rolling my eyes completely into another dimension. The sentence that did me in was "He had just returned from a two-year trip abroad, during which his algorithm dictated where he lived, taking him to Dubai, Taipei, and rural Slovenia." Aaaaanway I assume that invariably you get connected to someone jerking off when you use their phone thing.

THE POLITICAL SCENE

OH BOY! Susan B. Glasser writes about Never Trump Republicans, or at least one Never Trump Republican's attempt to rally other republicans to their cause. This had a real laugh to keep from crying vibe. The subject of the story was a former PR person who spent their career working for a cutthroat firm that worked against corporate regulation. While I'm not certain of the exact tactics of this firm, I AM sure that it involved lying and obfuscating like they were getting paid for it (which duh, they were).  The irony of someone decrying the acts and tactics of our extremely wet baby president when they themselves paved the way for those acts and tactics throughout their entire professional life is so rich it gave me brain gout. Anyway, SHOCKINGLY, this person spent a whole bunch of money and nothing changed! Ha HA HAAAAAA (sob).

SHOUTS AND MURMURS

Did not read.

ANNALS OF CULTURE

JILL MOTHER FUDGING LEPORE EVERYBODY! J comes through with a history of contagion fiction and even though this piece is patient zero for the pandemic of The Plague references in this issue (that was a little much, I know) it still sparkles. This was a great one.

LETTER FROM CHENGDU

Peter Hessler on his life in the lockdown of China. Weirdly I found this piece very soothing. Maybe it was all the different descriptions of the way people wore their masks? I DON'T KNOW! I kind of fell asleep reading this one.

COMIC STRIP

Chris Ware, much like Miller High Life, is something that I really loved in the early-mid 2000s but now have really lost my taste for. His self deprecating misanthropy schtick seems pretty boring now! Especially coming from a very successful person!

OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS 

I was really dreading Adam Gopnik's piece about New York during the time of Corona, even more so when I checked its length in the table of contents. Luckily it has a lot of photos by Phillip Montgomery. Some of those photos were very affecting (empty subway car/shelves at grocery store/classroom/restaurant, person diligently cleaning Port Authority), others less so (hand inside of plastic glove, rich person looking forlorn from windowsill of very fancy apartment), and one which was kind of both (stockbrokers on the phone outside the stock exchange (boring as hell but one of the dudes has a jacket with the word "Pasta" stitched into it and he's either selling pasta futures (which would have been a good thing to invest in seeing as how my body is now 65% pasta) or he's a stockbroker named like Tony Pasta or whatever and believe me, if I ever get the fuck out this I'm sure as shit unleashing on the world my character "Tony Pasta, Stereotypical Italian Stockbroker" who only invests in gabagool but somehow makes tons of money doing it.)). Without looking at the words I cannot remember any of the stories from this article though!

FICTION

I used to never read the fiction in the New Yorker but now I do. Even though I do have a degree in English and World Literature and should be able to tell you more about this story besides that I was bored by it, I cannot! It's possible I was bored because there was so much talk about tennis in it and oh boy I do not give a fudge about tennis!

ON TELEVISION

Doreen St. Felix gives us more of the what is ______ now that Corona is happening with television filling in the blank. It was fine.

A CRITIC AT LARGE

David Denby spends a few pages talking about how horny Harry Houdini was.

BOOKS

Casey Cep tells me more things amount Mormonism that make me go WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

BOOKS

I've never heard of Anna Kavan before but if I ever get to go to bookstore again I'll buy a copy of Ice because Leo Robson made her sound cool and kind of mean and fucked up and I like that in authors.

THE THEATER

Did not read.

Also did not read any of the poetry or laugh at any of the comics.

THAT'S IT Y'ALL! Another one of these in the "books"! Will I keep doing this? Probably! See you next week! Probably!