Innholdsfortegnelse for Sep-21-15 i The New Yorker

The Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival Now in its eighth year, this four-day affair features shows in Brooklyn and Manhattan, including “Comics We Think Ruth Bader Ginsburg Would Enjoy,” with Maeve Higgins, Aparna Nancherla, Michelle Wolf, Kate Berlant, and Mehran Khaghani; “An Evening of Entertainment from People with Black Glasses,” featuring Eugene Mirman, Ira Glass, John Hodgman, and Janeane Garofalo; “You’re the Expert,” with Chris Duffy, Jo Firestone, and Scott Adsit; “From the Basement of Union Hall to Network Television in the Next 2-3 Years,” with Firestone, Josh Sharp, Chris Gethard, Kyle Ayers, and Janelle James; “Pretty Good Friends,” with Mirman and the record-production duo Elegant Too; and “The Fake Emmys,” with Starlee Kine, Stephin Merritt, Cintra Wilson, and others. The feat ends on a cosmic note, with a “Star…

When Samuel Clemens was eighteen, he was working as an itinerant typesetter and sending money back to his mother and brother, in Hannibal, Missouri. He was ten years away from becoming Mark Twain, and twenty-three years away from publishing “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” He dreamed of running off to South America to work in the coca industry, and met a steamboat pilot who taught him the river for five hundred dollars. “At Noah’s age, he was not telling his mom anything—he was just off and on his own,” Cindy Lovell, the executive director of the Mark Twain House & Museum, in Hartford, Connecticut, said the other day Noah is Noah Altshuler, who turned eighteen in June, and is writing a stage adaptation of “Tom Sawyer” which producers hope to…

Last week, Mrs. Clinton’s strategists acknowledged missteps . . . and promised that this fall the public would see the sides of Mrs. Clinton that are often obscured by the noise and distractions of modern campaigning. They want to show her humor. —The Times. Clinton campaign H.Q., Brooklyn. Hillary Clinton sits with several staffers. STAFFER 1: Here’s something. Lots of jokes start with the line “A guy walks into a barn.” CLINTON: I like that. That’s funny. STAFFER 2: Bar. I think it’s “A guy walks into a bar.” CLINTON: Bar? Why is that funny? Are bars funny? STAFFER 3: I thought it was barn, too. CLINTON: That makes no sense. STAFFER 2: Is that funny, though? Walking into a barn? CLINTON: Barns are hilarious. It depends on the barn,…

VINTAGE CLOTHES HANGERS Their charm will only be concealed. WWII SHEEPSKIN AVIATOR PANTS I can’t spend $350 on sheepskin aviator pants. 1950s TOTE BAG Looks heavy empty. GOSSARD “ANSWERETTE” GIRDLE My question is, how does fifty-year-old shapewear age? 1960s SWEATER DRESS Itches, probably itches. HAND-KNIT POM-POM HAT Scans tea cozy. SPAGHETTI-STRAP DRESS Saw a picture of Bardot in a dress shaped like this. I am not shaped like Bardot. 1970s SPEEDO Nylon, XS, high risk. 1950s WIGGLE DRESS Enough said.…

You want to fix yourself into that event With an image of the volcano, or street killing, Or house fire, or fornicating bullfrogs, Or the centaur dancing, or the unicorn Piercing balloons over a pond with a fountain Shaped like an oak tree from the undiscovered torts That have scattered through office blocks and suburban homes, And which may be uncovered one day And be ripped from the sculpted foliage, becoming fact, Causing this accumulation of lies to fall like leaves Into the water below—and the unicorn to leap Into fiction while you Will be fixed in time to an image of crime, Or joy, or wonder, or a unicorn, As a commitment for life on the Internet Repeated, retweeted, But forever with your back to it.…

THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD, by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa). The final installment of Ferrante’s engrossing and wildly popular Neapolitan tetralogy concludes the story of the childhood companions and competitors Elena and Lila. Elena, brought back to Naples by the disintegration of her marriage and the start of a new romance, contends with family disapproval, the challenges of bringing up daughters as she advances a literary career, and the pull of the charismatic Lila. The novel examines friendship, motherhood, politics, class conflict, and the project of writing, as Elena reflects, “I felt strong, no longer a victim of my origins but capable of dominating them, of giving them a shape, of taking revenge on them for myself, for Lila, whomever.” THE INVADERS,…

SAVING THE PLANET Elizabeth Kolbert, in her article on Christiana Figueres and the urgency for action at the Paris Convention on Climate Change, mentions the need for “negative emissions” (“The Weight of the World,” August 24th). Kolbert writes that CO2 levels are already so grave that the world has to start “sucking CO2 out of the air and storing it underground—something no one, at this point, knows how to do.” As the co-founder and chair of the Carbon Underground, I would point out that there is a natural system for this: photosynthesis. Plants already process tens of billions of tons of CO2 every year in the natural cycling of carbon. We must figure out how to optimize this process; many scientists agree that the natural carbon sink of the…

Remember Bridgegate, the local traffic scandal that continues to affect national politics? Sal Cowan, the director of traffic operations at the New Jersey Department of Transportation, does, but barely. “We heard about it on the news, like everyone else,” he said last week. “It affected people in Fort Lee, but, honestly, for the rest of the state it was business as usual. Now, a blizzard? Closing the Pulaski Skyway for repairs? That’s when I’m pulling all-nighters.” He gestured around a room full of computer screens—the Traffic Operations Center, in Cherry Hill. He added, “In this line of work, you keep a sleeping bag and a food supply in your truck at all times.” From the T.O.C., technicians oversee state roads throughout South Jersey; a larger facility, in Woodbridge, focusses on…

In the spring of 2013, the consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble asked its former C.E.O. A. G. Lafley to come out of retirement and bail the company out of trouble. When Lafley stepped down, back in 2009, P. & G. seemed in fine shape, but his successor had floundered. Sales were falling short of expectations, and the company was losing market share to nimbler competitors. Lafley’s return seemed like just what was needed. During his first tour at P. & G., he turned the company into a consumer powerhouse and, in the process, became one of the most acclaimed C.E.O.s of his day, earning a reputation as a strategic visionary and an innovation guru. The day his return was announced, the company’s stock price jumped four per cent. A Bloomberg…

The reality-television star Bethenny Frankel climbed into a black S.U.V. and addressed the driver. “Hi,” she said. “How are you? Can I have one of those candies?” It was a Friday afternoon in SoHo, and Frankel and her director of business operations were on their way to a party. She unwrapped a hard candy and sucked on it thoughtfully. Though Frankel is forty-four, with a five-year-old daughter, she has the skinny-but-busty figure more commonly associated with lingerie models and comic-book vamps than with middle-aged parents. As is often the case with Frankel, the party was not strictly for recreational purposes. She was promoting a line of premixed, low-calorie alcoholic drinks called Skinnygirl Cocktails. Frankel, who was wearing an embroidered green cocktail dress, stars on the Bravo reality show “The Real…

Joseph (the Animal) Barboza was a murderer for hire from New Bedford, Massachusetts, who came by his nickname after an altercation with a minor mafioso which he elected to settle with his teeth. Barboza ultimately confessed to seven murders, and bragged to associates that he had committed many more, but he had the good fortune to be employed by the Mafia at a moment when authorities were trying desperately to better understand organized crime. In 1961, J. Edgar Hoover stressed, in a memo, the imperative to develop “live sources within the upper echelon of the organized hoodlum element.” Barboza became a prized informant: he served as a government witness, helping to convict members of the Patriarca crime family. In fact, he was so valuable that when authorities began looking into…

To qualify as watchable, a romantic comedy, in the movies, doesn’t have to be much good. Do the friends have chemistry? Is there a montage celebrating the joys of playing hooky in Los Angeles, New York, or London? Does Elvis Costello sing “She”? Fine, I’ll rent it. Much of my fondness for the inconsistent but very funny Fox sitcom “The Mindy Project” was that its creator and star, Mindy Kaling, clearly graded on the same curve. In her network-TV lab, Kaling sampled rom-coms like a master, splicing their rhythms into sitcom beats, pumping rude energy into Hollywood formula. The show got tiny ratings, was axed by Fox, and will now air its upcoming season on Hulu. Truth is, there should be public funding for such valuable labors. Kaling was a…

SEPTEMBER 2015 WEDNESDAY 16TH THURSDAY 17TH FRIDAY 18TH SATURDAY 19TH SUNDAY 20TH MONDAY 21ST TUESDAY 22ND THE DAUNTLESS GERMAN SCULPTOR Isa Genzken is back in New York, poised to knock our socks off again, after a star turn at MOMA, in 2013. That forty-year retrospective earned rave reviews and introduced a wide audience to Genzken’s mercurial eye for materials (X-rays, suitcases, spray paint). Her new show, at the Zwirner gallery, which opens on Sept. 16, includes the latest in her ongoing series of “Schauspieler (Actors),” mannequins in sizes ranging from grade school to grownup, styled with a jaunty eccentricity that jolts sculptural realism into the twenty-first century. THE THEATRE ALSO NOTABLE THE ABSOLUTE BRIGHTNESS OF LEONARD PELKEY Westside ALADDIN New Amsterdam AMAZING GRACE Nederlander AN AMERICAN IN PARIS Palace…

Certain activities can be improved by the addition of alcohol—blind dates, golf. Others are inevitably made worse—e-mailing your boss, trimming your bangs. Then there are those, such as cinema-going, that can swing either way. On a recent evening at Nitehawk, in Williamsburg, one patron’s wait for her date to see “The Parallax View” (a 1974 Alan J. Pakula political thriller, with Warren Beatty as a huge-haired muckraker) was improved by a chilled Tecate. When the lights dimmed, she handed a scrap of paper to a waitress (job requirements: crouching, night vision, experience as a ball girl a plus) that read, “Tequila tonic, please.” Her neighbors ordered queso, a kale salad, and fried pickles—a smorgasbord generating smells and sounds that made one long for the days of Junior Mints. Onscreen, an…

Ryan Reynolds’s dog, Baxter, padded through the woods, turning often to check on his master. The trail, at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, an hour north of New York City, was cool and quiet. The actor said that he’d found the dog, a golden-retriever mix, at an S.P.C.A. in Houston. “I was looking for a rescue dog for a friend who wanted a chocolate lab, which they didn’t have,” he recalled, clipping Baxter’s leash across his own chest like a bandolier. “I saw this guy and took him for a walk, then got in my car. Forty-five minutes later, I turned the car around—it was the way he’d looked going back into the cage. I went back in and said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’ And Baxter jumped in…

At dawn on May 14, 2011, more than two dozen federal agents and local police officers converged on a working-class neighborhood near the Miami airport and surrounded a small green-and-white stucco building—Masjid Miami, one of the city’s oldest mosques. Police sealed off a two-block radius, and F.B.I. agents, some armed with AR-15 rifles, assembled outside the door. Inside, eight men were kneeling for the first prayer of the day. When agents called for them to open up, one of the worshippers, a former police officer, went out and asked them to wait until the prayer was finished. The agents complied, and then they arrested the mosque’s imam, Hafiz Khan, an émigré from a mountainous corner of Pakistan near the Afghan border. Khan was in his late seventies, an albino with…

One day in mid-March, with patches of snow still mottling Brooklyn’s side streets, I went to meet Julianne Moore on the set of “Maggie’s Plan,” a comedy written and directed by Rebecca Miller, in a town house on Vanderbilt Avenue. Arriving exactly on time for the 8 A.M. call, I picked my way past gaffers and gofers slouched on the stoop, working their phones and sucking on their morning Starbucks. Inside, Moore was already shooting a scene in the farmhouse kitchen, which was sealed from view by a wall of cables, cameras, and technicians. In the crepuscular hubbub, Rachael Horovitz, one of the film’s producers, introduced herself and ushered me downstairs to a basement bedroom, where the production team was hunched around a video monitor wedged among ballet trophies, karate…

I took a piece of paper from Moshe’s messy desk and made a list of winter clothes to buy: Pair of corduroy trousers. Two flannel shirts. Undershirts—long sleeves. Long underwear. Wool socks. And maybe new pajamas, too. All this for him. And for me: Sweater. Winter skirt. Or maybe pants instead. Something not too expensive. Warm stockings. Flannel nightgown. (And replace the wicks in the kerosene heaters and the light bulb that shows if the boiler is working or isn’t working.) During breakfast, I said to him, “Moshe, listen, the summer is over and in the end we didn’t take that organized tour to Spain, so instead maybe you could give me the three and a half thousand shekels to buy some things for winter.” Moshe said, “O.K., fine. But,…

A college student working on a seminar paper about the mechanics of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 sees his father reading “Black Earth” (Crown), the Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s new book on the Holocaust, and asks the unaskable question: Do we really need one more book on the Holocaust? The facts are in and clear, he says, while so many other human horrors demand our historical understanding and get so much less: how many new books have been published this year on the Belgian genocide in the Congo? Doesn’t endlessly retelling the story of the murder of the Jews of Europe let us give ourselves the appearance of moral seriousness while immunizing us to the urgencies of actual moral seriousness? Piety is the opposite of compassion, which is better directed…