The Tortured History of ‘Entertainment Weekly’
How Time Inc. created the entertainment magazine 24 years ago, and how it was soon haunted by a quest for corporate synergy:
EW’s rise, scattered identity, brilliant heyday and slow, gradual decline mirrors the same journey of Time Warner’s conglomerate hopes and dreams. The leading magazine company weds a film and television giant? It all looked so great on paper. But here we are with the EW of today, and it’s clear: Just because it looks pretty in a business plan doesn’t mean it’s a good idea at all.
At the World Pun Championships, Victory Is Easier Said Than Punned
A profile of a 38-year-old ‘world pun champion’:
At one point Gruber helps lead a discussion of favorite puns. One competitor says, “What’s The Onion newspaper’s biggest competitor?” Ziek quips, “Is it Wiki-Leeks?” The punster seems embarrassed as he reveals his passable but inferior answer, the Garlic Press.
As the night wears on, the punsters form teams to play Schmovie, a board game in which players try to create the best punny movie titles. One round calls for a movie about a constipated basketball player.
A member of Ziek’s team comes up with Scottie Poopin’, but Ziek overrules him in favor of the more on-point LeBrown Jams. It’s a tough round, but his pick ultimately triumphs over another team’s Poop Dreams.
Comedy and the Single Girl
An excerpt from Armstrong’s book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, on how Treva Silverman helped create TV’s most memorable characters:
One night in 1964, Silverman was playing at a piano bar in Manhattan’s theater district—it was another one of those dark, smoky places, but this one had a well-tuned baby grand. She took her requisite set break, listening to the glasses clink and the patrons murmur in the absence of her playing. Still energized from her performance, she struck up a conversation with an intense, bearded, hippie-ish guy and his girlfriend sitting near her at the bar. Soon they were chatting about their mutual love of F. Scott Fitzgerald and J. D. Salinger. Beards were only just on the brink of acceptable mainstream grooming at the time, a signal of a certain kind of rebelliousness that endeared this guy to Silverman. Guys with beards tended to smoke weed, be creative, listen to cool music. They were Silverman’s people. Even more so when they could talk Fitzgerald and Salinger. It figured that he was there with a woman, though. Those guys were always taken.
The guy, Jim Brooks, worked at CBS as an assistant in the newsroom.
Colleges Are Full of It: Behind the Three-Decade Scheme to Raise Tuition, Bankrupt Generations, and Hypnotize the Media
Thomas Frank argues that journalists have failed when it comes to holding universities accountable for the rise in college tuition:
What I mean to say is that the tuition price spiral is part of the larger history of inequality, just as is the ever-rising price of Andy Warhol paintings, or the ever-growing size of the McMansion, or the ever-weightier catalogs issued by Restoration Hardware—and, of course, the never-increasing wages of American workers. As the rewards that can potentially be won by members of the white-collar class have gone from meh (in the egalitarian 1970s) to Neronian (today), it feels natural that the entrance fee for membership in that class should have escalated in a corresponding manner. The iron logic of inequality works the other way as well: Although a college degree doesn’t necessarily guarantee a life of splendor, not having one pretty much makes a life of poorly compensated toil a sure thing. Finding ourselves on the receiving end of inequality is a fate we will pay virtually any price to avoid, and our system of higher ed exists to set and extract that price.
The Lost Album of Okinawa
A family photo album is returned 70 years after being found during the Battle of Okinawa:
Shortly after Duke’s death in 2012, his youngest son, Ken, discovered the Okinawa album, its pages damp and moldy, photos stained and falling out. Spearheaded by Duke’s determined second wife, Carolyn, the family had taken up the search for the album’s owner, and after nearly two years of translation, dead ends, new clues, and dumb luck, they had succeeded. Now the Wieden clan planned to head to Okinawa to return it, departing in two days.
Tickets for Restaurants
How the owners of world-class restaurants including Alinea created their own custom ticketing system:
The concept of Next was so far afield of a normal restaurant that it was an opportunity to do something very different with the booking process. Though I hadn’t the faintest idea how we would sell tickets, Grant and I included the line: “Tickets, yes tickets, go on sale soon…” in the announcement ‘trailer’ for Next. That was meant to do three things: 1) gauge the reaction from potential customers; 2) create interest and controversy; 3) force us to actually follow through.
Miss American Dream
How Britney Spears went to Vegas and became a feminist role model. No, really.
Fifty stories above all this, Britney Spears was working. She didn’t know about the wind or the dancers or the fire-breather or about the old lady whose day she had fucked up immeasurably, the one who might be the Queen of England. She was sitting in a room in the semi-dark, slightly hunched over, a little bored, at the tail end of a daylong junket in which TV journalists asked her questions like “What do people not know about you?” (“Really that I’m pretty boring.”) and “What was the craziest rumor you ever heard about yourself?” (“That I died.”) and who her secret famous crush is, a question that she’s been asked for years and years and that she’s been giving the same answer to for years and years (“Brad Pitt”).
It’s Really Hard to Be a Good Guy With a Gun
In the wake of the Las Vegas and Oregon shootings, a long-time gun owner begins to doubt the prudence of “good guys” defending themselves with firearms:
We had our biases in this argument. My wife is the child of a cop who’s lost a partner in a shootout and had a lifetime of run-ins with wannabe civilian heroes. My father is one of those wannabe heroes. So am I. Dad and I have had our concealed carry permits for a combined 42 years. We love guns. We believe in self-reliance and self-protection.
But as the years go on and the country gets crazier—stirred up by paranoiacs, political hardliners, lobbyists, and simple gun-fetishists—I come nearer to my wife’s side. The universe of scenarios in which carrying a gun seems prudent or useful just keeps shrinking and shrinking, even as the legal freedom to wield personal firepower keeps expanding. The NRA has recalibrated its message for the 21st century: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But in many ways, the 21st century has already overtaken us good guys.
Pablo Escobar’s Private Prison Is Now Run by Monks for Senior Citizens
In exchange for his surrender, the top Colombian drug lord was allowed to build his jail—complete with a disco, jacuzzi, and waterfall. Now 23 years later, it’s a home for the elderly.
With negotiations underway in the spring of 1991, Escobar began hunting for the perfect piece of land upon which to construct his prison. He took along his brother, Roberto, who was the cartel’s accountant. Escobar had scouted much of the vacant land surrounding Medellín but found the lush mountainside of Mont Catedral particularly ideal. “This is the place, brother,” Escobar said during a site visit. “Do you realize that after six in the evening it fogs over and is foggy at dawn, too?” Escobar also appreciated the steep topography that would make it nearly impossible for the military or rival cartels to mount an air attack on the compound. And so, prior to formally surrendering, Escobar began construction on The Cathedral.
How Much Does It Hurt?
A new FDA-approved painkiller has some doctors worried about its abuse potential:
On October 25, 2013, the FDA announced it had approved the drug. The agency gave its rationale later in a statement: “In the case of Zohydro ER [extended release], we determined that the benefits of the product outweigh its risks.” (The FDA has taken a public beating ever since; every time the FDA defends its decision, the makers of Zohydro post it on the company website like an endorsement.)
Before the sun came up the day after Zohydro’s approval, an opiophile had posted this reaction online: “When a 50 mg Zorro hits the block, it’s gonna fetch a big ol’ price, I betcha. And it’s anti-abuse-proof. Hell, yeah, I can see the Tweens lining up at my klinik already.”
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