To Each His Own
A gay couple in Dallas plan for a family and look for a surrogate:
No one is more stunned about two babies on the way than Hanna and Riggs. It’s not that the boys are an utter surprise — “I’ve always thought I’d get married and have kids by the time I was 35,” Hanna says — it’s that the couple never imagined it would be this soon. The men had been planning and saving for a family even before planning their wedding. Because they saw surrogacy as their “first and only choice” for having children, they would need approximately $100,000 — fees for an egg donor, a surrogate, a fertility clinic, medications and attorneys — and that would take time to amass. To learn more about the process, the couple went to dinner last April with the office manager of a Fort Worth fertility clinic, where the specialties are in-vitro fertilization, donor-egg technology and surrogacy. A friend of Riggs’ and Hanna’s had employed the clinic’s services and connected the men to the manager. She had some time-sensitive information: A particularly extraordinary woman, a 35-year-old in Fort Worth, was about to have her third surrogate child and would be ready for another pregnancy in four to six months. She was, the men were told, the ultimate surrogate: tall and thin; healthy deliveries; no mental issues. If they didn’t act now, it would be almost two years before they would have this chance. Hanna and Riggs sent the woman an email that night. A week later, they took her to lunch. “We loved her,” Hanna says. “It was a great match for us.”
In Conversation: SNL’s Lorne Michaels
The producer reflects on how he keeps up with the Saturday Night Live schedule, and how Jimmy Fallon will handle the new Tonight Show:
Conan was an easy decision for me. Both Jay and Dave were essentially my generation—they were boomers. I thought the smart move was to drop down a generation, but if you’re looking at 30 or 28, there’s no one with any experience. I’m more used to putting someone on who’s never been on television before than most people, and that was the bet with Conan. He got roughed up badly, but he came through. The mantra that I used to say to him was, “The longer you’re on, the longer you’re on.” After a while, he just became part of the landscape.
But I think there’s always an alpha, and Dave—he invented late night. Both Jimmy Kimmel and Conan grew up under Dave, to the extent that I grew up under Carson. With Jimmy, and to some degree Seth, I think they were much more influenced by SNL. Jimmy’s not ironic.
Philip Seymour Hoffman: 1967-2014
Here is Lynn Hirschberg’s 2008 New York Times Magazine profile of the actor, who was found dead Feb. 2 in Manhattan:
“In my mid–20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said, after returning to his seat. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.”
First to the Ball
Willie Wood and the Making of the Modern Game: Michael Lewis on America’s first Super Bowl
The game itself lives only in memory: no filmed record exists of the first Super Bowl. It was broadcast on two networks but both of them lost or erased the program. All that remains are the few highlights culled by the N.F.L. before the tapes vanished. Their feel is archaic, of a game from a lost era. The lockers have metal grates and locks. Daring personal behavior consists of sneaking out of the hotel after bed check to dance with airline stewardesses. The kickers kick with their toe, and a sack is just another tackle, not an expression of personal domination to be followed by bestial gesturing. The biggest player on the field is the Chiefs’ Buck Buchanan, who at 6-foot-7 and 287 pounds is regarded as freakishly big. (Today the average fan would wonder why he hadn’t filled out.) It may not be a better time, but it certainly is a more credulous one. Everyone is readily believed, and so everyone is more easily deceived, or assumed to be. The example of the deceptive football mind at work is the play-action pass, in which the quarterback fakes a handoff to freeze the defense before making his throw.
‘So What Do You Do?’: A Reading List
This week’s picks from Emily includes stories from Politico, Vela Magazine, McSweeney’s, and Mother Jones.
Mia’s Story (1992)
Following Dylan Farrow’s open letter detailing her sexual abuse allegations against Woody Allen, a look back at Maureen Orth’s original 1992 Vanity Fair report:
There was an unwritten rule in Mia Farrow’s house that Woody Allen was never supposed to be left alone with their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. Over the last two years, sources close to Farrow say, he has been discussing alleged “inappropriate” fatherly behavior toward Dylan in sessions with Dr. Susan Coates, a child psychologist.
The Ghost Files
Historians are uncovering gaps in the National Archives and analyzing data to find scores of classified documents that should have already been declassified and released to the public:
Krasner, who earned a PhD in mathematics at Columbia, is among a half dozen computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians now working with Connelly on a multimedia research project they call the Declassification Engine. For the past year, this team has been gathering up large numbers of federal documents and creating analytic tools to detect anomalies in the collections. Several of the tools are on the project’s website and available for anyone to use. The one Krasner is developing is intended to find evidentiary traces of important historical episodes — a diplomatic crisis, say, or preparations for a military strike — that scholars until now have failed to notice. The Columbia researchers suspect that by spotting something as subtle as an uptick in a diplomat’s telephone activity they may be able to reveal the existence of historical episodes that the US government has largely suppressed from the public record.
“If you can make out something happening in the shadows, then we can ask: does it seem curious that little information about this event is available in the public record?” says David Allen, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia who is working on the project.
What Really Goes On at the ‘SNL’ After-Party
Paul Brownfield investigates ‘SNL’’s legendary New York after-parties, and whether they’re actually any fun:
“If you had a good show you’re on cloud nine,” said Jon Lovitz. who had a lot of them in the mid–1980s. On the other hand, Mr. Lovitz recalled the forlorn night when he had appeared in only one sketch, and was sitting at the party with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey and Mike Myers.
“It feels like your career’s over,” Mr. Lovitz said. “Honestly, they call it the after-party. In my mind, I only know one time when it actually felt like a party.” (That was in 1990, he said, when Technotronic played their hit “Pump Up the Jam” there.)
The Disposession of Latoya Ammons
Indiana authorities investigate a woman who believes her house is haunted by demonic spirits. They soon start to believe her:
According to Washington’s original DCS report — an account corroborated by Walker, the nurse — the 9-year-old had a “weird grin” and walked backward up a wall to the ceiling. He then flipped over Campbell, landing on his feet. He never let go of his grandmother’s hand.
“He walked up the wall, flipped over her and stood there,” Walker told The Star. “There’s no way he could’ve done that.”
Later, police asked Washington whether the boy had run up the wall, as though performing an acrobatic trick.
No, Washington told them. She said the boy “glided backward on the floor, wall and ceiling,” according to a police report.
The Secret Life of Johnny Lewis
Johnny Lewis was a Hollywood actor who starred in series such as The O.C. and Sons of Anarchy. He soon began exhibiting troubling behavior that led to a grisly murder:
In late October 2011, Lewis lost control of his Triumph motorcycle near Twentynine Palms. At the hospital the staff checked him for signs of a concussion, but he was allowed to leave after tests came back negative. Michael Lewis, however, noticed that his son’s behavior was becoming erratic and bizarre. Had the accident shaken something loose in his brain? he wondered. The elder Lewis scheduled two MRIs, which Johnny refused to undergo. Friends picked up on Lewis’s change in behavior, too. During an acting class in December, he kept speaking in a vaguely British accent. “I asked him about it because I was confused,” Tucker says, “but he shrugged it off.” By the new year Lewis’s behavior would turn from curious to dangerous.
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