Coming soon. Submissions welcome. Send your reviews or sites you’d like to see reviewed to srhodes@beachwoodreporter.com.
Posted on August 21, 2007
The Periodical Table
By Steve Rhodes
A weekly look at the magazines lying around Beachwood HQ.
Vanity Ad Fair
* P. 185: “Knowing the Rules Makes Her a Schooled Musician. BREAKING THE RULES Makes Her a Jazz Musician.”
– Diana Krall for Rolex
* P. 253: “Whatever’s on your list of things to do in life, do it better with Visa Signature.”
– Elvis Costello for Visa
Do they really need the money that bad?
Posted on August 15, 2007
Reviewing the Reviews
By Steve Rhodes
August 11 – 12.
Publication: New York Times
Cover: A bunch of very tall, thin Harry Potters. For “The Boy Who Lived,” Christopher Hitchens’ review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Yes, that Christopher Hitchens
Posted on August 13, 2007
Challenging Daley
By The Beachwood History Club
“I thought the patronage was an institutional theft of city resources.
– Leon Despres, April 2005
In 2005, former Ald. Leon Despres published Challenging the Daley Machine, his memoir of opposing the reign of Richard J. Daley. He once said of the book, “I am describing the last of the great urban political machines in America and the birth of a new globalized political machine with its permanent campaign and high-tech politics and government, but with the same old-fashioned patronage, nepotism, and corruption which characterized the first Daley Machine.”
Posted on August 12, 2007
The Periodical Table
By Steve Rhodes
A weekly look at the magazines lying around Beachwood HQ.
Error in the Code
“He was a gregarious child, whose hands seemed to hate him,” Richard Preston writes in The New Yorker. “Over time, his fingers had got inside his mouth and nose and had broken out and removed the bones of his upper palate and parts of his sinuses, leaving a cavern in his face. He had also bitten off several fingers.”
This is Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, “the far end of a spectrum of self-injurious behavior.”
In which a man’s right hand will literally try to stop his left hand from tearing himself apart.
American Code
This is a nation tearing itself apart.
Posted on August 10, 2007
Reviewing the Reviews
By Steve Rhodes
August 4 – 5.
Publication: Tribune
Cover: Some crayon thing; it’s a kids issue or something.
Note: I found absolutely nothing to read in this issue. Let’s take a look at the Trib’s books coverage online.
Wow, this page really sucks.
Let’s try the TribBooks blog.
Wow, this blog really sucks.
Posted on August 6, 2007
Reviewing the Reviews
By Steve Rhodes
July 28 – 29
Publication: Tribune
Cover: “DeSPERaTE HOUsEWife: Ellen Baker’s debut novel takes aim at 1950s gender roles in America’s heartland.” So right up the Tribune’s alley.
Other Reviews I Almost Read and May Elsewhere: The Last Tycoons: The Secret History and Americanism; The Fourth Great Western Religion.
Posted on August 2, 2007
The Periodical Table
By Steve Rhodes
A weekly (usually – apologies for falling behind!) roundup of magazines laying around Beachwood HQ.
Bikini Journalism
As a Beachwood reader points out, Amy Jacobson is on the cover of the new New Yorker.
Mr. San Quentin
The must-read in this week’s New Yorker is “Dean of Death Row,” Tad Friend’s profile of Vernell Crittendon, who was ostensibly the spokesman for the famed California prison for 30 years but in reality held a variety of roles including, most importantly, orchestrating executions. What seems most striking about Crittendon to Friend is his uncanny ability to modulate his perfect tone of impartiality with a variety of constituencies, and thus wield an odd kind of power and influence. What struck me the most was Crittendon’s inability to tell the truth; he modulated with himself as well.
Posted on July 26, 2007
PressNotes: Army Manuals and Calamity Culture
By Meghan Van Leuwen
News from Chicago’s academic presses, and other intellectual developments.
1. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Off the presses
* The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual: The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. . With a foreword by John A. Nagl, James F. Amos and David H. Petraeus, and an introduction by Sarah Sewall.
Posted on July 23, 2007
The Periodical Table
By Steve Rhodes
A weekly look at the magazines laying around Beachwood HQ.
Simpsonsology
In an oral history of The Simpsons, Vanity Fair reveals that Fox Broadcasting went so far as to audition replacement voices in the midst of bitter contract negotiations. “You know, the show has made so much money, in so many ways,” says Hank Azaria, the voice of Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy, among others. “Eventually, we just wanted to get our piece of the pie. And Fox is tough. They’re very tough negotiators. Their business model is not to give money away. So it got a little intense at times.”
Rupert Murdoch’s view: “The voices, who have been there since the very beginning, are now getting very large salaries . . . I’m not saying whether they’re worth it or not. Or whether you could replace them or not, but Jim [Brooks] wouldn’t hear of that, because they’re all his friends.”
Posted on July 19, 2007