By Jonathan Shipley
A weekly roundup of what’s on Shipley’s nightstand.
Swallowing the Spit
There’s really nothing cooler than sword swallowing. Well, maybe dueling. Dueling, and those old Secret Squirrel cartoons. Be that as it may, there’s a great blurb (fourth item) in the May issue of The Atlantic that discusses the medical issues sword swallowers have to contend with on the job. Some common occupational maladies include, well, sore throat, along with chest pain and perforations of the esophagus. Half of the sword swallowers surveyed for the story noted that when they removed the blade it was smudged with blood. Sometimes they vomit blood after the show.
Another Brick
“In the spring of 1929, a man named Patrick Murphy left a bar in Bisbee, Arizona, to bomb the Mexican border town of Naco, a bunny hop of about ten miles (16 kilometers),” writes Charles Bowden in an article about the expanding wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, in the May issue of National Geographic. “He stuffed dynamite, scrap iron, nails, and bolts into suitcases and dropped the weapons off the side of his crop duster as part of a deal with Mexican rebels battling for control of Naco, Sonora. When his flight ended, it turned out he’d hit the wrong Naco, managing to destroy property mainly on the U.S. side, including a garage and a local mining company. Some say he was drunk, some say he was sober, but everyone agrees he was one of the first people to bomb the United States from the air.”
And so it goes.
The Commuters Code
“Last year, Midas, the muffler company, in honor of its fiftieth anniversary, gave an award for America’s longest commute to an engineer at Cisco Systems, in California, who travels three hundred and seventy-two miles – seven hours – a day, from the Sierra foothills to San Jose and back,” writes Nick Paumgarten, in a fun, scary, and compelling story about power commuters – which is increasingly all of us – in the April 16 issue of The New Yorker. “It’s actually exhilarating,” the man told Paumgarten. “When I get in, I’m pumped up, ready to go.”
Closet Case
Why is the R. Kelly case taking so long to come to trial? Sun-Times reporter Abdon Pallasch gives us the update in the cover story (not available online) of Vibe this month. “A combination of reluctant witnesses, legal maneuvering. and just plain fate have allowed Kelly to continue on with his freedom and his career largely unaffected as the specifics of his alleged crimes slowly fade from public memory,” Pallasch writes. “Meanwhile the alleged victim – who witnesses will testify was 14 years old when the videotape was made – celebrated her 22nd birthday in September. At this point, she won’t look like a little girl on the witness stand – when and if she ever takes it.”
Burst Bubbles
Even champagne (or should we be politically correct and say Champagne? We read those trademark ads in Editor & Publisher) has a troubling past, according to “The Not-So-Sweet History of Champagne, in the new issue of Mental Floss. In WWI, for example, trenches on the front ran right through the champagne vineyards. That was a bad vintage. The German army also bombed the hell out of Reims, otherwise known as Champagne Central. (By the way, Wikipedia says that “Contrary to legend and popular belief, the French monk Dom Perignon did not invent champagne.” So that bet is settled.)
Design Fetish
Three experts review design school catalogs, in the current issue of I.D.. And you know what? It’s pretty cool.
Language Fetish
Also in the April 16 New Yorker, John Colapinto reports on his visit to the Piraha tribe in the rain forest of northwestern Brazil, whose language challenges the prevailing Chomskian view of unversial grammar structure. “The Piraha consider all forms of human discourse other than their own to be laughably inferior,” Colapinto writes. [And yet they have] no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, no words for ‘all,’ ‘each’, ‘every’ ‘most’ or ‘few’, terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the building blocks of human cognition.”
Newsweekly Nabobs
American Journalism Review weighs in with a hardy perennial in its April/May issue, exploring whether weekly newsmagazines can find their way and stay relevant in a new media environment. My guess is that the answer is the same as it’s been for the last 30 years or so that this story has been revisited: Only if they adapt.
Gang Green
Al Gore was once savaged for suggesting environmentalism as the next great societal organizing principle, but here comes the insufferable Tom Friedman in The New York Times Magazine with all kinds of half-baked nostrums (he wants to rename “green”; he resists suggesting “Tom Friedman” and instead goes with “Geo-green”) designed not so much to further an argument but to lay claim to an issue he has suddenly discovered and means to make his.
Planet Manny
Did you know that Boston Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez sometimes sneaks through a door in the left field wall to urinate during games? And that he once tried to sell a $4,000 grill on eBay? And that he doesn’t keep track of the count when he’s up to bat? That’s why he steps back into the box so often after ball four.
“Manny, let me ask you something,” former Boston general manager Dan Duquette once ventured. “I was just wondering why you get back in the batter’s box after ball four.”
“I don’t keep track of the balls,” Manny responded, according to “Waiting for Manny” – one of the most enjoyable athlete profiles you’ll read – in the April 23 New Yorker.
“I don’t keep track of the strikes, either, until I got two. Duke, I’m up there looking for a pitch I can hit. If I don’t get it, I wait for the umpire to tell me to go to first. Isn’t that what you’re paying me to do?”
Okie Living
A plea for help in the current issue of Oklahoma Living Magazine: “I am looking for a cooked coleslaw dressing that my mother used to make, using eggs, vinegar, and what else? Can anyone help me? This was poured over shredded cabbage. Write now! Emma Gallyer, RR 5 Box 100, Eufaula, OK, 74432.”
Anybody?
Posted on April 20, 2007