Jan 11, 2010
Bossy: Reading So You Don’t Have To
Bossy has this very interesting medical condition which brings her great anxiety, and that medical condition is called A Subscription To The New Yorker Magazine.
Bossy has been reading The New Yorker since she was a small girl, where reading equals flipping through pages for the cartoons. But as soon as Bossy grew up and became a mom — not necessarily in that order — Bossy’s dad decided it was time for Bossy to receive her own subscription, and so Bossy’s dad makes this his annual Christmas present to Bossy.
It’s the gift that keeps on giving. And giving and giving and sister mercy giving, owing to the fact The New Yorker is a weekly magazine, and Bossy wants you to know a week rolls around awfully fast when six months of unread magazines are rolling their eyes.
But one of Bossy’s New Year’s resolutions she forgot to make is a commitment to stay on top of her reading. And so every night Bossy has been making her New Yorker magazine a priority. Take for instance this latest New Yorker from January 4th. Please.
Shall we begin? First Bossy turns to the Contributor page to learn more about the various writers contained within this issue:
Next Bossy checks out The Mail:
And then, since Bossy lives a commutable distance to New York City, Bossy peruses with great interest the multiple pages associated with events happening in and around the city, in the categories of art, music, dance, theater, movies, and literature:
Next Bossy moves into the section aptly named The Talk of the Town, which features a handful of short articles covering hot and quirky topics across the national and local arena:
Skip skip skip, which brings us to The Financial Page, a weekly behind-the-scenes look at something associated with the economy:
And then Bossy moves into the heart of the magazine, which contains fuller-length articles on a wide range of subjects, beginning with this look at The University of California Berkeley:
Next Bossy came across an article about the band Vampire Weekend, who, among other things, are graduates of Columbia University:
And then Bossy read with great interest an article about the cofounder and CEO of Whole Foods:
Next there was a very informative piece about Vincent van Gogh, offering a new perspective on the events that led to the severing of his ear:
And then there was this captivating fiction piece:
Next there was a review of several books recently written about actress Grace Kelly:
And then there was a review of a tenor performing Schubert for the Lincoln Center’s Great Performance Series:
Next there was a review of the movie Avatar:
And finally, Bossy stared at this photo for an hour trying to think of a clever caption for The New Yorker’s weekly caption contest:
P.S. There were problems with the comment section earlier today which rendered the first blog visitors unable to comment, followed by a period in which every commenter was “Anonymous.” Apologies from Camp Bossy, where each commenter is as beloved as something salty dipped in chocolate.
Here’s what Bossy was up to last year: Click here to see Bossy’s Thank You video for those who participated in her Excellent 10,000-mile 35-day cross country road trip.
Don’t know why I feel the need to test this… but I do.
What I want to know is, “Did you use your awesome tabletop tripod for this photo shoot?”
I had no idea that Lyle Lovett is a dead ringer for Vincent van Gogh.
bossy- I think most of these articles would cure your insomnia
Aw Bossy — how wonderful of you to do our reading for us. And believe me, you did a more thorough job of that mag than I would have thought possible. One of the joys of our vagabond life is having NO subscriptions — and not feeling guilty about it!
We get The New Yorker at our house, too, and boy, you couldn’t be more right about how quickly those things pile up and make you feel bad about yourself. I do sometimes get to The Talk of the Town, but otherwise, yes, it’s all about the last page cartoons. We’re pretty good at picking the winner from the finalists. My husband sent in a caption once, but I guess they didn’t think it was as funny as he did.
Do you mind if I ask the surgeon to give me those boobs too?
I hate The New Yorker. There is rarely anything of interest to me in there and it’s my MiL’s magazine anyway. But she NEVER has time to read them, and she never puts them anywhere to read later, so they just hang around with the rest of her mail and her innumerable catalogs, cluttering up the dining room where we spend all our time in the winter.
You may guess that clutter is an Issue for me.
Whole Foods and global warming makes perfect sense.
I do everything you do except that I always read the Talk of the Town, even if that is all I read. I’ve only gotten as far as the UC Berkeley article in that issue. I made the error of reading something other than The New Yorker last week so am now behind in my reading. I find the modern visual art reviews are the ones that cross my eyes. I mean what the fork are they talking about?
My mother gets me a subscription every year for Christmas too. But not to The New Yorker. It’s for Reader’s Digest. Which thankfully, only comes once a month. I leave in the bathroom, which I think is an excellent place for it.
So the CEO of Whole Foods doesn’t believe in global warming? Was he also a fan of the Bush administration?
Bossy, you read the New Yorker exactly the way I do…or, ummm, would…if I bothered to even subscribe to a magazine in the first place. Thank goodness Bossy’s writing is online.
I had very well intentioned hippie relatives who gave us a subscription to The Nation every year. Used to go from the mail directly into recycling bin. Generally too much of a buzz kill.
PS. We live in NY and love to come to Phila for great restaurants and salons – go figure.
“when I said a hot piece of tail this wasn’t what I meant”
Meleah reads magazines the same exact way as Bossy does. And she thinks the CEO of Whole Foods looks really creepy in that photo.
I kind of like the tail…
BH
Wouldn’t you feel great if you sent a couple/all/how many you want of those almost completely skipped copies of the The NewYorker to me, an avid fan who only gets to read it in ‘Gary’s Muffins’?
and the cartoon should have something with ‘Bette Midler’ in the caption
Farty learned that the CEO of Whole Foods didn’t believe in global warming via the Twitter. It’s so educational.
P.S. Does BOSSY want a mountain of unread New Scientists?
…but I WAS looking at your face while you were talking to me!
How about some unread O, the magazine. Even once a month they pile up quickly.
How f-ing funny !I took that SAME exact issue to Sunday breakfast with me. YESTERDAY.
Except being Operagal, I read the classical music piece first.
That was the most fun time reading the New Yorker. Ever. I love Read Along with Bossy almost as much as Watch Along With Bossy, especially the Barefoot Contessa programs!
“I feel like a fish out of water at the PTA meetings.”
And comments have returned. Thank goodness.
My 17-year-old daughter has been getting gift subscriptions of Reader’s Digest from her great-grandma for about four years.. I think that she was reading the comics in them one time and Grandma took that to mean that she’d like the magazine. Heh.
The hell with the boobs. I want her abs.
I guess I should be thankful the O magazine subscription Mother-in-Law renews for every year comes only once a month.
Good God do I hear ya on this one. I can’t keep up.
@23 (Dawn in Austin): Great caption! Made me LOL! I like the other ones, too. Clever council!
And now I don’t have the read The New Yorker! Not that I ever did.
You have aptly described exactly why I don’t subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly anymore, even though it’s only Monthly, and why after that I knew I could never, ever get The New Yorker.
Love Dawn’s caption, but I think the mermaid is saying, “Why did you throw out all those New Yorkers? I was saving them up to make a shirt!”
that or, “When I promised that taking me home would never cost you a dime, I didn’t think you’d take me literally.”
And now Bossy knows why I stopped subscribing to The New Yorker. The guilt was crippling. But I do miss those cartoons.
Oh yeah, I used to subscribe to the New Yorker before, but just couldn’t keep up with reading too. They started piling up in the bathroom, because all I had time to look at in the morning rush to get ready for work, and doing my ablutions were the cartoons. I think the fill in your own caption cartoon in the back of the mag is the best.
Plus, some of the articles are so esoteric. I mean come on, do we really need to read 5 pages of why glow worms are going to save the planet? Get on with it already.
“Does this tail make me look fishy?”
I don’t have any subscriptions any more. Not allowed at the Poverty Party. There has to be somebody good on the cover to make me buy.
But thanks for reading that one for us. Any day now I’m going to read my Dec O because Ellen is on the cover, my Dec Glamour because Michelle O is on the cover and my Dec More because Sigourney Weaver is on the cover.
Caption: “Is it wrong of me to crave Sushi?”
It has been a very long time since I’ve read a New Yorker. Thanks for the quick version and did you notice how much the CEO and founder of Whole Foods looks like Lyle Lovett’s brother or some relative? It stopped me dead in my scroll to look a couple of times.
I grew up in the 50s a fairly cosmopolitan family in Wisconsin — actually a pretty cosmopolitan state. For most of my early childhood, the only newspaper was the New York TImes (delivered in the mail two days late) and the only cartoons were in the New Yorker. How sick is that? I didn’t even know about the funny papers till I was about 10. I can relate.
The Mistah and I stare and stare at those cartoons on the last page, trying to come up with something witty, pithy and clever. And fail every time. Oh, to be Laurence Lytton, who seems to have a finalist caption in *every week*. The rat.
I used to get “Family Fun” magazine when my girls were younger, until I realized the cold, guilt-induced sweat I was having while trying to fall asleep each night was due to all the crafts and homemade games/costumes/cute ideas that I hadn’t played or done with them that day/month/year. I still have flashbacks, but cancelling that subscription was a present to myself.
I pick up my New Yorker and read Goings On About Town, and picture myself at the Village Vanguard. Holding sway with the cool jazz people.
I love that John Mackey. From wiki- “has said that he used to be a “democratic socialist” in college, but when he began a business and barely made money while being accused by workers of not paying them enough and customers of charging too high prices, he began to take a more capitalistic worldview and discovered the works of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Friedman.”
Starting your own business can open your eyes to some things.
My Newsweeks pile up like that and I usually skip a third of the articles as well. And yet, I subscribe. Go figure.
“Do these boobs make my tail look fat?”
Ya know, the day this came out, that day when the comments weren’t working but I didn’t realize it, I actually typed out the entire tedious first sentence of the “What Do You Call It” article (about what to call the first decade, whose name actually is “who cares”). That first sentence was such a fine example of bad journalism: what kind of a lead sentence is that??? And then said sentence wouldn’t load as a comment. Karma on Reeb for dissing the New Yorker?
Classicly oblique final phrase in that sentence:
“…the decade upon which we were about to embark.”
Across the continent from New York City in a rural community far, far removed from the Carnegie Deli and the Brooklyn Bridge, there once lived an I Am Bossy reader who read the New Yorker each week. She started with the Contributors page, doggedly read the Mail, and trudged through the culture pages (though she knew not of the 92nd St. Y) until she had read half of the magazine. After a couple of years she was terribly snooty, quite tired and not at all well-read, as her obsessive front-to-back reading kept her from getting to the actual articles. Now she just blogs. The end.