Oh, the people I know
Last week Gawker ran an article by Doree Shafrir entitled, “A Cheat Sheet to the Secret Nicknames of the Literary Elite,” a list designed to be a helpful guide for literary-minded folks to gauge how “in” they are in certain circles. Shafrir provides this useful example: “Everyone will know you’re a poser if you don’t call [NY Times movie critic] A.O. Scott “‘Tony’” (too true!). She then provides her list of nicknames, which she encourages us all to “feel free to pepper [our] conversation with at the next Lapham’s Quarterly party”.
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of all these Lapham parties. Lewis Lapham (or “The Lap” as I call him) is a party animal… it never stops with that guy.
Obviously, I’m kidding. The Lap has never invited me to any of his ragers (and they are ragers), but I appreciate these types of lists. They really put me in my place. After all, I work in publishing in Not-NYC, USA… and since Shafrir’s list is comprised of “mostly dudes…and a lot of New Yorker writers,” (but hey, “maybe it’s a prep school thing”), I guess there are only two choices if you want to hang with the “in crowd”:
1. Move to NYC, attend prep school, and secure a postition at the New Yorker.
[Note: if you're a female, #1 will also require some "cosmetic surgurey."]
-OR-
2. Make your own list of nicknames.
I’m going with #2.
Since the New Yorker does not print it’s masthead, the fact that I’ve got a complete list of every person man on staff (circa 2006), and their nickname, shows just how “in” I am. Ready to feel included?
Here we go:
Louis “Cans” Cona, VP & Publisher
Michael “The Christmas Truck” Hess, Associate Publisher
David “Pickles” Remnick, Editor
Jacob “The Ladder” Lewis, Managing Editor
Henry “Hanky Panky” Finder, Editorial Director
Roger “Angels in the Outfield” Angell, Senior Editor
Jeffrey “All Beef” Frank, Senior Editor
John “Ramsey” Bennet, Senior Editor
Hendrik “Kraftwerk” Hertzberg, Senior Editor
John “The Aging Dreamboat” Cassidy, Business & Economics Writer
James “Woobie” Surowiecki, Finance Columnist
Ken “Punchbuggy” Auletta, Media Industry News Columnist
Ben “Thumbs” Greenman, Calendar & Events Editor
Leo “Harry” Carey & Henry “Hanky Panky” Finder, Books Editors
Calvin “Hobbes” Tomkins, Visual Arts Critic
Peter “Paul” Schjeldahl, A&E Critic
Alex “Paradise City” Ross, Classical Music Critic
David “Debbie” Denby, Film Critic
John “The Count” Lahr, Theatre Critic
Daniel “Monica” Zalewski, Senior Editor (features)
Nick “The Soft Pretzel” Paumgarten, Editor (features)
Jeffrey “Jeffrey” Toobin, Legal/Legislation Writer
Malcolm “The Million Dollar Baby” Gladwell, Science Writer
Bob “Scribbles” Mankoff, Cartoons Editor
Wow, that felt great–I really feel a connection to the New Yorker’s (male) staff. I can’t wait to throw these names around… if only The Lap would call.
In the meantime, here are some fun things to discover:
Paper surgery: or mangled portraits.
Get a free Yale education. Seriously.
Cop killers and midgets in diapers: NYC 1930-1960.
Some clever bastard self-publishes an essay about milk on Amazon, and others follow.
A new take on old forms of sculpture.
The petty jealousy of literary giants.
How to camouflage a battleship.
Wow. Math really is everywhere.
Star Wars retro porn.
About the Yale thingofmajigs: MIT does those online course things too: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
And to think, I paid to go to a public university. I feel like an idiot.
They actually aren’t the entire course. I tried doing one for the Old Testament, and I got a syllabus, a reading list, and a very condensed set of lecture notes.
Sure, one could go all autodidact/Good Will Hunting with these courses, but I imagine it’d take a lot more work to get them to make up for the knowledge of an actual human prof.
Still, I love the idea, and I might give it another go this summer.
I just bought R. Crumb’s illustrated version of the Old Testament and I can’t wait to read it.
I loved John “Bennett” Ramsey.
Fantastic post! I now will go back to Kathryn’s post and just say “what Steve said” whenever I want to make the point of male dominance in the literary market. :-)
I’m also now very confused though. Since Math is everywhere, should I go with the Yale or MIT online education? Probably MIT, right?
Norman “The Femme” Mailer and I once went on a three day drunk at The Lap’s summer digs in Bridgehampton. Salman “Chuckles” Rushdie showed up with Pickles and Woobie, but The Femme wouldn’t let them stay until they agreed to a kind of round robin tournament of Greco-Roman wrestling, which was to commence immediately. The Lap insisted on filming the whole thing, and brought in Jay “Valley Girl” McInerney to do a kind of play by play, with Kurt “Rocket Pants” Vonnegut adding color. You could tell that Rocket Pants favored Woobie, but Pickles dominated, of course, which was no surprise to anyone who knows anything. Which reminds me of a night at Elaine’s, when Paradise City, Punchbuggy, The Femme, and Cans thought it would be a good idea to……………………
Sam, I had no idea you were so down with the in crowd. It reminds me of this one time me and my three droogs were down at the Korova Milkbar making up our rassodocks what to do with the evening. What happened was we tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood. Good times. Just thinking about it now makes me smeck.
Giggles Plimpton was there, too, right? He was always there.
[...] to do? I’d like to pick a side, preferably before AWP (just in case I find myself at one of Lewis “The Lap” Lapham’s parties, I’ll want to be able to start berating “Chuckles” Rushdie with my opinions [...]