The New Yorker articles from August 2002

The New Yorker archives from August 2002

Power Alleys.(Ball Park Lanes bowling alley near Yankee Stadium in New York, NY)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... As it turns out, baseball and bowling get along famously. The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame in St. Louis is located right across from Busch Stadium. The basement of Fenway Park houses an alley for candlepin bowling. Duckpin...

Mammoth Undertakings.(THE FATE OF THE MAMMOTH; TIME TRAVELER)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... In 413 A.D., Saint Augustine wrote of the discovery of an enormous tooth on the Mediterranean shore: "If it were cut down into teeth such as we have, a hundred, I fancy, could have been made out of it." He went on: "For though the bodies of...

HIGH HOPES.(US economy)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... When things are going badly, there is a natural tendency to say that they can't get much worse. As the stock market tumbled in recent weeks, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, President Bush, and many others succumbed to that tendency....

ONE FAST FISH.(race between crab and snakehead)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... To the list of dream matchups devised around campfires and pitchers of beer--Wilt vs. Shaq, Mac vs. Venus, grizzly vs. crocodile--add one more: turtle vs. snakehead. It would be some race, a turtle and a fish. The early line in Chinatown is...

CITIZEN SPIES.(Humor)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... When Oscar Wilde wrote, "There are many things that we would throw away, if we were not afraid that others might pick them up," he probably did not have in mind garbagemen sifting through old magazines and empty takeout cartons for evidence of...

OH, BEHAVE.(Congressman James Traficant's final floor statements)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... Last Thursday, when the phone rang in the Washington office of the by then former Congressman James Traficant, the only greeting was a singsong intern's voice saying, "Seventeenth District of Ohio." The Congressman's name and title had been...

GANG GREEN'S NEW YELLOWS.(football fans react to New York Jets's experiments with colors and logos)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... One recent morning, Jay Cross, the president of the New York Jets, was sitting in the Jets' new Manhattan office, in a former Prada showroom on West Fifty-seventh Street. Some walls still bore the mint-green paint of the previous tenants, but...

AN AMERICAN TERRORIST.(Dawud Salahuddin)
August 5, 2002... On the evening of July 21, 1980, in Washington, D.C., Dawud Salahuddin, a twenty-nine-year-old African-American convert to Islam who was born David Theodore Belfield, prepared to commit murder. In an empty office at the Iranian Interest Section...

ROUGH DIAMONDS.(Little League baseball in Cuba)
August 5, 2002... Most of the time, the boys in categoria pequena--the Cuban equivalent of Little League baseball--play on days when there hasn't been a coup in Latin America, or at least not in a country that supplies a lot of oil to Cuba. Unfortunately, the...

THE NAKED FACE.(research on interpreting facial expression)
August 5, 2002... Some years ago, John Yarbrough was working patrol for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. It was about two in the morning. He and his partner were in the Willowbrook section of South Central Los Angeles, and they pulled over a sports...

BEAU NASH.(Ogden Nash)(Brief Article)
August 5, 2002... Ogden Nash hasn't been around for a while, but the need for him remains steady. Readers who counted on him for more than forty years in these pages--this one, at least--still instinctively look for the restorative Nashian couplet or clarifying...

MAN OF STEEL.(sculptor Richard Serra)(Interview)
August 5, 2002... In the long and often embattled career of Richard Serra, no event has been more cathartic than his most recent New York exhibition, which opened last October at the Gagosian Gallery on West Twenty-fourth Street. The opening had been delayed by...

SONGBIRD.(Maya Angelou)
August 5, 2002... By the time the poet and playwright Maya Angelou published the first volume of her memoirs, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," at the age of forty-one, she had already survived a number of personal misfortunes that might have crushed a lesser...

THE MISSING.
August 5, 2002... If there was ever a moment for Bruce Springsteen to take back his place at rock's center stage, this would be it. His last album of new work, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," came out seven years ago, in 1995. After that--despite an extensive world...

GOING WITH IT.(Full Frontal; The Last Kiss)
August 5, 2002... Now and then, big-time filmmakers undergo curious moments of confusion in which they imagine that what they are doing--concocting characters and emotions, then assembling the scenes in an artificial progression called a story--is somehow...

Art on the Edge.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... "Kruchenykh and I have illustrated some books together which are selling very well," the Russian Futurist Olga Rozanova told her sister in 1913. Although the Futurists loved the mechanized look, their books were homemade, usually stapled, and...

ON TO IRAQ?(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... On Monday, July 1st, in the province of Oruzgan, in south-central Afghanistan, an American AC-130 gunship unleashed its fearful firepower on the village of Kakrak and its surroundings. A big wedding party was taking place, and some of the...

A CONFEDERACY OF DEMOCRATS.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... The Democratic Leadership Council, which bivouacked at a midtown hotel for a "national conversation" last week, trailing a string of Presidential hopefuls and heavy elements of the political press corps, is perhaps the nerdiest of all political...

THINK OF ENGLAND.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... Every country has an ideal picture of itself; but not every country gets the chance to vote for it. After a shortlist proposed by readers of Country Life, and a final decision by a parish council of media worthies, Britain's Best View has just...

TEETH.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... On a recent Sunday afternoon, John Dumke and Kristina Harvey's two young sons were digging in the sand on Gibson Beach, in Bridgehampton, when Harvey noticed something odd. An unusual number of gulls and terns were diving at the water, at a...

SHORT AND DISTORT.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... For J. P. Morgan Chase, the trouble started on Monday, July 22nd, when a Senate subcommittee raised questions about the role that the bank, along with other institutions, played in helping Enron set up a "maze of financial transactions that... ..

THE NEW TEXAN.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... Lawrence Wright on Dallas and Ross Perot In the autumn of 1960, the people of Texas were given the chance--legitimately--to vote twice in the same election for Lyndon Johnson, who appeared on the ballot both as John F. Kennedy's running...

URBAN LEGENDS.(They Might Be Giants)
August 12, 2002... John Flansburgh and John Linnell--partners in the musical duo They Might Be Giants--were on their way out of a trendy little restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when the young waiter who had served them caught up to them. "You make good...

THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... In the early afternoon of June 14th, I stepped out of the Karachi airport into suffocating heat. When there was no sign of the car that was supposed to pick me up, I found a taxi; as we entered the city and neared the Marriott Hotel, the...

PASSION FRUIT.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... Nobuyoshi Araki's latest book presents many challenges, to local tastes, to legal standards (censorship laws forbid its publication in Japan), but most of all to shoplifters: "Araki by Araki," a collection of a thousand images taken over the...

THE GANG'S ALL HERE.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... A Hell's Angels photo portfolio, by Sylvia Plachy HOLLISTER, CALIFORNIA Without prejudice, I passed up the chance last month to buy a five-dollar copy of a panoramic photograph inscribed "Northern California Gypsy Tour, Bolado Park,...

POLITICAL HEAT.(Brief Article)
August 12, 2002... In the first week of July, 1995, a strong high-pressure air mass developed over the plains of the Southwest and began moving slowly eastward toward Chicago. Illinois usually gets its warm summer air from the Gulf of Mexico, and the air coming...

FIELD TRIP.(M. Night Shyamalan)(Interview)
August 12, 2002... An interview with M. Night Shyamalan, by David Denby This is only a stab in the dark, but could it be that M. Night Shyamalan--the maker of "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable"--harbors, in the depths of his heart, the ambition to be an...

Poster Children.(poster art collecting)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Although the poster dealer Gail Chisholm has been in the business for three decades, you can still find her lurking around Paris on Wednesdays at 4 A.M., making a deal for a placard or two. "It's when they do the trade-over--you know, when they...

Spies Like Them.(two books about spies and spying)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Assigned to a remote outpost of the Asian subcontinent in the spring of 1987, Jonna Goeser, an expert in clandestine photography, disguise, and false documentation--she can facilitate a "quick ethnic change" on demand--finds herself entangled...

MINE SHAFT.(Hollywood portrayal of nine rescued Quecreek miners)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... In a season of dolor--when the news is mostly of economic ruin, climatic foreboding, the abduction of children, and, of course, terrorism, war, and rumors of war--the rescue of the Quecreek Nine was an interlude of gladness. Nine coal miners...

A PATCH OF EARTH.(monument to Irish potato famine of 19th Century)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... What does a New York lament look like? Green--at any rate, if you're Irish. Down by the unhealed scar of lower Manhattan, at the northern tip of Battery Park City, a brilliant, heavily irrigated field of clover, bog grass, rushes, and heather,...

HELLO MUDDAH, HELLO FADDAH.(Camp Broadway)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Box-office is down on Broadway, but the most cheerful and high-spirited theatrical producer in town last week was Camp Broadway, yielding three musicals--"Oklahoma!," "State Fair," and "On the Town"--plus a number of perks. The performers,...

TEMPTED.(theatrical producer Robert Wilson)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... On a hot day in early August, under the large tent that provides rehearsal and working spaces at the Watermill Center, in Watermill, Long Island, about forty-five people were waiting for Robert Wilson. As anyone who has worked with Wilson or...

DRY MARTINI.(classic cocktail)
August 19, 2002... The Martini is in, the Martini is back--or so young friends assure me. At Angelo and Maxie's, on Park Avenue South, a thirtyish man with backswept Gordon Gekko hair lowers his cell as the bartender comes by and says, "Eddie, gimme a Bombay...

THE FRUIT DETECTIVE.
August 19, 2002... One hot summer day not long ago, just as the specialty food stores around town were putting up "First of the Season" signs to advertise their peaches, a rare and extraordinary shipment of apricots appeared in Manhattan. They were white...

SAPIDISSIMA.(shad-roes)(Recipe)
August 19, 2002... The roe that may go to the tickling of a single palate for one meal would be capable of development into thousands of lusty fishes that, even without a miracle, might feed the multitude.--Dr. J. Ernest Scott, Bucks County Historical Society,...

EVERYONE LIES.(restaurant food safety regulation)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... People often ask Esmond Anderson where he goes to eat. The truth is he rarely eats out. During seven and a half years as a restaurant inspector with the New York City Department of Health, Anderson scrutinized some two thousand commercial...

THE COOKING GAME.(cooks as artists)
August 19, 2002... I enjoy the company of cooks. I admire them because they are hard workers, and because they make delicious things. But, more than that, I like to contemplate the way they have to think in order to make the things they make. They are the last...

DISAPPEARING DISHES.(cataloguing regional Mexican cuisine)
August 19, 2002... In a peaceful town perched high on the rolling brown hills of Oaxaca, Diana Kennedy, cook, writer, and foremost authority on Mexican food, is hard at work on her latest research project. In a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, khaki trousers,...

THE REPORTER'S KITCHEN.
August 19, 2002... The kitchen where I'm making dinner is a New York kitchen. Nice light, way too small, nowhere to put anything unless the stove goes. My stove is huge, but it will never go. My stove is where my head clears, my impressions settle, my reporter's...

THE SECRET OF EXCESS.(television chef Mario Batali)
August 19, 2002... The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the "myth of Mario" was during a weekend in January last year, when I invited him to dinner with some friends. Batali, the chef and co-owner of Babbo, an Italian...

SEA URCHIN.(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes Calvin Trillin on telling red wine from white ...

A SANDWICH.(pastrami at Langer's Deli in Los Angeles)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes Calvin Trillin on telling red wine from white ...

AS THE FRENCH DO.(recipe from "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook")(Recipe)
August 19, 2002... Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes Calvin Trillin on telling red wine from white Adam Gopnik on a...

THE RED AND THE WHITE.
August 19, 2002... Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes Adam...

SWEET MEMORY.(cuisine - India)
August 19, 2002... Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami Calvin Trillin on telling red wine from white Adam...

RAW FAITH.(cheese-making nun Mother Noella Marcellino)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... If it's all the same to you, Mother Noella Marcellino would rather you didn't call her the cheese nun. It's true that she makes cheese--a New England variation on the unctuous Saint-Nectaire of Auvergne. And, yes, she lives in a Benedictine...

THE DOMESTIC MALE.(learning to cook)(Brief Article)
August 19, 2002... Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes Calvin Trillin on telling red wine from white Adam...

FOOD PROCESSOR.
August 19, 2002... Chang-rae Lee on sea urchin in Seoul Janet Malcolm reopens "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" Julian Barnes on being a man in the kitchen Nora Ephron on the perfect pastrami Madhur Jaffrey on honey and green mangoes Calvin...

HITLER AS ARTIST.
August 19, 2002... Adolf Hitler was an artist--a modern artist, at that--and Nazism was a movement shaped by his aesthetic sensibility. Cosmopolitan Vienna incubated his peculiar genius as well as his hideous ideas. These views have been in the air recently, and...

SHOWTIME AT THE APOLLO.
August 19, 2002... Throughout his career, George C. Wolfe has consistently been less influenced by the theatre than by film. Whether as the playwright of considerable promise who brought us "The Colored Museum" (1986), or as the director of considerable skill who...

ACTION!
August 19, 2002... Vin Diesel, the star of the spy-movie pastiche "XXX," has serious pecs and abs and, I'm told, a provocative belly button (it's high). He shaves his head, and his voice is a laughing street rumble with a slightly acrid, burned-onion edge--he is...