The New Yorker cartoon of the day features what appears to be a leftist protester-type wearing a I Heart NY Except For You Foreigners With Too Much Dough t-shirt (...we don't think it's that funny either). They then decided to tempt fate and tweeted, "What is the one thing about NYC you could live without? #ilovenyexcept." What they don't realize is that they've set in motion the kind of community-splitting argument that may eventually lead to alternate side parking being suspended indefinitely. But in the meantime, what are your exceptions? more ›

Other than a few laughs about chicken dances past, we didn't expect much to come from tonight's reunion of the cast of Arrested Development. Turns out we were dumber than a Blue Man Group alternate understudy: the New Yorker has tweeted that, "Arrested Development coming back for one more TV season before movie." Why would Eustace Tilly lie? more ›

Some New Yorker subscribers have had a few days (or not) to LOL about this week's cover of Mayor Bloomberg gazing at himself in the mirror while seated at a vanity with a box of chocolates (the card reads "To Me"). Today, the press corps asked the cover boy what he thought of the Barry Blitt illustration—turns out that double the Bloomberg is all right with Mike! The Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Howard Saul described Hizzoner as such, "Bloomberg gushed with tremendous pride and happiness. In Yiddish it’s called kvelling." more ›

Whenever we spot Elizabeth Kolbert's byline in The New Yorker's table of contents, we know what page we're turning to first. For over a decade, Kolbert has doggedly reported on the environment (among other things) for the magazine, and also written two books; the most recent is titled Field Notes from a Catastrophe. In recent years, she's chronicled in unsparing detail the causes and effects of global warming, America's role in its acceleration, and Washington's scandalous failure to do anything about it. In this week's issue, Kolbert ponders what a Republican-controlled House of Representatives means for the future of climate change legislation. Would you believe it's not a pretty picture? more ›

Leo Cullum, a TWA pilot and cartoonist whose first piece appeared in The New Yorker in 1977, died of cancer in Malibu Saturday. He was 68. Cullum was the most-published cartoonist in the magazine during the mid-90s, when he still turned out work between shifts flying for TWA. Before that, he was a bomber in the Vietnam War, and conducted bombing runs over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. "Who these were secret from I’m still not sure," Cullum told Holy Cross magazine in 2006. "The North Vietnamese certainly knew it wasn’t the Swiss bombing them." more ›

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has admitted to planning the September 11, 2001 attacks and who may or may not be tried in NYC, is the subject of a feature in this week's New Yorker. An abstract of the article by Terry McDermott says, "Insofar as we know Mohammed, we see him as a brilliant behind-the-scenes tactician and a resolute ideologue. As it turns out, he is earthy, slick in a way, but naïve, and seemingly motivated as much by pathology as ideology." more ›

Rapper Kanye West recently, and finally, joined Twitter. He may be fashionably late to the 140-character game, but he's delivering—and possibly even dominating. His little lexical gems have included, "Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on," and "wuuuuuuuuuut I need this goblet in my life!!!" more ›

In the aftermath of the Times Square car bomb scare, many people are wondering if any preventative measures, such as the "Ring of Steel," could have (or should have) caught the SUV bomb. But others, such as children's-health advocate Irwin Redlener, want to add a different element to the conversation: preparedness. more ›

According to actor Sam Rockwell, currently starring on Broadway with Christopher Walken, "we all do impersonations of Chris these days, every actor has a Chris Walken impersonation." And in this week's New Yorker, it sounds as if Walken doesn't really get all of that. more ›

It's starting to seem like there's no safe place for your feet these days—not on subway seats, not on the street, and definitely not in the hands of a fraudulent, murderous, calloused podiatrist. Jeffrey Toobin (no stranger to controversy himself lately) details the strange web of criminal podiatry that has spread through the city in the last two decades in this week's New Yorker. Much of it revolves around Citywide Foot Care, a defunct podiatric empire whose doctors were accused of charging patients for unnecessary and non-existent procedures, as well as defrauding Medicare—they targeted 'alta cocka,' "which is an old person of frail mind...these people were easily swayed into having surgery.” more ›

For the third year in a row, The New Yorker's celebrated its anniversary by asking readers to submit illustrated riffs on the magazine's iconic cover, created in 1925 by Rea Irvin, the magazine’s first art editor, who also designed the distinctive New Yorker headline type. The original features a fictional dandy, Eustace Tilley, inspecting a butterfly. As Louis Menand explained, the character "seems to be saying something about the magazine itself, and the question is: What? Is the man with the monocle being offered as an image of the New Yorker reader, a cultivated observer of life’s small beauties, or is he being ridiculed as a foppish anachronism? Is it a picture of bemused sophistication or of starchy superciliousness?" (If you're a subscriber, you can peruse the first issue, online here.) The first three images in this gallery are taken from the official "winners" this year; our favorites follow in the last four images. more ›

Even as his plans to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 plotters in a Lower Manhattan courthouse seem to be unraveling, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder insists that "[h]istory will show that the decisions we've made are the right ones." In a New Yorker profile, Holder claims that some of the politicians who have blasted the Obama administration for its policies on terror have "a desire to ignore the facts to try to score political points." more ›

For almost four decades, Carolyn Klass toiled in a lab at Cornell University identifying insects. For a $25 dollar fee, people from all over the world would send her pests they wanted identified, and in recent years business was booming because of the bedbug renaissance. Klass would examine each specimen and reply back with a thoughtful note, such as: more ›

Last week, Justice A. Kirke Bartley was caught using a placard to circumvent parking meters while off-duty. Now this week's The New Yorker reports on the "dashboard diva" wars. (You need a subscription to read full article here) Ground zero is Brooklyn Heights, where one "female executive" is so fed up she keeps a detailed log of the parking habits of placard abusers to aid in a letter-writing campaign. She described a recent interaction with one such abuser: "One day, she confronted a woman and her mother, who were getting into an illegally parked black sedan with medical license plates, which often had a placard in the window. 'I said, 'How do you like your parking space?' the executive recalled. 'And she said, 'I went to school for many years and worked very hard for this.' And I said, 'For a parking space?' And she said, 'Yes.' And her mother said to her, 'Close the window!' " more ›

The Observer has compiled a list to compile a masthead for the New Yorker's massive staff, though noting, "Keep in mind that because of the unique, internal logic of the magazine, job titles are a strange thing—someone who may be a staff writer may have only contributed a single piece in the last few years." Gawker did some counting: "Total Number of 'Critics': 11; Total Number of Staff Writers: 66(!); Total Number of 'Editors' of One Sort or Another: 31..." The New Yorker has been generally exempt from Conde Nast's cost-cutting. more ›

The gloves are off! Brazilian paper O Globo is angry that the New Yorker of published an article about crime and drugs in Rio just days before the International Olympic Committee decides the location of the 2016 summer games. This comes the day after former New Yorker coverboy President Obama flew to Copenhagen on behalf of the Chicago 2016 bid. However, besides the gang violence, Rio may not have the financial capacity to host the games as it recently had to cancel several international swimming events. Whatever, the New Yorker is probably just bitter that we didn't get the bid for 2012, right? more ›

Artist Jorge Colombo has impressed many with his drawings created on his iPhone (by way of the Brushes application. Now, his drawing of a 42nd Street hot dog stand is this week's New Yorker cover. Colombo tells the New Yorker he "painted" the cover while standing outside Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum for an hour. more ›

After over 70 years serving as both a source for top-notch instruments and a hang-out for musicians between gigs, Manny's Music on "Music Row" (West 48th Street) is said to be going out of business soon. Among other famous clients, Jimi Hendrix bought many of his guitars there, and Ringo Starr got the Ludwig drum set used in the Beatles’ “Ed Sullivan Show” appearances from Manny’s. The New Yorker recently spent a few hours palling around with Manny's cantankerous owner Henry Goldrich (son of Manny), and musicians John Sebastian (Lovin’ Spoonful), Tom Chapin, and Leslie West (the Vagrants). As if to illustrate the signature "thinly veiled hostility" of Manny's staff, Goldrich quickly instructed West, "Get out of my face. Seriously. You’re bothering me." And when West asked Henry if he ever played an instruments, he replied, "I played cash register." Though it's still not quite clear if the fat lady has indeed sung at Manny's, workers are busy scanning all the hundreds of publicity photographs of musicians that line the store’s walls, which will be preserved on a website called Manny’s Virtual Wall. And here's video of the visit. more ›

Earlier today, Washington Post book critic Ron Charles used his Twitter feed to pass along a juicy bit of gossip about The New Yorker: "Frequent contributor tells me the New Yorker is considering switch to biweekly or monthly. Recession pains." Charles wasn't the first to speculate about this, but his twist (twittst?) caught fire amongst the Twitteratti, and it seemed plausible enough, given Conde Nast's recent layoffs. more ›

Tomorrow will mark Alex Rodriguez's first time answering questions in public from anyone outside of ESPN's Peter Gammons since news broke that he tested positive for steroids in 2003. The Yankees have scheduled a press conference for A-Rod at their spring training facilities in Tampa's Steinbrenner Field tomorrow. more ›

In its roundup of the top ten media blunders of 2008, Politico's Michael Calderone puts the New Yorker "Politics of Fear" cover at #8 (between the mainstream media's reluctance to acknowledge the National Enquirer's reports of John Edwards' affair and how VP guessing was out of control). Calderone writes, "The Zabar’s set were in on the joke. But some didn’t see the humor in the illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama sharing a terrorist fist-jab and dressed, respectively, as a Muslim and Angela Davis-style black radical, with an Osama bin Laden painting on the mantle and an AK-47 leaning against the fireplace, in which burned the American flag." But he adds that, after the uproar, things ended up okay: "[New Yorker writer] Lizza and editor David Remnick — whose excellent piece on Obama in the same issue was largely overlooked in the ensuing dustup — are working on books dealing with Obama." Plus, Obama won. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times criticizes Corton, the new Tribeca restaurant helmed by enfant terrible chef Paul Liebrandt. Others at Time Out and NY Mag have raved, and Bruni's praise isn't exactly muted either: "At Corton [Liebrandt] calms down and wises up, accepting that an evening in a restaurant shouldn’t be like a visit to a fringe art gallery: geared to the intellect, reliant on provocation. It needn’t demand raptness. And it must, in the course of whatever else it means to accomplish, leave a person eager for the next bite and intent on the one after that." Makes sense, three stars. more ›

The Times tagged along with the New Yorker's Calvin Trillin for his "gastronomic walking tour" through Chinatown and Little Italy on Sunday, as part of the magazine's eponymous festival. The $100 tickets sell out instantly every year because the event is limited to just 35 nerds—er, gourmands—with money to burn. Trillin led participants on an erudite eating tour of his favorite little haunts on the two mile stroll. Among other revelations, he said he likes to eat standing up. And he doesn't care about restaurant reviewing: "If I couldn’t eat in a four-star restaurant again, it would mean nothing to me. But if someone said I couldn’t eat any more cilantro, I would be very upset." Also, the greatest development in American cuisine according to Trillin? No, not the Turducken; it's the Immigration Act of 1965, which allowed more third world immigrants. more ›

There was a time when one might have been surprised to find an article about, say, Girl Talk nestled within the fussy pages of The New Yorker. But for years now Sasha Frere-Jones, the magazine's pop music critic, has been broadening the magazine's appeal with his perceptive and funny observations on everything from Radiohead to Coldplay. (Ha.) (See also: Miscegenation.) Jones is also that rare breed of critic who actually creates in his field of interest; his band Ui has been a presence in the downtown avant-rock scene since 1990. more ›

Remember that New Yorker cover satirizing right wing scaremongering about Barack Obama and his wife Michelle? It was a big deal for a couple days over the summer, way back during those Halcyon days before the economic collapse drove us out here to these abandoned condos on the West Side where we survive on acid rain water and squab. Oh, right, that has happened (yet). In the meantime, let's have a laugh with the new cover of Entertainment Weekly, which features Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart recreating that controversial illustration. more ›

The New Yorker has a characteristically sprawling profile piece on Alec Baldwin in this week's issue, and the 30 Rock star is characteristically candid about life, his career, and his future. Or, as his brother William puts it, “There’s always something for him to fucking whine about.” Indeed, the profile, titled "Why Me?", is chock full of Baldwinning quotes. more ›

The political news cycle yesterday was dominated by the controversy surrounding this week’s New Yorker cover; called “The Politics of Fear,” it depicts Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as America-hating radical terrorists gloating in the Oval Office. New Yorker editor David Remnick, who celebrates his tenth anniversary helming the magazine with this issue, spent the day making the interview rounds and getting some great publicity for the magazine; speaking to Wolf Blizter on CNN, he defended the cover as “Colbert in print.” more ›