Letter from the Editors Archive
Sex and the City: Miami
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This Thing Looks Like That Thing, and Also, This Other Thing Also Looks Like That Other Thing from the Same ThingDoes Chip Kidd read Gothamist? (Probably not.) Within hours of the smutty gubernatorial scandal’s breaking, Gothamist, the New York City–centric web log, challenged its readers to contribute Photoshopped fun (for free!). A week later, New York Magazine, the New York City–centric magazine, challenged some of the world’s most successful graphic designers to contribute Photoshopped fun (for a fee). Can you tell which cheeky Chanel ad was designed by Chip Kidd, the legendary book-coverer and cheese monkey, and which was done by freelance commenter José?
At left: Client No. 9, by freelance commenter José , “We Can Haz Spitzer Photoshop?”, Gothamist, March 10, 2008; Right: Client No. 9 (Redux), by designer Chip Kidd, illustrating “The Governor and the Darkness,” New York Magazine’s March 24 issue.
Earlier in the week, New York Press also echoed the ’mist’s Something Awfulesqe photomanipulative dare:
At left, Eliot Spitzer and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, by commenter Jason, ibid.; Right: Eliot and “Kristen” in “Pretty Stupid,” gracing the cover of New York Press’s March 12 issue.
See? New York’s professional graphic designers and its wacky Internet surfers think alike under deadline: hacky jokes requiring 15 seconds of Google Image Search and 45 seconds of cutting and pasting. Also, it’s worth pointing out that this week, Y.P.R. out-Krugered Barbara Kruger. Left, Barbara Kruger* on The Golden Girls, Y.P.R.; Right: Barbara Kruger’s take on the gubernatorial dick, New York Magazine. *Not really. | ||
The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant!
A scrappy team of grown men playing a children’s game for millions of dollars from New York miraculously overtook the near-perfect team of grown men playing a children’s game for millions of dollars from New England yesterday, thus proving … the audacity of hope. Wear your pride on your chest with Yankee Pot Roast’s commemorative Super Bowl XLII T-shirt. [Update: Hyperlinks removed due to print-on-demand suppliers’ shocking unfamiliarity with the protection of parody under fair-use copyright laws.] | ||
Mailer Meets Maker
* Not really. | ||
How to Be Productive During a Writers' StrikeHey, striking screenwriters: Why not turn off Final Draft and flip open Microsoft Word for NaNoWriMo? Novelizations, people! | ||
The Y.P.R. Gift Shop
Shirts are available in Men’s S, M, L, XL, for just $15 (shipping & handling included). Please send an e-mail to nick@yankeepotroast.org for order inquiries. | ||
Coming Soon(-ish)Mr. Josh Abraham, your humble coëditor, had been mostly absent from this site for much of the past year, busy making a moving picture (or “talkie” as the kids are calling them these days). The film, American Standard, is currently in postproduction, undergoing the exciting processes of color correction, sound mixing, and the occasional reshoot or pickup shot.* The rough cut was shipped off to the fine folks in Park City, Utah, last week. Please enjoy the teaser and the extended trailer, below. And, yes—investment opportunities remain available!
*Want to be an extra in one of those pickup shots this Monday, October 9? Shoot us an e-mail: extras@americanstandardthemovie.com. | ||
Will Pimp for PropsGot a band, a Web site, a book, a store, a clothing line, or anything else to promote? We need to dress dozens of N.Y.C. apartments for our film, American Standard, and would be happy to feature whatever props you can donate or loan. You’ll join the illustrious ranks of Steve Madden, Joe Boxer, Mooroo, Proctor & Gamble, Crest, Barbasol, Puffs, Gillette, Duane Reade, 3M, Crunk, Folgers, He’Brew, Dove, Suave, Axe, Trojan, and many, many more fine product placers in our film. Please get in touch with us: movie@americanstandardthemovie.com | ||
Selected Words and Phrases from William Safire's "On Words" Column That Reveal a Libertine Heart Beating within the Conservative Wordsmith's BosomPerhaps he’s just extra saucy this morn from New Year’s Eve revelry, but today’s column is simply engorged with innocent-but-suggestive terms: * jaws of coming How many Times pieces can thrust four snatches into as many pargraphs? “Clichés for ’06,” The New York Times, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2006. | ||
Three Concerns about This Caption | ||
The Complete Radar
Collected in two handsome, leather-bound volumes, with raised spine, gilt edges, and over 2,300 illustrations, The Complete Radar is yours for only $289.00. | ||
May We Use Your Loo?Your humble coëditor, Josh Abraham, will be directing an independent feature film. It’s called American Standard, and will star these extraoridnarily talented, funny, beautiful people. But we need places in which to put them! In The Can Production is seeking scads of New York City apartments, offices, bars, and restaurants—specifically, their BATHROOMS, big and small. Want to show off your can? Want to get a credit (and cameo?) in a film? Know a great place we should check out? Please, friends, do drop us a note. We promise not to leave the seat up. Thank you for your interest and support. | ||
Transmogrify This“New Orleans is not fast or energetic or efficient, not a go-get-’em Calvinist well-ordered city.” —from “What It Means to Miss New Orleans” by Mark Childress, in The New York Times, Sunday, September 4, 2005. “There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them. It’s already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade.” —from “The Bursting Point,” an Op-Ed column by David Brooks in The New York Times, Sunday, September 4, 2005. ![]() | ||
Attn: N.Y.C.-Area ActorsThere’s a casting call for an independent film seeking your dramatic talents and pretty faces. Plus: the chance to be directed by your humble Y.P.R. coëditor, Josh Abraham. Details via Back Stage magazine reproduced here, but please do check out preliminary information and eventual updates at In the Can’s Web site, which is still under construction.
Please throw questions and comments hither: josh@yankeepotroast.org. | ||
Who Wants to Watch "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"Hey, kids! Do you like the TV? | ||
J.S.F., Loud & CloseThis month (um, circa) the Y.P.R. Book Club solicited your clever tricks satirizing or inspired by Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, whether you’ve read the book or not.
Extremely Long and Incredibly Bad Writer’s Block Everything According to Incredible Acquaintances Correspondence between Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss That Explains How They Wrote the Same Book Intellectual Property Recycled but relevant: “Everything Is Translated.” | ||
We've Already Got a Two-Year Subscription, Thank You![]() | ||
The New York Post-Times
Luckily, Y.P.R. subscribes to home delivery of the Bizarro World Sunday papers, where The Times is Postified and The Post is Timesized. Whatever, it all ends up Sploided in the end. Behold! May Day, 2005’s newspaper mashup. Take Kaopectate as needed. For-real front pages: | ||
Dowd, Untouchable Mutant
” … a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew … The researchers learned that a whopping 15 percent—200 to 300—of the genes on the second X chromosome in women, thought to be submissive and inert, lolling about on an evolutionary Victorian fainting couch, are active, giving women a significant increase in gene expression over men.” If she seems cold and standoffish, it’s because her slightest touch will siphon your energy and consciousness. Previously endowed Dowd columns: “Maureen Dowd, Avenging Angel” | ||
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
“Dish It Out, Ladies” by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, March 13, 2005. Also, please reread last year’s “ ‘And Another Thing about Bush 43’ by Maureen Dowd” by Mick Stingley. | ||
Arrrrrtwork![]() Behold “Three Jokes about Pirates,” a short piece of humor writing, and a digital painting, and a short film, sort of, via arrrrt.com’s artPad, by Dennis DiClaudio, (who really ought to get the lead out). (Viewing tip: Set the thing to “Fast.”) | ||
R.I.P., H.S.T.![]() | ||
Y.P.R. 3.0Folks, Welcome. As you can see, we’ve finally caught up with late-20th Century technology. Our upgrade is still underway, and you’ll notice most of our archive links go nowhere. Please be patient with us as we rejigger our gears over the coming weeks, during which the old archives remain browsably perusable. Meanwhile, keep them submissions rolling! Thanks for loving our awesome Web site. Best, |









Mr. Norman Kingsley Mailer, the legendary writer and pugilist, who only last month graced the cover of New York Magazine to announce he’d 












