Innholdsfortegnelse for February 4-17, 2019 i New York Magazine

1 In New York’s latest cover story, Andrew Sullivan wrote about the central paradox of the Catholic Church: It’s an institution made up of thousands upon thousands of gay men yet teaches that gay people are “objectively disordered” (“The Gay Church,” January 21–February 3). Francis X. Clooney, S.J., a professor at Harvard Divinity School, responded, “Sullivan’s thoughtful essay invites readers to think holistically about sexuality and priesthood so that we can find our way to create a more humane and more spiritual environment for the imperfect Catholics (all of us) who would still follow Christ. But where do we go from here? I write with experience, a priest (more than 40 years) and a Jesuit (more than 50), and all this time a celibate. As I get older, I am…

1 Apart from bundling more than $500,000 for then-candidate Barack Obama, Colleen Bradley Bell’s background for becoming ambassador to Hungary consisted of having been a producer of The Bold and the Beautiful. 2 Wealthy Washington Stater Cynthia Stroum, also appointed by Obama, lasted only a year in Luxembourg after an inspector general’s report described her management as “bullying, hostile, and intimidating.” Rather than keep working for her, the report stated, a number of senior officers had asked for transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan. 3 Perhaps because he was the kind of guy who could raise $21.3 million at one dinner, Mel Sembler snagged ambassadorships from both Bush 41 (to Australia and Nauru) and 43 (to Italy). Apparently Sembler performed well in the former posts, but when in Rome, he did…

1 Claire Stapleton Product-marketing manager at YouTube, New York Started the Google group for the walkout and shared it with a moms’ Google group and with a few people she knew personally, including Celie O’Neil-Hart … 2 Celie O’Neil-Hart YouTube trust-and-transparency lead, San Bruno … Who helped compile a thread of the changes people wanted. 3 Stephanie Parker Policy specialist in trust and safety, San Bruno Highlighted the importance of diversity in any list of demands and looped in … 4 Amr Gaber Software engineer, San Francisco ... Who raised the issue of “underleveling” and sent a text about it to ... 5 Meredith Whittaker Founder and head of Google’s Open Research Group, New York … Who helped construct the list of demands. 6 Tanuja Gupta Program manager, New York…

KIMBERLY COLOMBO Fashion Designer Great belt. Thanks. It’s Gianni Versace, vintage. I have five Gianni Versace belts. Nine acid-washed jackets, several pairs of acid-washed shorts, at least two acid-washed dresses. Six Norma Kamali sleeping-bag jackets. This late-’80s and early’90s thing isn’t my first phase: I’ve had a Victorian phase where I wore bloomers all the time, a pirate phase. I’m a vintage maven and an eBay and Etsy queen. When do you do most of your shopping? Into the night. I look at stuff. I buy a lot, then take a breather, then buy some more. I am very good at winning an online auction. I wait until the last 30 seconds to bid so that other buyers aren’t aware I’m interested. Then I swoop in like a vulture. You…

Italian wedding soup is easy to find in New York, especially at old-school red-sauce restaurants. Viennese wedding soup, not so much. But according to Bâtard chef-partner Markus Glocker, who also assumed executive-chef duties at Augustine last fall, they’re not so different: both broth-based, with some kind of meat, vegetable, and pasta. The Viennese variety, however, at least as he serves it at Augustine, is much more elaborate. The long-simmered base, richness of garnishes like bone marrow and dry-aged-beef fat, and overall comfort factor all put Glocker in mind of a Middle European ramen. And although he has yet to have the pleasure, he says, “it will be served when I get married.” R.R. & R.P. On the menu at Augustine; $32; 5 Beekman St., at Nassau St.; 212-375-0010…

In the year 1999, a software programmer (Keanu Reeves) moonlights as a hacker with the alias Neo. He’s contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who wants to have a word with him about something called the Matrix. But first, Neo is kidnapped from his office cubicle by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who asks him to help catch a “terrorist” named Morpheus. (Laurence Fishburne), who rescues Neo and offers him a choice between a red pill, which will show him what the Matrix is, and a blue pill that will send him back to normal life. Neo chooses red and wakes up in the future, where Morpheus explains that humanity has lost a war to robots and now most people live comatose in goo-filled pods, supplying the machines with bioenergy while their…

IF YOU WERE of moviegoing age in 1999, you may recall The Matrix’s debut, which hardly seemed to herald a movie we’d be talking about 20 years later, let alone praising as singularly important. The film opened on March 31, not traditionally a release date reserved for potential blockbusters. (Also released that day: 10 Things I Hate About You.) It starred 34-year-old Keanu Reeves, an actor of wavering fortunes whose career, at times, had served as a punch line. Having emerged in 1986, in River’s Edge, Reeves was introduced to the wider world in 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, then rechristened as an action hero in 1994’s Speed—only to run aground again with films like A Walk in the Clouds and The Devil’s Advocate. His role as Neo—which eventually…

PARADING IN THE STREETS In Chinatown, February 17; starts at Mott and Canal streets. In Flushing, February 9; starts at Union Street and 37th Avenue. In Sunset Park, February 10; starts near Eighth Avenue and 50th Street. A TRADITIONAL TEMPLE FAIR Chinese New Year Temple Bazaar at Flushing Town Hall, February 17; features performances, art- and lantern-making, and food. CLASSICAL-MUSIC TRIBUTES New York Philharmonic, David Geffen Hall, February 6. Carnegie Hall’s Chinese New Year Spectacular V, Zankel Hall, February 15. A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Lunar New Year Festival, February 9. Features a parade, performances, art-making, and Sesame Street Muppeteers.…

THE CLASSIC tailoring of suit jackets never goes completely out of style, but, like jeans, they morph according to the whims of designers or the winds of the moment. This season, the workwear staple grew wide, out of scale with its wearers, in a fun, almost comic way. It’s power dressing as power play—a little David Byrne, a little #pantsuitnation.…

ONE OF THE internet’s revolutionary features is that it’s given us a place to broadcast our innermost desires to large swaths of strangers in a multitude of inventive ways. Lately, that has morphed into people begging their crushes to … run them over. Who, exactly, is being asked to do this extremely reckless driving? BTS and One Direction band members. Delicate man Timothée Chalamet. Large, less delicate man Adam Driver. Even-larger man Jason Momoa. Ariana Grande, especially after she posted a photo of herself in front of a car. Danny DeVito. The night of the Golden Globes, Twitter lit up with people aching for celebrities to cause them grievous bodily harm—everything from “Excuse me while I lie down in the street and wait for Sandra Oh to run me over…

On her morning routine: Since I’ve been here, I typically wake up around 7 a.m. I live about a five-minute drive from the office, so I quickly get up, take a shower, put on some makeup, and head to work. I have a roommate, Katie Hill, who’s a congresswoman from Los Angeles, and she wakes up a little bit earlier than I do because her routine is a little bit longer. On living with a roommate: Katie and I moved in together the week of swearing-in. This is a pretty nutty experience, and it’s great to have support and someone to bounce ideas off at the end of long days. We just got the internet. We built a table and some chairs over the weekend. When we’re in D.C., we…

THE DESIGNER Batsheva Hay’s high-fashion prairie dresses first attracted widespread attention last year, and looking at them, I experienced a revelation. I felt I better understood myself—my taste, my personal style. The opposite of this, I remember thinking. My personal style is the opposite of this. I try to imagine wearing one—happily, voluntarily, in public—and my imagination quails, offering up only a public-speaking-in-underwear nightmare sensation, except it’s me, in a Batsheva dress, on the subway. But you know what? This is fine. Wearing a trend is one kind of pleasure; not wearing but watching it is another. And the prairie dress is plenty to watch. In some sense, it may have been inevitable. The pendulum swings—that’s what it does. Nothing looks new or transgressive or surprising forever. Exposed flesh had…

Under no circumstances will Lizzo play “Flight of the Bumblebee” tonight. Don’t get her wrong. She’s a classically trained flautist, in addition to a singer and rapper, and could twerk circles while playing it (that’s a trademark). But as far as songs go, “‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ is for basic bitches,” declares Lizzo, and tonight she needs a show-off song. It’s two hours before a live taping of 2 Dope Queens’ HBO special, and hosts Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson have asked her to perform her signature move, but the stakes—HBO, the 3,000-person-deep audience at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre—call for the kind of song that will make eyes widen, jaws drop. Normally, the trill-filled missile in Lizzo’s arsenal is 19th-century French composer Jean-Baptiste Arban’s “Carnival of Venice,” a song that requires…

KITH dimitrydino luvsickk miss you rn ** getting this bag. be home soon KITH ciaracherise Another day, another outfit pic. KITH illicitempress teddy fresher than u BLOOMINGDALE’S xherry.w Basic-ass millennial outfit. BARNEYS youngvisionary_ These threads got me feeling like Jodeci .. #sundayselfies BERGDORFGOODMAN ralphalive Dot Dot Dot. BARNEYS lexivintage BARNEYS theclotheswhorse Ahh! A little school girl realness for you! A full Thom Browne look, Oxford, unstructured donegal wool blazer, and a tartan schoolgirl skirt for men! As I live and breathe! BARNEYS fashionandthestreet Give me 1 reason to not run off with this mink coat (it costs $20,000 lol )…

HERE’S A LITTLE HACK: Before buying a rug at Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters or even Crate & Barrel, do a quick online search for that very same rug. Chances are it’s available under a slightly different name, and at a cheaper price, at wholesalers like rugs.com or overstock.com, which you can see right there on Google. And so it has been for years in the rug world, where the traditional supply chain for both rare-Persian dealers and basic retailers includes middleman upon middleman, as the rugs go step-by-step from sheep shearers who collect the wool, to knotters who weave it into rugs, to foreign sellers who supply the American dealers. Along the way, each participant charges a little more to the next buyer until it lands in front of the…

Restaurant Impossible: Misi Missy Robbins’s pasta-centric follow-up to her boffo hit, Lilia. THE WAIT: An 8 p.m. reservation for a party of four is available in a month or so, but some tables are reserved for walk-ins. (329 Kent Ave., Williamsburg) WAIT HERE: DONNA “Good news,” says the Misi hostess. “We have a table for you … in about two hours.” Wait for it at tropical-cocktail den Donna (27 Broadway) over the transportingly unseasonal signature slushie the Brancolada. Not that you have anywhere to be soon, but the Aperol Spritzes are on draft, therefore quick. PLAN B: BARANO For pasta without the wait, toddle four blocks south to chef Al Di Meglio’s Barano (26 Broadway); get the duo ravioli, the saffron gigli, the ricotta agnolotti, or all three in a…

The Matrix’s red pill has long been a symbol for the online misogynists of the men’s-rights movement. But over the years, it's also inspired a whole pharmacy’s worth of other memes and cyber ideologies—some playful, some hateful, some of which describe actual beliefs, and others used mostly pejoratively. Here, the more prominent and stranger ones. GREEN PILL Like red pill but less worried about feminism than reptilian aliens enforcing the New World Order. BROWN PILL Anti-materialist more concerned with personal enlightenment than with the Illuminati. WHITE PILL Ignorant of politics and global conspiracies. Hates reading and just wants to get laid. INDIGO PILL Supporter of the Illuminati (or possible member). Thinks people need to be controlled. GRAY PILL Aware of the Illuminati and is certainly no fan, but isn’t getting…

1 Social Media When most people first saw The Matrix, they probably identified with Neo or Trinity. Lately, I find myself identifying more with the villain, Cypher. Not because I want to ally with the machines for the taste of nice steak but because I spend most of my days, like Cypher, staring at nearly incomprehensible, endlessly scrolling arrays of information. In the movie, revolutionaries who have disconnected from the Matrix keep tabs on it by watching ever-falling green text on screens. Since the Matrix code is allegedly too complex to be rendered visually, the green text is the only way to monitor it from the outside. It’s called “digital rain.” We have something similar: Twitter, which is also an incredibly depressing, totally inadequate view into a simulated world. MAX…

“Music for theater is quite different from opera or concert music. The hope of the composer is to create a musical setting in which the plot, the dialogue, and the actor’s interpretation can be supported but without distracting or overwhelming the style of theater presentation which is being used. [For King Lear,] it is important to understand the history of England, Scotland, and France. The public of Shakespeare’s time in 1606 were well informed of King James’s obsessions with those issues. Seemingly each character in the play experiences their own points of view—politically, socially, and personally. All of these views are a backdrop to director Sam Gold’s vision of Shakespeare’s late masterpiece.”…

I CONSIDER MYSELF A person who knows the normal things a person knows. I can make macaroni and cheese. I can fix a running toilet. I’m aware that the FedEx logo contains an arrow. Two years ago, I purchased a wrap dress, in black velvet, with a V-neckline and long sleeves. I wore it never. Every time I attempted to put the dress on, I could not figure out how to make it function as a dress. Instead, it was sort of a sloppy, open robe, a misaligned disaster. It was not until Tuesday, December 18, 2018, in my thirty[cough] year of living, that I decided I’d had enough and typed “how to put on a wrap dress” into YouTube, where I realized every dress-wearer around me held a secret…

STELLA STANDS in her office, wearing the bag and trying to see her reflection in the window. Enter Ruth, stage right. RUTH: Oooh, I love that bag! I can’t explain it. I want to put my mouth against that bag. [Stella hands it to Ruth to fondle.] STELLA: Tell me what you love. RUTH: I don’t know! Is it expensive? STELLA: Yes, it’s over $3,000. But isn’t it so pretty? [Ruth gazes lovingly at purse, holds it to her face.] BAG: [Speaking in the voice of God] Touchez-moi. STELLA: Did the bag just … whisper something to you? RUTH: I thought only I could hear it. I think we’re soul mates. STELLA: Shall I marry you two? RUTH: Yes. Yes! STELLA: Celine bag, do you take Ruth— E M I…

GOD, SOMETIMES I can’t get myself to do anything, you know? I wake up, I churn, I look out the window, I churn, I change my bandages, I dig some graves, but there are always more graves to dig. I dip the candles, I reweave the baskets—why are my baskets always coming unwoven? Not that you have the answer; I know everyone’s baskets are always coming unwoven, but sometimes I think there must be a better way. Maybe in the future we’ll have baskets that stay put! I can envision it now. Like a permanent basket. Man, that would rule. I know I’ll never get to the milliner this week. I keep looking at my frayed hat in the corner and I’m like, I’m sorry. I’ll get there, I’ll do…

THE BRITISH ARCHITECT FARSHID MOUSSAVI, whose designs include the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and the Yokohama International Port Terminal in Japan, recently wore a suit from Simone Rocha’s spring collection to receive the Order of the British Empire from Prince Charles. Done in a tapestry fabric worthy of ceremony—warm shades of green, pink, brown, and wine against black—it featured a dirndl skirt and a jacket with extravagantly puffed sleeves. But it wasn’t stiff: It looked both feminine and, in the best British tradition, comfy and tossed off, with the architect standing before the flush-faced royal in chunky platforms. Moussavi first discovered Rocha’s clothes about seven years ago, soon after the designer’s London debut, and she likes to combine new and older pieces; her mother and teenage daughter wear the…

“I was surprised there was so much pink available.” SPOUSES: CASEY LEGLER, author, restaurateur, and former Olympian, and SIRI MAY, senior adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights Siri: I was excited to pick out clothes for Casey. We decided because of this story that we should pick out outfits for each other for a date and then just leave them out for each other. Casey: We have lots of conversations about clothes. Siri collects garments, and we’re both intentional about what we wear. Siri’s style is poetic and has this distinguished elegance to it as well. I loved finding out what she’d picked for me. I was surprised there was so much pink available—surprised and delighted. ➺ ON CASEY: Boss suit, model’s own shirt and shoes. ➺ ON SIRI:…

I AM NOT the female Donald Trump,” demurs Lana Marks in the very polite, very firm way that you can tell she does many things. ¶ At this moment, she certainly seems right about that. Perfectly coiffed, polished, and pearl-necked at her desk in the office behind the Palm Beach boutique that bears her name, Trump’s nominee to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to South Africa appears exactly as trim, sunny, and measured as her would-be boss is stout, grouchy, and combustible. ¶ It had seemed a natural question, though. Since her nomination was announced in November, Marks has been slammed for, among other things, belonging to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, lacking any diplomatic experience whatsoever, and engaging in relentless self-promotion to advance her decidedly flashy business … all of which…

WHEN APPLE unveiled its AirPods in 2016, they were derisively compared to electric-toothbrush heads, Q-tips, and antennae. Rudy Giuliani was photographed wearing them upside down. By late 2017, public opinion had clearly shifted: A bevy of cool celebrities, from Diana Ross to Kristen Stewart, were spotted with them, and the rare corded subway passenger suddenly looked out of place. A phase of acceptance, in other words, set in. Now here we are. It’s 2019, and Louis Vuitton has released these just-a-hair-under-$1,000 buds (louisvuitton.com), made in collaboration with Master & Dynamic and printed with the French house’s monogram. Acceptance didn’t take so long this time; early adopters include rappers Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, and Lil Yachty. CLUSTER In late January, the made-to-measure-suit company Indochino took over BookCourt’s former…

THE MATRIX WAS THE FIRST SHOT fired in what’s now considered a benchmark year for American movies—1999, the year that brought us Being John Malkovich and Magnolia, The Sixth Sense and Office Space, Fight Club and The Blair Witch Project and Election. And although few would claim it was the best of the bunch, it has worked its way into our thinking—for better and, unmistakably, for worse—as few other pieces of pop culture have done. We may talk about all those other movies. But Morpheus was right. In 2019, we are living in the Matrix. Or, you know, maybe we’re not. Maybe in 2019, we just like to say things like “We are living in the Matrix”—and that may be the truest and deepest influence of a movie whose high-flown…

Maybe So says Oxford University's Nick Bostrom, author of the simulation hypothesis. By BRIAN FELDMAN WHEN MORPHEUS told us our world was fake, it sounded far-fetched. Eventually, though, among academics and then tech billionaires, the idea took hold. In his 2001 paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?,” Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom posited that if humanity does become capable of creating a Matrix-like computer simulation of reality, it will create many of them—meaning there would be lots of simulated realities and only one non-simulated one. This means maybe it’s more likely than not that we’re living in a simulation right now. When you first published this paper, had you seen The Matrix ? I don’t think I’d seen it. Your hypothesis has attracted…

THE SUMMER I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE, I moved to New York City to Make My Dreams Come TrueTM . I got a job at a comedy theater, where I quickly began an affair with the 19-year-old custodian. One evening, in the midst of a Blue Moon bender (it would be two more years before I found out that alcohol makes you gain weight—did you know it’s just sugar?), I got a text from my friend Katie, saying, “Run, don’t walk, to see Frances Ha.” At the time, I worked two days a week and spent the other five lying around wondering why I’d squandered my Princeton education on making out in damp supply closets. I managed to find a hole in my gaping wound of a schedule to see Frances…

AS OF LATE, my reaction to the news can best be described as “Drunk Face,” a.k.a. “Woozy Face,” but I prefer the more rudimentary technical description “face with uneven eyes and wavy mouth.” It is the perfect iconography of the emotional spiral that results from an endless barrage of information. So whenever I get overwhelmed by it all (constantly, right this very moment), I regress to my most basic animal need: animals. Whether it’s of a panda falling into a leaf pile, a hedgehog eating a tiny burrito, or a schnauzer wearing glasses reading through a pamphlet on how to recycle properly, animal imagery seems to temporarily suppress the yowling of the existential maw by saying, “Here! Look at the soft one do the thing.” That’s why when I first…

WHEN I FIRST watched the trailer for Mary Queen of Scots—filled with candlelit lust, hushed intrigue, and Saoirse Ronan yelling in a Scottish accent—I found myself with two persistent thoughts. First, I really wanted Saoirse Ronan to yell at me in a Scottish accent. But mostly I was struck by a small, particular accessory choice—the five silver hoop earrings in Mary’s right ear. They looked tough and modern, especially when juxtaposed with traditional period-drama costumes. Did the real Mary, I wondered, actually look like she had just stepped out from a session at New York Adorned? Sarah Peverley, a historian and professor at the University of Liverpool, quickly cleared up the mystery for me. “No, Mary, Queen of Scots, wouldn’t have worn so many earrings in one ear,” she told…

Nino Galluzzo Graphic Designer PHOTOGRAPHED AT Laundry City, Prospect Heights Who designed your shirt? David Rudnick, an English graphic designer. I get crazy looks when I wear it because people just don’t know what the hell it means and the rhetoric is kind of based on, like, “Make America Great Again.” But it’s really alluding to the acid-house music genre. Estelle Monteillet Graphic Designer PHOTOGRAPHED AT Celsious, Williamsburg What made you want to buy this rug? The boobs. I’m very attracted to boobs, personally. It’s right next to my bed, so I walk on my boobs every morning. Natalia Perlaza Private Investigator and Musician PHOTOGRAPHED AT Celsious, Williamsburg What kind of music do you play? I call myself an elemental percussionist. I wrote a song recently while thinking about these…