Innholdsfortegnelse for March 30 - April 12, 2020 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s latest issue, the magazine turned its eye to how the coronavirus suddenly occupied the minds of millions around the world. The cover was divisive. Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco wrote that it nails “life during a pandemic,” and the cover quickly became a visual touch-point for media coverage around the crisis. But on Instagram and elsewhere, many commenters took issue with the reference to “the scariest time in America since 9/11.” @livschreiber, for instance, wrote, “This is ridiculous. To compare to 9/11?? This is what feeds hysteria. I’m in NY and surrounded by happy people running on West Side Highway!” Others criticized the design for being histrionic and unhelpful. @emelierod wrote, “As a trusted source of journalism for many, this feels really irresponsible.” The designer Steven Heller…

1. Hit Every Beat Challenge With “U Can’t Touch This,” by MC Hammer This is easy if and only if you already know the Macarena. It’s a good one to warm up with. Think of it as the equivalent of a child’s pose at the beginning of Vinyasa class. Do the Macarena twice as fast, pretend to drum a few times, then hit the “woah.” The woah is probably the most important TikTok dance move. Move your left arm down at a diagonal and move your right arm up, parallel to the left. Pulse. Confusingly, there are some other versions of the woah, most commonly a kind of “turning a car wheel” motion, but those are not the proper woah to do in this context. 2. “Say So”…

MY INSTAGRAM FEED used to be cluttered with color-coded lesson plans from parents determined to win at homeschooling. We are beyond that now. Still, kids thrive on routine, and there are ways to build a little flexible structure into your days. Here is some advice from teachers. Let your kids help you make the schedule. This can give kids a much-needed sense of control. Elizabeth Sussman, a middle-school special-education teacher, came up with a list of priorities that her family incorporated into their daily routine. “I talked to them about what they thought their day should look like, how we need to get outdoor time, how we need to make sure the dog gets walked, how we keep our apartment clean and pick up after ourselves.” Consider a “menu.” Instead…

WHEN THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL and Prevention told Americans to “prepare” for a serious outbreak of the coronavirus, most wondered: How? Lots of people took it to mean that they should stock up on supplies like hand sanitizer and canned foods—both of which are good to get, but the CDC was actually suggesting something more specific: It has stringent guidelines about what should be in an emergency-preparedness kit, as do FEMA, the American Red Cross, and the New York City Office of Emergency Management. All four of these lists include shelf-stable food and water, a flashlight, a radio, a first-aid kit, a whistle, and a can opener. While you will likely not need most of these supplies in the next couple of weeks, there are plenty of other disasters—natural…

THANKS TO TIGHT QUARTERS (and looming existential dread), couples are arguing about everything and nothing at all. We asked New York–based clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik to help a few navigate some common disputes. “It’s easy to project your anxieties about this time onto your partner,” says Guralnik. “Fighting becomes a way to play out your inner conflict.” Daniel Stigall & Elyse Lindahl, Brooklyn Together one month and self-isolating together at Daniel’s apartment. E: Yesterday I made a Google doc laying out what I need our schedule to look like. D: But I’m way too lazy to execute on it. I’m reluctant to have this written plan that defines our alone time and recreation time. E: We need to have our separate alone time. And separate spaces. I need…

(Nonfiction, 1994) ➽ There’s one exception to my “no pandemic” theme, and it is The Hot Zone. Be warned that you should read this only if you are a glutton for body horror, or if you’re in the mood for a book that will cauterize your fear of coronavirus the way a medieval doctor might torch a lesion. The prolific blurber Stephen King described this book as “one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.” I personally guarantee you will have a nightmare about it within three months of turning the final page. What a ride! The subject matter is viral hemorrhagic fevers, most notably Ebola. Preston documents the way these invisible monsters mutate through humans and other animals, wending from caves in Kenya to office parks in Virginia.…

The Golden Apples By Eudora Welty “When I first read this, I was a teenager in mid-1950s North Carolina. The linked stories about the inhabitants of a small town in Mississippi made me feel right at home; I recognized these people, and none of them surprised me. Rereading the book now, though, I’m struck by their great distance from everything that preoccupies me in 2020. They still make me smile, but their innocence breaks my heart.” —Anne Tyler, author of Redhead by the Side of the Road A Moveable Feast By Ernest Hemingway “I have this on my bedside table. As a writer in California, I like reading this memoir of an American writer in Paris, imagining him moving so freely with his pen—despite his lack of funds—into cafés and…

ON MARCH 16, Marisa Migdal posted in her neighborhood Facebook group with a plea. “My two children were getting frustrated with not being able to go to playgrounds or touch anything when we went on walks,” says Migdal, who lives on the border of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. “It wasn’t as fun as fresh air should be.” Someone suggested trying what families in other parts of the world were doing: hanging drawings of rainbows in their windows for kids to spot on their daily walks, like a neighborhoodwide I Spy game. “All of a sudden, I needed help to make a Google Map of everyone participating,” Migdal says. Word got around to Anna Grotzky, another Brooklyn resident, who volunteered to map all the quarantine rainbows in the neighborhood. She…

Please do this immediately if you’re working from home and using the videoconferencing service Zoom: Go to the lower-left-hand corner of the screen, find the video settings, and check the box marked “Touch Up My Appearance.” It’s the modern equivalent of Vaseline on the lens. KATHLEEN HOU If you want to stop letting your co-workers judge your home décor, use Zoom’s “Virtual Background” feature to simulate being in space or next to the Golden Gate Bridge during a work meeting. Or upload your own photos and pretend you live in Versailles. BROCK COLYAR…

IT’S QUITE POSSIBLE THAT BY THE END OF ALL THIS, almost every American will know of someone who has died. A relative, a friend, an old high-school classmate … the names will pop up and migrate through Facebook as the weeks go by, and in a year’s time, Facebook will duly remind you of the grief or shock you experienced. The names of the sick will appear to be randomly selected—the ones you expected and the ones you really didn’t, the famous and the obscure, the vile and the virtuous. And you will feel the same pang of shock each time someone you know turns out to have fallen ill. ¶ You’ll wake up each morning and check to see if you have a persistent cough, or a headache, or…

My favorite quarantine cocktail for simplicity (any fool can mix it), medicinal purposes (yes, there’s anti-malarial quinine), and psychological well-being (it speaks of summer, cool breezes, and the great outdoors). 1. Put several cubes of ice in your glass. 2. Pour your gin (we traditionalist Wasps prefer juniper-rich blends like Tanqueray) halfway up the ice (for rationing purposes). 3. Then splash in the tonic and a large wedge of lime. Stir with a carefully cleaned swizzle implement and enjoy!…

1. ❑ The 400 Blows François Truffaut This 1959 coming-of-age drama is French New Wave master Truffaut’s feature debut and arguably most personal film. 2. ❑ The Apu Trilogy Satyajit Ray Criterion worked for years to reconstruct these films after the original negatives were burned in a fire. Ray’s trilogy following the life of one young man is a consummate example of how great movies allow us to experience lives and perspectives we otherwise could not. 3. ❑ Bicycle Thieves Vittorio De Sica One of the most beloved films of all time, De Sica’s 1948 Oscar winner tells the story of a hardworking man whose bicycle is stolen. Don’t let the simple story fool you; this effectively rewrote the rules of film grammar. 4. ❑ Breathless Jean-Luc Godard The DNA…

Order the Cheaper Version of the Ferrari of Desk Chairs Renewed Herman Miller Classic Aeron Chair, $449 at amazon.com If you’re interested in purchasing a pre-owned version of the Herman Miller Aeron, Strategist columnist Chris Black recommends those working from home invest in the slightly less expensive “renewed” version of the chair. According to Amazon, renewed products look like new and come with a 90-day guarantee if they do not work or arrive as expected. Since it’s pre-used, give it a good scrub-down with some Lysol disinfectant—or Clorox wipes. INSTALL A PORTABLE DISHWASHER Farberware Front Control Countertop Dishwasher, $400 at amazon.com “After years of living in apartments with dishwashers, I moved into a place without one. I’m a food writer, which means I cook as often…

STEP 1: Find your bangs. “Hold a comb flat on top of your head. Turn sideways toward the mirror, so you can see where your head starts to round in the front,” says Snyder. “That is your starting point for your bang section.” STEP 2: Make your bang triangle. Now, it’s time for some math. “Using a wide-tooth comb, separate your bangs from the rest of your hair by making a triangle shape.” STEP 3: Find the length. Once you have your triangle, pull it straight out from your head in front of you. “Your fingers should be generally where you want the final trimmed length to be,” says Snyder. Start further down if you’re unsure. You can always go back in; we have nothing but time.…

ONE OF THE interesting side effects of the recent self-isolation measures is that people seem to be getting hornier. Maybe it’s a primal response to the anxiety of the moment or a desire for human contact that has hardened into something more carnal. Perhaps it’s just the nice weather. But unless you’re quarantined with a regular or potential sexual partner, your options for having sex with another person are limited. Which means: It’s a good time to take some nudes. 1. Find your light. Natural lighting is the most flattering, so if you have a room in your matchbox apartment that gets some sun in the afternoon, take advantage of it on your lunch break. If not, a well-placed desk lamp can work nearly as well. A frequent-nude-sending friend suggests…

(Nonfiction, May 5) ➽ With certain writers, it doesn’t matter what the book is about, because the brain that created it is so euphoric, so wicked, so irascibly specific, that you want to clear out a corner of your own headspace and beckon the author inside as a permanent tenant. It is for this reason that I, a person who has never been pregnant and has little interest in reproduction, can recommend a book about a pregnant lady who watches trash TV and dreams that she’s going to give birth to a monkey. The only thing I know about the memoirist here, Gabriela Wiener, is that she is a Peruvian essayist who has written a book called Sexographies—and, honestly, that’s enough. Wiener works as a journalist in Spain. Her mind…

… BUY an older edition of Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs on eBay, because whoever designed the most recent cover should be sentenced to six months in prison? … READ The Player if Hollywood books tickle your pickle? ... SETTLE INTO A frothing bubble bath of Jane Gardam with The Man in the Wooden Hat? ... SUCK ON Miss Aluminum, a lollipop of a memoir, if you like Eve Babitz, Hollywood tales, and coming-of-age stories? ... RIP THROUGH The Portable Veblen for instant mood elevation? ... DO A LITTLE DANCE AND make a little love with Astonish Me?…

SAMIN NOSRAT and HER CONGEE and COOKIES UPON WAKING UP, I took my antidepressants—always crucial but especially so these days. Truth is, I haven’t been eating the way I usually do since the stay-at-home order started. I haven’t zeroed in exactly on what is different, but I don’t feel all that excited about eating. For breakfast, I made a milky, cardamom-y cup of coffee, sat in my heated garden chair, and watched a pair of titmouses (titmice?) work on the nest they’ve been building in my garden. After some puttering, I walked a few blocks to see my friend Elazar Sontag, who just got back to Oakland from Brooklyn. He posted that he had made cookies and left them out for neighbors on his stoop. I sat at the bottom…

ON MARCH 15, along with 1.1 million other students, Maeve Foley learned that public schools in New York City would be closed. The 17-year-old high-school senior, the youngest of four, realized that she would likely complete her final year of high school from the comfort of her parents’ Carroll Gardens apartment—and she still had weeks to go until virtual learning began. She was ridiculously bored. “I really like being in school, and I really like helping people,” Foley, who playfully describes herself as having a “New York superiority complex,” says. “It felt weird to be sitting around, not doing anything to help.” Her response: posting flyers around the neighborhood offering to pick up groceries and prescriptions for anyone over the age of 65. “I figured going to the store could…

I can’t open dog-poop bags anymore. Now that my former go-to method—licking my thumb and forefinger and, aided by the wetness, rubbing the top of the bag apart—is not an option, the task has become impossible. So here is a solution I have come up with: Lick the bag as if it were an envelope. I know it sounds bad—and trust me, it looks worse. You just have to lick the part that was safely tucked away in the roll, untouched by your potentially contaminated hands, free of germs other than whatever ones were on it to begin with, and open it.…

I’VE WORKED FROM HOME since 2009 when the economy collapsed and my kids were only 3 and 5. Staring down the barrel of weeks if not months with my kids out of school while I both work and write a book—let’s just say this is the kind of déjà vu I do not enjoy. But now is the perfect moment to pause and send up a prayer of gratitude to your god, your Antichrist, or at the very least your boss, that you have the option to earn money while inside your house. For those of us who find ourselves in this fortunate (yet still potentially hellish) position, this is what I can tell you: I know panic, I know what it’s like to try to figure out your universe…

David Mandel: We did Splash on night one—holds up and John Candy is even funnier than you remember. Night 2: Frozen 2—eh. Alex Gregory: Midnight Run went over HUGE. Now in Kaitlyn’s all time top 5. Opened the Pandora’s box of South Park. Blew their minds. Gabrielle Allan: We’re watching Midnight Run tonight. I let them watch South Park. Is Team America too much for 13 and 16? Or not enough? Dan O’Keefe: Team America is pretty hardcore, even for 16. Jennifer Crittenden: [Waiting for] Guffman went over well but I had disastrous results with 2 movies that I thought would be winners: Defending Your Life had a much slower pace than I remember and the charms of Albert Brooks were lost on Maisie and PJ. And we shut down…

1. ZA’ATAR “It can be sprinkled on basically anything. My favorite is from Canaan Palestine and contains a mix of dried oregano, roasted sesame seeds, and sumac. It gives anything it touches a nice citrusy, zesty flavor.” 2. Aleppo Chile Flakes “Aleppo flakes melt into the food better than regular chile flakes and give food a nice heat without being overpowering. They’re good with beans and legumes, especially with a little lemon juice and olive oil.” 3. PAPRIKA “My favorite way to use paprika is on roasted mushrooms, but it also works well with vegetables and meats. My favorite is from Burlap & Barrel—it’s locally grown, single origin, and comes in pimenton and sweet pepper.” 4. Turmeric and Ginger “For an extra boost of antioxidants. I like…

Peter McGough in a bespoke gray-flannel three-piece suit, which was made for him by Jake Mueser on Christopher Street. Most days during quarantine, he wears one of his many silk bathrobes. The city used to be teeming with junk shops—“where you could find things for nothing.” He bought this dog portrait in one of them. Visible over his left shoulder is a painting of his own making, Dandysmo, ca. 2005. It is a play on the early-20th-century Italian art movement Futurismo. “I DON’T MIND BEING ALONE. I like it,” says artist Peter McGough from his West Village apartment, where he is quarantined along with his dog, Queenie. “I have my books. I have all sorts of things to keep me occupied.” This past fall, he published a memoir, I’ve Seen…

(Nonfiction, 2001) ➽ The vast majority of “forgotten books” are forgotten for a reason, which is why it’s exhilarating to stumble on the opposite: a book that should have been massively famous for a hundred reasons and instead, by some historical fluke, was brutally erased like Joni Mitchell’s paved paradise. The topic at hand is the rise of Zen in America, by way of San Francisco (of course), and a scandal in 1983 that “rocked the community” to its vegetarian core. It is also the portrait of a charismatic entrepreneur and an examination of how an ancient Eastern practice took hold and mutated in the West. Possibly because the author had not published a work of nonfiction before this book—novels, mostly—he brings a party bag of formal inventions to the…

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, AND Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit Everyone feels alone in a crisis, at first. This one has made the isolation concrete, and oppressive, with social distancing alienating each of us: those lucky and healthy enough to want to help advised only to keep to themselves, those doing the front-line work providing health care and food and medicine left lonely and exposed, those sick and dying forced to suffer alone. It is an especially modern, and American, coping mechanism: retreating even further into atomized lives and away from each other. It needn’t be that way. In fact, as the incomparable Rebecca Solnit has shown throughout her long, meandering, brilliant career, but especially in…

MY COUSIN JACOB SOLOME, or Jack, will only tell me how old he is; for the purposes of this article, he says, “Put me down in the high 90s.” He met his wife, Eda, now 99 and suffering from dementia, when they spent two years hiding from the Nazis in a Polish farmhouse, crawling under floorboards whenever they heard anyone coming. They’ve been married for 75 years. A retired obstetrician-gynecologist and news junkie, he’s long kept a full schedule of teaching, swimming, and driving like a drag racer to various social engagements. Pre-pandemic, we would meet at his favorite all-you-can-eat Pan-Asian buffet in Sheepshead Bay, not far from the Midwood home where he and Eda have lived for a half-century. Now, with each of us in isolation, I called him…

EVEN IN TIMES of crisis, drag queens know how to make people smile. When Tyler Ashley and Charlene Incarnate’s monthly Baby Tea Brunch—a five-hour mimosa-fueled extravaganza at Dumbo’s Superfine—was canceled, they quickly pivoted to a livestream show from their Bushwick rooftop. (It helps that they are roommates, too.) Their reasoning was financial: “Charlene primarily relies on income from gigs, and it definitely subsidizes my nonprofit salary,” Ashley says. About 2,000 fans popped in, some staying for hours, and they made about what they would have made IRL. 1. Oops! Social Distancing Edition ❑ When: Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Where: Instagram (@ iamwestdakota @ harajukubk). How to tip: Venmo (@ oopsgirls). 2. Drag Aerobics: Live in Your Living Room ❑ When: Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. Where: Facebook and Instagram (@ dollytrolleydrag). How to…

Maybe it was the fourth Adam Devine Netflix movie you watched in a row, or that season of Bosch you inhaled on Amazon Prime without ever actually paying attention to the story. If you’ve decided to get more creative with your viewing choices, play along with this rough variation on Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. We asked some of our film brains to start with one Kevin Bacon movie—for purposes of availability and ensemble friendliness, we picked Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning 2003 thriller, Mystic River, now on Netflix—then work their way through five more titles … ending on another Kevin Bacon movie. Mystic River Play Misty for Me (rentable on Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube) Clint Eastwood’s 1971 directorial debut is a solid entry in the disreputable but irresistible…

GIVE TO RESTAURANT-RELIEF FUNDS • Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation restaurantworkerscf.org • Restaurant Workers Relief Program leeinitiative.org • One Fair Wage ofwemergencyfund.org • The James Beard Foundation Food and Beverage Industry Relief Fund jamesbeard.org • The U.S. Bartenders’ Guild National Charity Foundation usbgfoundation.org • CORE: Children of Restaurant Employees coregives.org • Your Favorite NYC Restaurants grubstreet.com/2020/03/ coronavirusrestaurants-crowdfunding.html • Golden Rule Charity goldenrulecharity.org DONATE MASKS AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES • Mask Match mask-match.com • Donate PPE donateppe.org • New York Governor’s Office covid19supplies@esd.ny.gov • Masks for Docs masksfordocs.com • Get Us PPE getusppe.org • MedSupplyDrive medicalsupplydrive.com • Seattle Mask Brigade sites.google.com/view/seattle-mask-donations SUPPORT FRONT-LINE WORKERS • NYC Health + Hospitals nychhc.networkforgood.com • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation cdcfoundation.org • Direct Relief directrelief.org • International Medical Corps internationalmedicalcorps.org • World Health Organization’s Solidarity…