Innholdsfortegnelse for August 26-September 8, 2024 i New York Magazine

1 In a series of essays, New York’s latest cover story, “Are We All Bad Pet Parents?” (August 12–25), explored some ethical questions that many animal lovers might not have considered about their furry, feathered, and finned companions. Reader amason1108 commented, “I’m sorry but this entire ‘concept’ issue makes me queasy … If you as a human are incapable of imagining what your pet might be thinking or missing, you really should not have a pet.” The accompanying photos by Charlie Engman featured humans in creature prosthetics, including the cover image of a chimerical “cat” gazing longingly out a window. “What in the Jellicle tribe is this cover?” asked @JordanPfot, while@MediumSizeMeech said, “Surely they could have just used a photo of an actual cat?!” Emmaleah.shp reasoned, “Unpopular opinion (apparently): I…

JUST AS Michelle Obama reached the crescendo of her speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Barack Obama started dancing backstage. As Michelle channeled Kamala Harris’s mother and exhorted the roaring, adoring crowd to “do something,” the former president, beaming and carrying a paper cup full of hot tea, began nodding enthusiastically, dipping one shoulder, then the other, then slightly bouncing, shifting his weight between his feet. I caught the scene from my spot on the far sideline of the convention-center floor, stage right. It was brief, but its meaning was clear. Barack was feeling what was obvious to everyone in the cavernous arena. Michelle was right when she opened her speech by telling the crowd something special was happening—the return of hope. The next night, Bill Clinton said…

“THEY WANTED UP-TEMPO,” Nicole Scherzinger purrs in the insulated register of a pop star preserving her voice, “so I’ll do a fun little set of the hits.” You may know the hits yourself: Scherzinger is best known as the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, the aughts girl group whose songs touch a certain age bracket in the amygdala and get them on the dance floor. You probably remember the bravado of “Don’t Cha,” which suggests the listener wishes “their girlfriend was hot like me,” or the aural striptease of “Buttons.” We are, at this moment, speeding down the FDR Drive in a black car on her way to a gig: a set under the Brooklyn Bridge at a Wimbledon watch party. A few days earlier, she was performing at…

Kacey Musgraves (9/4–12/7) The singer brings Deeper Well on the road with Father John Misty, Lord Huron, and Nickel Creek. Kehlani (9/4–11/2) Kehlani made Crash to get live audiences’ “hearts exploding.” Flo and Anycia open. Clairo (9/6–11/8) Catch the artist performing Charm. Los Angeles and New York get five nights apiece. Post Malone (9/8–10/27) The musician with No. 1 hits with Morgan Wallen and Taylor Swift tours behind his country album, F-1 Trillion. Charli XCX & Troye Sivan (9/14–10/23) Charli and collaborator Sivan—finally serving 2023’s Something to Give Each Other Stateside—team up with Shygirl opening. Billie Eilish (9/29–12/17) The singer’s promo for Hit Me Hard and Soft has involved her being filmed eating vegan dishes. Her world tour will also promote plant-based food. Vince Staples (10/14–11/7) The rapper brings the…

ON A MUGGY July afternoon in Iowa City, I went grocery shopping with the writer Garth Greenwell. We hit up the town’s 1971-founded co-op armed with a short list from his partner, the poet Luis Muñoz. I was going over for dinner the next day, and ingredients needed to be acquired. Greenwell is one of the more respected practitioners of American fiction working today. His first novel, What Belongs to You, the story of a love affair between a young Bulgarian hustler and an expat teacher from Kentucky, was nominated for the 2016 National Book Award and will be adapted as an opera this fall. His second novel, Cleanness, mines the same American-in-Sofia premise to create a deeper, more layered work. Cleanness is full of sex and feeling, painstakingly unfolding…

INSIDE: Ezra Klein at the convention / Harris and the Democrats reclaim the spotlight AT A POLITICAL convention, power is rendered as geography. The rank and file are stuck in the rafters of the arena; the delegates jostle on the floor. Donors and VIPs are positioned up in a ring of luxury suites, their status-conferring badges and passes flapping from their many lanyards. The staffers toil down in the bowels, harried and molelike, their eyes on their phones. But at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, maybe the most important piece of real estate was a narrow space up metal gangway stairs at the back of the United Center, where Ricky Kirshner worked in front of a bank of a half-dozen flat-screens. The Democrats in the hall were extras…

➸ UNLESS YOU WANT to make pesto for a dinner party or big-batch cocktails on the regular, a compact blender can fulfill all of your speed-shredding dreams—and it won’t hog counter space. When kitchen and dining writer Emma Wartzman asked chefs and other food professionals which model they prefer, the Nutribullet Pro 900 ($110) was the most common and enthusiastic response. Cookbook author Jess Damuck compared it to the holy grail of blenders—the Vitamix—claiming that, despite being a fraction of the price, it’s powerful enough to purée frozen fruit, liquefy ice, and crush nuts to dust. Wartzman tested one and has been using it to whip up pasta sauce, salsa, and salad dressing, while Strategist managing editor Kelsie Schrader has been blending smoothies weekly in hers for six months. The…

SEP. McNeal Lincoln Center Theater, previews start 9/5 In Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play, Bartlett Sher directs Robert Downey Jr. as Jacob McNeal, a writer with an estranged son and a sinister obsession with AI. The Hills of California Broadhurst Theatre, previews start 9/11 Jez Butterworth’s play follows the reunion of four sisters, once a childhood singing group, at the bedside of their dying mother in Blackpool, England. Sam Mendes directs this musical Dramawith-a-capital-D in its transfer from London’s West End. Yellow Face Todd Haimes Theatre, previews start 9/13 Leigh Silverman directs the Broadway premiere of David Henry Hwang’s farce, in which a beleaguered Asian American playwright (Daniel Dae Kim) speaks out against a toxic casting trend in a Miss Saigon production … and then inadvertently casts a…

KAYTRANADA IS SEATED inside a dimly lit bistro in Montreal’s Mile End, wearing large sunglasses and a Frank Zappa T-shirt, regretting the hedonism that led to his present ruined condition. He lives in Los Angeles, but he grew up here, in a quiet borough some ten miles away, and a trip home for his mother’s birthday has also meant debaucherous reunions with childhood friends. “I don’t want to drink anymore,” he says half-heartedly in a soft French Canadian accent, pushing away the wine menu before ordering a bottle of sparkling water. Famous last words from the in-demand DJ-producer for whom partying is both his métier and escape. Kaytra recently attempted to forgo weed, too—his Grammy-winning sophomore album, 2019’s Bubba, was named for the strain he smoked while developing its effervescent…

“I’M TRYING TO slim down now, ” says Josh Rivera half-jokingly. “Hollywood loves the lean boys. Timmy Chalamet is working his butt off.” We’re at the rock-climbing gym Brooklyn Boulders in Long Island City on a July afternoon. Rivera, who packed on nearly 30 pounds of muscle to play Aaron Hernandez, the late star Patriots tight end who was convicted of murder, bulges out of his loose cutoff beige shirt and gray shorts. Rivera was 24 years old and working as a principal standby for the touring version of Hamilton when he sent in a tape for Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story. He was cast as Chino, Maria’s (Rachel Zegler) family-approved boyfriend. “I was like, ‘Tight, I made it.’ Like, ‘I’m Hollywood now … smooth sailing,’ ” he…

SEP. Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner (9/3) Sadie Smith, a former U.S. spy, is a ruthless observer of human behavior with total faith in her ability to manipulate it. She makes her way to rural France, where she’s been hired to infiltrate an anarchist commune and stir up trouble. Meanwhile, a radical from an earlier generation is living in a network of caves—a life that Sadie is increasingly drawn to. The author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room is as intimidatingly intelligent as this twisty novel’s main character. Colored Television, by Danzy Senna (9/3) Since her best-selling debut, 1998’s Caucasia, Senna has explored biracial identity through a series of acerbic novels and stories. Here, a writer named Jane is struggling to finish her book, a sweeping treatise on the…

SEP. How to Do Everything (NPR, 9/4) Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag’s weird, dry, and thoroughly fun “survival guide to life and assorted things” call-in show originally ran from 2011 to 2016, and it’s set to roar back to life as part of the Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! podcast feed. This season, the duo focus on how a town in the shadow of the Alps figured out a way to get sunlight, how chimpanzees recognize one another by their butts, how to get out of quicksand, and so on. The Worst Podcast (Canadaland, 9/4) Alan Zweig, the Canadian filmmaker known for idiosyncratic docs like I, Curmudgeon and Vinyl, turns to the audio-interview format with a fittingly outré premise. Each episode finds Zweig prodding a different celebrity guest to…

AS TOLD TO DOMINIQUE PARISO AND LAUREN RO To shop all these items in one place, scan the QR code. Colbo 51 Orchard St. colbo.nyc Colbo TK Shirt in Brown, $275 “We’re bringing this piece back for fall. The crinkled cotton fabric is so versatile and is sun-dried for 30 days in Japan.” —ELDAR HADAD, CO-OWNER East Fork 377A Atlantic Ave., Boerum Hill; eastfork.com Oval Platter in Big Sky, $220 “The Oval Platter came out earlier this year and, this fall, will be available in Big Sky, a beloved color from our archive.” —ALEX MATISSE, CEO AND FOUNDER Beverly’s NYC 27 Orchard St. beverlys.world Saint Heron Glassware 001, $158 “Every single one of these handblown glasses from Solange Knowles’s line is slightly different in feel.” —BEVERLY NGUYEN, FOUNDER Brown 514 Washington…

ADAM PEARSON INSISTS his acting career started as something of a joke. It was 2013, and he had just received an email about a casting call from Changing Faces, a U.K.-based nonprofit he had worked with that is dedicated to helping people with visible differences on the face, hands, or body. A film called Under the Skin, to be directed by Jonathan Glazer, was looking for an individual with facial disfigurement to play a part. Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis type 1, a condition that produces benign skin tumors all over his face, certainly fit the bill. But he had never acted before and had no intention of doing so. “Let’s waste someone’s time for a while,” he remembers thinking as he sent off his CV. Then he was asked to…

A GUST OF FRESH AIR is blowing through the art world. A brand-new outfit called Ruby/Dakota has opened on the supercool strip of East 2nd Street. A whole new scene has formed around 56 Henry’s two gallery spaces in Chinatown, and solo shows there by Laurie Simmons and Richard Tinkler promise to scintillate. Just north of the Whitney, Fort Gansevoort Gallery regularly showcases undiscovered artists, including, in September, 84-year-old quilt-maker extraordinaire Yvonne Wells. A gaggle of established artists are also exhibiting—Kara Walker, Simone Leigh, Nick Cave, and the still under-known Denzil Forrester among them. And the museums will have their fair share of thrilling exhibitions, too: The Whitney will feature American national treasure Alvin Ailey, MoMA will peer deep into its own brilliant bellybutton in a show about the woman…