I was always a fan of TheWest Wing. Now it turns out that one of the pranks I initiated at Spy inspired an episode. In the January 1993 issue, we pulled a prank on incoming Congressmen, interviewing them with a series of stupid questions that culminated with a solicitation of their opinion of what to …
Spy turned thirty this year. Graydon Carter threw a party for the old gang at the Waverly, which I am sorry I missed. Working at the magazine remains my happiest professional experience; still ranks kind of high on my personal experiences as well. Daniel Carter took a couple pictures; Tom Phillips brought T-shirts (I hope …
On Thursday night, we were one small strike away from having viewed a future Yankees Classic. A Magical Mystery Tour of a six-run seventh brought the Yankees all the way back from a dispiriting 7-2 deficit to the loathsome Red Sox, and suddenly we were up 8-7 with Robertson ready to pitch the eighth and …
In The Atlantic, Jared Keller has assembled a rather brainy slide show–a collection of literary references in The Simpsons. Many of my favorites are here, including Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chambon, George Plimpton, Gore Vidal, Robert Caro, The New Yorker, Tom Wolfe, The Economist, and William L. Shirer.Somehow Keller missed the episde in which Lisa …
A self-proclaimed actor and writer named Will Hines has written about Spy on a website called splitsider.com. “Maybe you’ve heard of Spy Magazine, the satirical magazine that was one of the funniest things ever in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but never read it. Now that Google Books has put much of the Spy …
Complimentary words from Matthew J.X. Malady in Slate: “A few weeks ago, Kurt Andersen tweeted the following: “Google’s digitized every issue of Spy magazine. Half up now, the rest soon. (The internet has justified itself).” Media nerds and pop culture junkies rejoiced. Spy, which Andersen co-founded in the mid-1980s with current Vanity Fair editor Graydon …
Thanks primarily to the efforts of Kurt Andersen, all of the back issues of SPY are becoming available on Google. About half are up now, and the rest will be rolled out soon. As Google says: Smart. Funny. Fearless.”It’s pretty safe to say that Spy was the most influential magazine of the 1980s. It might …
Thank goodness for whatever inspired Kurt Andersen to collect all of the covers of the issues of Spy which he edited, and to put them on his website, and to share them with his former colleagues–because now I can share them with you. Here they are, as Tad Friend dubbed them, “the 71 horses of …
Many years ago, Walter Kirn worked in the cubicle next to me at Spy, and he was a most entertaining neighbor (in fact, Walter was succeeded by Jim Collins and then by Larry Doyle. On the other side, I had Joanne Gruber. Spy provided me with tremendous neighbors.) During Walter’s short tenure, we spent pretty …
My friend Julie Mihaly, Spy‘s clever, creative photo editor in the Puck Building days and for a spell on Union Square as well, saw the photos I had posted on the blog here and here and here and here, and decided to do some local photo research–local, like in her own photo albums–to see what …