Yesterday in The New York Times Book Review, Slate‘s Internal Affairs Correspondent Jack Shafer favorably reviewed A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America, by Peter Richardson. “Ramparts stands with a handful of 20th-century American magazines–Playboy, the Harold Hayes-era Esquire, Rolling Stone, Spy and Wired–whose glory days continue …
Tad Friend, once upon a time my colleague at Spy, has written a family memoir called Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor. It’s elegantly written, with many beautiful and touching passages, and the affection for his family really shows through. One very personal reaction it engendered from me was …
Trawling through photo albums last week, I found these wonderful pictures. Left, Kurt and Kate Andersen; above, George Kalogerakis, Rachel Urquhart, Spike and Graydon Carter. Below left, Molly Malanowski and me. These three photos were taken in 1989 at Kurt’s place in Putnam County. Below right, Molly, earlier that same year, in our apartment in …
. . .on the roof of the famous Puck Building, much of the staff of Spy assembled. These were friends of mine. Photos by Julie Mihaly, courtesy Natasha Lessink. In the top picture, Constance Drayton, Cindy Arlinsky, John Brodie, Ben Svetkey, Rachel Urquhart, George Kalagerakis, Elissa Schappell, Kurt Andersen, Cynthia Cotts, Joe Mastrianni, Graydon Carter, …
Here’s today’s innovative idea, from Newsweek: Hire a comedian to edit the magazine, which happens to be a Tina Brown brainstorm from 1995 (she hired Roseanne Barr to edit The New Yorker), and sell the concept with Spy magazine cover concept, fresh from 1989. (By the way, that’s the head of Scott Yates doubling for …
Sonda Andersson, an art director at SPY, posted on Facebook these photos taken sometime in the summer of 1989 at Kurt Anderson and Anne Kreamer‘s second home up near Carmel in Putnam County. Good to see all these shiny happy faces.
Yesterday I ran into my friend Larry Doyle on the corner of 42nd and Sixth. Larry said he had came to New York because he “just had to get out of Baltimore for a day.” Of course, I did that 36 years ago and never really returned, so perhaps someone should check to see if …
My eagle-eyed friend John Connolly spotted this complimentary comment about Spy in, of all places, The Tube City Almanac of McKeesport, Pennsylvania: With My Little Eye: One of my purchases during the recent Book Country outing was a history of the late, lamented Spy magazine called Spy: The Funny Years. I started to page through …
My friend Gina Duclayan (center picture, foreground, in front of Kurt Andersen and her future husband Daniel Radosh) posted an album of photos from the Spy days on her facebook page. Fun to see the kids. (I wonder who got custody of the flag?) Shown in the enlargement-resistent photo at right (you’ll have to take …
The writer Lynn Phillips, who a few days ago requested a copy of the article “When Disney Ruled America” that I wrote for Spy, has written with her comments: “The article does indeed live up. Particularly once Eisner gets into power.The writing has an antic energy – a feeling of rushing faster and faster down …