interesting things
The Upper West Side, shrine to the pricey pillow sham, is no longer much of a frontier. But, on a recent sparkling Tuesday, Bryan Cranston revisited the proving grounds that—when he arrived here as a callow redhead, in 1983, to star in the ABC soap opera “Loving . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/11/26/121126ta_talk_friend
It began with an earthquake. What hit San Francisco in 1906 was one of the worst natural disasters in American history. Once the water mains broke, there was no way to fight the dozens of fires caused by ruptured gas mains, except by dynamiting buildings in the fire’s . . . (Subscription required.)
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_lepore
Inside the towering iron gates of Green Acres, a Beverly Hills estate built in the nineteen-twenties by the silent-film actor Harold Lloyd, a narrow road climbs through eight acres of lawns and gardens to a mansion modelled on the Villa Palmieri, the Florentine palazzo where Boccaccio set the . . . (Subscription required.)
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_bruck
The square that borders the Dadar Railway Station is the largest of sixty-five newspaper-delivery depots in Mumbai. At 4 A.M., forty trucks and vans packed with newspapers and magazines have parked and slid open their back doors; the trash-strewn streets are otherwise deserted, and the loudest noise . . . (Subscription required.)
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_auletta
There’s a certain way that actors behave when they put on police uniforms: their bearing stiffens, they furrow their brows. “It’s, like, cops,†Jake Gyllenhaal said the other day. “I see a lot of actors wear the uniform, like they feel different. To . . . (Subscription required.)
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/10/08/121008ta_talk_widdicombe
1989
Afterward, when the world was exploding around him, he felt annoyed with himself for having forgotten the name of the BBC reporter who told him that his old life was over and a new, darker existence was about to begin. She called him at home, on his private line . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/17/120917fa_fact_rushdie
One of the happiest moments of my life was the night Dr. Kimberly Shaw tore off her wig. It was December, 1992, and my friends and I had been gathering weekly to watch “Melrose Place.†When our favorite character—a red-headed home-wrecker who had seemingly . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/07/30/120730crte_television_nussbaum
Corn sex is complicated. As Michael Pollan observes in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,†the whole affair is so freakishly difficult it’s hard to imagine how it ever evolved in the first place. Corn’s female organs are sheathed in a sort of vegetable chastity . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/07/23/120723taco_talk_kolbert
paragraph class=”noindent”>Joanne Trattoria is a simple mom-and-pop outfit, but the mom and pop in question are Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta, the parents of Lady Gaga. The music idol is not involved in the restaurant, but it has other celebrity connections. In the kitchen is Art Smith . . .
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/tables/2012/07/23/120723gota_GOAT_tables_carey
Few people, unless they travel with an electron microscope, would ever notice the egg of an Aedes aegypti mosquito. But the insects follow us nearly everywhere we go. Aedes can breed in a teaspoon of water, and their eggs have been found in tin cans, beer bottles, barrels, jugs, flower . . . (Subscription required.)
via The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/09/120709fa_fact_specter