Stuff I like by Benita

I'm awesome.

- Dec 21
Naked-Santa Spectacular | Culture | Vanity Fair

We lay the holiday season bare with stories, comic strips, and humor essays by hilarious writers like Sloane Crosley, Martin Marks, Teddy Wayne, Mike Sacks, Ben Widdicombe, Bruce Handy, and Michelle Collins.

I haven’t read all of them yet, but the ones I have read are very good so I have high hopes for all.

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- Dec 28
From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut? | Vanity Fair

Look at people on the street and in malls—jeans and sneakers remain the standard uniform for all ages, as they were in 2002, 1992, and 1982. Look through a current fashion or architecture magazine or listen to 10 random new pop songs; if you didn’t already know they were all things from the 2010s, I guarantee you couldn’t tell me with certainty they weren’t from the 2000s or 1990s or 1980s or even earlier. (The first time I heard a Josh Ritter song a few years ago, I actually thought it was Bob Dylan.) In our Been There Done That Mashup Age, nothing is obsolete, and nothing is really new; it’s all good. I feel as if the whole culture is stoned, listening to an LP that’s been skipping for decades, playing the same groove over and over. Nobody has the wit or gumption to stand up and lift the stylus.

Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out. So as the Web and artificially intelligent smartphones and the rise of China and 9/11 and the winners-take-all American economy and the Great Recession disrupt and transform our lives and hopes and dreams, we are clinging as never before to the familiar in matters of style and culture.

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- 16
- Jan 12
Should Vanity Fair Be a Spelling Vigilante? | Blogs | Vanity Fair

This is my favorite response to the NYT piece causing a stir today.

“Just as New York Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane is concerned whether his newspaper is printing lies or the truth, we here at V.F. looking for reader input on whether and when Vanity Fair should spell “words” correctly in the stories we publish.

One example: the word “maintenance” seems like it should only have one “a” in it. It should be “maintenence,” right? But it’s not. So is it our job as reporters and editors to spell it correctly?

Another example: who decides “Michele Bachmann” should be spelled with one “l” in “Michele” and two “n”s in “Bachmann”? I’ve never seen it spelled like that in any other circumstance, so should we print it just because that’s how she spells it? I don’t know.

As one reader recently wrote in a message to the spelling editor:

“My question is what role the magazine’s news coverage should play with regard to stupidly spelled words. In general, Vanity Fair spells stuff correctly, but sometimes words just look wrong. ‘Broccoli,’ for instance, looks dumb. If a magazine’s overarching goal is to be correct, but something makes you do a double-take because it just looks so bad, should Vanity Fair just let these oddities stand?”

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can Vanity Fair do this in a way that is objective and fair? Whose job is it to decide what words look strange and what words just look fancy? And at what point does an exotic extra consonant become distracting?”

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Stuff I like by Benita

I'm awesome.

Naked-Santa Spectacular | Culture | Vanity Fair

From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut? | Vanity Fair

Should Vanity Fair Be a Spelling Vigilante? | Blogs | Vanity Fair

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