Exhibit 22.8

New Cupboard

A Brief Encyclopedia
of Modern Magic
with tricks you can do at home!

by Michael Stewart

Now Available‏
1 tape-bound volume
Designed by Brett Yasko
$15/year subscription, $5/individual

The Cupboard is pleased to announce A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic by Michael Stewart which will immediately become the most important compendium of magical knowledge you own.


*ABOUT THE VOLUME*

Every illusion carries a price and no one is more aware of that than the wondrous, tragic magicians detailed here. They know darkness that leaves scars. They know failure that gives birth to terrible life. They know their journey is one of haunting, their competition one that doesn't end with this world. Did it never occur to us they keep their tricks a secret to protect us?

Plus tricks you can do at home!

(You should never do these tricks at home.)

Read excerpts here.


*ABOUT THE AUTHOR*

Michael Stewart is a writer and professor living in Providence, R.I. He teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University where he graduated with an MFA in 2007. His work has appeared in a variety of journals including Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, and elimae among others. Recently, he has been anthologized in both Thirty Under Thirty and Best of the Web. More of his work can be found at strangesympathies.com.


*SUBSCRIBE*

The best way to enjoy The Cupboard is to subscribe. The Cupboard publishes four great volumes per year and this, our fifth volume, begins our second year. Now is the time. One year=$15. Subscribe here.

Past volumes from Louis Streittmatter, Mathias Svalina, and Caia Hagel are also available individually for $5.

Note: If you've been a subscriber since the birth of The Cupboard, your subscription is now up. We hope you will renew it. Thank you so much for your support.

Exhibit 16.26

Notes

* My college friend Mallory was mentioned in the New York Times yesterday. That's pretty cool by itself, about as cool as you can get, really, but her description takes it to another level:

"The radical technologist, Mallory Knodel, 25, of the Lower East Side, writes code to help further leftist causes. She said Drupal had been helpful for her group, May First/People Link, a network that includes trade unions and political pranksters who oppose globalization."

I would kill to be a radical technologist. I might get the business cards printed up just in case it ever happens for me.


And I know they are referring to her politics here, but if it's okay with everyone--especially Mallory--I'm just going to go ahead and assume that, in addition to her politics, she is engaged in some kind of supervillainy. I wouldn't put it past her.

I don't really know, but I assume Fox's new hit drama Fringe is about such things. Oh, who am I kidding, I totally know.

Anyway, the point here is that Mallory is awesome. I remember once trying to explain to her the 200-level astronomy class I'd taken. I'd say her reaction was akin to a parent listening to their child describe the marshmallow castle they planned on living in as an adult. She just seemed sad.

* My brother's radio show is hitting its stride and has had some quality guests recently, including all-around great guy Scott Hales who shares the list of people he's going after when he gets back from Afghanistan. You can always find the downloadable version at their blog here.

* Joe Posnanski's new column is a heartbreaking story of a Royals scout who's both A) Getting married at 81 to a girl he first proposed to in 1958 and B) Very excited about Royals prospect Derrick Robinson. I don't know whether to cry or take my proposed 2012 Royals lineup out of my hope chest and start modifying. I've never told you about my hope chest? Hmm, I sort of wish I hadn't now. As you might imagine, it's mostly full of fake business cards.

Exhibit 12.14

George Saunders has a hilarious take on Sarah Palin in the New Yorker. Read here.

And, in case you haven't noticed ("and judging by the attendence, you haven't"), the Royals have won 6 in a row, Soria has 40 saves, Meche has 12 wins, and I have begun to say things like, "If Ryan Shealy had been in the lineup all season this team would have been within 5 games of .500."

Ah, autumn, it's that magical time when I begin to talk myself into Kyle Davies and work out Brian Bannister for Jeff Francoeur trades in my head.

Then comes winter. A very long winter.

Exhibit 10.25

Not content to play it cool like their benign, cookie-perfecting brethren, the New Yorker has decided to throw a grenade into the relative calm of the mid-early-mid election coverage with their most recent cover. Naturally, people are upset.

The problem isn't that it's unidentifiable as satire or that it's a prima facie ploy for attention, but that it's satire without an obvious referent. The necessity here is that we know the New Yorker is joking because they're the New Yorker, not because there is one consistent, universally identifiable image they are mocking. At best it can be said that they satirizing a problematic conservative meme but their method of doing so confuses the issue by using imagery that, with the exception of the fistbump, is completely from the artist's (rather than the public's) consciousness.

It's a perfectly reasonable response to see this image's heresy (the flag burning) and its stereotyping (poor Michelle) as trumping whatever chuckles, if any, it gets. Mostly there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what role the New Yorker plays in our culture. I think most of us would agree that this image is not so obviously satirical that if it were, say, on the cover of a conservative magazine like the National Review, we'd all recognize it as funny rather than horrific and offensive. If the same image could be used to make exactly the point it's supposed to be satirizing, is it successful satire? And is that 'THE NEW YORKER' up top capable of turning the fear, hate, and racism of the image into a joke all by itself?

It is for me, but that's probably not good enough.

When this image is plastered all over the news tonight--as Mr. Remnick et al. surely knew it would be--the country will be left to make a decision about this image without benefit of an enlightened dialogue on the subject. What discussion there is will be about the controversy, thus effectively removing any element of satire before most Americans get the opportunity to even see the image. Katie Couric isn't going to turn to look at this image as it hovers over her tiny shoulder and laugh tonight. No, she's going to talk about it in an even, grim voice and we're all going to study this like a Jim Crow-era cartoon (except for me, I'll probably be playing Civilization or baking cookies).

As someone from the plains, I'm never one for underestimating "the public" but I think it's a legitimate issue here. Had this been the cover of Mad Magazine, we wouldn't have an issue, but for a magazine that's likely to have diverse and even contradictory connotations to those who don't regularly read it, placing such a problematic image on the cover without only the magazine's name as context risks quite a bit. We already know how this ends, of course, and now that familiar black THE NEW YORKER header is going to loom quite a bit darker for many.

The real question here is why they didn't find a way to use this image--which I think is actually quite funny in the proper context--in a way that was actually, you know, satirizing something. If, say, this image had been on the television screen being watched by two scared looking farmer-types, suddenly the joke is on the media and the rubes.

It's perfect. If we know anything about the New Yorker, it's that they hate the rubes.

Exhibit 8.21

Royals thoughts after an arbitrary number of games.

Record: 7-5
Team MVP: Brian Bannister
Team LVP: Jose Guillen
New Powder Blue Uniforms: Welcome
New Video Board: Absurd/Awesome
New Manager's Ratio of Chin to Chin Hair: 1:1
Distressing Early Season Performer: Gil Meche
Tony Pena Jr's OPS: .99 (this, it should be noted, is almost impossible)