Team Party Crash: Poets & Writers Magazine at 35
Accordions: All the coolest tools are getting them!
It seems like just yesterday that you perused the inaugural issue of Poets & Writers magazine and pretended to know what the hell they were talking about. But time doth fly and P&W has been confusing twenty-somethings for 35 years now. Since 35 is the new 25, the editors rented out Bowery Ballroom, commissioned a performance by One Ring Zero and even rallied the Brothers Jonathan (Franzen, Lethem, Ames, but no Foer alas!) for the occasion. Gawker correpondent Noelle Hancock and Village Voice shutterhussy Jennifer Snow captured it all. After the jump, Jonathan Ames' undescended testicle and Jonathan Franzen does not heart Gawker.
Erica Jong listens patiently as Grandma describes her first orgasm.
Here we are! Noelle Hancock and Jen Snow coming atcha live from downtown Manhattan! Tonight we're celebrating Poets & Writers magazine and, indeed, poets and writers like Nick Flynn, Francine Prose, and Susan Wheeler have showed up in support, along with the types of people who jerk off to McSweeney's. What a crowd it is, everyone! We wish you were here to see this!
Don't let the sensible haircuts and clothes fool you — these women are feared and revered on the krumping circuit.
Balconies are for judging!
Being a publishing groupie is a lonely existence.
Everyone is shuffling in, and the entryway gets clogged with people as a woman slowly escorts a man down the hall. EXCUSE ME! A man behind her bellows, causing the woman to turn around and snap, He s BLIND! Whatever, Mr. Excuse Me mutters. How great that we live in a town where it is so common for people to wear dark sunglasses indoors at night, that your first assumption is not that they are blind, but that they are just being a douche. New York faaaannnntastic!
Esther really hopes she comes out on top when they raffle off dinner for two at The Cheesecake Factory.
The happy couple demonstrates the joy of living by the Antioch rules.
Suddenly, Jonathan Franzen s tweedy self makes an appearance. Long before Hermes was dissing Oprah Winfrey — mistaking her for a North African when she s SO a Zulu descendent — Franzen dared to take on O-Town (Population: infinity!). He famously refused to allow his book, The Corrections, to be a part of Oprah s plebian book club. I cautiously ask him for an interview and he responds with what we Southerners call a slap in the face with a wet squirrel. I know Gawker! He fumes. I hate Gawker! Gawker was mean to me for a lot of years!! We did it for Oprah, Franzen, we did it for Oprah!
You know what they say about guys with big cellos: They were teased like hell in high school.
Not to dwell on this glasses thing, but do the Eyemasters and Lenscrafters below 14th Street just make a killing? Seriously. The Village has gotta have the highest spectacle per capita rate in the nation. And does anyone else feel cheated that they can't be in high school NOW when it's suddenly cool to have bad eyesight and be dorktastic? If the Trenchcoat Mafia losers had just waited a few years, they'd have been the most popular kids in school.
This guy thinks he's posing for a Friendster photo.
The indie, anarchist vibe is compromised when the band gives a shoutout to the night s corporate sponsor, Google. Yes, let's all thank the company responsible for the fact that every mediocre article we wrote in high school is now readily-available to our prospective employers. I actually have a theory that most people's ambition comes, not from a desire to change the world, but a desire to get all of the dumb things they've done or written pushed to Page 2 of Google.
Who says The Fountainhead is no longer relevant?
Lohan's new blonde hair is not really working for her.
A woman models the new Hipster Shock Collar, which prevents its wearers from going above 10th Street.
Jonathan Ames gets onstage and sounds a barbaric yawp — without help from Mr. Keating and the "sweaty-toothed madman," no less! "It s a sound I made when I was eight-years-old that cured my back spasms and finally lowered my undescended testicle! Ames tells the audience. It has healing powers. It can help anyone in the audience who is feeling sick." And who isn't with the indelible image of Ames' undescended testy tattooed on their mind.
Jonathan Ames' performs to the sound of one testicle dropping.
"You want a piece of me?"
"Shit, don't let me photographed with Ames!"
Colson Whitehead will make you his bitch.
The band calls Jonathan Lethem to the stage and a woman behind me sighs, Oh, I just want to fuck him! A quick look over the shoulder reveals that the woman is in her sixties. Later I ask the thrice-married author if writing is sexy. I think it s sexy as hell. I m turned on 24 hours a day! He says, and then tells me he's writing the world's first "emo novel." (uh oh)
Lethem eats cake.
This here is Barney, he'll be your Poet for the evening.
The roofies kick in.
You are my amigo, negro, let's not fiiiiight....
So is it possible for an un-Jonathan to make it in this business? "I think there's, like, a tidal wave of Jonathans because we were the number one baby name circa 1964," says Lethem. "We re basically clogging up every profession at the moment. There are probably foremans complaining about the glut of Jonathans as we speak."
Ames tells Gawker, "I was actually thinking of changing my last name to Franzen and writing a sequel to The Corrections called The Erections." Oh, har har. Maybe Ames should be writing for Gawker instead.
