All the News That’s Fit to Print (Online)

The Holy Grail

My day started off badly. I had a 9am appointment to speak to a health insurance advisor and they stood me up.

So I decided to head to where I work in midtown Manhattan. Bryant Park, to be precise, 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. (You can’t get any more midtown Manhattan than that!)

Now, normally, I buy The New York Times in the morning so I can read it before I go to work at 11am. There are two newsstands within one block of my apartment. (They’re both owned by Iconic Magazines.)

I see now that that’s an anomaly.

I spent about 45 minutes frantically searching midtown Manhattan for a copy of The New York Times. (Did I mention that I was in midtown Manhattan in New York City, the largest city in the United States? Indeed, where The New York Times is printed?)

I could not find a copy.

I did see several newsstands. They were either completely shut or they didn’t have any newspapers. (Yes, we now have newsstands that don’t actually sell any newspapers!)

Now I know I’m going to get a lot of flack for this (in fact, I already have), but I like to read the print edition of The New York Times. I like to look through the entire physical paper and decide what I want to read.

Some of you will say, “But everyone reads it online!”

Yes, but who decides what to put on the front page of their website? Not me!

I know some editor will decide what they think are the most important stories, but some stories are sure to fall through the cracks, especially if I’m not looking for them.

Like on Friday, for example, there was a review of a new movie called Late Fame, which I would not have known existed if I had not seen the review in the print edition.

Would the online editor of The New York Times have deemed that important enough to put on the front page of their website? Surely, there was some major studio release that would have warranted more attention.

I know I’m a dinosaur—and proud of it!

In a similar fashion, I know that there’s a whole universe of TV shows out there for me to watch, but I like to channel surf until I find something I like. That’s just how I operate.

I did finally find a copy of The New York Times at a deli in Chelsea. But now the news would be one and a half days old, as a friend of mine helpfully pointed out.

But the important thing is that I get to decide what I read—even if it’s a day and a half old.

Late Fame/Shoot the Moon

Late Fame is the story of a poet, Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe), who published a book of poetry in 1979, but since then has led a quiet, uneventful life as a postal worker.

He’s discovered by a group of young artist-wannabes who have dubbed themselves The Enthusiasm Society and is invited by them to take part in a reading they are planning.

One of the group’s members is an older, mysterious Asian actress named Gloria (a fabulous Greta Lee) who develops a crush on Saxberger.

Maybe I’m flattering myself by saying this, but I so identified with the character played by Willem Dafoe that I practically burst into tears.

Like his character, my “career” peaked in 1979 (the year I graduated high school) and I moved to New York City in 1981, four years after his character does.

There are many nice touches in this movie that rang true to me.

The self-described groups of artists turns out to be a bunch of trust fund babies, most of whom haven’t actually read Saxberger’s work. The most pretentious of the bunch, Meyers (Edmund Donovan), points out that his sleek Soho apartment was purchased for him by his father as an investment. “It was cheaper than the dorms at NYU,” he says.

Saxberger’s friends are a group of working-class men whom Saxberger refuses to invite to his poetry reading because he doesn’t think they’d appreciate it, and who mock him when they discover his creative past.

There’s a moment in the movie when Saxberger and Gloria are walking through Soho and Saxberger describes living in Soho in the ’70s like “living on the Moon.”

At the end of the movie, Saxberger reconciles with his working-class buddies, perhaps as a result of discovering the phoniness of his new group of admirers.

This weekend, I also caught Shoot the Moon on TCM (which I hadn’t seen before), one of the most explosive depictions of a marriage falling apart I’ve ever seen, with amazing performances from Diane Keaton and Albert Finney as the divorcing couple. The ending of this movie is particularly shocking, but there are shocking moments throughout, as well as a surprisingly touching performance by Peter Weller (the future star of Robocop).