The New Yorker

“When in doubt, turn to food: at least when it comes to gift giving, that’s an infallible motto,” Helen Rosner writes. For every person on this earth, there exists a perfect gastronomic gift—something to eat, something to eat with, something to eat near, something to remind one of the joy of eating. From a pair of leather boots sculpted to resemble a half-peeled banana to a jar of violently purple French mustard, Rosner shares the items she found herself most drawn to this year—a motley collection of the edible, the functional, and the absurd. See her full gastronomic gift guide: https://lnkd.in/gGTA3aDK

A cartoon by Jack Ziegler, from 2005. #NewYorkerCartoons https://lnkd.in/g484YkQg

The first issue of the magazine Giant Robot the writer Hua Hsu ever came across featured the Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai on the cover—which was enough to stand out on a crowded newsstand in the mid-1990s. But what caught his attention, Hsu writes, were the teasers for a random assortment of other stories, about gangs, surfing, shaved ice, orgies. A small tagline in the top right corner read “A magazine for you.” “But who was I? I was a teen-ager and desperate to know. I suspected Giant Robot could help me figure it out.” For anyone under the age of 40, this level of impressionability might sound a bit silly, Hsu writes. But this was a time when there were few things as intoxicating as a bountiful magazine rack, with countless interests, ideologies, identities to try on for size. There was something about Giant Robot’s affection for Asian culture—and its allergy to dwelling on what that meant—that drew in many young people who were searching for a context. It was a magazine that was very serious about some things, and not at all serious about others. Read Hsu on what Giant Robot meant to him and Asian culture at-large: https://lnkd.in/gzZBaWwJ

Does the little surge of the Donald Trump dance move across sports represent a wave, or at least a wavelet, of athletes declaring their allegiances for the President-elect? It’s not clear whether the dance move, a kind of cross between a shimmy and a shadowbox, is celebrating the President-elect or mocking him, Louisa Thomas writes. “It’s not clear, in fact, whether that distinction between celebration and mockery means anything. The move is a meme.” What is clear is that many professional athletes and many of the young men who flocked to Trump have never been of voting age in an election in which he was not on the ballot. For them, the question is not whether Trump will become normalized. He is the norm. Trump’s victory made that clear, and his dance made it clearer. Read Thomas on what the proliferation of the Trump dance reveals about the parade of athletes imitating him: https://lnkd.in/gxpWiB_A

In the years since completing his tenure as James Bond, Daniel Craig has pursued a variety of roles that seem to mark a conscious break from his Bondian image, whether cavorting around as a tweedy Southern-accented detective in Rian Johnson’s hit Netflix movie series, “Knives Out,” or playing Macbeth on Broadway. But his character in “Queer,” Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s semi-autobiographical novella of the same name, is an especially sharp departure. In the film, Craig plays the Burroughs avatar, an American writer named Lee. “I recognized him,” Craig said of what appealed to him about the role. “I’m terrible at doing impersonations of people, so that wasn’t going to happen. I just wanted to find somebody that I could tune into. And I felt like I could tune into him because he was someone searching for love.” The book centers on Lee’s romance with a young American, played in the film by Drew Starkey. The movie’s sex scenes are about as explicit as any that a major male movie star has performed onscreen with a male co-star. Craig said being “coy” with the scenes would have been a “big mistake.” “He wants to fuck. And that’s what people do,” he said. Read Craig’s full conversation with Isaac Chotiner, in which he discusses his experiences making “Queer,” being fascinated by the concept of masculinity, and his complicated relationship to James Bond: https://lnkd.in/gYyTx-an

A cartoon by Victoria Roberts. #NewYorkerCartoons See all the cartoons from this week’s issue: https://lnkd.in/grH_6pEJ

Read the rest of “Paris Friend,” a new short story by Shuang Xuetao. https://lnkd.in/gw5pjfCD

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, he will oversee 13 operating divisions, including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His reach would extend into virtually every corner of the nation’s health-care infrastructure, from messaging on public health and investment in biomedical research to the approval of new drugs and the delivery of medical care. Trump, who in April called Kennedy a “Radical Left Lunatic,” recently encouraged him to “go wild” on health, medicines, and “the food.” Kennedy seems poised to oblige, Dhruv Khullar writes. In the past few months, Kennedy has indicated that he intends to re?xamine safety data for approved vaccines, advise municipalities not to add fluoride to their water supply, halt infectious-disease research at the N.I.H. and fire 600 of its employees, and reverse the F.D.A.’s “aggressive suppression” of, among other things, discredited COVID remedies such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. The trouble—and the opportunity—with Kennedy is that, although he has many bad ideas, not all his ideas are bad. He appears deeply concerned about the staggering rates of chronic disease in this country, and correctly condemns the long-standing failure to meaningfully reform the American food system, which is characterized by a glut of ultra-processed products, owing partly to unhealthful agricultural subsidies. “And yet the irony of our political moment is that Kennedy’s more reasonable positions are the ones that could sink his candidacy,” Khullar writes. Read his full piece: https://lnkd.in/g-V_MQXH

Ridley Scott’s movies have contended with Great Men of History, as well as aliens, androids, con men, gangsters, goblins, soldiers, serial killers, and the Gucci family. He creates visceral worlds, whether the rain-streaked, mechanized dystopia of “Blade Runner” or the dusty Roman arenas of “Gladiator” and the new “Gladiator II.” Several of his screen images—a slime-covered creature bursting out of an astronaut’s chest in “Alien,” Thelma and Louise zooming off a cliff—are lodged firmly in the popular imagination. But he’s tough to pin down. “Is Ridley a fine artist? Is he an art-cinema director? Is he a commercial hack? Is he all of the above?,” Paul Sammon, a writer who has published three books about Scott, said. “That’s what I really enjoy about Ridley—he is unclassifiable.” Read a Profile of the filmmaker: https://lnkd.in/gxhhwKri

Travelling can be full of unexpected twists and turns. Recently, David Sedaris bumped into a few hiccups on his way back to New York City, following a vacation on a small island in Maine with his longtime partner Hugh. Thunderstorms in the New York area led to the last-minute cancellation of their flight, so the pair opted to drive back to the city—with a fellow stranded passenger. Had Sedaris proposed earlier that he invite the stranger to come with them to New York, Hugh would have said no. But the woman, who had to be at work the next morning, was “so grateful that there was really no way for him to back out,” Sedaris writes. In a new Personal History, Sedaris writes about the pains and pleasures of travelling with Hugh and what he learned about himself and the stranger he invited along on their long, strange journey from Maine to New York. Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/gEuEdkzm