Thursday, July 20, 2023

Malcolm in the Break Room

Someone donated three boxes containing every New Yorker from the past 7 years, from 2016––now. That's more than 300 issues. Since a lot of the magazine's content remains interesting, they do sell, but we happen to have about 50 issues spilling off the magazine rack right now. 

I decided to take off and frame some of the coolest covers. We usually have lots of picture frames priced at 99 cents, and I think the framed covers would sell in BOOK’s for a coupla bucks. Not the best time-per-penny ratio, but I’d enjoy doing it, and I always like to snazz up my area.

But this first cover (2/22/2016) I framed, for which I even found a mat, I put in our break room, underneath the MLK Time cover I’d framed a while ago.
When Mr Furniture came in, I said, “Look, I put up Malcolm X to balance out MLK, like you and Big Boss.”

“He’s no MLK,” Mr Furniture said. “More like Dr. Phil.” 

(Mr F’s a nick-namer. He calls Big Boss 'Dr. Phil' to his face, and me 'San Francisco'. Asst Man is 'Opie' from Mayberry.)

Mr Furniture paused. “But I could be Malcolm .”


See the art close-up, at The New Yorker:

Kadir Nelson's painting “celebrates the Schomburg Research Center [for Black Culture--a branch of the NYPL] in Harlem.
He wanted to create ‘an homage to the great Harlem Renaissance painters Aaron Douglas [the background painting, “Into Bondage”], William H. Johnson [“Café” couple, 1940]…
Also …artists and performers the Nicholas Brothers, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington; the activist Malcolm X;
and writers James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston.'"
THE BEST: the famous Nicholas Bros. 3-minute dancing scene (the staircase!), here on youTube—from Stormy Weather (1943, Cab Calloway at the start):

4 comments:

  1. That is an excellent cover, as so many New Yorker covers are. I'm surprised your thrift store accepts magazines. A lot of them don't.

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    1. STEVE: yes, so many NewYorker covers are worthy of framing. Magazines are pretty popular at the store—we don’t usually get too many more than we can handle (tho we probably recycle half— People magazine ages in a day)
      —I think people don’t subscribe to as many as they used to.

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  2. Pretty sure I will regret every letting a NYorker go to the library free bin. I love their articles and jokes and covers but really, overkill!
    Your thrift store is cool because of your artistic presence!

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  3. I LOVE the Nicholas Brothers! I wish they'd made a million movies with them: they're so amazing to watch.

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