FAMOUS AD GUY Lord Maurice Saatchi co-founded Saatchi & Saatchi, which for a while was one of the largest agencies in the world. So he really knows how to pitch. When I find him at a back table at Il Gattopardo, a quiet-luxury Italian restaurant in the bottom of a townhouse across from the Museum of Modern Art, on a recent Saturday, the elegantly soft-spoken 77-year-old is wearing his trademark Mr. Magoo glasses and a long white shirt that extends down below his knees. It's noon, and he has already ordered a glass of white wine and is prepared to tell me about—or sell me on-his saucily titled book, Orgasm, a large-format, large-print collection of his essays. Each is designed to rhetorically demolish what he apparently perceives as the reader's preconceived notions. Chapter titles include "Conservatives Are Cruel," "Poetry Is for Wimps," "Cocktail Parties Are Stressful," "America Is Perfect," and "Truth Is Good." He hopes to disabuse you of these beliefs, assuming that you hold them.
He has priced Orgasm at $100. Assuming that I haven't bothered to read it, he starts off with the big catchy idea. "We know that a physical orgasm is the most blissful human experience," he says, the theme music from Succession actually playing in the background. "This book claims that there is another kind of orgasm-an orgasm of the mind. Which has nothing to do with sex. Which is even more pleasurable." The waiter arrives with an amuse-bouche, with compliments from the chef: arancini, a rice ball with sweet peas, mozzarella, and pear.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 20 - June 02, 2024-Ausgabe von New York magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 20 - June 02, 2024-Ausgabe von New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
