THE APPROVAL MATRIX Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies.
124 new york | september 16–29, 2019
lowbrow
brilliant
despicable
highbrow
PHOTOGRAPHS: WHITE HOUSE/WIKIMEDIA (BOLTON); SCALLEJA/WIKIMEDIA (DEAN & DELUCA); COURTESY SPERONE WESTWATER, NEW YORK (GIORNO); JOI ITO/WIKIMEDIA (ITO); HULU (THE TESTAMENTS); AJAY SURESH/WIKIMEDIA (PARIS THEATRE, WEWORK); JOAN MARCUS (SLAVE PLAY); HAMPTON UNIVERSITY/LINKEDIN (HAMPTON UNIVERSITY); NEW YORK STATE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE (LICENSE PLATES); SHEEP81/WIKIMEDIA (RHINO); TANA PAUL/YOUTUBE (MONGEAU); MANFRED WERNER/WIKIMEDIA (LOVE); HBO (ROY); WARNER MUSIC/WIKIMEDIA (HELLA MEGA TOUR); ADRIAN_BENEPE/TWITTER (PLANT); GAGE SKIDMORE/WIKIMEDIA (RENNER); VALERIE PLAME FOR CONGRESS (PLAME); ROBERT VIGALSKY/HBO (CATHERINE THE GREAT); FACEBOOK (DATING); MARLAFAY/INSTAGRAM (VSCO); ALTONMASON/INSTAGRAM (MASON); DARIA KOBAYASHI RITCH (DRAPERS); INSIDE EDITION/YOUTUBE (CHEETOS); DAVIDWALLACEOR1/TWITTER (CHALAMET); BACHELOR NATION ON ABC/ YOUTUBE (BACHELOR)Thisuncontradictable
presidency.So things are so
awful we’re
supposed to feel
conflicted that
John Bolton is out?Thank God, Alabama
survived Dorian
unscathed.Turns out WeWork
isn’t worth so much
after all!The suck-uppy
sketchiness of Joi Ito,
now the former director
of MIT Media Lab.Why were all the proposed
New York license plates so fug?Bye-bye, brick and
mortar! The number of
retail bankruptcies has
alreadyexceededlastyear’s.JPMorgan’s “Volfefe
Index”quantifies
presidential volatility.Amazon sends out
copies of Margaret
Atwood’s The
Testaments a week
early. Fortunately,
women have been
banned from reading
books in Gilead.Somewhat related:
Au revoir, Paris Theatre.Watching yourself
watching Slave Play
thanks to Clint
Ramos’s mirrored set.She Said,
Jodi Kantor
and Megan
Twohey’s first
draft of
#MeToo
history.Hampton University
waives tuition for a
semester for University
of the Bahamas students.John Giorno’s rocks
atSperone Westwater.Chris Bogia’s trees
at Mrs. gallery.Savage Appetites,
Rachel Monroe’s
cultural autopsy
of our true-crime
fixation.JacquelineWoodson,backamong
thebrownstones with her family
drama Red at the Bone.Gun Island, Amitav
Ghosh’s magic-realist
novel about the realities
ofclimatechange.Scientists create two embryos
for the almost extinct
northern white rhino.Joker wins the Golden
Lion at the Venice
Film Festival. How
devilish and twisted.Shiv Roy’s
Greta Garbo
boss pants.Book your babysitter now!
Green Day, Fall Out Boy,
and Weezer join forces for
the Hella Mega Tour.Valerie Plame announces
she’s running for Congress
or maybe starring in an
action flick. Or a Chevy ad.Helen Mirren, extremely
horny empress, in HBO’s
CatherinetheGreat.Betty and Sally Draper
reunited for Rodarte’s
spring 2020 campaign.Bond Hardware’s resin
“cinder block” furniture (perfect
for decorating your igloo).Emoji-handbag
designer Susan
Alexandra hosts a bat
mitzvah instead of a
fashion show,
complete with mini-
bagels and the Electric
Slide.She’s34.Timothée’s at-sea
make-out sesh with
Lily-Rose Depp.The Cheetos fashion show
serves flamin’-hot looks.Who could look happier than
model Alton Mason at the Tommy
Hilfiger show at the Apollo?Bachelor in Paradise makes
cringe-watch history
when Luke S. offers Bri his
rose and she rejects it.Joss Sackler, who married
into the OxyContin
zillionaire family,
reportedly offers Courtney
Love $100,000, plus perks,
toattendher fashion show.Billie Eilish unfollows
vlogger Tana Mongeau,
so of course Mongeau
makes a tearful,
unhinged vlog about it.ADatura stramonium plant—which is so toxic and
hallucinogenic it’s allegedly used by voodoo priests to
create zombies—is found growing on Columbus Avenue.The Brooklynboroughpresident’s
new pest-control solution: drowning
rodents in a big vat of rat soup!Jeremy Renner
throws in the
towel and shuts
down the Jeremy
Renner app.The (very basic) rise
of the “VSCO girl.”Period-tracker
apps Maya and
MIA Fem share
data with
Facebook on when
women last had
sex or whether
they use
contraceptives.A 17-year-old Alaska
high-school swimmer
was disqualified after a
win because her team-
issued bathing suit
showed too much of
herbuttocks (she was
later reinstated).Possibly related: Facebook
is launching a dating app.Dropping your AirPods
on the subway tracks.