What We Loved This Week: Jonathan Raban, Ricardo Arjona and Ernest Hemingway, Humor Writer

Eva Holland
“At Sea,” Jonathan Raban’s ode to the simultaneous isolation and civility of the seagoing life. It’s a 1996 magazine story that I came across in The Best of Outside—here’s a favorite section:

In the society of the sea, it is the duty of every member to keep his distance from all the others. To be alone is to be safe. It’s no coincidence that those two most English of attitudes, being “standoffish” and keeping aloof,” are nautical terms that have long since passed into the general currency of the language. Standing off is what a ship does to avoid the dangers of the coast; aloof is a-luff, or luffing your sails, head to wind, to stay clear of another vessel. The jargon of the sea is full of nouns and verbs to describe the multitude of ways in which a ship can keep itself to itself.

Michael Yessis
Ernest Hemingway, Humor Writer—aka PapaFunny. Hard-boilded Papa wants to be a comedy writer, and he’s challenged himself to produce 100 kinds of humor. Love the late night talk show joke about the movie version of “Eat, Pray, Love.”

[I]n the film, and this is true, this woman learns about life from eating too much in Italy. That’s how she learns about life. How about, let’s see, fighting a WAR in Italy? How about driving an ambulance through a bombed-out hellhole while being shelled by Germans, silly lady? How about being inside a building that blows up while you are in it? Christ, you could fall off a Vespa on a Milanese piazza and scrape part of your elbow and learn more about life than you would from eating goddam pizza, moronic woman.

Jim Benning
My favorite Latin pop singer-songwriter, Ricardo Arjona, released a new album this week called “Poquita Ropa,” and I’ve been enjoying it. Here’s a promo video:

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