The Periodical Table

A weekly look at the magazines lying around Beachwood HQ.

Error in the Code
"He was a gregarious child, whose hands seemed to hate him," Richard Preston writes in The New Yorker. "Over time, his fingers had got inside his mouth and nose and had broken out and removed the bones of his upper palate and parts of his sinuses, leaving a cavern in his face. He had also bitten off several fingers."

This is Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, "the far end of a spectrum of self-injurious behavior."

In which a man's right hand will literally try to stop his left hand from tearing himself apart.

American Code
This is a nation tearing itself apart.

So-Called State of Mind
Like nearly every other critic, The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin pans Lifetime's new show State of Mind, which is a shame because you'd think a TV show with Lili Taylor would rock. And the premise - Taylor as a psychologist; think updated Bob Newhart - sounds so promising. But apparently the show sucks.

This parenthetical, however, is the most interesting part of Franklin's review: "([The hapless young lawyer] is played by Devon Gummersall, who portrayed the memorably odd, awkward neighbor boy Brian in My So-Called Life.)"

He resurfaces!

Gummersall's So-Called performance was nothing less than brilliant. That show is missed.

Carpentersville USA
"It's in places like Carpentersville where we may be witnessing the opening of a deep and profound fissure in the American landscape. Over the past two years, more than 40 local and state governments have passed ordinances and legislation aimed at making life miserable for illegal immigrants in the hope that they'll have no choice but to return to their countries of origin. Deportation by attrition, some call it," Alex Kotlowitz wrote in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday.

"Forty miles northwest of Chicago, Carpentersville is a bit too far to be a commuter town and not distant enough to be a self-contained village. The town, which sprawls over seven and a half square miles, has grown without much planning, and feels less like a suburb than it does an adventure in navigation. The languid Fox River, which cuts through its midsection, is what orients. East of the river and west of the river have clear connotations."

If you've found it hard to wade through the incremental, daily, trudging coverage of the immigration debate in towns like Carpentersville, this article is the antidote. In one smoothly-written swoop, you can get up to speed.

The animating theme of the piece is captured in this paragraph: "But with Congress's inability to reach an agreement on an immigration bill, the debate will continue among local officials like those in Carpentersville, where the wrangling often seems less about illegal immigration than it does about whether new immigrants are assimilating quickly enough, if at all."

Toronto Tumbles
"Its status as Canada's pre-eminent is being challenged," the Economist reports. "The contender is Calgary, in Alberta, the western base of the country's booming energy industry. Though its population is only 1m, it is growing fast. Calgary is building new schools, hospitals and roads and luring corporate head offices."

Sister City
"Deep in the heart of China, the hilly riverside city of Chongqing is burning with ambition and wreathed in smog," the Economist says. "Comparisons are often made with Chicago."

Desert Delusion
Let's face it, Phoenix sucks. No matter how much of a spin Dwell tries to put on it.

We had it right last month, and now comes the Economist to prove us right:

"A city that once won prizes is now a crime-ridden mess," the magazine reports. "[B]urglary, theft and car crime are among the highest in the country. Newcomers who left Los Angeles to avoid smog and commuter traffic find that both are little better in Phoenix, and the area scores embarrassingly low in national education ratings."

Also Noted
From last week's New Yorker:

* "Damn Spam: The Losing War On Junk E-Mail."

* "An Unsolved Killing: What Does The Firing of a U.S. Attorney Have To Do With a Murder Case?"