Aren't We All Qualified To Edit The 'Times' Magazine, Really, When You Think About It?

by Matthew J.X. Malady

People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask.

I was on the Rihanna plane and once yelled at Jon Caramanica at a house party. Please consider letting me edit the New York Times magazine.

— Julieanne Smolinski (@BoobsRadley) November 12, 2013

Julieanne! So what happened here?

I’m glad you asked. This tweet was fascinating, and I’m glad it didn’t go unheralded as “not interesting to anyone, at all.” Let me break it down for you, in three equally entertaining parts.

• I was on the Rihanna plane
Rihanna is a Caribbean musician who likes to wear shirts without pants underneath them. She went on week-long singing and dancing airplane tour last year and brought along 150 members of the press. I was one of them. It was, as you may have heard, sometimes fun but frequently terrible.

• and once yelled at Jon Caramanica at a house party.
A few summers ago, I was at the home of cool music journalist Sasha Frere-Jones, who was having a party. I think his buzzer was broken, because we were all taking turns going downstairs to retrieve arriving guests. I let in cool music journalist Jon Caramanica, whom I had never met, so I was just this sweaty, weird, non-cool music journalist answering the door, and he made some casual “Who are you?” joke on account of us not knowing each other. I pretended he meant it in a pejorative way and was like, “I’m the biggest deal AT this party, Jon Caramanica” and then seized on this opportunity to be annoying for an entire night. Whenever possible, I said things like, “I guess you’d be more enthusiastic if the door had been opened by Ben Fong-Torres,” and “I can’t believe media’s Jon Carmanica doesn’t know who I am,” and put pieces of celery in my mouth like walrus tusks, going “Look at me, I’m media’s Jon Caramanica.” I don’t think he thought it was as funny as I did. I may have been intoxicated.

• Please consider letting me edit the New York Times magazine.
I tweeted this not long after reading a rumor that The New York Times needed to replace a departing editor. I am sort of between gigs right now, and I thought maybe this was the universe’s way of speaking to me, as it often does through birds, my multiple astrology apps, and songs requested on the Delilah radio program.

What was the worst thing about being on that Rihanna trip, and the best thing about giving Caramanica hell?

We visited seven cities and were asked to attend seven concerts. We went long periods of time without sleep because Rihanna must always keep moving, like a sexy Barbadian shark. But as we were watching the exact same concert every night and had no access to Rihanna for interviews or anything, many of us ended up filing stories about being sleepy, crabby, hungry, and airplane-greasy. Many people thought we were assholes for this.

As far as Jon goes, he was a good sport about all of my ribbing and I think was mostly still confused as to who I was and why I was there. I think I actually took my shirt off at some point. I had a smaller shirt on underneath, but the gesture was probably pretty alarming.

Lesson learned (if any)?

I have not been invited to a party since.

Just one more thing:

I would still like to be considered for an extremely top-level position at The New York Times.

Matthew J.X. Malady is a writer and editor in New York.