Andersen will spend the spring being a professional "visionary" at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, where he'll presumably see the future by drawing heavily on his experience conceiving snark as a love child named Spy with Graydon Carter in the 80s, co-founding once-vaguely-exciting Inside.com in the 90s, and writing columns for various large, important magazines over the years.

Andersen also has a Twitter to keep him busy, and his show on NPR about media (Studio 360). And he'll continue to write for New York enough to use the magazine as a calling card.

" Kurt contributed a great piece to our 'Reasons to Love New York' issue," New York's publicist told Fashion Week Daily, "and he'll continue to write for us as his schedule permits. Everyone here's a big fan of his."

Adds FWD: "Interestingly, in an interview with former New York Press editor Russ Smith posted yesterday on the Web site Splice Today, Andersen allows himself to be identified as a New York columnist."

Andersen cofounded Spy with the amusing-looking Graydon Carter, where they invented making fun of celebrities and the media, and then they both sold out, except Kurt still has cred because he just writes a column for New York, he doesn't edit a glossy celebrity magazine.

Now Kurt has finally joined such luminaries of modern thought as Jim Cramer and Shaq (that is the best Twitter ever, btw) in the field of 140-character updates on politics, world news, and what you are watching on TV (Andersen is watching You Don't Mess With the Zohan).

Now it's only a matter of time before this media legend "@'s" you, future superstars of making fun of celebrities!

Not all of the deparated are worthy of such reverence. Will anyone weep for O At Home or Cottage Living? Rather didn't think so. Here are three I wish were still on the newsstand.

Spy
Though its circulation topped out at 194,000, Spy touched us all by destroying the '80s cult of celebrity. Spy, which launched in 1986, never lost its acidic insight as it morphed from a New York insider rag to a mainstream national publication. It established literary practices which Gawker readers might find commonplace: Dubbing Donald Trump, for example, a "short-fingered vulgarian." It died, at long last, in 1994 — just in time to inspire a generation of disenchanted Web writers, like Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman, who launched Suck.com, an unabashed homage, in 1995. (I worked at Suck.com for one blissful year.)

Sassy
I kept stealing this magazine from my high school gal pals. (Yeah, it took me a while to figure out I was gay.) Teen magazines are clearly doomed; drawing the Facebook generation away from laptops and cell phones is a hopeless cause. But if Sassy were still around, they might be driven to the newsstand to try out this newfangled ink-and-paper contraption. The reason why: Sassy spoke authentically using the real language of teenagers. Sort of the way Web publications have so enthusiastically adopted LOLspeak!

Upside
Launched in 1989, this magazine was the first of the tech-and-business titles that proliferated during the '90s and died after the dotcom bubble burst. (All of which are gone: The Industry Standard, eCompany Now, Business 2.0, and, for all intents and purposes, Red Herring.) The writing was uneven, but in its best days, it tweaked Silicon Valley like no one else. A cover showing Wired founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe as Adam and Eve provoked hilarious outrage among the digerati. (Anyone have a scan of that cover? Please send it to me.) The magazine's decline had a tragic note: Aaron Bunnell, the magazine's Web chief and son of publisher David Bunnell, overdosed in 2000. The elder Bunnell kept the magazine going for another two years.

That's my list of magazines I wish were still publishing. What's on yours? Did anyone actually read Cottage Living? I'm sort of dying to know.

Getting an academic post as a "visionary" ("in residence" no less!) is just a few steps from a lifetime achievement award, a string of honorary degrees, and the dreaded title of "legend" (used when you're done in this metaphorical media town). A "visionary" is one who can articulate brilliant ideas but can't get rich from them. Tesla was a visionary. We still send checks for our electric bill to the man who stole all his ideas.

Related: Gawker acting managing editor Nick Denton had "had it with being called a visionary" back in 2001. Thankfully he eventually shed that title and became a cold, emotionless tyrant internet publisher, burning through "visionaries" like they came free with a pack of Marlboro Lights at an Amoco.

Have fun in L.A., Kurt!

Kurt Anderson Now Officially a Visionary [Portfolio]

There are lots of reasons for this. Spy was the louder and brasher magazine-it cheerfully went about making enemies among New York's rich and powerful. Spy's editorial and design influences were more varied and harder to pin down than Wig Wag's (which was clearly directly influenced by the New Yorker where the editor and many of the staff had worked). And, Wig Wag's post-modern pages have not aged nearly so well as Spy's. The specific visual language Spy pioneered live on in dozens of magazines including New York, Vanity Fair and Radar. Wig Wag's impact is not seen in a few easily identified tropes such as Spy's disembodied floating heads. [Folio]

Snobbery Rules [Salon]

• Ex-Spy editors give freewheeling interview to ... Bergdorf Goodman magazine. [Michael Gross]
  
• The new Adderall? [NYT]
  
• Waverly Inn reservation update, part XXVII. [Eater]
  
• Former New Yorker scribe, current BU prof Renata Adler: easy grader, pretty hot for an old lady. [Media Mob]

Last night was the official book release party celebration event at the infamous Puck Building, where Spy once kept its offices. We sent the intrepid Nikola Tamindzic, who does for nightlife what William Wegman does for dogs, makes it look like assholes, and our very own Unethicist, Gabriel Delahaye, to see what happens when the laughter gets old. Like, seriously, Graydon, Kurt, George? You guys are sooooooo old. Our gallery of misty memories is worth a laff or three, with Nikola's extended mix here. After the jump, Gabe's journey into the heart of snarkness.

As soon as I walk in to the Puck Building, even though I'm wearing a decent button-down shirt, I feel completely underdressed as everyone else in the spacious ballroom is wearing a very severe suit and tie. I should also mention that I am wearing this pair of jeans that I haven't washed in, like, six months, and it is raining out, so they kind of smell like if a wet dog that then died and as its body slowly disintegrated, instead of becoming some kind of fleshy pulp, it actually becomes a puddle of piss. All of this self-consciousness disappears, however, when a middle-aged man walks in wearing a Paul Frank t-shirt with a skateboard monkey on it. At least I'm not THAT fucking asshole.

Here's the thing, I am not good at this. I don't care about media. I don't like parties. I'm incapable of talking to people I don't know because I hate people I don't know. At one point I'm standing about two feet away from Harvey Weinstein and in my head I'm like, "Is that fucking Harvey Weinstein?" and then in my head I'm like "He's just a fat Jew, you should not think that every fat Jew you see is Harvey Weinstein," and then later it turns out it actually IS Harvey Weinstein, but at that point I'm texting my friend Lindsay saying "I can't do this."

Nikola is running around taking all kinds of pictures, and all these Gawker people are there, like Jessica Coen is there and Emily Gould and Intern Neel and Doree Shafrir, and I'm just standing around when I'm supposed to be ... I don't know, journalising? So I start to feel kind of like when your boss comes over to your desk and catches you playing Minesweeper and you're like "On the one hand this looks bad, and on the other hand I was just about to clear the board in 98 seconds on the 'Difficult' setting, which is a totally good time, if you hadn't come and fucked that up for me."

Apparently Anna Wintour is at this party, as well as Ron Perelman. The only person I actually recognize is the creator of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Andy Borowitz. The guy is about as funny as, oh, let's say, a gallon of milk that you hid behind the radiator in your friend's room. Is that funny? I suppose it has the potential to be funny to someone. Your old college roommate probably finds it fucking hilarious. I don't mind talking shit about Andy Borowitz because what is he going to do? Write a "Shouts and Murmurs" piece about me?

The night is winding down and I have not talked to anyone and I'm sitting on this little settee or whatever, and Nikola has made some kind of comparison between talking to people at media parties and getting laid? I don't really know, I'm obviously terrible at both. I ask the bartender if he has whiskey and he says he has a single malt and I ask for it on the rocks and he gives me this look and is like "It's single malt, you should drink it neat," and I am like "That is awesome, even the guy who looks like he tears tickets at a Loews movie theater is making me feel like an asshole."

Finally, right before I go, I decide to try and get quotes from the three founding editors of Spy. The first one I approach is George Kalogerakis, because let's face it, he is the shortest. Aww. He gives me some quote about how no one can escape getting older, which, I mean, it's true, but that's the kind of thing that old people tell young people and think they're being really profound when in actuality the young person is thinking "I'm never going to look like you." I ask Kurt Andersen if he has anything to say about the party, or Spy, or Gawker, and he shakes his head and talks about how the party is really nice. Jesus Christ! If Spy magazine was really the bukkake party of hilarity (laugh on my face! laugh on my face!) that everyone keeps saying it was, you'd think I could get something a little snappier than "I am happy." Finally, I stand near Graydon Carter, print media's own John-Leguizamo-in-Spawn, waiting to ask him the same basic question, when I see that he's talking to JIM CRAMER from MAD MONEY, which is the most hilarious thing that has happened all night, and at that point I realized that I really needed to stop drinking single malt scotch on the rocks and get the fuck out of there because I don't actually care what Graydon Carter has to say, even though I'm sure that whatever it is, it would have been totally mind-blowing. Back in 1988.

'Spy: The Funny Years' Launch @ Puck Building [Photo Gallery]

Above, enjoy one of the more staid events on the Spy revival/anniversary tour — more later this week! — courtesy of videographer Richard Blakeley and Intern Mary. A crowd of 30-something hipsters too young for Bob Dylan but too old for MTV crowded into the New York Public Library (NYPL, or "nipple") to hear former Spy magazine editors chat about everything from Hillary Clinton in bondage gear to the publishing business to pregnant Bruce Willis. "He didn't pose for that," Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter said when the Willis cover was projected. "That was me." Overall, the night was pretty tame, aside from Carter's out-of-control-classical-music-composer hair and the sexual tension between New York Times media columnist David Carr and everyone on stage, from the "powerful" Carter to the "mysterious" Kurt Andersen. George Kalogerakis somehow lurked in the background, as ever, despite being physically present in the foreground.

Had it not been for Spy, of course, there never would've been a Gawker Stalker (Spy loved maps, anonymity), nor Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd (Spy loved pranks), nor VH1's "Best Week Ever" (Spy loved postmortems). Nor, the creators suggest a bit grandiosely, a Daily Show (though in fairness, the Brits—and even Saturday Night Live—have been satirizing TV news for decades).

Nor an internet, nor snark, nor, let's face it, humor itself. In all of recorded history prior to Spy no one had ever been funny before. We give up. We're going to toss our old copies of Private Eye into the trash right now and bow down before the altar of two guys who invented the concept of "this celebrity looks like that celebrity." Thank you, Spy!

Also, if anyone out there has that great old New York picture of Graydon Carter picking his nose on the subway, we'd love a copy.

Hey! Remember Us? [NYO]

Numerous Canadian Consular Officials (CCO), seated around Tom Phillips: "So, you were involved in SPY Magazine?"
Tom Phillips (TP): "Yes, until 1991 when we sold it."
CCO: "Why was SPY always so hard on Canada?"
TP: "Oh, well, that was mostly Graydon [Carter, current Editor of Vanity Fair]."
CCO: "Well, what does Graydon have against Canada?"
TP: [shifts in his seat, pauses] "He's...from there."
CCO: In unison, all nod slowly, say "Ohhhh."