Remainders
David Halberstam's Doonesbury appearance: He kissed Woodward and Bernstein's Guccis. [Slate]
The New York Times is all up on fixed gear bicycles. [Complex]
Harlem branch of Citarella begins accepting food stamps "to accommodate the vastness of the neighborhood" and the fact that it's across the street from a project. Fun with gentrification! [NYM]
The new owner of the Times Building, Lev Leviev, is the definition of a sketchy businessman. [Room Eight]
What it sounds like when a server drops bread at French Laundry: "The sound that poor young man made when that toasted piece of heaven hit the immaculate carpet was akin to the soft keening sigh one might make upon discovering that one's pet Siamese had passed from this earthly realm to the next." [gentlemen who dine]
To Do
Don Cheadle: 'Picket Fences', Ocean's Eleven through ∞, and now, published author. [NYM]
Eric Drysdale, Bob Powers and Janice Erlbaum read while someone makes music in the background. [Upcoming]
Meghan O'Rourke! Jorie Graham! Claudia Keelan! Love 'em or hate 'em, you'll want to get poetessey. [NYer]
sketchy nights out with
Tasked with writing about his Night Out With Limp Bizkit frontman and director
Fred Durst, Mickey Rapkin had to overcome a host of challenges. How to be subtle and
Times-y about Durst's decision to pick up a Russian maybe-hooker and bring her along on their outing, for instance? "Ms. Valevich let out a hearty laugh. She proposed a toast: 'To never seeing each other again.' It was now Mr. Durst's turn to laugh." Nailed that one! But what of the difficulty of alluding somewhat obliquely to the fact that Durst is perhaps best known for his deeeesgusting sex tape? Simple: Be a blog! "'I learned not to kiss and tell,' [Durst] said. (He has told plenty; see Google.)" Let's try that again: "'I learned not to kiss and tell,' [Durst] said. (He has told plenty;
see Google.)" Ah, that's more like it.
—Emily
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The Future
It is only a matter of time until ID-card protected walkways connect the new condo buildings that self-contain New York's newest and brightest youngsters. The
Times real estate front pager on those "friendly apartment buildings" this weekend was notable for the picture alone: Carefree whites chortling over a complimentary croissant, a tub of Stoneyfield Yogurt self-righteously open on the spotless glass table. It filled us with loathing. These are people who amble downstairs (or upstairs!) and cavort with their fellow tenants in vast and well-lit common safe spaces. They are clad in "in sweatshirts and fuzzy slippers, suits and oxfords, seeking chocolate muffins and Cheerios." They are evil and they must be stopped. But what if they are us?
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comical british alcoholics
Here's a snippet from an interview with
Christopher Hitchens:
Have you ever prayed in your life?
I probably once did pray for an erection, but not addressed to anyone in particular. Nor completely addressed to my cock. You're too polite to ask if the prayer was answered.
Was it?
No. There was an answer, but I don't think it was the result of the prayer. After all, if one was not a mammal, and could get erections on demand, there'd be no need for prayer in the first place.
If, like us, you are now trying desperately to clean your brain of any imagery relating to Hitch begging for some inflated erectile tissue, meet us at the Shark Bar and we'll all try and drown it out together. On the plus side, we guess that he's proven that there is no God. No deity in the world would allow this to happen to us.
—balk
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capitalizing on tragedy?
That's
one blogger's assessment of the deal that a
Virginia Tech journalism professor just made with Plume, which
Publishers Weekly describes thusly:
[Roland] Lazenby, a journalism professor at Virginia Tech, will use the perspective of students on campus, in particular his own journalism students who helped supply the mainstream media with information via their student-run Web site planetblacksburg.com, to provide context for the events and describe the recovery and resilience of the campus community.
Also, "a portion of the proceeds will be given to the victims' fund at Virginia Tech and to support journalism education at the university." It's hard to put our finger on what exactly about this deal is making us agree with the smells-bad assessment. After all, it's not like this story doesn't deserve to be told! Maybe it's the part about "describ[ing] the recovery and resilience of the campus community." Rule: If the recovery the book will describe hasn't even begun to happen yet, maybe the book deal shouldn't either. You think?
—Emily
Plume Gets Virginia Tech Account [PW]
tabloid menace
Peter Braunstein—former
W writer, fake fireman and sex attack perpetrator—is really crazy, it turns out!
Mr. Braunstein's lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, has said he would show color images of his client's brain, called positron emission tomography, or PET, scans, that he said show that Mr. Braunstein had undiagnosed and, until his arrest, untreated paranoid schizophrenia that drove him to behave as he did.
Oh, science! Didn't his former employer,
W, really make him do it? Yes, of course, says one mental health professional hired by the defense!
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making poetry sexy again
A fun game for poetry nerds: read the first line or sentence of a favorite poet's first book, and imagine it as a summary of the writer's entire career... Meghan O'Rourke, the culture editor of Slate, offers a terse contribution to the first-sentence genre in this, her debut collection: "My poor eye."
Um, ok! It's maybe not as good a summary of Meghan's career, though, as it is a summary of our response to this illustration, in which she appears to be... squirting?
—Emily
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how good is food?
We were already of the opinion that the
Times's Sunday Business section is the best part of that paper, but this weekend's pullout confirmed it. From the letters section:
To the Editor:
Re "Winning the Nutrition Game, With Help From a Coach" (April 22), which discussed the hiring of personal coaches to help with weight loss or other goals:
For many people, the problem is not that they don't know how to eat healthfully but that they don't like to, because of a fact that is apparent to anyone with taste buds: healthful foods simply don't taste as good as ice cream sundaes and chocolate layer cake.Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Providence, R.I., April 22
The writer is a philosophy professor at Brown University.Eggheads. Is there anything they can't do?
Letters: A Bank on Every Corner? [NYT]
[Image
via]
Blogorrhea
Community-building office experiment results in actual community! [the company bitch]
The Japanese could really turn Coney Island into something amazing! Fake, but amazing! Think about it! [gowanus lounge]
Trannie teens explain gender theory with concision. [overheard in ny]
World's most brilliant Firefox extension puts the cussing back in your internets. [ironic sans]
studio 54
Studio 54, now a theater company, turns 30 this year.
New York magazine sent aged historian Philip Nobile to kick around the entrails of Steve Rubell and
Ian Schrager's 70's hotspot. Have the intervening three decades yielded any insight? Why yes, they have!
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James Brady
James Brady takes a look at mags for teen girls and discovers that, in the post-Atoosa era, they're all going for a less racy presentation. We're not particularly interested one way or other (the sooner tweens learn the "17 Fastest Ways To Get Him Off," the sooner they'll be prepared for middle school), but the column itself is another Brady tour de force. While the namedrops aren't as plentiful as usual, the man can set a scene: "What's the formula? I asked founding
Teen Vogue publisher Gina Sanders over lunch at La Grenouille, the day before she and her family took off for a Jamaica holiday." But do we get one of those senility moments that is the hallmark of a Brady puffer?
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altarcations
As noted philosopher Carrie Bradshaw once put it, the New York Times wedding announcements are "the straight woman's sports pages." Altarcations is all about scoring the game. Each week, we evaluate the latest newlyweds, based on an elaborate rating system, described below.
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media sports
Tomorrow night, the magazine industry will gather at Jazz at Lincoln Center for this year's
National Magazine Awards. (Nobody bomb that precious braintrust!) Their theme this year: We are Magazines, Take Us Seriously! Which is why they are having celebrity presenters. Har! Anyway, who's likely to take home the trophies (called Ellies) in the major categories?
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breast buy
Shame on you,
Mediaweek, for your indelicate and heavy-handed report on the success of
Jane magazine's Breast Health Guide issue both in print and online. Did you really have to use so many played-out mammary puns? From the headline—"
Jane's Boob Job Pumps Subs Online"—to the first paragraph— "Condé Nast's
Jane is filling out its sub file with support from a spread on breasts in the May issue"—seriously, it's just so
crass. "Online subs swelled"? Frankly, we're offended. Offended and titillated! Heh, we said 'tits,' sorta. Oh no, and now the floodgates are open and it's like our typing fingers are being controlled by the ghost of
Russ Meyer! Swollen subs! Rock-hard nipples! Boobies! Jugs! Knockers! Hooters! MILKY FUNBAGS! OVERBLOWN TEATS SQUIRTING MILK INTO OUR GAPING MAWS!
—Emily
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the international sex web
Christine Keeler, the woman whose affairs with an English minister and a Soviet diplomat helped bring down a Tory government, later sought refuge in the arms of one of Britain's most celebrated film critics.
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yesterday's scandals
Alec Baldwin's new movie,
Suburban Girl, based on Melissa Bank's
A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, has him playing a character who is "divorced. He's estranged from his daughter. He hasn't spoken to her in years and is resigned to just leaving her voicemails. He is an alcoholic struggling with his sobriety." Huh! But the audience at Tribeca, where the film premiered, was standing by its man during the
Q&A session after the screening.
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femiladyism
Feminist blogger
Jessica Valenti's new book
Full Frontal Feminism has a controversially betorsoed cover, which she justifies to
New Yorkmag like so: "Let's face it, no young woman is going to pick up a book with the woman's symbol with a fist on it." Is that what books about feminism usually have on their covers, though? Let's look at some recently published ones.
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art stars
Did Björk take a swipe at her hubby in yesterday's
Times?
[Björk] appreciates reaching a large audience. "It would be too easy to walk away and say, 'Oh, I'm just going to do these ornate objects that only a few people, blah blah blah,' " she said. "That's just pretentious and snobbish."
Okay, there's a remote possibility that we're reading too much into this.
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very foreign media
It's May Day in China, International Worker's Day—and our Special Correspondent For Chinese Media reports that the T.V.s are broadcasting lots of long, lascivious shots of this giant sculpture of working men in action. Hot, steamy, gay action. The well-muscled shirtless worker facing the camera even appears to have his pants undone a bit. The People's Republic is really entering the modern world!
the uncommon reader
As a hazard attending to the job we do, we pretty much consume almost all media going, and we've yet to see any kind of etiquette guide regarding the forthcoming visit of Britain's Elizabeth "Queen" Windsor to these shores. But according to the
Daily Mail our papers have been chockablock with tips for how we should behave in the off chance that we somehow encounter that little island's monarch. While helpfully noting that "Indians and black people are included in all of the ceremonies she will attend," the article doesn't do much in the way of providing useful advice as to how one should handle oneself in the presence of royalty. So here's our suggestion if you've somehow breached the security cordon: Say hello, ask her how her kids are, and get the hell out of there. This is America, we barely give a shit about the President. No need to be embarrassed about some old queen.
—balk
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Tribeca Film Festival
On the unseasonably warm Saturday night just past, the Meatpacking District was engorged with the usual screeching banshees and washed up frat boys. But, since it was the
Tribeca Film Festival and since the film the
Nobel Son had premiered earlier in the day, the film's stars
Mary Steenburgen, Ted Danson and
Alan Rickman were awkwardly chatting in the corner of Tenjune. Outside the venue, the small red carpet and backdrop adorned with various sponsors (tonight: Maxim, Altoids, and CKIN2U) that are endemic to these kinds of things had been strung up and the Grand Guignol had begun. A very paternal looking Bill Pullman answered questions from Fox's Shira Lazar. PR personnel commanded the many big and tall bouncers to guard the Velvet Ropes like the Masada; meanwhile, schlubby co-producers and their trophy wives entered the basement club. We sent Joshua David Stein and the Ansel Adams of peoplescape
Nikola Tamindzic to report.
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why johnny can't read
If you're bookish, you might've heard about the lit imbroglio swirling around the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In the wake of similar reorganizations at the
Los Angeles Times and the
Chicago Tribune, that paper has made a controversial decision to eliminate its book review section, along with the job of its books editor, Teresa Weaver. Maybe you got an email from a friend urging you to sign a
petition to keep her employed, or someone hipped you to the read-in protest taking place in Atlanta this Thursday. Or maybe you read author
Michael Connelly's impassioned essay about the important but foundering symbiosis between newspapers and reading culture. "My 10-year-old daughter's love of reading books is slowly leading her toward the newspaper sections that are spread every morning across the breakfast table," he says, asking, "Now where will new voices be discovered?" Well, Michael, maybe they'll be discovered by... blogs. Crazy, right?
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where my bees at?
Remember how global warming skeptics would point out that there were still cold days in the spring? And then we all realized there was no global warming? Well, thanks to
Slate blogger
Mickey Kaus' mom, we don't have to worry about that disappearing bee epidemic either! Yay!
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Gawker
