2. Eat some pork buns.

3. Eat some steak.

4. Eat some Gray's Papaya.

5. Eat some wings.

6. Eat some tacos. Pork tacos.

7. Eat some bacon (but don't be obnoxious about it).

8. Eat a bacon cheeseburger.

9. Eat some turkey. Some jive turkey.

10. Just be a vegetarian, and understand that most meat-eaters do respect your views, but that they're not as complicated and complex as you'd like to think they are, and that most people are actually, yes, quite aware of the arguments you'd like to "respectfully" make, what they're doing, the various reasons why it's uncool, and that we should eat more vegetables, and that we don't need to be guilted about it, and if we did, we'd read Michael Pollan's book instead, or at the very worst, Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker review of Jonathan Safran Foer's book, which is both (A) quite great and (B) will save you $15 or $20 and save us from hearing you opine on what you read by the guy that wrote Everything is Illuminated talking down to all of us about eating our vegetables.

11. STFU.

To be sure, some Schadenfoer is actually literary jealousy over what some (correctly) view as undeserved success. But! While the Guardian asks, "Is this a case of Foer having reached a level of fame that makes him fair game for cultural lampooning?" we must point out that it's hard to feel sorry for someone who's actually, earnestly been quoted as saying, "too many people hate art." Whatever; let us present the case against him.

Literature:

Well, have you read it? Have you? In case not, a review from the New York Press a while back: "extremely cloying and incredibly false."

This NYT Op-Ed that he wrote: My Life As a Dog. It's about leash laws, I think? "Maybe one day we will be able to genetically engineer dogs that do not wish to run free. Maybe. But will those futures make us feel, in the best sense of the word, human?"

Lifestyle:

While some people may indeed be jealous that he lives in beautiful Park Slope with his wife and kid—let's be real, that is the most self-satisfied, smug, annoying neighborhood in Brooklyn. Then there was this total rumor from a while back about why they purchased a new house: "Well," [writer wife Nicole Strauss] said, "you know, we're planning to have at least two kids, and obviously we all need our own floor."

Attitude:

There was the time he got all undermine-y in Vanity Fair about his buddy's new play: "his play is hilarious and great. I hope it's bigger than The Lion King."

As he told the NYT, "I'm not funny. 'People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life." Nope.

Wonkette suggested that you could recogize Jonathan and his brothers by "their wire-rim glasses, sensible-but-disheveled style of dress, carefully cultivated air of quiet superiority, and the smuggest little smirk you've ever seen." Heh.

In assembling talents for his project, Mr. Clough aimed high. His first choice for the author of the book, which contains clues to the scavenger hunt in addition to the mystery story, was Jonathan Safran Foer, whose work contains its own sort of coded narrative pyrotechnics. Mr. Clough sent him a little tease, a Rubik’s Cube of a sculpture made of anodized aluminum, encased in an acrylic cube that opens into a puzzle stamped with his firm’s phone number and the word “Please.”

Mr. Foer was intrigued and gave him a call. In an e-mail recently, Mr. Foer recalled that his daughter had just been born, and he was adrift in a fog of new parenthood. “It was a very good piece of mail that came at a very bad time,” he wrote. “I was losing and ignoring all kinds of things that I shouldn’t have. Did we speak on the phone? The whole thing was so dreamy I can’t really remember. In fact, the project was never described to me as simply as you did in your e-mail. Had it been, I would have rushed to do it. I suppose that’s the price one pays for being as mysterious as Clough is. Or as skeptical as I am.”

In case you missed it, that was a NEG. That said, the over 40 people involved in creating the fantastically complicated built-in house-puzzle were not paid.

Mystery on Fifth Avenue [NYT]

Sure enough, Scene Two takes place inside the apartment of the actor who has optioned Benjamin's book. The scene opens with David remarking, "I've never been in an apartment where the owner has so many pictures of his own face on the walls."

Amusingly, VF's Michael Hogan tried to reach Schreiber and Foer for comment on this bitchy play that makes fun of them, but they were unavailable, as they were having a money fight.

The play ends, appropriately, with playwright "David" and novelist "Benjamin" leaving the play itself.

"How could you write about me?," Benjamin demands.

David's response says it all: "How could you not write about me?"

Answer: Mr. Moses, you do you appear to speak in a whimsical pidgin English. We assume you're Jewish, though, so you're halfway there.

There is a good lesson here for aspiring playwrights, though. Bratty autobiographical playwriting is only fun when it mocks someone we can all hate on.

Literary Feud Watch: Jonathan Safran Foer vs. Itamar Moses [VF]

There's also something to be said for the ingeniousness of its editorial-advertising department synergy: in one six-page (ooh, see what we did there?) feature, "Fall Fashion Picks from the Pros," the magazine actually enlists executives at five major department stores to assemble seasonal "looks" from clothes, accessories and cosmetics all entirely available at their respective employers. (Also intriguingly, the stylist on the feature appears to have been paid by the department stores themselves?) But where the magazine exercises editorial independence it falls flat: its warmed-over list of the 25 best-dressed ladies at New York Fashion Week included Teen Vogue editor Amy Astley, whom we've pictured here so you can ogle all that personal style she is exuding. Its columnists, too, are still clearly finding their voices: an item by "Socializer" columnist Kelly Killoren Bensimon contains the puzzling rumination: "You can't afford cigarettes or taxis anymore. Might as well walk outside. Might as well walk outside and inhale the toxic fumes. I look at it as the new nicotine." Huh. However, as with any middling celebrity tabloid, P6TM serves up a few little nuggets of gold blissfully un-couched by editorial commentary. Like for instance here's author Jonathan Safran Foer complaining about the movie Liev Schrieber made from his book:

"There's an old saying. Don't f—- a pig in the a— and then bitch and moan when your d—- smells like s—- the next day."

*And also, to be sure, if we hadn't been writing a miniscule item for the magazine earlier, because we have a lot of friends who work there, at least we did before we wrote this review.

Earlier: Extremely Large and Incredibly Expensive

Regarding all our uber-jealousies of powerful literary couples, what about Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones, Lucky, and a forthcoming novel from Little, Brown) and Glen Davis Gold (a novelist and McSweeney's vet)? Admission: I work for Sebold's literary agent, so I'm biased as can be.

Earlier: Annoying Literary Lovebirds Poll

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

That first song, "The Big Picture," with its lo-fi hollering that sounds like it's pouring out of a blood-splattered shower, is both a self-referential homage to the raw pubescent angst that first brought a 13-year-old Oberst to the attention of the music establishment and a mature reflection on the album's central theme: the relationship between art and artifice.

Par Pix Nabs Foer Memoir [Variety]

Earlier: Who Loves Bright Eyes More?

Ingredients:
Jonathan Safran Foer and wife, Nicole Krauss
Jonathan Lethem
Jhumpa Lahiri
Rick Moody
Colson Whitehead
Gary Shteyngart
Marty Markowitz

Place bylines and egos in Borough Hall; stir for three seconds or until pretentious. Serve chilled.

Brooklyn Will Soon Fete Its Literary Stars [NY Sun]

Instead, we'll go with the more lighthearted behind-the-scenes reel, in which Foer talks about how being a vegetarian is "as easy as easy could be." Wish we could say the same for watching the video, which requires you to look directly at the overly precious JSF for an uncomfortable length of time.

If you still want to see Foer's tour of the bovine bloodshed, you can do so here.