Ladies who've just had babies (they get all the luck, fitness-wise!) can simply attach their nipples to the mouths of said baby, and allow the child to extract hundreds upon hundreds of calories worth of breast milk every day, leading to slim, trim, pre-baby body in no time. So says a gross simplification of a NYT trend story today (with a priceless lead photo)! At last, science has discovered a use for babies. New mothers couldn't be happier:

"Nobody wants to admit they are doing it for themselves, or ‘I'm doing it to help myself look hot again,' " said Jesse Comer, from Portland, Ore., whose main motivation to breast-feed was her baby's health.

Ha, we'll take your word for it, Jesse! And for those of us not fortunate enough to have an attachable fat-remover, scientists have bad news: the bacteria in your very gut is conspiring with the food you eat to make you fatter. The simple takeaway is that, if you want to lose weight without being forced to reach inside your own intestines and engage in hand-to-hand combat with allegedly "friendly" bacteria, have a baby.
[Pic via]

It's not like you just have children and then don't have to worry about your fitness routine and whether the changes induced in it by parenthood would be good fodder for any fake trend stories in the NYT. You do have to worry about such things! You think jogging while pushing a stroller is just as easy as regular jogging, except while pushing a stroller? The paper of record has like a thousand words of filler that say you're wrong:

Ms. Arnold of Santa Fe joked that strollers should come with a placard, warning starry-eyed parents of what an intense workout they provide.

She's absolutely right. Strollers should come with a placard warning starry-eyed parents of what an intense workout they provide. "WARNING," this placard would say, in bold letters. "This stroller provides an intense workout."

But one placard won't be enough to resolve all of the serious fitness issues facing the adult New York Times-reading population. Allow us to present to you Michelle Slatalla's newest column detailing her adventures as a Wife/Mother/Worker/Spy. In this episode: Michelle likes to play tennis at the tennis club but she hurt her wrist and now she has to learn to serve with her other hand and despite her extensive work with Rafael the club tennis pro she's hesitant about returning to playing tennis competitively at the tennis club but her entire tennis team is putting mad peer pressure on her to come back to playing tennis until one day, Michelle reports, "She had put me in the lineup! OMG, OMG, OMG!"

She plays okay. The point is, the reader demographics of the New York Times are fucking terrifying.
[Pic via]

First of all: Fresca. Come on. It was LBJ's favorite soda! He was not a chocolate milk man.

Second of all: "24-year-old LA lawyer." Ugh.

And thirdly: we just failed the Millionaire audition last week.

In what is probably a violation of ABC's game show audition policies, our mother signed us up for a Millionaire audition against our knowledge, emailing us after receiving a confirmation from ABC.com and then shipping us a copy of The World Almanac 2009.

And because we do not like to disappoint out mother, we schlepped out to West 66th last Friday afternoon. And we stood outside of one of ABC's many buildings on that street, in the oppressive heat, with a couple dozen 50-year-old ladies from Westchester, cantankerous retired men from all over the tri-state area, a couple mooks in from Scotia, and three or four tattooed young folk participating either as a sop to mothers who think they've always wasted their prodigious talents or because it would be funny.

The ABC employees eventually ushered us into a classroom with an unmarked door leading directly to the street, where we learned how incredibly terrible old men are at going through metal detectors. They have literally hundreds of pockets, in their old man trousers and shirts and coats, and each one of those pockets is filled with assorted things they've collected during their 70+ years on this earth. They spend ten minutes emptying these pockets of their paper clips, LifeAlert pagers, money clips, Buick keys, buffalo nickels, bits of twine, pocket knives, and Nazi gold, and then they still set the alarm off, either because their hips are made of titanium or because they forgot they're keeping some tin for the war effort in their shirt pockets. It was hot, and we were slightly hungover, and standing outside waiting for these old men did not make us happy.

But it did give us some time to chat with the old ladies! They were a more fun-loving bunch, though none of them have had anything to do with all the hours in the day for 30 years now. Which is why all the old ladies have auditioned for Millionaire multiple times. And not just Millionaire! One lady told a story that began "well, when I was on Hollywood Squares..." and who knows if she meant Paul Lynde Hollywood Squares or Whoopi Goldberg Hollywood Squares or even Shadoe Stevens Squares.

Once we finally sat down the two fresh college grads organizing the audition waited out the old guys still at the metal detector by asking us if anyone had traveled far for the audition ("62nd street," said an old man) and then one of them got into a flirty argument with the mooks from Scotia (she was from Troy) and once it became dangerously like the first day of camp or maybe rehab the test finally began.

Here's how the audition works: you sign up, you are sent an application with lots of pre-interview questions about whether or not you're an ABC employee and how you would convey an interesting but not too out-there personality during a four-second conversation with Regis, and then you show up and take a multiple-choice test. Your score on the test determines whether or not you move on to a super-quick interview with a producer, and that interview determines whether you will end up in the contestant pool. Once you are in the pool, they can call you up to be on a syndicated taping tomorrow, or never.

The old ladies who've auditioned a hundred times warned us that the test was hard. We didn't believe them! We did well on the SATs and the ACTs. Taking multiple-choice tests is precisely what years of urban public schooling taught us to do! And it wasn't that hard, honestly. But we still sucked.

It's a 30 question multiple choice test and you have ten minutes to complete it. It was not that difficult. It was a smidgen of pop culture and simple math, and the rest was maybe Thursday Times crossword puzzle subject matter and difficulty. We only completely guessed on two questions, and gave educated guesses on maybe two more. But we failed. And then everyone who failed (at least 80% of the crowd) was very quickly hustled out of there.

We were never told what the passing grade actually is, but from now on, whenever we find ourselves knowing, without lifelines, the answer to every single damn question on Millionaire, and we watch some idiot contestant struggle, we will feel even worse. And we are a disappointment to our poor, long-suffering mother. At least Leitch got the chance to lose on actual TV.

[More in-depth take at Jezebel]

This ad campaign is outrageous, reportedly, because it makes light of motherhood in an unacceptable way. Now it's been crushed and the company is grovelling in apology. Good taste has prevailed!

The beginning of the end for the Motrin push probably came Friday night, when Los Angeles blogger Jessica Gottlieb said she was tipped off to the ads and started expressing her outrage over the campaign on Twitter, where she has 1,018 followers.

"I am a satirist, I get humor, I talk about my vagina," said Ms. Gottlieb, who works as a freelance writer for National Lampoon and writes for Silicon Valley Moms Blog and Celsias. "I'm just insulted. I'm not an activist. I don't have an agenda, but I do have children."

Psht.

[Ad Age. Mom protest video here. Ambient outrage goes in the comments. And UPDATE, Jessica Gottlieb responds here.]

Why would you treat a pregnant woman different from any other person, except to offer her a seat on a bus or to help her with a heavy package? Should we say pregnant women can't hold the same jobs as men due to their condition? Or how about run for office due to their delicate condition?

I do approve of your efforts, yes, Alex. You and Gawker are doing the job that the MSM isn't - not sounding the same irritating drumbeat as the rest of the media. If one more big media outlet calls Sarah Palin a "reformer", McCain a "maverick", and Bristol some sort of role model for all 17 year olds I WILL SCREAM. (Bristol isn't a role model, she is just a kid who made an unfortunate mistake - maybe 2 mistakes! there, I'm picking on her also).

Tell that person that your mother doesn't approve of hate mail.
Can't we all get just get along?

She further comments:

Hey, you guys should do a feel-good story on that german shepherd Buddy who DIALED 911 when his owner had a stroke or heart attack. He is a cute german shepherd and apparently has opposable thumbs

Here you go!

"On a recording of the 911 call Wednesday, Buddy is heard whimpering and barking after the dispatcher answers and repeatedly asks if the caller needs help."

In her new book, I Amaze Myself! (iamazemyself.com), Kay McConaughey dishes on everything from her son Matthew’s conception to how her husband died in a compromising position with her!

“On Monday mornings, he and I often said goodbye by making love,” Kay says exclusively in the latest issue of Us Weekly. “But one day, all of a sudden, it just happened.

"I knew that something was wrong, because I didn’t hear anything from him. Just nothing," she says. "But it was just the best way to go!”

"I knew that something was wrong, because I didn’t hear anything from him. Just nothing," she says. "But it was just the best way to go!”

And when her man couldn’t be revived, she made sure he was taken from the house in the buff.

“I was just so proud to show off my big old Jim McConaughey — and his gift,” she says.

Needless to say, Kay amazes us too. At last we have a clue as to where this former Sexiest Man Alive developed his taste for screwball, fuck-til-we-plotz comedy that has come to define the Matthew McConaughey sensibility. Having learned now of the bittersweet passing of his own father—who died, yes, but did it doing what he loves best—we think it may be time to revisit his entire romcom filmography again, whereupon frothy concoctions like Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Lays will begin to take on all-new levels of deeply personal significance.

• EXCLUSIVE: Matthew McConaughey's Dad Died Having Sex, Says Mom [Usmagazine.com]

Other quality threads include,

• "omg— did the criminal search thing and found SO much on my brother. so sad."
• "what would you buy for 100.00 at Bendels?"
  and finally:
• "i think i have finally decided to go ahead and have my tail surgically removed."
  
  Like... a devilish gossip tail, similar to Satan's? We have no idea.

Maybe, though, you could have summarized all of your tips by using the very sage advice that kid gave you in 2nd grade, when the teacher had you guys write an advice column. Each of you wrote one letter asking for advice and each of you answered one letter. You had a sad letter about basically how you were too hip for 2nd grade, you were telling all sorts of funny jokes and nobody got them. And you wanted to know how to make those kids understand.

And the kid who answered your letter wrote:

Alex,
you should tell funnier jokes.

To this day, I laugh and laugh and laugh when I think of that, and how mad you were about it.

And I never made bad jokes again.

I guess I've suspected the worst for a long time. Certainly the signs were there from a fairly young age: He invariably chose "Power Rangers" over joining me in marathon viewings of the work of Stephen Sondheim. He preferred to thickly carpet his bedroom floor with castoff clothing rather than use the color-coded, padded hangers I put in his closet. Worst of all, he evinced a disturbing interest in Grace's bare, bony chest rather than concentrating on absorbing Will's snappy — yet ultimately supportive — patter. If he didn't pay attention, who would I have to call me "girlfriend" in my old age? How would I keep tabs on Britney, Carrie Underwood and that creepy kid from "High School Musical" without my very own Rex Reed 2.0?

A friend of mine once said that she wants gay kids because they're going to be born anyway and she feels that she'd be a good mother to them, which was absolutely true. And that I can understand. But saying you want a little play thing, even though it's for a "humor" piece? It's just so obtuse.

So how about it? Do any of you actively wish for gay kids? Do any of you have any? Are they 24-30 and single?

Slope-bashing hit the big time last February, when The New York Times’ David Brooks pegged the ’hood as ground zero of the “hipster parent moment.” He wrote: “Can we please see the end of those Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward, anticorporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police?”

Some of this sentiment, to be sure, springs from the area’s transformation in recent years: Trendy boutiques and bars have replaced bodegas on Fifth Avenue; and the neighborhood’s nickname has gone from nice, crunchy “Dyke Slope” to crowded, congested “No Park Slope.” According to a recent study, nearly half the drivers cruising at any given time are searching for a parking spot.

At least to non-locals (such as Brooks, who doesn’t realize that Williamsburg is actually where the “hipsters” are), the Slope seems to represent all that is reprehensible about gentrified New York and modern urban parenting. “Non–New Yorkers think of it disparagingly as a hipster alterna-playground, and Manhattanites think of it as a sanctimonious PC stroller derby, like one big suburban PTA meeting stuck in a food co-op,” says novelist Steven Johnson, a longtime Sloper who jokes on his blog that “all writers with young children in NYC are legally required to live” there. “To the outside world, it’s too cool for its own good, and inside New York, it’s not cool enough.”

Even many residents maintain a love-hate relationship with their nabe. Graphic designer and community organizer Aaron Brashear says that his family shops everywhere but jam-packed Seventh Avenue. “We will not walk there because of the stroller brigades,” he says. Slope psychotherapist Peter Loffredo has sworn off the kid-crammed Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and both Tea Lounges, and not because he doesn’t like the coffee. “They’re overrun pseudo Romper Rooms,” he says. [TONY] [photo: Ben Goldstein]

“Park Slope isn’t even part of Brooklyn anymore,' wrote one commenter on Gothamist. "It’s seriously a lower rung of hell, filled with hateful English teachers." And on Eater.com, one posted comment said: "Park Slope and its ilk are why NYC is becoming more and more pathetic by the day."

And the locals?

"Park Slope is a perfect storm of stereotypes that provoke derision,” said Steven Johnson, a local writer and a father of three. “Since Park Slope is the neighborhood most explicitly associated with urban parenting, it attracts the wrath of people who think parents have gone way overboard. I imagine there’s some horror fantasy fusion: the well-off Park Sloper and co-op member who is obsessed with his kids. Oh, wait, I just described myself.”

By the same token, when we talk about “people who hate Park Slope,” we are talking in large part about a certain stratum of the chattering, Twittering class. “This whole thing sounds like white people being annoyed by and jealous of other white people, which I find kind of funny,” said James Bernard, a union organizer and a member of the local Community Board 6. “I live in the Slope. I love it. I talk about it as much as anyone else does. But I founded a charter school near Brownsville and I don’t hear anyone talking about Park Slope over there.” [NYT] [photo: Nicole Bengiveno]

First, an important poll:

i feel shitty. nann came in this morning and we never shoveled and it was all ice (we have a slate front porch and large walk way) she didn't say anything, but when i came home just now it was all shoveled. she said she didn' wantthe mail man or someone (more) to slip. how horrible are we?
* omg you need to get her something for that.
* how in the world did she shovel that ice? we are locked in like an ice cube
* yuck, you suck, to be honest.

What should I give to my cleaning lady as a gift? I'm giving her a nice tip, but I also have a box of chocolates and a nice candlestick. I'm thinking the chocolates, right?

for those of you who have nannies, how do you handle petty cash? for example she is out with the kids and they want an ice cream, etc. do you pay her back later? give her spending money and expect receipts? new to this nanny thing and looking for help. (more)

This week, we check in with Veronica Buckman, a religious, conservative-minded mother of four from Alpharetta, Georgia. Ms. Buckman grew concerned when she read the magazine's feature on college porn mags two weeks ago, and she wanted to let other parents know that they ought to do a lot of research before they shell out 100 grand for their kids' education. Ms. Buckman was positively delightful when we reached her on the phone this afternoon, and explained to us with genuine warmth and conviction that although she has no problem with naked bodies or adolescent rebellion, she has reservations about any university administration that would fund pornography.

Our interview after the jump.

Why did you write this letter to the New York Times Magazine?
I consider myself conservative, but I'm very open-minded and I'm actually kind of a realist about society and the shades of gray out there. But with this, it was more a personal sort of thing, in that I have a child in college, I have two more going to college soon, and I work as a volunteer in the college and career center at my kid's high school. Those who don't know yet have children, they may think it's all funny and in good fun, this article in the New York Times, but when it comes to actually paying for college, well, it's very expensive. I wanted to let them know, these parents, that we can use the very tools the kids are using—the computer, the internet—and we can dig deeply into the websites of the colleges themselves.

Your letter was pretty subtle. What were you trying to say?
I wasn't casting judgment upon the young people who are doing these sorts of things, per se, although I sort of was. I'm not sure I approve of it. Even though Harvard is probably the best learning institution we have in America, some people might not want their students in that sort of environment, when those things are approved by the administration. Meaning the pornography.

In the letter, you call yourself an "uptight" parent. Why did you call yourself that?
I'm actually not uptight at all. That's actually the funny thing. I'm actually not uptight at all. Listening to my kids' music, I think it's great. I live in the South. I live in the hip hop capital of the country. Well, one of them. I'm open to different kinds of art and culture. I think the human body is beautiful. I have nothing against nudity. But nudity and pornography are not the same thing. I'm trying to bring my kids up, especially my daughters, to be virtuous.

So you like the rap your kids listen to?
I like to know what's going on with the kids. I think being a little radical, a little outside the box, those are good things and that's what you're supposed to do in college. I don't have any problem with nudity or people, um, learning about each other. But when a school starts paying for pornography, that's where I draw the line. And I think other parents would do.

At the end of your letter you say that a college newspaper is a "great way to get the 'feel' of a school," and "feel" is in quotations. Was that a joke on purpose?
I did that, yes. Again, I was trying to be subtle and let people know that I understood. You get the feel of the school by reading what's going on. By reading the crime reports. What are the kids writing about? What are they talking about in their school? That's what I want to know. What are they worried about? That's how you get a feel for the school.

But "feel" was a joke you were making, about the pornography.
Sort of. But then again it wasn't. Just like "uptight." I'm uptight but I'm not uptight. I'm just a regular mom, trying to do what's best for my kids.

Jed Rice of Loki was talking about a geo service from his mom, then showed a pic of his mom and her e-mail address. "She'd love to hear from you," he said. Then, moving on and trying to get his geo link back in: "My mom's been around."