One of our foodiest friends, erstwhile Gawker Joshua David Stein, recently spoke with Ed Sorel, the fellow who crafted the large, backroom mural. Per Carter's request, Sorel created an olio of various 1920's and 30's notables—society scenesters, publishing demigods, and showbiz types. He told JDS:

we decided essentially on a who's who of who is in New York between the wars. We have Fred Astaire, this is the Fred Astaire who appeared on Broadway with his sister. There's also Henry Luce, Herb Ross, Conde Nast, Blanche and Adolph Ochs, the Fitzgeralds—Zelda and F Scott, Billie Rose, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber.

So basically the type of people who just won't ever exist anymore because instead of somehow (knew a guy!) getting a table at Monkey Bar and sitting in proximal awe of these storied people, we can just lie on our couches in Brooklyn and type incessantly about them, thus rendering them kinda unfabulous, so why would we want to stare at them at Monkey Bar in the first place? It's kind of a Lost-style time loop sorta thing.

At the same time, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., has hit at least nine states in the past year with billboards that look like they're made of stained glass but say "Beware of Dogma," "Imagine No Religion," or — coming soon — "Reason's Greetings." The group also advertises on the liberal radio network Air America. One spot features Ron Reagan, son of the former president, who signs off: "Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist. Not afraid of burning in hell."

Ron, you always were a disappointment to your dear old dad. Atheists are reportedly also engaged in subversive activities such as charity work, "meet-ups," and family fun days. This will not stand:

In seeking the spotlight, the movement risks a backlash. Some Christians find the billboards deeply offensive, especially at this time of year. In recent weeks, press releases from the religious right have accused atheists of "mocking" and "insulting" Christmas. In rural Chambersburg, Pa., one Christian group responded to an "Imagine No Religion" billboard with a giant sign of their own, asking: "Why Do Atheists Hate America?"

Check. And. Mate. [WSJ]

Hey New Yorkers, Confession: I took things down for a bit of a timeout but Happy Election Eve and let’s rock. It’s been about a year since I lost all that weight that made me feel like an outsider –and gone from outsider to insider. But make no mistake: I always want to bring an outsider (or at least an original and unconventional) perspective with me wherever I go. And it is, and always will be, a presence in my ‘narratives.’

... I will not post for the sake of posting anymore. I’ve peeled back the curtain as I’ve now for the first time actually gone behind the curtain. But I don’t want this blog to become simply a travelogue or series of random thoughts - sharing for the sake of sharing.

Well, blogging is all about sharing for the sake of sharing—or sharing for the sake of generating revenue and charging higher ad prices! But whatever. Just keep bringing us content—goofy pics of society plagues like Liam McMullan and Kristian Laliberte—and we'll be happy. (We hope Brill doesn't discover the real cure for blogger burnout—benzos and alcohol.)

[Essentially Emily]

Kid's supposed to be a nice guy, relatively, and he's already had an Observer profile—as he told them, “I’ve always wanted to do lots of things, like direct movies, and write things, and make art, all different types." (He then took a hit of weed.)

Suggestion: Liam, just continue these stream-of-consciousness observations for Page Six and you'll do just fine:

Now (sex) just goes on forever. And I have these migraines now that do really hurt like balls when I’m having sex. I start being a dick then. I’m like, ‘Um you can move around a little bit—I don’t have to do all the work.’” [Observer]

• Deaths: Nobody we personally know—yet!
• Birthdays: Radar founder and EIC Maer Roshan, is 41 today. Gay weatherman Sam Champion is 47, reports Cityfile.
• Marriages: Joshua David Stein—former Gawker editor, current Page Six Magazine scribe, and presumably the star of Emily Gould's forthcoming book about love and the Internet—is engaged to be married. To a lady! Ms. Ana Mascarenhas Heeren, originally of Brazil, is described as such by Mr. Stein: "Rememer that lady I was making a go of it with? Well, it worked!" We offer Mr. Stein and Ms. Heeren our sincerest congratulations, and also draw your attention to his headline in the New York Times The Moment blog: "Caviar On My Face and Tell Me You Love Me."

While the rabble may have padded about in cut-off rags in days past, respectable members of society are only now dipping a toe into the short-waters:

A growing number of style-conscious men are becoming more comfortable with the idea of showing some leg during the hot summer months. No longer does it seem remarkable to see men—straight men—dressed in slim-fitting shorts that hang well above the knee, from conservatively dressed 9-to-5 Manhattan types, to Williamsburg hipsters who wear their cutoffs so high, it evokes the lyrics to the 1993 R&B hit “Dazzey Duks” (or The Dukes of Hazzard, depending on one’s age).

Moneyed gentlemen including Ed Westwick, Devendra Banhart, Sean Avery, and even Graydon Carter have donned short-pants at one time or another, the intrepid news-paper reports. The news-man queries several of his close personal friends to determine how this trend is going over within the media:

Michael B. Dougherty, a research editor at Gotham magazine, [says] that there’s “something really defeatist” about shorts, kind of like wearing sweatpants when you get to the point of not caring how you look[.]

But the practice is deemed more acceptable within the devil-may-care confines of Green-Point:

And if you ask John McSwain, who works as an assistant editor for Vice magazine’s online television network, VBS.tv, he’ll tell you that four to seven inches above the knee (or perhaps even higher!) is about right.

Mr. McSwain, 27, of Greenpoint, is a shorts enthusiast who loves all styles, from Fred Perry tennis shorts to those little cutoff jeans that, when worn by women, are sometimes referred to as “boom-booms.” (Mr. McSwain alternately calls them his “redneck cutoffs.”)

"Shorts" fit for public prancing may be purchased at Barney's for $160, the story notes. But those with proletarian urges can find versions fit for slumming at the "American Apparel" millinery:

Mathew Swenson, a spokesman for the company, said the male audience for short shorts, once exclusively the attire of trend-setting hipsters, has widened to include more mainstream types of guys who’d previously limited themselves to the baggier cargos and board shorts dominating the market—these days considered, perhaps, a bit dorky. “Now you prove your masculinity by wearing short shorts or pink underwear,” he said.

What a gay time we'll have in our "shorts!"

[NYO]

Surprisingly, not everyone camping on line is African American - two white Park Slope residents, Rob Tanzer, 24 and Jake Feingold, 23, have also joined the group.

"We read about this on Curbed, and we just thought that being on this side of the fence seems like a far more authentic Brooklyn experience," explained Mr. Feingold, "We basically want the black community to know that not all white people are here to displace them; That really, we're part of the solution. And of course we're also down to get paid."

[Blognigger]

"Nowhere on May December (melissacmorris.com) will a reader find salacious gossip or compromising party photos. Instead, in posts written with all the propriety of a thank-you note on Mrs. John L. Strong stationery, she shares a recipe for beef stroganoff and snapshots from a family wedding in Nashville, and seeks help in settling a friendly dispute with her husband.

"In a post titled, 'A Tale of Two Dishwashers,' she wrote, 'When we renovated part of our kitchen we added a butler’s pantry (don’t get too excited, there’s just me and no butler in sight, so technically this room should be renamed Mel’s pantry).'

"She compared the merits of a new appliance in the pantry with the older model still in the kitchen, and said she and her husband disagreed about which one was better. 'So, blog readers, what say you,' she wrote, 'dishwasher with the silverware rack up top or dishwasher with the silverware basket?' (In a follow-up post, she said she preferred the basket.)

She could be any housewife — her preferred descriptor — except her homes are on the Upper East Side and in New Canaan, Conn. (where the Mieles in question are). Her husband is Alfred Hennen Morris, 58, known as Chappy, whose ancestors settled New York and helped draft the United States Constitution. And included among friends in those wedding candids is 'Senator Bill,' as in Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader.

"The juxtaposition of the mundane and the glamorous, provided by a woman who wears her glasses to charity galas and prefers preppy togs to high fashion, nets May December 40,000 hits a month. 'There’s nothing too deep about her life, but it’s kind of neat to keep up with her,' said Nina Theiss, a Minneapolis stock trader and reader. [NYT]

The WSJ reports that there's an internal battle at Live Nation right now over whether to press ahead with more of these monster deals, or slow down. If they did 15 more at $100 million per (a lowball estimate), that's $1.5 billion. If the company lays out that much scratch, you better believe they plan to see their profits. Ultimately it could mean that the 99.9% of less-than-mega artists that get shut out of deals like this have even worse financial career prospects than they have now, if such a thing is possible.

Homogenization forever! The entire music industry is now riding on: Madonna and Jay-Z, along with the Jonas Brothers, U2, the Rolling Stones, and maybe Shakira—Live Nation's roster. Not everyone is a fan of the company's strategy, though. Their stock is down 44% since they started signing these deals. Also, "profit margins in concert promotion are perilously thin, and a bad tour could undercut the overall value of a package deal."

So if you don't want the Jonas Brothers to be considered cutting edge music by the next generation, please boycott the next Madonna tour. This has been a public service message.

[WSJ]

Conscious rappers touch on this now and then, but are much more interested in telling us that black criminals are victims of the system. A recent example: "Black Thought" on The Roots' new album tells us, "It is what it is, because of what it was, I did what I did, 'cause it does what it does."

OUTRAGEOUS.

So: indeed, it's "not all like that." But if the folks known as the hiphop generation are learning their politics from "conscious" rap, there is little hope for our future.

Oh, John McWhorter, that's where you're wrong. The hip hop generation has a message for you: "I know I can/ Be what I wanna be/ If I work hard at it/ I'll be where I wanna be." Dig it, old man!

[NYS]

The gym offers classes including "Yogod," its take on yoga, and "Chariots of Fire," a spinning class. Spaghetti-strap tank tops and short shorts are not allowed, and women's tops must cover their bottoms...

"I don't need anything to lead me into temptation," Mr. Heistad said. "I can get there on my own."

"It's a Christian business, a Christian environment," he added. "It's a better feel. You stand a little taller, don't grunt, don't get pumped and yell, 'Daddy's got a new set of pipes.' "

Hey: it keeps the Christians out of our gyms. Daddy's got a new set of pipes, baby, yea!

[NYT]

More upper- and middle-income parents, including many who felt pressed for time when their children were growing up, aren't ready to be "finished with them" by their 20s, says Katherine Newman, a Princeton University sociology professor and one of the project's 20 researchers. Also, as more students attend college at older ages, parents are coming to regard the 20s as a time of self-discovery.

Self-discovery of a job, is the idea. If you're truly poverty-stricken, or taking care of a sick parent, that's one thing. But these are able-bodied young people who willingly choose to live in the basement.

More enduring cultural and social changes are at work, including a growing "child-centeredness" among families, Dr. Newman says. Many parents enjoy having adult kids around as long as they're pursuing "a future they can endorse."

Don't you people want to have sex in peace?

[WSJ]

If you provide me with the name of that person's company... I will go above and beyond and ridiculously out of the way to NEVER... EVER.. buy on solitary item from them! I'm almost sorry that hip-hop as a culture came into being.

Hey Moses, great article that rings true with me. I am not black, but have many personal and professional friends and colleagues who are. Most of them have echoed your sentiment here one time or another. Of course I grew up in the melting pot of Los Angeles! I live in VA now and my wife is Hispanic. I think the Hispanic population often experiences the same stereotypes.

Great article, and I agree with the points, but maybe this message should be broadcast to the ones that continue to cast the shadow of perception by follwing the path of the stereotype associated with them. I live in Atlanta, so without need to say, I am around and work with numerous Afican American's (or as I prefer to say "people"). The people I work with are great, intelligent and dedicated to being hard workers and a better person. They do not dress or act "white", they act classy.

[pic via BPLU]

In addition to top officials, these people include corporate executives, leading investors, top bankers, media moguls, heads of state, generals, religious leaders, heads of terrorist and criminal organizations and a handful of important cultural and scientific figures. Each of these roughly 6,000 individuals is set apart by their power and ability to regularly influence millions of lives across international borders.

Among the superclass members that Rothdopf names in his article: Rupert Murdoch, Martha Stewart, and Jon Stewart.

We'll be eagerly awaiting his follow-up study, "Capitalism, Dude: It's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be."

So at last night's New Yorker's For Children: A Fool's Fete ball at the Mandarin Oriental, there was a silent auction as there usually is at these kinds of things. One of the items being bid on was a gym membership to Equinox which started at $450. The first bid was by a guy named Bronson Van Wyck. You can read about him here and here.

After that PR lady Susan Shin and a guy named Stuart Sussman also bid on the membership but they had crossed out their bids for some reason. The mystery was easy to solve. It was Van Wyck's doing. According to another bidder who was about to outbid Van Wyck, as he was putting down his bid, Van Wyck came up to him and whispered, "Hey, why don't we just cross out all these bids and then we'll just get the membership on the cheap." The counter bidder looked at him with disgust and said, "No, you've got to be kidding me. This is for charity." and refused. So the price went up and Van Wyck, perhaps to mask his crumminess, eventually won it, for $1050.

[pic via Patrick McMullan/ Fashion Week Daily]

I just saw Speidi outside the Sony building on Madison and 55th. They had clearly tipped off the dozen + paparazzi to their own arrival as the photogs usually are not hanging around in midtown. Spencer was wearing a suit in a desperate attempt to blend in with the other productive members of society but Heidi was wearing a purple minidress, aqua heels, and leather jacket channeling Julia Robert in Pretty Woman, pre-makeover.

Send your Manhattan sightings to stalker@gawker.com and include the a/s/l time/date/loc so we can map it.