Judy! It's Me!

Diamonds in the rough

2006-06-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

Last was an eye-opening weekend, what with learning about lubricated Ecuadorians and Poles, the high price of lattes for college grads, and one man who's trying to hawk children's paintings for a Manhattan pad in the same glorious Saturday-Sunday of Times reading! It's trite to say, I know, but Where do they come up with this stuff! Seriously, with that last one, it takes some stunning reportage to unearth a bespectled, mustached children's book collector with an Asian, art-propagandist man servant. One really can't make this up.

But would I be far off predicting that in scooping the Where the Wild Things Are guy, the Real Estate section tipped off their buddies in Arts for today's Bob Barker tribute? Like peas in a pod, right? Right? Eh?

Ok fine, it might be a stretch to compare the childhood founder of the International Wizard of Oz Club (which this Real Estate profile was) to patriotic "Price is Right" fan-boys. Either way, when digging through the trash, what a joy it is to come across those still-ripe apples:

"Everyone in the United States can identify with our show," he said. "On most game shows today you will see contestants between 20 and 45 who are physically attractive. We have people on 'The Price Is Right' who are between 20 and 45 who are physically attractive too."

Bloggers love indie rock

2006-06-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

It's true. Sia knows it. Now, so does the Times, having made Michel a music regular, hopefully not just because she knows bloggers-- the bloggers. She knows their story. They love Tape n' Tapes.

Tapes 'n Tapes is indie rock's latest Internet-driven mini-success story, which is no surprise. This charmingly nerdy quartet is just the kind of band a blogger loves.

Usually between 5'6'' and 6'4'' (the ones who wear the hiked tube socks and try and look like Larry Bird), bloggers are always wistful for their 1993 mornings at Macalaster , when they messed around in their dorm rooms to a soundtrack of Husker Du, Pavement, and the Pixies. Tape 'n Tapes, and the Arcade Fire, make them remember mornings waking up with another girl from lit class. Yelping, a turned-down organ, and electric guitars do that, particularly when songs made like that are made by shags from Minnesota, far away from the magazine writers and bloggers who share pints and failed pitches every night at Daddy's.

A blogger loves, besides Tapes n' Tapes, beer, and black coffee - except the ones who went to Sarah Lawrence like lattes - and the self-satisfaction at talking with another magazine friend, over a beer or a black coffee, about failed pitches and pumping up a band like Tapes n' Tapes. They know all they have to do is wait a few weeks, maybe a few months - 6? - and then the New York Times will write about them, with the help of the ex-EIC of Spin. She knows who they are. They know who they are. They know the New York Times.

And Tapes n' Tapes only wishes it had been around in 1993, to share space on a mix-tape with Husker Du and Pavement, while future bloggers who are lit majors make out.

Don't let the days pass you by

2006-05-31T22:26:00.000-07:00

But I have feared this day. The Times is onto why I've delayed my lap-pool regimen for 9 months now-- all I want to do is once-over the one-pieces. And I can't. It's 2006.

My laziness may rely on many things, but Jane Fonda's "butt cheek get-up" won't be helping it anytime soon. Her days are gone. Thank you Melena Ryzik. I forgot about that old Rolling Stone. I didn't know the racquetball club was full of duffers anyway. Nor that the local Gold's Gym - the one with the twee guidos stretching eachother - is really more of a "social" place, echoing the 1985 film "Perfect" starring John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. Those guys know to keep to their work-outs , at least before hitting the showers, just like beauty publicist know to wait until after work, after the gym, to get wasted and picked up.

If I'm not afraid of hip thrust, if I favor crotch-hugging, am I resigned to laziness - or at least weightroom shunning - it no longer being 1985?

And what about Jazzercise? I know it's a clever hook for your hopefully Gruppie readers to take - hook, line, sinker - but is it really dead, Melena. Really?

And now my impression of Woody Allen...

2006-05-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

Like the shy kid at the dance whose charms are not readily apparent, unpopularity has kept some species in circulation, waiting to be discovered. Atlantic mackerel wears its reputation like a pocket protector and horn-rimmed glasses, but a little attention reveals its sweet side.

Whether because she just loves fish or is nostalgic for an old flame, vet-foodie Marian Burros imagines her dinnerplate as a geek—"he's the quiet, contemplative type...weird haircut...can't really see his eyes behind the big lens...but when you do!"— which is fine, I suppose. Fish guides are the things of print utility, to say nothing of a culinary compliment in a Dining Out section that has heart, and a transformed head. Ted Koppel and other newsies might have faded into the occasional cable-news-spot sunset, but not R.W Apple Jr., whose dashing byline from Tehran to the Balkans is now cosy by the freezer, thank you very much, whether that be in Shanghai, South Africa, or New Orleans.

After all, the world needs food. And snappy Dining writing. And, famous eaters, with Apple the most legendary of them all.

Keep barking for Scotch, Johnny. Keep padding Art with comfort food and kind words, Marian. It's what keeps this rig so regular, and so content.

I've Found the Man I'm Going to Marry

2006-05-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a long and grueling search, folks. And the fact that so many primos have already found their wives has made the task all the more difficult. That said, I know that neither Allison "Petrol" Petrullo nor a Cal Spas grill can keep me away from the man of my dreams any longer: Mr. Dave American-As-They-Come Petrullo, clad in an Hawaiian shirt from Daffy's and sporting a $6,600 grill. (Which he and his wife have only cooked upon three times since they bought it, the Times reports. What concupiscent decadence!)

The point of this post is to offer the times a simple suggestion. Rather than degrade yourself any further with Al Gorian stunts of the "I'm down with the kids...and awkward!" variety, why not turn to the far more lucrative endeavor of match-making? It's lined many a pocket in the past decade and is loaded with street cred to boot. That’s right, NYT--go on ahead and put Match.com to shame! Who needs a gimmick like the "personality test" or a front man like Dr. Phil when you've got the original village yenta right under your fingertips?

The ol' Gray Lady would hook all of us all up if you'd only let her, Arthur. In the meantime, let us pray that Allen Salkin continues to help America 'pimp its grill.' When male whiteys in tapered mom jeans can find their mojo in $6,500 grillers & Doogie Howser look-alikes tap into Bedford Ave cool with $200 skinnys, then the Style Section is doing its job after all--God bless the U.S. of A., no glass cielings here; not even on the road to metrosexual machismo.

Like when Christo asked me what I thought of The Gates

2006-05-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

Where's Dov when you need him?

Kristof finally picked America's most ~~groveling~~ enterprising young journalist to kick it with him in Africa! And winner Casey Parks sure doesn't skimp on the sob stuff. But if self-aggrandizing pity stories are grounds for wylin' out in Rwanda (this is, after all, going to run on MTV, hopefully replete with confessional booths in NGOs), then the winner, without a doubt, shoulda been Lauren Wiesner, whose precocious tales of harrowing surgeries pale in comparison to her admission of wasting her college years away at the Muhlenberg Weekly, "dragging a mouse in the glow of a computer screen to create and fill text boxes in Quark." Note the conspicuous absence of, say, "designing spreads" or even "resizing converted jpegs." That's because you can't do that on Quark! Maybe, just maybe, if she'd won the damn thing, she coulda stopped by Times HQ and stolen a copy of InDesign! (Trust me, guys, when Africa was just a twinkle in her eye, she would've killed for some Photoshop integration.) Kristof, this is one bird you don't wanna piss off, so where's the love?

And of course, if promotion's the name of the game, then the Times nailed this one-- "marketing" is in the URL!-- infesting the blogosphere with a litany of exclusive TimesSelect features-- don't miss the phone call!-- and the aforementioned baller package deal with mtvU. All during the same week the OGL debuts their spankin' new no-spin blog! You know, Punch, if you're not gonna put me on the payroll, wanna lend me some of your web design army? Because until The David rears his ugly head, Judy sure isn't getting one of those fancy Gawker-style polls.

So for now, we're going to have to settle for posting your fave submissions in the comments section. Me? It's gotta be the guy who makes me shudder when contemplating a Gawker Media internship (quite a feat!)-- Henry the Intern, whose ass, we've just discovered, is available for kicking just a few minutes up the Hudson. Perhaps modesty isn't overrated?

Young man! Are you listening to me?

2006-05-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here."

Live from the streets of Chelsea-- whoops, just the East Village-- it's Guy Trebay! As if sobbing about the prevalence of the untucked shirt and examining men's packages (beating Eric Wilson to the punch by about a year, mind you) wasn't enough, Trebay's incisive piece about gym culture begins with a lede so downright homo, it's-- I can't even begin to explain. All I can say is: floor please!

I know what you're thinking. Another Grey Lady Style article made for Massachusetts grupsters-- big deal! But what sets this article apart from, say, the Galliano piece directly below is Trebay's nose to the grindstone research. Facts painstakingly gleamed by our intrepid reporter include: the demise of the Arnie ubermusclo in favor of the twee Yoga fag; gyms remain remarkably fashion-free; and the gist, I believe, is that, come 3 am, if he isn't popping Ambien, the average American is running on a treadmill next to Calvin Klein. Oh, right, and he's probably fatter than his dad was!

Bill Nye This Is Not

2006-05-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Science Times hates sources, or at least giving the appearance that some of their writers are actually journalists, rather than disgrunts who hate doing their underwear laundry. This bit about "Frankencotton": it spewed straight from James Gorman's head, like Athena, only dressed in Eric Wilson's edits from his winded, May 11th press release on white shirts, Manhattan Ducktalers and the Whitney.

How would the world feel, how do you feel, knowing that at the moment you are reading this you may be wearing transgenic underpants?

And history shows the great diversity of clothing that humans have worn, from the loincloth to low-rider jeans, from the toga to the tail coat.

Gorman has one source, "a recent report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the University of Arizona," and it's not even directly quoted. Does he mean this one, or this one, or maybe this one, or even yet, maybe this beaker chillaxing Sideways in the desert, soiling his genetically-engineered undies with desalinated Pinot Noir?

With 670 words of back-porch, blither/musings that are really just veiled promotion for the Summer Shirt, what else can we expect from Science?...More axed-Style articles! It's up, up, and away to the dippy galaxy of SPACE FASHION!!!

More Effective than Fox News and Britney Spears Put Together

2006-05-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

I doubt Mitt Romney would have hosted me and my pinko friends for post-prom breakfast, which it's too bad, because DAMN are these Georgia kids having fun with Sonny Perdue.

Of course, the downers among them were lamenting the loss of liquored-up trips to second-base, replaced by Sonny's "smorgasbord" of fattening food, but those teenage dirtbags are nothing compared to Sonny & Co.'s future base - suburban girls who hate the smell of Coors but LOVE Dixie.

Really, though, why did Brenda Goodman have to present two students - Sonny canvassers this fall, no doubt - as "work[ing] the room, hanging an arm around a shoulder here, a waist there." First of all, who the hell let these kids grope at the governor's house? Moreover, if that passed, the girls in this photo should get off scott-free for the whip-its they did in Sonny's bathroom before meeting the duffer himself.

Michael Jackson's Dream

2006-05-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

"When they were shooting this thing in Hungary, the production company would call me in the middle of the night and say, 'Michael wants more troops,' " said Dan Beck, a senior marketing executive who worked on the video. "He dreamed the big dream. It was P. T. Barnum."

Within five pages of half-Hamletizing, half-Trumping MJ, there's testimony that, above all, he was a dreamer. Perhaps. At least, if that dream was blowing half a billion borrowed cheddars to make PT's bygone theatrics reality.

Barnum was significantly involved in the politics surrounding race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up the American Civil War... Around 1850, he was involved in a hoax about a weed that would turn black people white.

Heath Ledger, shut the fuck up

2006-05-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

Frank Gehry, moments away from annihilating the fortress of solitude

So what if this Ratner plan is gonna dwarf your precious brownstone? As far as I'm concerned, you and your famous lefty friends can just go home, write some Jew-loving nostalgia for a bygone New York, and take lotsa pictures of your skyscraper-less Park Slope vistas while you still can. Besides, while the voiceless hoi polloi languish at their bodegas, it's apparently worth noting that you're getting shmoozed over with Junior's cheesecakes! Don't worry, JSF-- they're salami-free.

Mothers Need Brassknuckles

2006-05-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

With gusto and to no surprise, the Style section pushes farther from the shores of decency, into the Bermuda-shorts triangle of brokers and their moneybag wives. The story of UES richies showering their kiddies is hardly new, but did you know they now waste 10k on play groups? Obviously it prepares the little ones for a life of leisure and sound fiscal judgement.

Flexing their tax cuts so little Mort will say "brunch" in two years and not "pee pee," the mothers quoted are hardly Marx's bourgeoisie battering Chinese walls with their cheap commodities. Unless, of course, Karl really imagined "Chinese walls" as infant music programs, where "cheap prices" meant throwing down a Daewoo to get the progeny into a playgroup.

At least the kid shrinks have their heads screwed right.

"The child is often oblivious to what's going on," [Dr. Michel Cohen, the founder of TriBeCa Pediatrics] said.

Funny, I assumed the not-yet-teething tike would be bitching that his San Pellegrino was a little flat.

I Don't Remember Names, But I Remember 1993 Movies About Baseball.

2006-05-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

Apparently I've underestimated the Dining Out section’s investigative journalism department, as they’ve landed upon an unexpected case of the plagerism epidemic.

El Bulli, the restaurant in Barcelona that innovated the scientists-as-bartenders craze, has more recently been "featur[ing] cocktails re-imagined in an appropriately El Bulli fashion—a gin fizz, half hot, half frozen.” WOAH. You can’t even pull the ‘photographic memory’ card with that one! Allow me to scratch your nostalgic, itching brain with the following from Coach Brickma:

"Some guys ice down their arm after a big game. Some say that heat's the way to go. But I have discovered the secret: HOT ICE! HOT ICE! I heat up the ice cubes! It's the BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!"

Seeya back on your feet, gelling with the crew

2006-05-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

Sia Michel wrote for the Times in her Spin editor days, yes, but it's still warming to see that she's been welcomed into the Critics' Choice circle. I wonder who's the better gloat, Kelefa or Jon P, since Sia's come charging in with her "Letter from the Editor" Spin clip file. Either way, it's proof there's life-- and more target, Target audiences-- for media manechins after the axe, on the Yankees of newspaper music staffs, no less. Keep it up, team. No reason to slump when your new leadoff hitter's on a tear like this...

But since the band formed in 1983, [The Red Hot Chili Peppers'] vision of Los Angeles has changed considerably, from cheerfully anarchic pleasure dome to soul-sucking dystopia where junkies lurk behind every fruit-smoothie stand.

To summarize: Californication = drinking berries with wheatgrass from the Central Valley, shooting up.

Cred on all corners

2006-05-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

"Mies is one of my favorite architects," Mr. Gosser said. "I find the simplicity very soothing." [Ed. note: almost as much as the sepia-bathed pic!]

Chew on this one, Adams: a grupster paying $600/month for a Mies studio in Jersey, $35 for a Corbu couch, and-- wait-- he's a teacher? Not content, of course, with bitch work for Hoboken architects, Matthew Gosser maintains his intellectual pedigree by teaching architectural graphics at the New Jersey School of Architecture to diamond-studded wannabe-Suicide Girls down with their boyfriends' art and existentialism. This dude probably puts our Media Studies profs' tangled knots of Thursday night bonkers with their students to shame.

So apparently, old folks aren't the only ones hip to the modernists any more. Watch your back, academia, because here comes a spendthrifty, Spam tee-riding, bona fide hipster who furnishes his elite pad with PBR merch (and makes sick art out of the neighboring factory, to boot!) And thanks to the Old Grey Lady's Architecture For Burgeoning Rich Dummies, we might all be closer to that reality than we ever imagined.

Fake edit: wait a minute-- what would any self-respecting grup like Matty be doing if he wasn't using the ghost of Mies van der Rohe to pick up chicks?

"I go to art openings like twice a week, and meet girls all the time," he said. "It's too much fun right now." Mr. Gosser has been known to mention the Colonnade to women he has just met. "If they care about architecture," he said, "they're impressed that I live in a Mies van der Rohe building."

Judge Dredd hates distractions

2006-05-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

Diminishing dread with more distraction? Bollocks! While I might not be an "extreme dreader," I had a root canal once - not so bad in the end - but Gawker and the History Channel were pretty weak against Judge Dredd beforehand. Well, at least this research explains the White House press corps, and why all those does were so uppity reacting to Colbert's direct riffs.

Poseidon Adventures for philosophes and gay men alike

2006-05-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

Jumping out ahead of the brunch storm to take on Thomas Vinciguerra and an early posting from the Sunday Styles. So Hollywood is remaking 1972 cult classic "The Poseidon Adventure" (not to endorse Vinciguerra's culled, freak testimony too much), and by "cult" he means the Poseidon Adventure Fan Club, the kind of crackpot source that plainly justifies, and creates, this kind of story.

Besides standard, in-you-underwear, eating-macaroons-with-cream-cheese movie-freak fodder (a grown man who, when he was 8, saw the film seven times in the theater; or a Hawaiian who claims to have seen this wreck 400 times), Vinci marks the philosophical appeal of the film; that is, the notion that "personal empowerment" is as appealing to these Luddites as breakfast toast, a frittata, and a nice worn sweatshirt are to nostalgic Grupster readers.

Newsflash: turns out gay men REALLY love this film, because, you know, gay men love all things "outrageous 70's," including hags in their panties, jokes about the loo...you know, "splashiness."

Mr. Castro, who is gay, suggested that another reason "Poseidon" has a sizable following among men like himself is that many first saw the movie during puberty, when they were grappling with conflicting issues of sexual awareness. "It was finding out that there were a lot of struggles at that age — about who we were and trying to live with this identity," he said. "It kind of made us realize that if they could survive, we could survive."

Chelsea boys? Grupsters? Whose the target here? I suppose anyone who got "sexually aware" watching movies at 13 and realized that Gene Hackman's hair, and a sinking cruise ship, somehow stood for those motions.

Stamps, a rich bloke collector, and even more rich blokes gunning for auction

2006-05-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

"I have often seen this strange combination in people who lead high-profile lives," Mr. Ashton said. "They like to retreat into their personal worlds." He noted that this solitary pursuit has attracted a diverse group, including members of the British royal family, King Farouk of Egypt, Prince Rainier III of Morocco, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Yul Brynner and John Lennon.

Sir Gawaine bought stamps all his life.

I don't hold categorical dislike for these kinds of stuffy Arts stories - who doesn't like to read about bygone chaps, Royal Canadian stamps, and limeys who deck out their castles not only with Southeby painting hauls, but STAMPS! By gosh, it's so unusual! And inane! "He only collected unused stamps, which is unusual," according to the Southeby's stamp grubber, Richard Ashton. "He embraced the period from when stamps first came out in 1840 until he died, and in the Victorian period collecting was not done much, so unused stamps are rarer."

Yawn. Doesn't this read kind of like that typographic article months ago about how the fonts in Good Night, and Good Luck were historically inaccurate, like putting GPS on the Titanic? That article's absurdity made it somehwhat useful, or at least insightful, and at least it was buoyed by quotes from crackpot, caged font specialists. But this bit of Southeby's copy, half of which is an extended obituary for Sir Stamp Collector, is none of those things. It's gunning directly for Long Islanders who eat scones and, hopefully, will decide they want a piece of Sir Gawaine's action.

Count me in, at least for the amateur car racing scene. Even if Stirling and Jackie kick my Falcon ass, I could get some nice Cava at the end, and some Victorian-loving tail. And then I could go collect more stamps. Or better yet, I could save the millions on stamp collecting and go to Panama to honor the Donald, whose new diddy down south, despite the good press, looks like a cheap, Panamanian knock-off of Dubai's current reigning hotel, at least until Adrian Smith has had his way with the desert.

Eric Wilson's wailing libido, and love for tight pants

2006-05-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

OK, it's been a while. Tonsilitis, I found out, redirects things; so too does academia. But I'm back to it, and while the scope of the absurd in the the Lady expands far beyond Style - what, exactly was Jon Pereles' verdict on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Roseland show, besides that Karen O gyrates? - I'm going to be lazy and go straight to the Thursday Styles. It might be easy, but when high-priced tightness is shoved upfront, one must respond.

Eric Wilson's revelatory bit - that tight jeans are in among the City's bronzed, self-tanned, well-payed fashionistas - was a hoot not only because it focused so baldly, and badly, on an obvious trend, but because it approached the subject like a Fairfield country mom on a weekend jaunt down Madison. What a surprise: it's the Times.

So Eric Wilson likes to sheepishly gloat in his dandy-spender column that people think he looks like James Dean when they can see his package through tight denim. Big deal. It's not like some of us don't see that every day (here's looking at you, Sam). Nor that moving away from boot-cut is like listening to Air America, which is what one of these freak designers wants all those Weekend Journal readers to think as they peruse his rack of $400 jeans.

Fundamentally, this story is about Bill Keller, or Art, or some other higher-up giving into an "in"-Style nitwit who wanted to type out a trend and let Wilson loose on the Times expense account to do so. And for what, so Eric can deck his ass out in tight denim that screams green, if not gauche? Come on. That I get the same satisfaction from $30 Levi's is probably not the best retort to this foolery. Wilson's wailing libido, and the momentary attention B&T sluts give him at the hotel bar because he's sporting his John Varvatos, are the most Art and the Gang can hope for from this crass shopping spree.

Buyers Beware/Thumbing Our Noses at Death

2006-05-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

"Queries about cockroach extermination are as macabre as open houses generally get. Yet making a down payment and later discovering that someone went into that great good night in your great room can really put a damper on your housewarming party."

Man, it's really the pits when people die in your SuperSweet new Brownstone, the Times reminds us in its Pulitzer-worthy article "Some Buyers Regret Not Asking: Anyone Die Here?"As the Real Estate section slips gracefully into its role as the Style section's ugly but just as Jappy younger sybling, some Dick and Janes just cracked open a bottle of Yellowtail to celebrate not buying a BK Heights home that would have reminded them of their mortality. PHEW, crisis averted!

T.R.U.T.H., Cat Urine & Some Full Disclosure

2006-05-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

FACT: NYT's readership cares more about Wiccan cat ladies & UWS community boards than Sudan + Immigration + North Korea + Johnny Damon put together. The latter piece describes the "raffish mix of writers, leftists, and musicians" who call the UWS their home in their quest to protect strong senses of self from boogeyman developers, and Judy! has an inside scoop that the writer of the piece is one of them. Said 'journalist' also contributes that, in the strange universe of the Upper West Side, "many onetime socialists are, to their embarrassment, millionaires on paper.”

Well I got news for you: I may have once been a socialist (around the same time that my B.F.F. first played me "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on her walkman), my mom went to C.B.7 meetings for an entire year, and I even did database entry for the lady who argues that preserving the unique "saw-tooth up-and-down quality" of B'Way is reason enough to rezone the entire Upper West Side of Manhattan. But I have NEVER been a millionaire, and should I ever be so lucky as to make it that big, believe me I'd let you know all about it. Embarassment would be at the very bottom of my list of things to worry about, right next to the "Is it ethical to steal from the Retreat?" question.

Moving on, one might reasonably assume that Kieth Richards sustaining hospital-worthy head injuries by 1) falling out of a Fiji tree onto his head and then 2) going water skiing and falling on his head AGAIN would get more ink than Ms. Neer, who once had upwards of 100 cats and really likes Harry Potter. (Who knew?!?) But if one were to think that, one would be wrong.

Strivers Penetrate the Ratrace as Interests Conflict

2006-04-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

I took a bad spill at a party that made me hate lesbians, and ever since my right foot's been able to detect the presence of Tracy Flick, no matter how well hidden she may be. Sometimes it just goes totally apeshit, like just now when I experienced a pain so profound that I thought an A-Bomb/Dr. Scholls cocktail had detonated inside my Onitsuka Tiger. (NB: unlike Jason Anderson, I don't like my coffee black and converses white.) While I know that at first glance this lead doesn't seem to be too promising, in the case of Alan Finder's most recent contribution to the NYT, the facts just speak for themselves.

For just as Brown 'indy freaks' land gigs writing for Pitchfork, so, too, do strivers of a more bookish nature flock to the lesser sections of the Ol' Gray Lady. This week, for example, an eager beaver from Swarthmore has found a killer way to supplement his work-study income. The article that he's filed operates much like E.T. would have had Reese's paid Universal 83% more than it did. As someone who is, in theory, a cerebral dude, couldn't he have done a better job at covering his tracks? Did he bypass Somerset County's Kaplan course on feigning media ethics, and has he learned nothing from the fate of Nick Sylvester?

For while every high-schooler in the country currently struggling with the "Shit, which Ivy do I choose?" Hamlet-Fest will most likely read his article by week's end, is utilizing such effective advertising space to aggrandize one's alma mater truly worth jeopardizing NYT integrity? But OMG, how could I be so dumb. The Times is all about selling products these days, whether they be sneakers or liberal arts colleges in PA. No WONDER I'm still on level 3 of Brain Quest! As for Alan, the phone hasn't stopped ringing with job offers from the New York Observer. What a rite of passage for him; we're all so proud. It clearly takes a village.

From The Pages of Masthead Revisited: a saga for our time by John Irving & Joyce Carol Oates

2006-04-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

Chapter One: The Wedding // Sing, Oh Goddess, of that rowdy family of reform Jews that, suspended in time, eternally eats its Chinese takeout over an heirloom Mahogany table from the Old Country. Alternately shooting the shit and going at throats with butter knives, it enacts the same conversation over and over ad infinitum.

Things haven't been the same since 10-10-2-20 went broke, and while their dinner has not yet ended, all has been getting pretty bleak. Hobbes ain't just a tiger, in other words.

At the head of the table sits Pops, although these days he tends to nod off and drool on himself rather than contribute to the conversation, occassionally coming to and moaning "Deeepp tthrrooatt, Deeeppp throaattt...I could have been a contender..." (Or is his disengagement deliberate?) To his right is Pop's eldest, Thomas Paul, whom everyone called 'TP' in high school. These days he's both ornery and bombastic, largely to keep up with the constant yammering of his wife seated next to him whom everyone calls the 'Screen.' (Funny how that rhymes with Maureen!) Her uppity bitching about men has compounded his woes by contributing to their estrangement from their sons, Nick and Kristof.

Ever eager to get the hell out of Larchmont, N & K are currently enrolled in a 6-year Where There Be Dragons culinary arts & waterskiing certification program in Nepal. They write often about the local eight-year-old ethnic minorities whom they'd like to take for their wives, and, in one recent email, Nick expressed his delight in the "truly exciting and educational" political revolution unfolding outside the resort complex's walls.

Facing the Sharp flatscreen is family's would-be jock, a real sad case. He almost went pro after high school, but when some shit went down involving a Martha's Vineyard stripper and a bridge, the stress surrounding the scandal caused him to strain a gonad. His curve ball was never the same thereafter [beat], dashing all of his Doubleday dreams. But, as he himself said at her funeral, "Made it to work on time? You lived. Slept in? You're dead."

Last, but hardly the quietest, is the family's most recent Penn alumna. She's always yammering about TWU fashion faux pas and expensive sneakers, but no one seems to mind. Big Nose, and the girl I sing, who, forc'd by fate, left the Hamptons shore to write about a wedding: STAY TUNED, for soon she'll tell the tale of Laurie Nehmen and Austin Stark's wedding, where the aisles flowed with Don Perignon and the lucious breasts of all were sculpted to mirror Ivanka's...

Inspired by the Whole Foods produce section

2006-04-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

They might not be making up this shit as they go along, but facts alone do not an article make. Sure, there's a soon-to-be-teased (and rich...and disarmingly lullabied...) baby shuttling between Hollywood and London named after a fruit, with a little brother named after the sea-parter of the Chosen People. So?

Chris Martin, when not writing impotent songs naked on his bedroom floor, gives his kids twerp names that will be easy targets for their future, fellow twerp classmates. Huzzah. Jason Lee, hysterical that the Kevin Smith days have passed him by, names his little one after a character fit for Tin Tin, and where is he now? Successfully on the chemically-green lawns of the Sunday Styles, where the seating is positively "whimsical."

Cinema aristocracy? A headline that assumes we're all been waiting expectantly for these answers? I mean, I suppose when you lead with writerly hambones advising us on how to pick up B&T hooknasties at tourist bars, anything goes.

Loser shoes

2006-04-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

Alex Kuczynksi, the Thursday Style's cad who gets to write a weekly fashionista column ("Critical Shopper") just because he loves retro shoes and maxing out his Discovery card (well, at least this week), is stepfather to a bright-bulbed teen. Consider his lead to today's "review" of Flight Club, where drug dealers and Ashton Kutcher must go to buy their $800 Air Jordans:

"My deeply hip stepson sounded vaguely amused that I was planning to check out Flight Club, the sneaker resale boutique in NoHo. Who knows what they'll make of you, he said, his voice stopping on the 'you' with just a bit too much force. The emphasis made me realize that he thinks I'm a total loser."

Well, dude, why the hell have you been peddling what The New Republic aptly calls "luxury porn" in the Times for the last year? Of course, there's the obviousness that Art and his gang of Newsies think this is news - or rather, are okay with bagging news in favor of fact-checked, titillating trends - and are paying Kuczy to do so. But Alex, why waste your certain way with words - "At the heart of Flight Club's existence is the paradox of sneaker fetishism. Sneakers used to be things we wore until they wore out." - "reporting" on what every employee at Conde Nast wants and probably doesn't have to pay for anyway? I mean, the delineation of sneaker vintages under "quick strikes" or "hyper strikes" is a very Grey Lady way of masking the moneyed and the mundane with some English Major gloss, but damn. Can't you try and shake some more words out of Matthew Barney instead? Maybe report on circuit bending and how a re-wired, alien, Speak N' Spell is a better use of your extra grand.

Or Kuczy could dig up some dirt on NoHo boutique owners. Then I'd stop griping - that's news fit for the Style section. These "trends" and "styles" are nothing more than "me-writers" trying to reduce themselves to a joke - "The guy in charge handed me a card listing the vintage Air Jordan models, brandishing it with a flourish as if he were the sommelier with a list of rare wine. He was proud. I was cool." - and unfortinately doing far too good a job of it.

Uhuh

2006-04-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

So there's more than one Danny Tanner out there. Sound the alarm. Or better let, lead the Sunday Styles with three pages of the shit...er, bleach.