I live in Brooklyn. I like it. But, fuck me, I was under the impression that Brooklyn was pretty cool until I started reading all the analysis of it. Now I hate it.

Brooklyn "power couple" Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are leaving the neighborhood. Their beautiful Prospect Park West mansion (see pic, above) is on the market for $8.5m (they paid $3.5 for it back in 2003). They'll be fleeing to a fancypants penthouse in TriBeCa. So, is everyone going to just abandon Brooklyn? First it was Michelle Williams and the late Heath Ledger (though she kept their Boerum Hill brownstone, she spends most of her downtime in LA, he spent it in Manhattan), and now these well-respected "boho" "artists." Thank God we've still got Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Keri Russell. And I think M.I.A. lives somewhere in Bed-Stuy. But, they'll probably leave too.

There are many reasons for homelessness. Many are sad, some tragic, and a few eminently understandable. A there-but-for-the-grace-of- God woman appeared in night court last night; unable to afford her apartment after she lost her job, she'd been arrested and charged with trespassing for sleeping on a Gramercy Park roof.

Zagat, the restaurant review of choice for uptown adventurers, wannabe foodies, and those who don't know any better, releases its 2006 edition today. We can't wait to see restauranteurs polish their meaningless "mentioned in Zagat's" window stickers to honor the occasion!

We're typically like Uncle Leo, ready and even eager to find anti-Semitism anywhere. But, still, we just can't get ourselves worked up about a scoop in this morning's Post, that Bronx Democratic chief Jose Rivera charged that Assembly speaker Shelly Silver made a deal with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz because "blood [was] taking care of blood." See, Rivera meant that as a compliment. "I learn from 'em," Rivera also said. "God bless 'em, you know what I mean. What's good for them is good for me and my people."

Jessica Pressler, who wrote the strange Philadelphia-is- the-sixth-borough piece in the Times last weekend, talks to the blog Philebirty today and, between admitting that the whole thing was just a PR gimmick for the city and dropping a few too many f-bombs, basically ensures she'll never write for the Times again. Also, she manages to insult all Times-reading New Yorkers:

According to yesterday's Times, Philadelphia is the new Williamsburg. And, commute-wise, 2 hours is the new 20 minutes.