The NYT trend piece on blogger health wasn't so far off, after all: Radar Online editor Alex Balk has been complaining about a pain in his arm for a couple of days now, and I'm scheduled for the first of two small, yet uninsured, procedures over at Bellevue tomorrow morning. They think it might be an ulcer! (Yet, they prescribed Xanax for some reason.) But:
It's hard out there for a young writer, especially if you're blogging all up on the HuffPo! Jessica Wakeman wasn't sure how to make her writerly dreams come true, so with adorable naivete, she asked Vanessa Grigoriadis, the successful but occasionally-mocked writer of Rolling Stone articles, Britney meltdown-profiles, and creative-underclass blogger chronicling. Vanessa's response? "You need a strategy."
Richard Florida, the oft-quoted author of The Rise of the Creative Class, has helpfully mapped out the singles populations of American cities. What do we learn? There are too many girls in New York, but boys are plentiful in California. God, just like we've always suspected: East coast men have their pick of the litter, but as for females, it seems we have a choice: either become aggressively, desperately self-promoting, "branding" our singleness (Julia Allison?), or go West, where it's going to be 74 and sunny on Friday. (See ya!) Click to enlarge this essential piece of data, from Creative Class Exchange via New Republic.
Yeah, yeah, magazine features are shorter than they were. This Old House may be shut down. The lead times for printing and distribution are increasingly absurd in an age of instant online publishing. But do magazine writers have to be quite so depressed and depressing?
Berliniamsburg: everybody's doing it! The European sister of Williamsburg is perfect for a perennial trend piece on the antidote to gentrification: you know, just chillin' while being a beatiful loser or an artist or a creator in Berlin. (Even me. I'm so going on vacation in two weeks!) And then T magazine tortures us with photos of two stylish musicians in a Berlin apartment to stab for. As it turns out, "What New York was in the 80s, Berlin is now," is a cliche, according to an interviewee.
The Sunday Times included an essay on how certain books can be major turnoffs while dating, and already 162 people have posted their own "literary dealbreakers" to an nytimes.com blog post. There's also a follow up blog post, a follow-up column and of course blogger reaction (former Gawker Emily Gould has two posts up so far). Consensus turnoffs include anything by Ayn Rand (huge among business executives, in my experience), Da Vinci Code, Bridges of Madison County and the Harry Potter series. Also, no one seems to be making allowances for gifts from parents and friends and, hello, book sales, which might be the only reason some of us have David Guterson, Barack Obama, James Frey and, uh, maybe Imus on our shelves, OK? Not that there's any need to be defensive; listening to other people try and justify their literary chauvinism tends to be more entertaining than threatening, especially if they're strangers. After the jump, some of the best posts, and some of the most insane posts, from the Times' literary turnoffs discussion thread.
Emo kids, those overly made-up, mopey fans of overwrought post-punk music, are annoying. But do they really deserve to be hunted down and beaten? Because that's exactly what's been happening to them in Mexico. Reports Exclaim, "the violence began March 7, when an estimated 800 young people poured into the Mexican city of Queretaro's main plaza 'hunting' for emo kids to pummel. Then the following weekend similar violence occurred in Mexico City at the Glorieta de Insurgents, a central gathering space for emos." Click for the video of violent anti-emo mobs! (Don't worry, they're fighting back with rainbow banners.)
Welcome to the recession! The AP reports that in the midst of a "slumping economy and the credit crunch," adult children are moving back into their parents' homes. Except they're not all 25 — some are middle-aged?! Well, at least one: they interview a 52-year-old and a 27-year-old who have moved back home. A financial planner in California "has never seen older children, even those in their 50s, depending so much on their parents as in the last six months."
In the L Magazine's most recent "Money" issue, Adam Bonislawski makes the point that striving to become a middle-class New Yorker is a.) hard, and b.) perhaps not worth the effort, "like swimming the English Channel or climbing Everest without oxygen, or translating the Bible into LOLcats." Sounds familiar!
We already know that half of Manhattan abuses Adderall, but what does an ex-addict novelist need to get writing in the morning? According to an Esquire interview with James Brown, author of Los Angeles Diaries: a lot. Writers, take note! Among other things, we learn about antidepressant Wellbutrin's pleasing stimulant qualities, especially whenn combined with something called "No-Explode..."
That patchouli-wearing hippie who likes to set houses on fire? He's just a misunderstood "anti-sprawl activist" to the Times. Here's how the paper started a blog post about a string of arsons near Seattle:
"...We basically got paid to come in and do nothing for a few hours which was fine... until i got hungry. Then it sucked. We could have learned all that in five minutes at the begging (sic) of a shift. Because "Don't serve a drink that you know is going to taste like crap" is a pretty easy guideline to follow. Although that would preclude us from serving the new Honey Latte, which tastes exactly like burned milk. What I don't get is who really cares that Starbucks closed for three hours? If you think the coffee is shit then... great it shouldn't have affected you. If you love it so much that you angrily bang on the door for a half hour... you need to discover internet porn or something."
"True story. My apartment in 'prime Williamsburg' was broken into. The thieves searched out my [Apple] iPod and [Mac] PowerBook, but the didn't touch my roommate's Dell that was sitting out in plain sight on our kitchen table. PS: A kitchen table - suck it Manhattan." [via email] (Photo: Everystockphoto)
Like every growing hipster, I'm painfully transitioning from my local indie grubby cafe to Starbucks, because dammit I just want a clean table and no one asking me for money and maybe an egg nog latte in December. I also want a cafe without a mob of laptop zombies typing with headphones on, creating a completely silent cafe and making me feel like I must whisper my order. So I'm not happy that in its upcoming switch from T-Mobile to AT&T, Starbucks is dropping the price of wifi from $10 a day to one $5 payment for the rest of your life.
It's true, and soon the hipsters will be reading it on each others' Tumblrs or whatever: Polaroid is getting out of the film business, closing factories and hoping someone will be stupid enough to buy their technology even though they themselves stopped making cameras a year ago. Experts say the move is long overdue, but a dollars and cents calculation misses the awful human toll: literally dozens of young aspiring artists left unable to photograph their ridiculous friends using a retro analog tool that pales and mutes its subjects. The terrifying news has only just begun to trickle through the Polaroid fetishist community. In the meantime, here are some of the hardest hit.
The "sugar mamas" cruising the profiles for potential "boy toys" at online cougar-dating site Pocketchange NY might want to be careful. We spy the profile of one Neel Shah! What the lovelorn cougars probably don't realize is that Neel, AKA Former Gawker Intern Neel, Radar Online-r, and general man-about-town, is probably writing about his experience, as he is known to do. They might not want their awesome chatup lines broadcast all over the internets, and he'll definitely be crashing their little speed-dating event tomorrow. As it is, they're leaving him all sorts of lascivious comments...
Is Valentine's Day simply a stinging reminder of singlehood, like a coarse-grained sea salt rubbed into your painful, wounded heart? asks Fresh Direct, the home grocery-delivery service we can't afford. Well, yes. Luckily, they have some sort of five-step program to help us out. For some reason, they involve all manner of produce, delivered right to our door. Oh, and cat litter, naturally!
Just in time for Valentine's Day, Jakob Lodwick—New York's eligible-ish bachelor, web boy, and "burgeoning music entrepreneur"—tells us his "new favorite website." It's called Knicker Picker, the "online dressing room." You simply select a panty model, and dress her up (or down) in whatever lingerie you choose! You can have her "turn around" or "come closer," and she'll oblige without so much as a peep. Which is so perfect, really.
A while back, we asked, "at what point will American Apparel's billboards show some equal opportunity and start featuring fully-splayed half-naked men as well as women?" Hallelujah, that day has almost arrived! Dutch magazine Butt ("a pocket-size, quarterly magazine for and about homosexuals") has saved us via an AA model search for boys. No photos yet, but rest assured, we're on this. [Butt Magazine]
