In a move that leaves us scratching our heads, Civil Court Judge Diane Lebedeff has ruled that two Manhattan women are were entitled to refunds from internet dating service Great Expectations. One woman paid $1000 for six months that yielded absolutely no dates, while another paid $3,790 for a three-year membership full of duds. The latter woman, "Debra Roe," works in financial services and was looking to meet a fellow professional:
She just couldn't handle all that love being sent her way.
Yesterday, we lamented the existence of Thrillist, an email newsletter catering to Golden Tee-playing Murray Hill boys and their love of drinking and humping. In particular, we're frustrated by the lack of a comparable newsletter for ladies and/or Gays (save for the overly-precious Daily Candy), and we suggested that we might start translating Thrillist for our own means. Today's edition, in which Thrillist men can learn about a rip-cord applicator condom — donned with such speed that you'd have to be a fucking girl to lose your erection in the process — is exactly the sort of thing that could be easily and effectively marketed to the opposite sex:
• Chelsea's tony London Terrace towers bans "making out" in the residence's pool or health club facilities. Apparently, this also means no sex with homeless men in the locker room. Absurd: It's as if management doesn't even know what neighborhood they're in! [NYDN]6;
• If the devil isn't wearing Prada, she opts for Bill Blass. [WWD]
• Dangerous street gangs shoplift diabetes test strips! [NYT]
• Is the NYC Marathon just one big excuse to piss in public? [Daily Slope]
• Voice gossipette Michael Musto lays down the law: "I swear on my obsolete Uggs that dumb blonds are, like, officially over. It's just not cute anymore to watch people who, thanks to raging insecurity issues, insist on being both stick-thin (because they want to look "good") and camera-hoggingly self-humiliating." But that's not really fair, we think. To be humiliated requires a degree of self-awareness — which is simply not the case with these girls. [VV]
• Mapping Billy Bob Thorton's NYC hookup route. [HotelChatter]
• It's the Webby Awards list of the Top 10 most influential internerd moments; having nailed the number two spot, rest assured Drudge will spend most of his night engaging in celebratory masturbation. [AFP/Yahoo]
We're reluctant to admit it, but we've been following online newsletter Thrillist more closely than anyone without a closet full of striped button-downs ever should. And yet? We're completely transfixed by its evil, fratty brilliance. It manages, four times every week, to find a different way of promoting the finest in testosteroniffic pursuits: heavy drinking and getting ass. We may not agree with it, but we're certainly impressed. You try finding 208 different ways of telling a dude to make sure he gets his date drunk.
We know what happens if we go to Google, type "failure," and click "I'm feeling lucky." It's the same thing that would have happened if we did that at any point in the last few years. It's not new, your friend wasn't the first to discover it, and, no, we don't need to act quickly before Google "fixes" it. (First Nexis mention: December 2003, in The Washington Post.) We understand you mean well, but, please, stop emailing about it.
• We contacted indie filmfreak Vincent Gallo this morning for comment and have yet to hear back on the matter, but it seems that for just $1 million dollars, you can buy some of his sperm. If you're Chloe Sevigny, it's free of charge. [VG]
• It's come to our attention that all Viacom employees — i.e., roughly two-thirds of NYC — are now unable to receive IMs that contain links. The point of this? We don't really know, but golly, we're tired of the man holding you down!
• Yesterday, Radar reported that hip-hop magazine The Source has been unable to pay its rent. So are they evicted yet? [For Myself and Others]
• The seller offers no proof of authenticity, but you know you're just stupid enough to pay $1750 for a cocktail dress reportedly belonging to Paris Hilton. Helpful tip: the shame is less palpable if you do your bidding drunk. [eBay]
• Need your own militant activist to throw red paint on your enemies? PETA is auctioning off their president, Ingrid Newkirk, for an entire day of furry fun. [AdFreak]
We're not sure if we feel worse for professional curmudgeon Andy Rooney, who gamely sat through a Public Eye non-interrogation, or Public Eye, the new CBS News non-ombudsman non-blog, which had to suffer through Rooney's charmingly dismissive responses. This exchange was our favorite, simultaneously an apotheosis of Public Eye's bushy-tailed earnestness and of Ronney's lived-spotted cynicism:
Earlier, we were perusing a Corcoran listing for $2.75 million townhouse in Prospect Park (only because a reader claims the seller to be the delightfully backbiting writer/actress Cintra Wilson — not that we care enough to confirm). Cruising Corcoran is nothing new to us, so we're a bit surprised that today, of all days, we noticed the address bar for Corcoran's website features a teensy, evil little visage of the Corcodevil herself!
From time to time, we find ourselves commenting that, all present employment evidence to the contrary not withstanding, we are fundamentally Luddites. We use IE rather than Firefox; we keep our appointments in an antediluvian Filofax; we do not — this part we feel a touch of guilt about — own an iPod. We tend to argue that many things work just fine as they are, that hifalutin technical "upgrades" and "advances" are merely marketing scams and inconvenient timesucks. (Yes, we've been crotchety since we were about 10.) Then an article like this one comes along:
It was too good to be true: After months of smoothly gliding into the Post's website with nary a glitch or an interruption, it seems that nypost.com decided, on this otherwise lovely fall morning, to crap in its own hands and wipe the mess all over our monitors.
A reader points us to the current "Popular Searches" list on MSN.com and asks, which of these things is not like the other?
Speaking of which: Get clicking, people. Numbers ain't looking great today, and if you don't step up we'll have to get someone else fired.
Favorite 4 Times Square Mole reports this morning that Conde Nast's management might well have achieved its real goal: Not so much ridding the company of Andrew Krucoff as scaring the bejesus out of its remaining employees. F4TSM emails:
Remember that time when all the sudden it started really hurting to pee? And you noticed there was a little blood in your urine? And then you remembered that hookup a week earlier, when you didn't have a condom, but you were drunk, and you didn't really do anything that unsafe, but, well, you know? And so you went to the doctor, who told you — thank God — that it was just a random irritation, and you actually didn't have any horrible STDs? But it still scared the shit out of you, and so you stopped — at least for a while — with the random coked-up bathroom sex? And you were really, really careful about condoms?
Crisis at 4 Times Square!
This email arrived the other day:
Yes, yes, yes; we know.
Top Five Searches on msn.com at the moment:
