Maer Roshan's new mag, Radar, is set to hit newstands on April 22nd, and the press blizzard is just starting. The NYT's David Carr has an extensive review and Page Six offers a few excerpts from an article titled "Monsters, Inc.":
· On Dave Eggers: "Thin-skinned exhibitionist is so paranoid about his image, will communicate with press only via e-mail. Claims to loathe big imprints, yet is published by Penguin in the U.K."
· Wall Street dilettante Jim Cramer "gave surviving employees of his beleaguered financial Web site thestreet.com autographed copies of his blustery post-bust tell-all, 'You Got Screwed!,' in lieu of bonuses."
(We snagged a copy, too, so you'll get more excerpts later.)
New magazine has the sound, not the budget, of the late Talk [NYT]
Radar tracks boldface boors [Page Six]

The NYT's Carl Swanson attended the Fischerspooner concert Wednesday night at the Hammerstein Ballroom. (So did I, but you won't get my report until Monday.) If you haven't heard of them, Fischerspooner began as a quasi-art project by two Chicago Art Institute grads and developed a cult following performing at clubs in Williamsburg and art galleriesi.e., Deitch Projects in SoHo. If you have heard of them, you're probably rolling your eyes, and moaning, "Oh my god, Fischerspooner is, like, sooooo three years ago. My friend is, like, friends with Casey Spooner, and like..." Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk about it on Monday. It should be noted that their first performance was at the Astor Place Starbucks. Front man Casey Spooner lipsynched a song about being hit on by an Indian cab driver while Warren Fischer (the composer) pressed play on the boom box. Spooner on that performance: " It felt great to do [a show in] Starbucks. It totally disturbed an environment that has become such a natural part of our day. It was great to disturb that homogeneousness. Imagine it: you come in to grab a coffee and there's a guy in a monkey suit doing a striptease to electro music surrounded by backing singers wearing red vinyl panties. In a Star-fucking-bucks."
Come on, pretend it's a really big concert [NYT]

1. Hear architect Raphael Vinoly at NYU.
2. Panelists from Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Times, and Television Without Pity discuss television criticism at the Museum of Television and Radio.
3. Catch Cat Power at Warsaw.

The NYT has discovered The Hipster Handbook and the post-PostMo Williamsburg population that no longer acknowledges its existence. (I think the original appeared in Free Williamsburg three years ago.) Says one resident: "Nobody uses the word ['hipster']. Asking somebody if they're a hipster is kind of like asking somebody if they're bourgeois, and of course they're like, 'No, no, I'm not bourgeois.'"
Hip young things see no need for a new guide to the hip [NYT]

"The Italian restaurant Serafina Sandro unveiled a 'Tobacco Special' menu on Wednesday, with such delicacies as gnocchi made with tobacco and filet mignon in a tobacco-wine sauce, garnished with dried tobacco. Tobacco panna cottaan Italian cooked cream dishis available for dessert, followed by a strong glass of tobacco-infused grappa." This should make the NYT's William Grimes happy.
Eatery offers menu for tobacco-deprived [via 601am]
Serafina Sandro [Citysearch]

NYT food critic William Grimes laments the death of smoking in bars in restaurantseven though he's not supposed to. "As a diner, critic and epicure, I applaud the new antismoking law...Smoking is the enemy of food. It distorts or disguises flavors. It dulls the taste buds. It has no place in a restaurant." Yet, Grimes writes, "By temperament and by profession, I am aligned with the pleasure seekers. Therefore I find the no-smoking crusade disturbing, even though it works to my benefit. What's next? Cakes and ale?" Next to be regulated, speculates Grimes: noise, fat, and red meat.
On a clear day I can eat forever [NYT]

Lockhart Steele reviews the much-ballyhooed (particularly by Lockhart himself) Nolita rice pudding shop Rice-to-Riches: "The crowd was pulsating, the servers too chipper, the flavors obtuse. We tried the Strawberry Floozy, which tasted like a goopy strawberry sherbert, with lumpsalbeityespleasing lumps. Today we read in a Times article about the phenomenon that the owner 'spent a lot of time looking for words that go together.' Right-o."
Rice to Riches [Lockhart Steele]

A new rendering of the New York Times headquarters building on Times Square. The screens at the top of the tower are designed to deter pigeons. Here's a diagram showing the new NYT tower, beside the original building completed in 1889: skyscraperpage.com.

The industrious editors at the Morning News have been spending their time inventing things designed to meet the needs of the lucrative "New York" demographic. Among our favorites: the "Times Wiper," which takes all the "annoying blocks of text" out of the NYT, leaving readers with the comparatively pleasant ads; the "Transit Forceps," to hold open subway doors; and the "Shopping Cleats," to spike anyone that get in your way at the Manolo sample sale.
New York inventions [TMN]

The NYT needs editing almost as badly as I do. A reader writes, "Mixed metaphor alert in that Times article you posted:

The NYT's Andrew Jacobs chronicles the history of smoking in New York, from Dorothy Parker to the '21' club, to a trading floor on Wall Street a week ago. Writer Fran Lebowitz: "It's the continued suburbanization of New York,"...In a city filled with undersize apartments, the bars and restaurants, she says, are collective living rooms and parlors, the places for intellectual discourse and artistic give and take. "The history of ideas, as opposed to notions, is that you sit around bars and talk," she said. "You can't sit around in bars and not smoke."
Walk a mile for a camel? Not far enough anymore. [NYT]

The NYT reports that a "don't ask; don't tell" policy has descended upon Manhattan dinner parties with regard to talking about the war in Iraq. Safe subjects: Tony Blair's hair (going grey), Christine Amanpour's fashion sense ("How does she manage to look so good in a war zone?"), the French wine selection at the Kuwait City Marriott (could be better), and chem suits in fresh spring colors (orange is all the rage!).
Thank you for not talking about the war [NYT]

An article from this morning's NYT begins, "For the record, not everyone in Connecticut is a crook. But this is no longer obvious..."
The nutmeg state battles the stigma of Corrupticut [NYT]

The NYT's Alex Kuczynski writes about the Vanity Fair Oscar party, "[It was] less about overt, gaudy, look-at-me celebrationpopping open the bubbly, drinking out of satin Jimmy Choosthan it was about measured manners, cautious behavior, peace and love." Then she goes on to describe the somber occasion, chronicling agent Ed Limato's drink-tossing fight with Page Six columnist Richard Johnson, stylists Philip Bloch's comments about Queen Latifah's dress ("It was eh. Just eh."), and Adrian Brody's fake tan.
At the afterparty, less cleavage, unreal tans, and a tossed drink [NYT]

Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend arrived at the Academy's Oscar party at Le Cirque wearing a long navy sheath dress with spaghetti straps. "It's a Morgane Le Fay," she tells the NYT's Joyce Wadler. She remarks, of the Oscars, "It's an important industry for this country, and it's great to have something people can think about and look at in this time when there's so much strife in the world." Then, "Please get the name of the [dress] designer in your article."
Oh, no! Now he's offended Joan Collins! [NYT]

In case you missed Michael Moore's speech last night at the Oscars, A.O. Scott chronicles the events: "...Michael Moore, who won for best documentary for Bowling for Columbine, asked the four other nominees in his category to come up on stage with him. 'They are here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times,' Mr. Moore said.

The NYT's Jennifer Steinhauer is aggressively promoting the idea of "matchmaking"a process of setting up her single friends "for the vicarious thrill." (At least she admits it.) "The obvious key to matchmaking," she says, "is looking for similar qualities in people that go beyond, 'Gee, Dan, you're from the Midwest, and Rose is, too.' The reality is that if Rose wanted to meet and marry a guy from the Midwest, she would have stayed in Michigan, gotten a perm and started calling soda 'pop' again."
You two have a lot in common. Or not. [NYT]

Greg Allen on why Gangs of New York director Martin Scorsese should get the Best Director Oscar over Chicago director Rob Marshall:

Actor Joel Grey's Manhattan apartment is minimalist in feel, if not style. The loft, with its 30 feet of windows, is "populated by a few simple pieces of furniture and art." The impulse toward "clean and simple" is understandable, especially in a happily chaotic city like New York, but Joel definitely goes beyond the normal standards: "...the first thing he does when he checks into some hotel rooms is to remove the bedspread and replace it with a plain white sheet to 'neutralize the space.'"
Grey's anatomy [NYT]

ArtNet's Charlie Finch, bitter that the NYT isn't covering his favorite Chelsea galleries, takes Raines-bashing to an entirely new level: "...the New York Times is a hyper-capitalist vacuum which sucks in high commodity advertising targeted to its wealthy readers, covering it with a pathetic, neosocialist editorial slant, designed to disguise its plutocratic raison d'etre: handbags for the rich and editorials for the poor...bogus editor Howell Raines, age 60, is yapping about how much he loves Eminem."
The bizarro art world of the New York Times [ArtNet via Traveler's Diagram]