Out with the old
New Year’s Eve isn’t a huge deal for me. I like to spend it with friends, eating and toasting, possibly singing–you know, generally getting merry. So in a few minutes we’re off to do just that.
And I’m wishing every last one of you the best year ever in 2003.
Edwards for Prez?
It’s early yet, but I like this guy.
Dreaming of a sunny Christmas
Early Friday morning, I fly south for my annual Christmastime love affair with South Florida.
Hibiscus! Fake snow! Peacocks! The ocean! The sun! Well-done maduros!
States setting inmates free to keep taxes low
I’ve posted on an embarrassing number of occasions about the fiscal crisis the states are experiencing in the wake of the aggressive tax cuts of the 90’s, the economic slowdown, and the federal estate tax repeal. State tax revenues are in the longest period of negative growth since World War II.
To cut costs, some [...]
Wolcott on Franzen’s latest
Looks like somebody didn’t like somebody’s new book.
From my friend Chris Baker:
“Ouch! Mr. Wolcott does the most devastating litcrit body slams imaginable. His piece on Kathryn Harrison’s The Kiss in the October 1997 Vanity Fair is even more stinging.”
The “first honest gay personal ad”
Choire, the NYC half of East West, has posted a personal ad detailing the eleven reasons no one should date him. Says Choire:
As a social corrective and ethnographic experiment, I’ve taken out The Personal Ad of Truth. Although it doesn’t present all my excellent qualities in a fair light (such as my revolutionary fashion [...]
I know, I know, it’s serious
3AM Magazine interviews Simon Goddard about his Smiths compendium, Songs That Saved Your Life.
Poor and middle class to pay more in taxes?
It looks like Dionne was right when he predicted in the Washington Post last month that conservatives would soon be assailing the “non-taxpaying class.”
I heard on NPR this morning that the Bush tax policy wonks are gearing up to try to convince the populace that the lower and middle classes should shoulder a larger [...]
Solaris author denounces Soderbergh’s film
Stanislaw Lem, author of Solaris, announced after the release of the Soderbergh adaptation that “he had no intention of seeing the film,” and “was troubled by its emphasis on romance at the expense of deeper philosophical concerns.”
Lem’s novel, among other things, “is a veiled attack on Marxism and its claim to have replaced religious mystery [...]
Bob Graham to announce run for president?
“For those of you think [sic] the Democratic nomination field is pretty set, what would you say if you heard that Senator Bob Graham of Florida had initiated some ’serious discussions’ with people about whether he might put together a strong 2004 presidential campaign?” from ABC News’ (hideous) the Note, via Flablog (a great source [...]
Chalmers, Carroll, and more
In the NY Times Sunday Book Review, Sam Sifton puts in a good word for Robert Chalmers’ Who’s Who in Hell, “a coming-of-age story set in a post-Thatcherite world, amid darkness and mirth combined.”
Hornby fans, take note; Sifton says:
Nick Hornby mines much the same vein of hipster melodrama in his own novels, and [...]
30 days diet
This diet tip is written in my grandmother’s copy of The New Settlement Cook Book, published by Simon & Schuster in 1954. It appears between the index and a handwritten recipe for chess pie.
Target boat disappoints Manhattan shoppers
In this week’s Talk of the Town, Nancy Franklin reports on the Target boat experimentally docked at Chelsea Piers for the holiday:
There could hardly be any news more thrilling to discount-minded Manhattanites . . . than that Target has come to town. Manhattan has a lot going for it, but until two weeks ago we [...]
Izzard interview
Thomas Colereux has brought to my attention an excellent Eddie Izzard interview on Salon.
Rabbit blog
Not only does the Rabbit, aka Polly Esther (of the now-defunct Suck), aka Heather Havrilesky, give better advice than most paid columnists out there, she also features personality disorders of the week and offers the occasional “pointless quiz” designed to let you know “what the fuck is wrong with you.”
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