M A N H A T T A N I T E

Guys! Guys! I’ve got obvious news! Navel-gazing media profiles happen all the time time in New York. There is literally nothing else to talk about! Sometimes it’s about putzes with wifi; sometimes it’s about Tumblrinas; sometimes it’s about Ivy dudes posing as leftists; sometimes it’s about rando bloggers on the LES; sometimes it’s dudes who pretend to not be jealous of their friends getting six figure book contracts; sometimes the Ivy dudes posing as leftists attack twee dudes who act like outsiders after they get seven figure book contracts; so yeah, your wave has crested and all that is left is sneering at expensive Brooklyn real estate that you pretend isn’t worth trading your dignity, or something, for. But chin[…]

I wonder if there is a way measure how Extremely Online has changed, if at all, since the early days. Certainly the markers have shifted: what qualified you, what your public socio-political disposition reflected, and how you funded it. Because it’s always been at least a part time job. From hasty, typo-ridden screeds dispatched to your music LISTSERV or USENET group to hasty, typo-ridden tweets fired off minute by minute, the defining characteristic of EO is that you cannot be asleep at the switch. Online has always felt like a space, and that is likely the notion that sustains the most deluded, which is not an attempt at diminishing the experiences of those in thrall. I am most definitely one[…]

Sorry to Bother You I left the theater (Alamo, during wide release but late in the cycle) having successfully avoided my companion’s friends, who had just happened to be in the same screening, talking about needing to pick their jaws off the floor and brains out of the carpet and willing to give the kind of dunderheaded sci-fi farce a pass if only for getting that Chappelle’s Show b-reel fake rap scene to the silver screen and because of the Armie Hammer Renaissance.  Then I noticed the firebrand director evincing an inability to deal seriously with works of fiction in an attempt to knock his elder down a peg and slag one of the top five best movies of the[…]

So someone who works for a magazine that was profitable for decades solely due to subscription stuffing done by cutout intermediaries noticed that publishers try to game the numbers. I can’t properly qualify that claim — it was told to me at least ten years ago by some publishing industry wonk about a practice ten years older than that; so the surety with which this claim is presented is inherited, but the gist is that in a given year, prior to the Internet and Wasserstein largess, New York Magazine made the bulk of its advertising revenue on the back of the ‘Best Of’ issues, the cornerstone of which was the ‘Best Doctors in New York’, which was as hefty as[…]

One of the odder maxims of old YM was to never ‘report on’ conversations that happened during casual gatherings. I believe I was the progenitor and the logic was something on the order of extending a courtesy of privacy so  that people need not be guarded for fear of some lazy gotcha down the road. As much as we insisted it was a valid moral stance, it was conveniently and often ignored. And the almost galling naivete it contains was supposed to be leavened by the belief that social norms would be upheld to the degree that bad actors ‘in the scene’ would be exiled absent any requirement that wider exposure of misdeeds be broadcast. But there’s something a little[…]

I found the work agreement from my first post-college job yesterday. A full-time professional position, $6/hr. That works out to roughly $1K a month. My first post-college apartment was $365/mo IIRC. Education debt was about four bills. I’m an old, sure, but this was during the Clinton administration. The more things change, etc. I used to have a physical ledger I used to track expenses (look the 90s weren’t a Dickens novel – there was some affect to the decision). I’ve discarded it, but last I saw it, several years ago, I stared uncomprehendingly at entries detailing weekends at the bar where somehow I got stupendously drunk off a $20 ATM withdrawal.  I wasn’t looking for it – I was[…]

One could argue that Bill Clinton’s preferred method for mitigating exposure of his philandering, rapey tendencies was harming black people. Recognizing that using the implacable power of the state to further hundreds of years of violence against our most vulnerable was good optics, before he even ascended to the most lusted after seat of power, he took time out of his busy schedule of dodging accusations of infidelity and sexual assault to pull the lever on Ricky Ray Rector, a man so impaired that he declined to finish his final meal, uttering the infamous phrase that is the genesis for this post title.  Emboldened by the popular response to this act of callous cruelty, we were treated to a decade[…]

The raison detra of this brand has always been discussing things in too much detail that not even all the people reading cared that much about. If we give the keys to Foster at any point, he would probably breathlessly describe this mode of writing as some variant of a ‘high wire act’ because bloggers love nothing more than investing unearned drama into literally the most insipid and lazy form of journalism ever invented. Anyhoo, this is has been a pretty stock opening (give us some slack, it’s been years) so let’s get to the thing: earlier this week, we were graced with a deep dive on the D. [We also specialized in the parenthetical aside – I’m pleased to know[…]