1. David Amsden’s “Conspiracy of Two” (August 27), about the suicides of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, fed the army of bloggers who are obsessed with the subject. Most merely wanted it understood that they know more about the case than Amsden does, but he was also chided for depicting New York as a “hostile but ultimately rewarding environment for an artist,” while L.A. is “often the opposite: easy and glittering until you begin to suspect it is all maybe a cruel illusion.” The blog Theresa Duncan Control responded: “This is the kind of shit that makes me wish we could deport every single New Yorker. Let’s start by rounding them up in Santa Monica, where they clog up our sidewalk cafés and steal our rent-controlled apartments.”
2. Last week saw the launch of the new Shop-A-Matic feature (nymag.com/shopping/shopamatic), which, in its original incarnation, allows people to browse thousands of home-design products from stores throughout New York (fashion and accessories will be added in September). Among the first to weigh in was Racked, which griped that many of the items cannot be purchased directly on the Internet because stores don’t all have e-commerce capabilities. But wait a minute, that was the whole idea! Not just a pass-through to what’s already available on the Web, but an enterprising effort to collect the best stuff from around the city in an easy-to-browse format. Fortunately, others noticed that; Media Life remarked that “what makes the online catalogue different is that it features many products that can’t be found anywhere else online.” Exactly.
3. Ileana Jimenez of Manhattan wrote to inform us of an omission: “I am very disappointed that on your ‘Lit Guy’ map of New York (August 13), Three Lives was listed as serving the city’s ‘gay-lit clientele.’ You clearly overlooked the Oscar Wilde, our city’s only remaining lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender bookstore, which is just one block away from Stonewall on Christopher Street, in contrast to the ‘two blocks from the site of the riot’ one must walk to Three Lives.”
FROM THE IN-BOXFree the Bird!
Whoever coined the term “for the birds” underestimated the great love out there for our feathered friends, as apparently did we when we featured a live lovebird in Best Bets (August 20). A sampling of the outcry that ensued:
“I don’t appreciate your shopping column that encouraged people to purchase lovebirds as a ‘bright shiny thing.’ Living things are not to be bought and sold. Thank you.”
Marjorie Hass, Hartshorne, Okla.
“Caged birds suffer until they finally find mercy in death. Having a beautiful bird in a cage is not stylish, it’s simply selfish and cruel.”
Michelle, who identified herself further only as a “person with a conscience and style!”
“Birds can be as much work to properly care for as a baby…Please do not encourage or condone buying a living thing as a whim to brighten up one’s day.”
Gwen S.
“It is good to remember that humans aren’t the only species on earth, we just act like it.”
Dan Piraro, Brooklyn