Next Week’s Intel, TodayA sneak peek at the political coverage coming in next week’s ‘New York.’
ByChris Rovzar
in the magazine
New ‘WSJ’ Luxury-Title Editor: Which Archetype to Assign?Today we learn that Tina Gaudoin will be the editor of a yet-to-exist quarterly luxury supplement to The Wall Street Journal. We imagine it will be sort of like the Times magazine T. Well, probably it will be exactly like it. But anyway, according to the memo obtained by Romenesko:
Tina will bring [the Journal] a valuable set of skills from her extensive career in the magazine world. She began her career at Tatler working as beauty editor. In 1992 she moved to New York to work on the re-launch of Harpers Bazaar. During her time in New York she also worked at Vogue as senior writer and then as a presenter on Barry Diller’s Q2 channel. Returning to London, she became deputy editor of Tatler before launching the women’s magazine Frank. After that she became editorial director of the iVillage UK web site . She joined The Times of London in 2003 as style director of its Saturday magazine and was named editor of the quarterly magazine The Times Luxx in June 2007.
So luxury-journalism experience luxury-journalism experience something about Barry Diller luxury-journalism experience. Hm. There doesn’t seem to be anything in there about whether she is qualified to run a luxury journalism title. That is, there’s no explanation of whether she has a ridiculously over-the-top personality and outrageously self-demanding personal (and sartorial) daily regimen. With a touching underdog story.
in the magazine
Why Do New Yorkers Live Longer? Flavored, Sugared Water!New Yorkers live longer than other Americans, and in last week’s New York cover story, Clive Thompson tried to explain why. We walk more than most Americans, he pointed out, we climb more stairs than most Americans, and many fewer of us die young of onetime urban plagues like murder and AIDS. We have great hospitals and lots of healthy-eating options, and, as he noted, people who are ambitious and hard-working and appearance-focused can be just as Type-A about their health as about everything else. But leave it to a marketer to isolate the mysterious X factor, the key reason New Yorkers live longer than everyone else. It came in a press release this morning, and it’s beautiful in its simplicity: “Life Expectancy for New Yorkers Increases as Snapple Grows in Popularity.” Why didn’t Clive think of that? Oh, the press release was, of course, from Snapple.
in the magazine
‘Hairspray’ Turns FiveHairspray — by which we mean the Broadway musical, which was inspired the Divine movie of the same name and in turn inspired the John Travolta movie of the same name — opened five years ago last night, and it’s still going strong. (Stunt casting helps, sure — hello, Lance Bass! — but selling 101 percent of capacity, as it did last week, ain’t bad.) A month before it opened, Susan Dominus previewed the show and essentially predicted a smash. “Everybody thought it was going to be the New York Times that would make it a hit,” recalls Richard Kornberg, the veteran theater publicist who reps the show. “But when the New York Magazine put out this piece, that is the one article that put it through the top and sold Hairspray.” To mark the anniversary, here’s “Hairspray It On,” from the July 22, 2002, issue of New York.
Hairspray It On [NYM]
in the magazine
Further Adventures in Crumbling Infrastructure
If it feels like the city is falling apart around you, it may not just be your paranoia talking. Early yesterday afternoon a section of midtown sidewalk collapsed under two construction workers jackhammering it, sending them on a ten-foot fall into the hole underneath and leaving both at Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. With exploding steam pipes and “structurally deficient” bridges, what else can go wrong? Christopher Bonanos considered that question in this week’s New York. Our advice: Be ready for blackout, and watch out for falling bricks.
The Old Town [NYM]
Two Hurt in Sidewalk Collapse [Newsday]
in the magazine
Jay McCarroll Will Design for Food
Jay McCarroll, Project Runway’s first-season winner and a major character in Jennifer Senior’s “The Near-Fame Experience,” the cover story in this week’s New York, is not, it appears, happy with how he was portrayed in the piece, particularly with Senior’s characterization of him as “still homeless in New York.” Where did she get such an idea? Well, probably from this direct quote:
“I haven’t been living anywhere for two years,” he says. “I sleep at other people’s houses. I sleep here [his sewing-machine- and fabric-filled studio] if I’m drunk.”
And how do we know he’s not happy about this? He’s posted to YouTube at least six videos mocking the characterization, largely filled with him wandering lower Manhattan while repeatedly howling, “I’m homeless, I’m homeless,” and “Will design for food.” One version — we kid you not — is set to Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Women,” which makes no sense contextually but at least blocks out the howling. It’s the best one.
UPDATE: McCarroll heeds our advice, maybe? He’s removed all the videos except the Crystal Waters version. Be thankful.
Jay McCarroll Homeless Crystal Waters Remix [YouTube via Radar]
The Near-Fame Experience [NYM]
in the magazine
The Fred Thompson Letters: ‘Looking Forward to the Hamptons!’
When Stephen Rodrick profiled former senator Fred Thompson, also the incumbent New York County district attorney on Law & Order and an all-but- declared presidential candidate in real life, Rodrick took a look at Thompson’s Senate papers, which the then-lapsed politician donated to the University of Tennessee in 2005. Among them was a good deal of his senatorial correspondence, both letters received and those sent. And there were some good ones. After the jump, highlights from a few of our favorites.
in the magazine
Steamroller Stalled: Could You See It Coming?In a nutshell: In an effort to score political points by claiming his nemesis, Joe Bruno, was inappropriately using state resources (aircraft, cars, troopers) to travel to political events, Eliot Spitzer, or at least people working for Eliot Spitzer, inappropriately used state resources (the state police) to carry out their oppo research. A.G. Andrew Cuomo released a report yesterday saying so, and saying, incidentally, that Bruno hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Spitzer indefinitely suspended one aide, transferred another out of the governor’s office, and denied any knowledge of what they were up to; Republicans are skeptical he was really so oblivious. So much for being the White Knight, eh?
In last week’s New York, Steve Fishman profiled the governor and examined his (many) feuds with other state officials, most notably Bruno. There’s lots of fun foreshadowing.
in the magazine
Summer of Sam Revisited: The 1977 Blackout Thirty years ago tonight, the lights went out in New York City. Unlike the placid blackout of 2003, the 1977 blackout plunged a weary, wary city into inky mayhem. Fires burned in Bushwick. Looters tore into Crown Heights. A significant chunk of Broadway was ablaze. Damages went into the hundreds of millions. And no one got shot. In a special issue on the blackout published on August 1, 1977, New York’s Thomas Plate wrote about what the cops did and didn’t do that dark night. “ [I]t is still somewhat reassuring to know that the NYPD’s behavior during the blackout was far more thought out than Con Ed’s.” Considering what happened in Queens last summer, that is reassuring indeed.
Why The Cops Didn’t Shoot [NYM (pdf)]
in the magazine
Summer of Sam Revisited: The 1977 Championship YankeesThough the Yankees eventually won the 1977 World Series, the title was not assured that summer. The team, one of the most racially mixed in franchise history, had the flash and character of the city. Reggie Jackson joined the Yankees that year, only to clash with manager Billy Martin and several teammates who regarded his ego as outsize and overbearing. But it was also when Jackson became “Mister October” and helped the Yankees beat the Dodgers four games to two. In a season preview published in New York in April 1977, Peter Bodo wrote: “[The Yankees] are in a number of ways the ball club of the future, given the increasing freedom demanded by the players, their increasing preoccupation with money, the increasingly frantic shuffling of talent by owners who need to make a winner to make a budget.” Sounds like an accurate prediction to us. Except for the budget part.
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio [NYM (pdf)]
in the magazine
Summer of Sam Revisited: ‘New York’ on the Dems’ Lousy Mayoral CampaignThe Summer of Sam was also the summer of a hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary. Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo, and Bella Abzug were just a few of the politicians vying for the city crown amid all the chaos, and in a September 1977 issue of New York, Doug Ireland was disgusted with the whole process. “Surely this is the oddest Democratic primary in recent history. Seldom have the voters in our town had such a hopeless welter of nonissues thrown at them in a mayoral campaign,” he wrote. “[I]n a city still reeling from a swelter summer of blackouts, looting, criminally high unemployment, and Son of Sam, most candidates are as afraid of the voters as the voters are of the muggers in the streets.” Take a look at the whole article for a flashback to city politics, seventies style.
Democratic Dogfight: A Hopeless Welter of Nonissues [NYM (pdf)]
Earlier: Summer of Sam Revisited: ‘New York’ on the Search for Sam
in the magazine
Summer of Sam Revisited: ‘New York’ on the Search for SamThirty years ago this summer was arguably the lowest point in New York’s late-seventies bad years. The Bronx, as Howard Cosell informed the nation, was burning; July 13 brought an epic blackout; there was a heated Democratic primary for the mayoral race; Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin dramatically feuded en route to the Yanks’ World Series win; and, mostly notably, a serial killer calling himself Son of Sam was terrorizing the city, with police seemingly unable to stop him. ESPN started its eight-episode The Bronx Is Burning miniseries about that season last night, the Daily News is running recollections of the year, and we thought we’d join in the fun with some classic New York features from that long, troubled summer. In our first installment, here’s Robert Daley’s August 22, 1977, cover story, “The Search for ‘Sam’: Why It Took So Long.”
The Search for ‘Sam’: Why It Took So Long [NYM (pdf)]
in the magazine
On Martina, Sheep, Ferrets, and Fruit FliesWe can’t claim to be one of those savants who has read every article published in every issue of New York since Clay Felker midwifed the thing into existence back in 1968. Even so, we have a hard time believing we could ever find a more favorite sentence in those back issues than this one, from this week’s “The Science of Gaydar”:
Late last year, Martina Navratilova joined activists to speak out against an experiment that sought to intentionally turn sheep gay (it failed, but another experiment successfully turned ferrets into homosexuals, and the sexual orientations of fruit flies have been switched in laboratories).
If you need us, we’ll be working on our gay-ferret jokes.
The Science of Gaydar [NYM]
in the magazine
You Can Find Brooklyn’s Toxic Sludge
A little freaked out about the 10 million gallons of toxic sludge lurking under Brooklyn and seeping toward the surface? Afraid it might be oozing toward you? You’ll be thankful, then, for the efforts of Michael Heimbinder, a Fort Greene resident and member of the Newtown Creek Alliance. He’s created an interactive map of Greenpoint, the most affected neighborhood, on which you can learn all about the occasionally escaping sewage and pinpoint known polluted spots. “I wanted to take the opportunity that the Internet offers to create the connection between what’s happening in the city — air pollution, water pollution — and what’s happening in New Yorkers’ apartments,” Heimbinder explained. Now you can know all too well. —Rebecca Ruiz
Explore Newtown Creek [HabitatMap.org]
The Ooze [NYM]
in the magazine
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Brooklyn DevelopersThe ever-cantankerous Copyranter points us today to a subway advertisement for Twenty Bayard, billed as “Williamsburg’s premier parkfront condominiums.” He’s mostly upset by the obnoxiously and self- consciously diverse foursome in the ad’s Warhol-esque portraits, but we’re more troubled by the ad’s tagline, “Radically chic. Chicly radical.” Not to get possessive about this, but when did Radical Chic become a desirable thing? The term was coined in a 1970 issue of New York, when Tom Wolfe wrote about “that party at Lenny’s,” a fund-raising soirée Leonard and Felicia Bernstein threw at their Park Avenue duplex for bigshots to raise money for — and actually mingle with! — Black Panthers. The piece is devastating and hilarious, an classic indictment of do-gooding but oblivious limousine liberals. Need to refresh your memory? From the magazine’s archives, here’s the original article.
Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s [NYM 5/6/1970]
The Four Fashionable Faces of Williamsburg [Copyranter]
in the magazine
Live from ‘New York’If you were watching NBC over the weekend — and, actually, Nielsen numbers from the last few months suggest you probably weren’t — you saw the Lorne Michaels version of what Saturday Night Live was like in the nineties, a Sunday-night prime-time clip show of the comedy franchise’s Clinton-era highlights. (“Must have been a short show,” quipped a New Yorker.) Want the non-hagiographic take on SNL in that era? We bring you back to the March 13, 1995, issue of New York and Chris Smith’s cover story, “The Inside Story of the Decline and Fall of Saturday Night Live.” Smith spent a month in and around Studio 8H, and he discovered a show with falling ratings, increasing expenses, mediocre writing, a miserable cast, and a detached executive producer in Michaels. “What’s really killing SNL,” he wrote,” is a deep spiritual funk.” From the archives, here’s his account of that funk.
Comedy Isn’t Funny [NYM, 3/13/1995]
in the magazine
Sex Diaries: The Bisexual PolyamoristIt’s the Sex and Love issue of New York this week, and for it six New Yorkers kept Sex Diaries that chronicled their sexual lives (or lack thereof) over a period of seven days. Daily Intel has even more diaries, and today we end our week of sex diaries with a big one. Here’s the Bisexual Polyamorist: female, 28, lawyer, Boerum Hill, single.
DAY 1
10:00 a.m.: Arrive for the weekend at a nudist swinger sauna retreat in Maine.
5:00 p.m.: Give an impromptu sexuality workshop. Two grandmothers ask for a G-spot demo.
ByArianne Cohen
in the magazine
Sex Diaries: The Crazy Co-edIt’s the Sex and Love issue of New York this week, and for it six New Yorkers kept Sex Diaries that chronicled their sexual lives (or lack thereof) over a period of seven (or in this case, six) days. Daily Intel has even more diaries, and we’ll bring you a new one each day this week. Today, the Crazy Co-ed: female, 22, undergrad, Tribeca, “disappointingly straight.”
DAY 1
3:00 a.m.: Guy I’m dating is out of condoms, again, despite knowing that I was coming over. Me: Unimpressed. Instead he undresses me, handcuffs my hands behind my back, blindfolds me, and places clothespins on my nipples. He proceeds to go down on me like a starving man. There are spankings, but they are weak.
Noon: I wake up to feel the guy placing my hand on his morning wood. Five minutes later, I go back to sleeping.
6:00 p.m.: Thinking about watching porn, but there are people at home and I’m running late.
9:00 p.m.: Attend party. Somehow results in me topless with four to six other girls.
11:30 p.m.: Decide to go to fetish party. Dance my ass off on stage, eventually stripping down to my skivvies and covering my tah-tahs with makeshift pasties. Bump into a friend and her boyfriend, make out with her boyfriend, make out with her, then make out with an innocent bystander.
ByArianne Cohen
in the magazine
Sex Diaries: The SwingerIt’s the Sex and Love issue of New York this week, and for it six New Yorkers kept Sex Diaries that chronicled their sexual lives (or lack thereof) over a period of seven days. Daily Intel has even more diaries, and we’ll bring you a new one each day this week. Today, the Swinger: male, 37, party promoter, West Village, “engaged, straight, and practicing polyamory.”
DAY 1
12:50 a.m.: Winding down for bed, read Playboy on toilet. See one good pic of nude real-life female bounty hunter.
12:40 p.m.: Fiancée asked me to rub lotion near her anus, gave me a semi hard-on.
1:00 p.m.: Trimmed down pubic hair; much-needed topiary management.
3:30 p.m.: Me and my fiancée’s girlfriend of three weeks arrives. Ridiculously sexy South American. Short catch-up, then unbelievable sex.
7:30 p.m.: Visible afterglow all evening at dinner and movie. Intermittent daydreaming about earlier encounter.
ByArianne Cohen
in the magazine
When Imus Stopped Giving Interviews (the First Time)Leafing through some seventies issues of the magazine earlier today, searching for David Halberstam’s contributions to New York, we happened across the most curious thing. It was the October 30, 1972, issue, and Halberstam’s piece was on the ascent of Spiro Agnew. (No, we couldn’t make it all the way through.) But on page 62 we found this: “Why I Won’t Talk to Journalists Any More.” It was a media column by Don Imus. “I want to say right up front that I am a star,” he begins.
I am in fact a very big star. The hottest thing to hit radio in 50 years. I have been in New York less than a year, and when you are not in New York City the national press ignores you. I was a big star last year in Cleveland, but the New York press was not bright enough to realize what I was going to mean to them. Now everybody in the country wants to write about me.
in the magazine
Halberstam in ‘New York’: On Book Tour With the KnicksDavid Halberstam, who died yesterday, is one of the very few reporters — you can count them on your fingers — who shifted the history of the United States. It was his field reporting for the Times, very early in the Vietnam War, that first sent the message home that this war was not going to be like the others, that Americans were heading into something deeper and murkier than they expected, something that they couldn’t wrap up tidily. That sort of legacy suggests a fierce and even dour sort of man, and in fact Halberstam was a very serious person. But when he brought his seriousness to bear on nominally more frivolous subjects, his depth gave them extra dimensions. (Even his odd, elliptical, semi-repetitive prose grew on you after a while.) In the seventies, he wrote occasional pieces for New York, and the most charming of them managed to touch on both his rising authorial fame and his love of pro basketball. It’s a diary of a month in 1973, kept during the book tour for The Best and the Brightest, detailing the extraordinary measures he’s taking to watch the Knicks-Bullets playoffs in a variety of hotel rooms and friends’ houses. You can read it here. “I am worried about our entire front line,” he says at one point, “which seems old and without rhythm.” It may have been true of the Knicks, or for that matter of the American generals then prosecuting an unwinnable war. But never of him. —Christopher Bonanos
A Fan’s Notes: There Were Other Obsessions Besides Watergate and Biaggi [NYM, 5/14/73]
in the magazine
Sex Diaries: The Single GirlIt’s the Sex and Love issue of New York this week, and for it six New Yorkers kept Sex Diaries that chronicled their sexual lives (or lack thereof) over a period of seven days. Daily Intel has even more diaries, and we’ll bring you a new one each day this week. Today, the Single Girl: female, 31, lighting designer, West Village, “the kind of girl who kisses girls and sleeps with guys.”
DAY 1
2:29 a.m.: Got high and fucked a new boy. I hope the spanking and screaming didn’t wake my roommate.
3:00 p.m.: Just ate breakfast that my new lover cooked for me. It was good, but he is talking the whole time while I’m trying to check voice mail/e-mail/get shit done.
4:00p.m.: New lover is a photographer I call Paparazzi. We had semi-undressed portrait session.
7:00 p.m.: Dinner with the girls (roommate and best friend). We talk about everything: love, sex, jobs, apartments, gossip, and Paparazzi’s penis.
9:00 p.m.: We disturb the next table with our graphic discussions about sex. (They didn’t say anything; they just got really quiet.)
11:00 p.m.: Dirty texting with Paparazzi. He’s so scatological.
ByArianne Cohen
in the magazine
Inside Norwood, New York’s Forthcoming New Faux London Club
Another London-style for-profit club is coming to the lower West Side, and, as Geoffrey Gray reports in this week’s New York, the new entry will be Norwood, located in an 1845 townhouse on West 14th Street. According to the prospectus, there will be a “buzzing and spacious Grand Hotel-like bar” on the parlor floor, a private dining area and reception space on the garden floor, dining rooms on the second floor, “a less formal salon with lounging areas of decadent grandeur” on the third floor, and up on the fourth floor a “penthouse” space for meetings, screenings, and special events. What will it all look like? As yet unknown. But the brochure provides photos of what the townhouse looked like as the previous owner had furnished it. Above, the front entrance and main stairs. More pix after the jump.
in the magazine
Sex Diaries: The Attached VillagerIt’s the Sex and Love issue of New York this week, and for it six New Yorkers kept Sex Diaries that chronicled their sexual lives (or lack thereof) over a period of seven days. Daily Intel has even more diaries, and we’ll bring you a new one each day this week. Today, Jessica Delfino: 30, comedian and dirty folk rocker, East Village, straight and in a relationship.
DAY 1
Midnight: Reunited with boyfriend after he was out of town all week. Trade wet kisses.
12:30 a.m.: Boyfriend tells me we should go home and 69.
12:57 a.m.: Get fondled in the foyer, followed by some love pecks and pokes in the elevator. Steven Tyler would have been proud.
1:27 a.m.: Attack my boyfriend in bed wearing nothing but a softball jersey. He’s watching That ‘70s Show and isn’t responding.
1:32 a.m.: After five minutes of kissing him, he’s still not with the program. Warn him that I’m documenting our sex life. He calls me weird. He caresses my vagina and thighs between eating chocolate-covered raisins while he watches the show.
2:07 a.m.: Sex o’clock. We both win. Me first, as usual.
ByArianne Cohen
in the magazine
In the Colbert Nation, We’re All Young and Invincible
Last night, Stephen Colbert devoted his show’s prime real estate — his “The Word” segment — to the “Young Invincibles,” the health-insurance-forgoing twenty- and thirtysomethings David Amsden profiled in a recent issue of New York. “This is an encouraging trend,” the faux-conservative faux-blowhard commented about Amsden’s piece, “but we have to make sure that forsaking health insurance stays sassy and rad.” With your help, Stephen, we’re sure it will. Comedy Central has the clip, and we’ve got the article.
Hip Replacement [Comedy Central]
The Young Invincibles [NYM]
in the magazine
Imus in the Seventies“There are those who would claim that Imus occasionally lapses into good taste,” Mike McGrady writes in New York. “If true, this may well be a result of several lengthy discussions he has had with the station manager and the program director, his ‘Mr. Vicious’ and ‘Mr. Numb.’ The upshot of those discussions is that he will never, never, not ever do any more jokes about Chappaquiddick or, for that matter, anyone else involved in a personal tragedy.” McGrady’s profile is from the April 3, 1972, issue. The I-Man was 31 years old, freshly arrived at New York’s WNBC, and he was a new and jarring force in radio. He was also, it seems, very much the same guy he is now. Which New York radio personalities did Imus admire?, McGrady asked. “David Steinberg —he’s very funny for a Jewish person.” We’ve dug the profile from the archives; you can read it as a PDF.
Radio Therapy: Shock Treatment in the Morning [NYM, PDF]
in the magazine
Anna Nicole and ‘New York’: A No-Love-Lost StoryWe said yesterday that there was no particular New York connection to Anna Nicole Smith. But as it turns out, there is a New York connection. Savor, if you will, our August 22, 1994, cover (click on it for a larger version), which featured the then- already-former Playboy Playmate illustrating a Tad Friend analysis of the ascendant “White Trash Nation.” Miss Smith wasn’t pleased with the depiction, filing a $5 million defamation suit against the magazine in Los Angeles Superior Court that October. “She was told that she was being photographed to embody the ‘All-American- woman look’ and that they wanted glamour shots,” her lawyer told the Times then. The avec–Cheez Doodles pic, he charged, was a just-for-fun outtake and wasn’t supposed to be used.
in the magazine
Five More Things You Didn’t Know About Judith ReganLast week we learned that recently deposed book editor Judith Regan kept all sorts of weird things in her office, including clothes, her kids’ report cards, and an enormous portrait of herself. In this week’s New York, Vanessa Grigoriadis tells us so much more about the woman:
1. While all the O.J.-Jews-firing saga was going on, Regan was on a 21-day liquid fast — no chewing allowed! — that allowed her to eat only an “infusion of berry drinks, enzyme shots, hot tea, live juice, and a once-a-day treat of soup — a mélange of carrots, sweet potatoes, and spinach puréed in the Cuisinart.”
in the magazine
A Medical Miracle, As Seen on TVGrey’s Anatomy wrapped up a special two-part episode last night, and we’re sure you were as fascinated as we were with a case the doctors were facing: A teenage girl came into the hospital with a severe form of scoliosis, known as kyphosis, that left her permanently bent 90 degrees at the waist. The deformity was caused by a rare disorder known as VATER syndrome, and after three unsuccessful surgeries, she thought there was no hope — until Dr. Shepard came up with the ingenious solution to remove the bent part of her spine altogether and rebuild it using a titanium-mesh cage, thereby allowing her to stand up straight for the first time in her life. Wherever, you must have wondered, do the show’s writers come up with such wacky ideas?! In this case, we think we know: In New York’s 2005 Best Doctors issue, we wrote about Krystle Eginger, who suffered the same problem, went through several similarly failed surgeries, and was ultimately saved by Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei at the Hospital for Special Surgery, who also replaced part of her spine with a titanium-mesh cage. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime case!” said Izzy on the show, begging to be allowed to scrub in. We’ll go with twice in a lifetime.
Bent But Not Broken [NYM]
in the magazine
Farewell to ‘The O.C.,’ BitchThe O.C., the erstwhile Fox teen-drama hit that briefly made us all want to live in Southern California and celebrate Chrismukkah a few years ago, has been canceled by the network, as Broadcasting & Cable, the TV-industry trade pub, reported at the very end of the day yesterday. The final episode will air Thursday, February 22. We’d like to be able to make a pithy dying-like-Marissa joke here, but we didn’t watch the show enough to be qualified. So instead we’ll simply say: Ahem.
Fox Yanks ‘The O.C.’ [B&C]
Why Did Viewers OD on ‘The O.C.’ [NYM]
in the magazine
Git Yer High-Priority Art
The “High Priority” typographic illustration in each week’s New York Magazine — you know, that gorgeously designed graphic at the start of the listings section — is a sought-after gig for a designer. It’s usually the work of an invited contributor, and the invitations go to some of the top designers and typographers in the world. For this week’s new issue, though, New York teamed with the design blog Speak Up! to run an open-call contest, welcoming anyone to submit an entry. The winning effort, by Spencer Fruhling of Richmond, British Columbia, is on page 109 of the magazine (well, okay, and also above); other top contenders are at underconsideration.com/hp. Check ‘em out.
Speak Up: High Priority [UnderConsideration.com]
in the magazine
One More Reason to Love New York Right Now
It’s a week before Christmas, and it’s nearly 60 degrees. Now if only global warming could make it a little sunnier out.
Reasons to Love New York Right Now [NYM]
10022 [Weather.com]
in the magazine
Cops Catch Up With Brooklyn Rabbi
Rabbi Joel Yehuda Kolko was arrested yesterday in Brooklyn and charged with child sexual abuse. Back in May, New York’s Robert Kolker detailed allegations against the rabbi that went back at least two decades, noting that the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office would often defer to Orthodox authorities instead of investigating complaints. But David Framowitz, a former student of Kolko’s, sued the rabbi and his Flatbush yeshiva for $20 million in federal court in May. Kolko now faces other civil suits filed by adults who claim they, too, were abused. “The bottom line is that abuse is a universal issue that closed communities hide because it threatens them,” one former Lubavitcher who said he was abused told Kolker. “Whether it’s Jewish or Amish or Mennonite or Catholic or Muslim, it doesn’t make a difference.”
On the Rabbi’s Knee [NYM]
Sex-Rap Rabbi is Busted in Brooklyn [NYDN]
