quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

“Is water a barrier to clients? Is it a barrier to the business? That was really the question.”

has this paper gone out of business yet?

The lease in his Manhattan office was up at the end of June, so he began hunting for office space in Brooklyn, a short walk from his home in Cobble Hill.

there's nothing offensive about that, but it's evocative of a certain kind of upper-middle-class novel writing. i feel it ought to be going somewhere. like maybe we meet his estranged son in the next paragraph.

Somewhat related: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/11/the-nyts-subscription-strategy/

If a gaffe is when somebody accidentally tells the truth, then Gerry Marzorati’s latest comments probably count:

During a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood New York conference, Gerald Marzorati, the Times’s assistant managing editor for new media and strategic initiatives, explained why the paper’s print business is still robust. “We have north of 800,000 subscribers paying north of $700 a year for home delivery,” Marzorati said. “Of course, they don’t seem to know that.”

Marzorati went on to become positively disingenuous:

“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re literally not understanding what they’re paying,” he said. “That’s the beauty of the credit card.”

wow

:O

$_$

o_O

lol

not sure if this really belongs here, however I was amused by the business equivalent of taking the same class as a girl you'll never pluck up the courage to talk to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/technology/12valley.html?ref=twitter

(especially when the girl has an underpants gnome derived business model)

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/all-the-young-girls/

My roommate was having a rough go of it. An intern for a bigwig fashion designer, she was once dispatched to Miami to procure a heap of Italian cashmere.

...the Upper East Side apartment that my roommate’s father had co-signed for us was too far out of the way.

I mean you could just quote the whole article pretty much.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/fashion/21clubkids.html?adxnnl=1&src=dayp&adxnnlx=1290355287-kHlUsIEc0Cby9maQooCDzw

Whoever said New York night life is dead hasn’t been out recently.

ZAM!

The meatpacking district is a tangle of new velvet ropes. D.J.’s are trekking to the nether reaches of Bushwick. The Lower East Side has spilled over into Chinatown. And every week, murmurs of a new hot spot seem to reach a fever pitch.

We're coming to you live from 2002!

Also restaurants. Lots of new restaurants are opening in New York in various neighborhoods. Right now.

Wow, Laurel, that article you linked is nearly unreadable. "Earrings became blowfish-big to draw attention and ward off predators." Like... what?

Laurel: looooooool that is like 1/2 of every Time Out.

“Put on an Ace of Base song and everyone clears the dance floor in 30 seconds. Then you have four promoters running up to you screaming.”

ur doin it wrong

DJ AM. “Before I saw him, I didn’t know how to differentiate between a playlist and a D.J.”

The paper version is even worse. They put the picture and a blurb on the front of the Fashion & Style section as a teaser for the actual profiles inside. wtf, nytimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/nutrition/30best.html?pagewanted=1&ref=health

Maybe I'm missing something, but this article seems utterly ridiculous.

Why? It's in the health section. People get hurt cycling, and by the looks of it the article started a discussion on biking vs. running. The only thing I found annoying was how she wrote out her friends' full names.

The first thing I did when I hit the ground was turn off my stopwatch — I did not want accident time to count toward our riding time. Then I sat on a curb, dazed.

Love how this is delivered with zero trace of irony

Amanda Hess OTM: http://www.tbd.com/blogs/amanda-hess/2010/12/new-york-times-trends-women-5379.html

that was a great read

soembody should do a NYT supercut article

Later that year, the paper pounced on a "growing number of researchers" concerned that some women are receiving most of their calories through alcohol. "Drunkorexia is not an official medical term," the piece claimed. "But it hints at a troubling phenomenon in addiction and eating disorders."

That was fantastic and made me really detest the NYTimes.

One of the people I've seen in lists of cases of spontaneous combustion had eaten nothing but booze for three years--in the 18th Century. This is not a new thing.

And I've seen the term drunkorexia

Damn Zing.

And I've seen the term drunkorexia used before, decades ago.

frazzled momz
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/garden/02parents.html

Somehow I feel like I've already seen the "frazzled moms spend too much time volunteering for school" thing elsewhere -- slate maybe?

ah yes, this gem:
http://www.doublex.com/section/news-politics/why-im-sick-volunteering-my-kids-wealthy-school

michiko kakutani writes a review of The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe in character as brian (the dog) from "family guy. though "in character" in this case pretty much seems to consist of saying "hi, this is brian from 'family guy'" at the beginning of the review

Of course in the top-dog department, Maf doesn’t come close to having my skills. He can’t drive a car, he can’t sing and dance, he hasn’t attended college, and as far as I can tell, he’s contributed exactly nada to the zeitgeist. But hey, he does have chops as a witness, I gotta give him that. And as a fellow observer of the human comedy, I’ll throw him a bone. Every dog has his day, and Maf, you lucky dog, you, this is yours: I, Brian Griffin, your best-selling competitor and colleague in the literary trenches, award you for your novel — er, memoir — a coveted three out of four paws up.

I literally cannot make myself read past the first paragraph

inserting stock phrases like "no doubt about it" and "I gotta give him that" does not a 'persona' make

The quiddities and agonies of reading Michiko Kakutani

all the book reviews written in character as a dog from a cartoon that's fit to print

oh what a fine review, i'm sure the pulitzer committee will be unanimously in your favour <--- voice of stewie

^^this guy is posting as stewie, you know, the talking baby from Family Guy, in case you haven't noticed

Truly hateful:

Mixing Drinks, Adding Class

One of many gems:

“In my opinion, if you don’t have a bartender at your party, you’re a loser,” said Dustin Terry, who lives a floor below Ms. Argiro and said his job was to get models and Saudi royalty into hot clubs. “The bartender brings class and sophistication.”

“If you can’t afford to hire a bartender,” he added, “you shouldn’t be having a party.”

The whole theme of "we are in a recession so we have to hire bartenders to signal wealth" is aggravating to the extreme.

More evidence, perhaps, that the Times Style section is actively trolling people.

i actually think that article's pretty good - it reads to me like the best of a bad job, i.e. yes the Times being actively reprehensible in its choice of subject matter, the writer handed an absolute dog of an assignment, but i think he does a pretty sly job. these people really do come across as monsters.

“Hosts don’t want to have to look after their guests’ needs,” said Matt Solan, a bartender who works many such small locations. “But they also want a level of prestige.”

that quote's just left there on its own but it tells you everything you need to know.

They munched on Ms. Argiro’s homemade panko-crusted chicken bites and jalapeño poppers while dancing to tracks by the Cure, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Gorillaz.