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

would still prefer to see pollan movie adaptation than that julia child blogger thing no matter how awesome meryl streep's impression is.

unless she dry-humps philip seymour hoffman as capote or something spectacular like that happens

her and ed harris' pollock go on a crime spree

there is a commercial for that film that makes me worry they have tried to make Julia Child into the kind of plucky know-nothing heroine who goes "whee" and claps for herself after successfully making a dish in cooking school. I hope I've just misinterpreted it or seen something out of context, because my sense is that Julia Child was sort of a badass?

i read somewhere over the weekend that she uses a machine gun to make coq au vin at some point in the movie--i'll try to find it

she was a college baller and tried to join the Navy

smart, well-educated, sophisticated, tall, and according to Wikipedia helped develop a shark repellent to keep sharks from setting off mines

i think thats from the early part of her life, when she first moved to france and fell in love with food but didnt really know what she was doing

i dont know if the "whee" part is true-to-life

it seems wrong to give someone space in the back of the times magazine to talk about his important experience, as a presumably non-autistic grown man, of how not to get along with neighbors.

haha thats how that thing always seems to work ~ like the one before this one was a dude thats like 50 coming to the groundbreaking realization that while its foolish and limiting to be overcautious lyfe is still dangerous and bad things can happen, even if they usually dont. also that he doesnt no how to work his kids car seat

Wasnt she a spy?

she comes across as totally confident and awesome and someone i'd wish i'd known in this movie

honestly it's like two seconds of a TV commercial, what do I know, but it seemed to be going for empathy between the modern light-film viewer and Julia Child in that kind of romantic-comedy way that often makes women relatably inept -- which is fine, male and female characters both get the "relatably inept" thing, but Julia Child going "whee I cooked something" and clapping (possibly while surrounded by dismissive-looking male students) seemed a tad much.

yay, s1ocki, glad to know it's just the ad!

tell you what, when i cook a Beef Bourguignon the first time, i'm clapping and saying whee, too. and i'm a badass.

In her haste, she said, she looked up the dates for two big stories that Cronkite covered — the assassination of Martin Luther King and the moment Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon — and copied them incorrectly.

I hate to be that guy, but not knowing these two dates off the top of one's head kinda boggles my mind.

― I am moving on baby, I am moving on (Pancakes Hackman), Monday, August 3, 2009 11:02 AM

It's good that you're rainman and all but you need a bit of a reality check on this.

i think those dates are supposed to be seared into old people memory, like 9/11/2001 or 11/12/1955.

When a "great" newspaper hemorrhages money, pity the poor editorial skeleton crew.

On the "Ralph Kramden":

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/fashion/13POTBELLY.html?_r=1&ref=fashion

the “coolios” of now

Even for hipster jerks it's all about the president.

coolsters

The risible Joe Nocera writes an all-too-believably idiotic column about the Post Office. His take? Its pesky obligations to its employees are absurd, with no grounding or justification, and universal service is unnecessary anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/business/08nocera.html

But this is the real kicker. According to Nocera, the real reason the USPS is suffering is the Internet. Why would that be, you ask? Can one send a halogen bulb or hardback via email now?

Well, no. He says that email means no one sends personal letters any more. It's all just junk mail! Aunt Fannie doesn't pen personal thank-you notes any more, so the USPS has a multimillion dollar deficit!

Question - did Nocera ever stop - just for a second - to think that Internet shopping might INCREASE Post Office revenue?

He even mentions that 2006 was when the USPS handled its highest volume of mail ever! I guess 2007 was the year Aunt Fannie stopped writing. I don't know.

Oh, and he bigs up his own column in this piece of advertising, disguised as his "blog":

http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/lets-outsource-the-post-office/

the post should get in on the action
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08132009/news/regionalnews/pedro_kin_no_show_no_no_184356.htm

1 - that's in the Post
2 - that's actually exposing the ruling class as a bunch of looting layabouts

man ive been rocking the beer belly since high school

So hip.

middle-aged dads finally have their moment in the sun

omg, this is terrific: ever since I moved and gained like 10 pounds I've been all bummed that all my old shirts look a little, umm, pronounced around the center -- little did I know that I was just CUTTING FUCKING EDGE

I'm so breaking out all the tight t-shirts I stopped wearing and having this article screen-printed on them

whaaa that article is insane even by style section standards

let's not question it, dude, the newspaper of record is saying it was cool and stylish of me to eat too many Cheez-Its

as long as you're not a woman, it's okay ...I want the NYT style section to say it's cool for me to eat too many Cheez-Its.

isn't "style" NYT code for "gay?"

Well the article sez it isn't going to happen so I would give up that dream.

a dream of eating Cheez-Its deferred ...

A Snack Of One's Own

to be honest though I think a better analysis of what they're looking at is this: there are now lots of guys around here old enough to be developing guts who still wear t-shirts most of the time. (unlike older guys whose guts are under tucked-in shirts.) I suggest a business-section tie-in article about the big market opportunity in designing gut-accommodating clothes for skinny guys with sticky-outie bellies who are around 30 and still mostly wearing what they did when they were younger.

xxp If a skinny woman gets elected president though you might be able to get a little junk just to be contrary. We all know how hipsters love to be contrarians.

let us not forget the oh-so-edifying Sloane Crosley article about how white girls with big asses were "in"

Oh I had forgotten about that article. When was that? Are they still in? sarahel you might be able to eat Cheet-Os after all.

i would like to be "in" white girls w/big asses HELLO

Yes, but you aren't a Style of the Times writer so who cares what you think.

judging by NYC subway fashion this season, I'd say asses are "out" and legs are "in"

What a relief! I was worried that in order to be stylish and cool, all women had to adopt the practices of that kooky breatharian lady ...

parents are assholes: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/dining/19soft.html?hpw

“There used to be this image that was wholesome and cool,” Mr. Semanko said. But these days, in Tacoma, there is a guy in an old mail van with no shirt on, smoking a cigarette, he said. “I heard one kid complain that the guy actually burped on him. That’s creepy to people.”

Ms. Reiley didn’t mind buying him a treat, occasionally. But the truck — called Here’s Frosty — parks outside her door on most sunny days around 4:30 p.m. and wakes her son from his nap. “Then he’s up, plastered against the window, yelling: ‘Music truck! Music truck!’ ” Ms. Reiley said. “Sometimes he grabs his little bank and says, ‘I have money.’ ”

That's cute as hell.

Ice cream is one of only two ways that I can get dairy into my kid and totally indulge him whenever the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, our ice cream guy speeds down the streets and is notoriously difficult to catch. We are mostly certain that he is a drug dealer.

“I fall into the camp of parents who are irate,” Ms. Sell said. She has equal disdain for Mister Softee and the ice cream pop vendor outside the park, but since they are licensed, there is not much she can do about them.

“I feel kind of bad about having developed this attitude,” she said. “I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it’s really predatory for them — two of them — to be right inside the playground like this.”

Jesus christ lady