"You schmoes of America, rally ’round your bard! You sad sacks in sweaters, undershirts untucked and dangling below your belts! You frustrated artists, you terrified fathers: Do not be ashamed of your increasing girth, your outré sexual fantasies, your rampant neck-beard. One lonely man sings your song. His name is Sam Lipsyte, and right now he is eating a jelly doughnut."
—Reviewing Sam Lipsyte's new book was obviously just a way for Awl pal Dan Kois to justify neck-beards and middle-aged belly creep in New York Magazine. @10:00 AM 2
My Baby? My Baby Seems So Smart But I'm Also Scared About My Baby @2:00 PM
Dear New York magazine,
My baby. My baby! Recently my baby had some tests. My baby is 2.5 months old. My baby! Sometimes my baby seems different than other babies. My baby should have be accepted to a very good college in the year 2025. My baby likes yams and dislikes all loud noises that are not the sound cows make. My baby has good arm strength but bad color-name recognition. My baby! Last night I had a dream that my baby had a prehensile tail, and when I woke up, I confess that I wished it was true. Oh, sometimes I think my baby is really listening to me when I read to it in Russian, but then I see that my baby is staring just past the top of my head, at the mirror. Does my baby recognize my baby in the mirror? I think my baby is terrified of faucets, and so I try not to turn them on. Ever. My baby came out of a human being and it is all I can think about, that the baby was made out of people, not bought from people. Do I want another baby as well? Would that be twice as much baby, or really more like thrice? Would I be betraying my baby? What if I had another baby and something was wrong with my baby? What would I do then? What if secretly something is wrong with this baby that I already have? And I am about to find that secret out—maybe later today even, or it could be tomorrow, or possibly sometime in the middle of next week? What will I do for my baby then?
Sincerely,
A Parent
Brooklyn, New York 49
Good To Know! The Things That Simply Everyone Does @8:59 AM
Do you know what everyone is eating? The English breakfast. That's right: "Lately, that morning meal has become all the rage in New York," says New York. English breakfast should not to be confused with the Irish breakfast, which comes with "black pudding" (that's congealed blood!) and "white pudding" (that's fat and oatmeal, essentially). Why aren't you stuffing your face with sausage right now, you bollockey bastard bloater? 21
Reasons to Live Through the Weekend @11:28 AM
Monday, in New York magazine! "Dog-walking with the novelist and vegetarian polemicist Jonathan Safran Foer"! Also! "Circumcision: For and Against"! 23
'New York' Magazine Subscription 60% Less Valuable In Under Two Decades @3:35 PM
This weekend, I found myself in a bathroom that time forgot, and there was a copy of New York magazine's 1991 fall fashion issue. The third best part: the fashion edit was spectacular. It was like the first round of new wave flashbacks, and it was like a neon sign shop threw up on Taylor Dayne, with Samantha Foxx singing backup. Girls on the wet streets with smoke machines, with a hand sassily on the hip! The second best part was that David Blum was listed as a contributing editor. But the absolute first best part was the blow-in subscription card. READ MORE 7
When Did Goldman Sachs Give Up Its "We Are The World" Shtick? @10:40 AM
So there's a huge Joe Hagan article in New York mag with the undeliverable-upon headline "Is Goldman Sachs Evil?" (Not answered.) Hagan sets up the article because he sees something menacing and threatening in the fact that Goldman brought a giant team to the big emergency meeting between banks led by Hank Paulson at the Federal Reserve, where the goal was to "save" AIG. But Goldman brings a huge team to a meeting of the Ladies' Sunday Afternoon Tea Society. Any in-house conversation at Goldman involves cc:ing 20 or 30 people on an email. It's their culture, and there's not anything menacing in it—it's just irritating, and probably time-wasteful. Also it provides checks and balances to over-eager ambitious types. There's some good bits on how everyone in the firm soiled themselves when everything went to hell (there was an emergency loan program set up in-house to bail out individuals! And aggressive de-partnering of firm high-rollers!). But what's most interesting is what's omitted. There's not a bit on their social programs (10,000 Women, etc.) and other corporate do-goodery (this image of corporate do-goodery was severely undermined by the company's waves of brutal layoffs), and the members of the firm are described as uniform and clique-ey—not, as Goldman used to push for, a staff that is diverse and a giant melting pot. Now they just sound like a bunch of white men rollin' hard to the Hamptons. Which pretty much they are. 5
Don't Mind the Man With the Computers @1:38 PM
The most bizarre portion of New York magazine's story on lawyer-swindler (tautology! ok, sorry) Marc Dreier, about his son Spencer:
With his mother waiting outside, Spencer delivered his speech. "He said no one should be deserting his father because his father gave them so much," says someone who was there. "It was bizarre." The lawyers in the room were livid. One even started shouting: "I'm not going to listen to you! You have no place in here! This is a partnership meeting. You're not a partner!" Spencer even apparently came back to 499 Park Avenue the next day, trying to get in, when the guards stopped him. "He said, 'I'm just going up to get some computers!' " a source says. "And they said, 'Well, you can't. Sorry.' "
He clearly didn't have his father's sang-froid, because "I'm just going up to get some computers" is the absolute worst excuse for trying to get back into your lawyer-swindler father's office in all of history. 1
