This brief little nugget in the Post today should sound the alarm for all lovers of Freedom and the Free Market: the Department of City Planning is working on a zoning amendment (they have to rezone to do this?) to give away (or sell, more likely?) up to “40 percent of the city’s public lots” to shared-car rental outfits like Zipcar. (Are there other outfits “like” Zipcar? We assume they mean “just Zipcar” really.) So, first they turned Broadway into a ped mall-which is turning out to be actually good for drivers, by the way, as the models of better traffic flow seem to have been correct; then they came for your trans fats and now they’re coming for your cars! (Duly noted: Goldman Sachs is taking Zipcar public; it has not yet turned a profit. But it will, thanks, perhaps, to its new friends in City Hall.) Very little of NYC’s municipal parking, by the way, is in Manhattan.

by Sam Biddle

At what point do I stop checking Craigslist? Why is there an ad for “MYSTERY SHOPPING” in the “writing/editing jobs” category? How much is their purported “nominal compensation”? A ten dollar per diem? A bag of buttons? A punch in the throat? “THIS IS NOT A FREE MEAL!,” the ad warns. Well, then. Forget it! Why does this company leave the ‘i’ in ‘iNC’ uncapitalized? Perhaps this is some sort of test-for a prospective mystery shopper-slash-editor? What other horrors can I spot? I wonder if the person who wrote “boutique mystery shopping company seeks strong writers” felt as sad writing that as I do reading it.

When I think boutique, I think of lots of little hanging crystal beads, baskets with pearls in them, stacks of folded crimson scarves, a dour woman with cropped hair staring into a cold vacuum. I imagine myself saying “No thanks, I’m just browsing,” which is my anxiety response at any store, boutique or otherwise. I know it will probably be a long, long while from now, but the first thing I’m going to do when I get a writing job here in New York City is march into the first J. Crew I see and, beaming, reply to the robot working there, “Why yes, I do need help. Bring me some moon-proof socks-I’m covering the Space Election for the Observer!”

But for now I’m just going to stick with looking at my feet and saying “No thanks” before the clerk says “Hey! You! You idiot! You moved to New York to be a writer! Have you even looked at Craigslist?! Ten thousand people just applied to fill out forms at a boutique mystery shopping company!”

I’m pretty sure “boutique” has become a business-world euphemism for “insignificant and unsuccessful”-the quivering in my friends’ voices when they describe the boutique hedge fund or boutique consulting firms they work for indicate as much. Would that make me a boutique recent college graduate? I just realized I’ve been in New York for a full week!

* * *

I’m getting dinner with A____ tonight. I like meeting up with my high school friends because around them I needn’t feel so bad about being unemployed. This is probably because they all knew me when I was 14 and had the haircut of a lesbian and the physique of an anorexic straight girl. They’ve seen me at some rather low points, so what’s one more, I suppose. A____ works in some sort of PR consulting thing-nobody is really quite sure. I’m beginning to doubt whether my newly employed peers know what they or anyone else are now doing for a living. Inquiries of this kind are usually met with a “ah well ah some sort of, well it’s a media consultancy, ah…” met with an “Ah, okay, oh, cool, oh so that’s like-…,” at which point both parties trail off and take out their iPhones to compulsively check for app updates.

* * *

I went to the Met yesterday. I’m not sure how I convinced myself that going to a museum at 2 p.m. on a weekday would distract myself from the fact that I’m unemployed, but I usually find Attic vases affirming in some primal way. And besides, reading the “writing/editing” jobs was getting bad to the point of being, frankly, a bit shocking. “$1 LASER TEETH WHITENING — WRITERS ONLY!” What? Come on. WHAT CAN THAT POSSIBLY MEAN?

“Ten dollars is the recommended entrance fee,” they said. “Is that okay?”

If this had been phrased in any other manner I would have paid less, but there was really no way for me to look that woman in the eye and tell her that it wasn’t okay. It was okay. Only days before I had paid $17 for a sandwich and a lemonade at Bryant Park. The cashier did not ask me if $17 was okay. I just told him, “Okay, here, here is seventeen dollars. Take my money. Take all… of my money,” and then blood started pouring out of my eyeballs.

Ten dollars is an okay price to pay. Paying zero would make me a dick, paying one dollar would make me more of a dick, and paying nine dollars would out me as a cheapskate at best, and most likely some sort of a dick. After studying moral philosophy for the past four years, guilt remains the most formidable practical principle of them all. It’s okay. Ten dollars is okay. I know you don’t like guilting people into paying ten dollars. If I can be candid here, I’m not even a student. I should be paying more than ten. This student ID is expired. I graduated last month. I’m defrauding your employer. Do you need an intern?

The Dead Germans have some things right though, and if life is as horrific as Schopenhauer suggests-and how can Craigslist lead us to any other conclusion?-escaping into art could have saved this afternoon. But the usual red-figure scenes-discuses hurled upward into a clay sky, a young boy being seduced by his gym trainer, Zeus raping a giant fish-didn’t rouse me as I had hoped. Here were gathered men and women of virtue, immortalized through their activity. My most laudable activity of the day up to this point was putting on pants before 11 a.m. S____ texted me with good news about his job interview, and wanted to meet me at the museum. We had a drink on the roof of the Met. So far, I resent New York’s tendency to stick cash bars where they shouldn’t be.

Sam Biddle is a recent college graduate in New York City.

Photo by doobybrain from Flickr.

BREAKING: New York City Jews in the 60s and 70s discovered to be liberal, hard-working, concerned with education for their children and issues of social justice

! What does this “new” “information” about Supreme Court Justice nominee Elena Kagan’s family mean to us? A: Nothing! You’re not confirming her nomination! Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

My recent reading material (Francis Wheen’s Strange Days Indeed, Alice Echols’ Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, etc.) has all focused on the ’70s, which I guess makes sense since I recall very little about the decade of my birth. I recall it as a period of terrible browns and greens. Television was somehow simultaneously garish and muted. Something something Jimmy Carter energy hostages. And the soundtrack? Pure despair.

I mean, yes, there was disco (read that Echols book, it’s pretty solid), but for me the sound of the ’70s came out of a giant clock radio my dad had put in the bedroom I shared with my brother. He’d let us listen to music as we fell asleep, and I can remember watching the numbers on the clock flick over each minute while the radio played what seemed to be an endless procession of incredibly depressing music: Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Rita Coolidge’s cover of Boz Scaggs’ “We’re All Alone” (which was also quite popular in the grocery, if I recall), and always, always Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me.” There was probably some Carpenters in there too. But ask me what the decade sounded like and my brain will immediately drop the needle on Anne Murray. (In this I am not alone.)

I was, to be sure, an unhappy child, but I am now an unhappy adult, so I don’t think my recollection is in any way colored by that unhappiness: It is a depressing fucking song. Even if that is not the intention, it is an auditory downer. But Anne Murray SELLS IT, man. She sells “Snowbird.” She sells “Danny’s Song.” She sells “I Just Fall In Love Again.” Anne Murray SELLS all those songs that make you want to kill yourself. And that is a talent that deserves a certain degree of admiration.

Morna Anne Murray turns 65 this Sunday. Happy birthday, Anne Murray. Thank you for all the misery. Sometimes it’s the only thing worth listening to.

This is one of the five things you see on Twitter before you die. (Another being TWEETS FROM YOUR GLEEFUL EXECUTIONER.) It is: “How do girls wearing rompers go to the bathroom? Is it just really awkward?” Well, it had to be asked. Because apparently the romper/jumpsuit thing is out of control-so much so that the Houston Chronicle, that arbiter of fashion, is all over it. Oh yes: “There are short romper styles at Wal-Mart and elegant jumpsuits at Nordstrom and other upscale retailers.” Wal-Mart, people. And “upscale”-like Nordstrom! Oh my. Also NewsNet5 is on the case: “Rompers are all the rage this summer!” Haha, oh boy. So what’s the answer about the whole peeing thing?

The answer may not surprise anyone. 🙁

@davidcho HUGE. PAIN. IN. THE. ASS. drinking + rompers = pending disasterFri Jun 18 18:42:53 via Twitterrific

A Raza
OfficialAWoWW

So you mean….

@davidcho you pee to one side.Fri Jun 18 18:49:43 via TweetDeck

Jen Doll
YourUnemployedD

Ah. Got it. Enjoy summer!

So, we all knew that there’s rape-rape, which is the really bad one, and then there’s “rape,” which is presumably bad but not as bad. And then somewhere down the scale from that comes “male rape,” which is the Daily Mail’s term for their scandal-crime story today about a police officer accused of raping a man. (Important to know: men can’t be raped in Scotland!) Somewhere down beneath that is partner rape, because marriage is a sacred contract in the eyes of Baby Jesus, and then there’s prison rape, most often brought up as a punchline by morons. But yeah, we reviewed England’s 2003 Sexual Offences Act and found no crime called “male rape.” It’s still just “rape”! Or maybe “rape-rape,” I guess. So confusing.

“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”
-The eyes of Dina Lohan have surely seen some ridiculous things in their day, but, you know what? I’ll forgive her the hyperbole on this one.

“I myself am greatly looking forward to the movie. Because the whole point of it — superior people make superior products and earn superior money because they’re superior! — is going to be really complemented by the spectacle of this broke-assed movie made with former WB stars for like five cents. I mean, this is an expensive movie, on the face of it. There are like gleaming teal sci-fi train tracks and uberbridges and megaweapons that can explode a goat and the whole thing ends in a postapocalyptic landscape with the death of civilization and everyone in it. (SPOILER.) How are they going to pull that off, Claymation? Or are they just going to film the speeches? The seventy-seven page speeches? Which, I guess, is the real draw. Ayn Rand writes the stupidest things you’ve ever heard, but she wraps it up in this package that says you have to be A GENIUS to agree with her, so you make your way through the seventy-seven page speech and you’re like, “I DO agree! Plus I done gone and read me some philosophy! I ARE a genius, Ayn!”
–I are dying reading this.

OMG WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CHELSEA CLINTON GONNA GET MARRIED? Sources, notes Doree Shafrir in New York, “have confirmed that the nuptials will be held on July 31 in a still-secret location within a three-hour drive of New York City,” and that the “smart money” puts the location “somewhere upstate, possibly in Westchester or Dutchess County,” which is totally code for the Applebee’s in Poughkeepsie on North Road. Now you know!

Lizzy Caplan, the talented and hysterical actress whose breasts have been the subject of story and song, did Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night and was absolutely charming. She also made some sad remarks about how poorly her series “Party Down” is doing in the ratings, noting that very few people are even aware of it. To which I say: WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Do they realize they are missing THE FUNNIEST SHOW ON TV? Why are they not WATCHING “PARTY DOWN”? Do whatever needs doing to see it. Don’t get Starz? Find a friend with Netflix. There are two episodes left-the season finale is next Friday-and it seems unlikely the show will return. Lizzy Caplan, at least, seems destined to be around for much longer; the woman does a great Andy Rooney impression. [Via]