The apartments above the East Village pork purveyor Momofuku Ssam Bar are ready for renting, and yes, they are — like every other new apartment that’s come to market in this city in the past too-many years — “luxury”! Which basically means that they look like every other apartment that you might see lately, with the stainless-steel fixtures and the hardwood floors and the price tags for three-bedrooms that run from $5,950 to $7,500 (!). One hopes that the landlord takes off the protective blue plastic on the kitchen fixtures before move-in is final, but one might especially hope that the exhaust-fan system in the place is halfway decent. [Via]

In the end, we will be consumed by flames. Long before our sun explodes we will have already come face to face with our own extinction as the planet finally takes revenge for all the damage which we have exacted upon it. As temperatures rise and our unwillingness to confront the methods and procedures which have caused those increases continues-or, more likely, we engage in half-hearted attempts to change when it is far too late, and which somehow makes things worse-we will inevitably be confronted by a series of blazes that feed upon themselves, choking our cities with smoke and ash and razing all the gigantic symbols of human achievement back to the ground as if they were so many blocks of wood, which, to the earth, is essentially what they are: the fuel the planet will use to replenish itself during its fiery rage. We will burn, we will melt, and we will wither, and all that once stood as testament to our might will be nothing but dust. Before that, however, it’s going to be a little chilly until Friday, so try to enjoy it.

Doubts about the efficacy of increased video surveillance aside, New Yorkers should just swallow hard and expect a slew of new “safety enhancement procedures.” After a while you won’t even remember the way things used to be, so you might as well not even worry about it!

Liesl Schillinger’s Styles-cover-worthy rundown of the “morning-news-romcom-vérité” relationship between Mika Brzezinski and her Morning Joe foil Joe Scarborough, which was illustrated with a gigantic version of the Leg Show-worthy shot at left, not only refers to the anchor as “Doris Day with a tan and killer abs” and quotes a reader e-mail in which she is told that she “looks like a Peep.” No, it really goes there with multiple quotes attesting to the coupley bona fides of Joe n’ Mika from none other than Nora Ephron:

“For me it’s not so much about the politics,” she admits. “I tend to watch almost anything like this in terms of: is this romantic comedy? And it is.”

“Mika and Joe, I feel, really like each other. I’m very busy thinking about them as a temporary couple on the air.”

“The conversation is like some kind of dream sequence at a bar, only you can have a part in it, and it’s in the morning.”

I am glad that the Styles section is basically telegraphing the snappy relationship that will serve as the focal point for Ephron’s next onscreen collection of well-worn romantic tropes. Women eat that kind of insideriness up!

It’s fun to argue about who is the best rapper in hip-hop history: Rakim? Ice Cube? The Notorious B.I.G.? Andre from Outkast? It’s way less fun to argue about who is the greatest rapper in hip-hop history. As to that question, with its parameters expanded beyond matters of technical skill into overall body of work, cultural impact, stature and star power, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there is only one answer and it is Jay-Z. He appeared on Saturday Night Live on Saturday (above if you have a life but not a DVR), performing a medley intended, surely, to whet the public appetite for the greatest hits album he’s putting out June 29th. It will no doubt be a double-disc set, but the track list is not yet available. Here’s what it should be, and how it should be sequenced:

Disc 1:
1) Ain’t No Nigga
2) Who You Wit?
3) Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)
4) Can I Get A…
5) Money Ain’t a Thing
6) Big Pimpin’
7) I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)
8) Izzo (H.O.V.A.)
9) Hola Hovito
10) December 4th
11) Dirt Off Your Shoulder
12) Roc Boys (And the Winner Is…)

Disc 2:
1) Can’t Knock the Hustle
2) Friend Or Foe
3) Streets Is Watchin’
4) Where I’m From
5) Come and Get Me
6) Takeover
7) U Don’t Know
8) 99 Problems
9) Public Service Announcement
10) Pray
11) D.O.A.
12) Empire State of Mind

BREAKING: Britain’s Liberal Democrats are still discussing an “agreement” that will allow the Conservative party to form a government. There’s not a deal yet, but there’s also not not a deal, said a Liberal Democrat member in a statement, which has pissed off all the newscasters on Knifecrime Island, who were all set for a big announcement but are now forced to resort to asking questions about “body language.”

Kanye West seems to really like Hawaii, where he is recording his new album, A Good Ass Job. So much so that he has put his kind of boring 3-bedroom, 4,214-square-foot Hollywood house, built in 2002 at 7882 Fareholm Drive, up for sale for $3,995,000. (It’s way overbuilt on the lot, which is only 5,320 square feet.) The decor is what you’d expect: the cool earth-tones and open space of the “Love Lockdown” video, set of by bright-blue pop art, giant-sized children toys and Takashi Murakami stuff. It gets a little Romper-Roomy sometimes, but the fish-tank bathtub is the best idea since Hot Tub Time Machine. Or, you know, you could buy an adorable, very L.A. 2-bedroom house up the next block for $799,000. Your call.

If anyone is prepared for a confirmation hearing, it’s thoroughly actually heterosexual man-loving Elena Kagan, former Harvard Law School dean and current U.S. Solicitor General. Not only has she thought quite a bit on what a confirmation hearing should reveal, she’s no stranger to the political process, having been shut out of a confirmation hearing entirely after Clinton nominated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But believe it, this process will be excruciating. You thought the Goldman Sachs hearings down in D.C. were mad political grandstanding? You ain’t seen nothing yet! And while her confirmation process as Solicitor General was quite boring-she kept making the case that her job was to represent the interests of the U.S., without regard to her personal opinions! The nerve, to say she’d, like, do a good job and stuff and serve America!-in this confirmation process (assuming we’d get there), she will, we think, be far more revelatory about her potential decision-making process. A process some of us may or may not like, entirely apart from our need to get reelected, not that that matters.

“Stick it, A-Rod.”
–Peggy Lindsey, the grandmother of Oakland A’s pitcher Dallas Braden, who hurled the 19th perfect game in MLB history in the Athletics’ 4–0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday. Braden and the Yankees’ existentially tortured third baseman had a bit of a row last month when Rodriguez jogged across the pitcher’s mound while taking a shortcut from third base to first, which Braden took as a sign of disrespect; at the time, A-Rod idly wondered if Braden had much to complain about, given the “handful of wins” the lefty had amassed up to that point. In the wake of history, Rodriguez was a bit more gracious: “Good for him, he threw a perfect game,” he told reporters before the Yankees’ 9–3 loss to the Red Sox in Boston, in which he hit career home run No. 586. He then noted that Braden’s downing of the AL East-leading Rays was a fortuitous thing for himself and his teammates, because hey, it’s important to always look out for No. 1.

The legendary-a word used too frequently but never more appropriately than in this case-Lena Horne has passed away at the age of 92. Superlatives and distinctions aside (“first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio,” one the greatest interpreter of standards in the 20th century, etc.), she herself delivered perhaps the best epitaph, late in her life, which the Times wisely chooses to end her obituary: “My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.” She was indeed.