You might think a “conversation with a woman who hunts for gravestones with epitaphs describing death by lightning strike” would be of limited interest, but you would be wrong. I mean, it is not of limitless interest either, but it wouldn’t kill you to give it a shot.

I guess we have reached the point where everything is going to sound like 2000 and we’re going to have to be okay with that? I mean, it could be worse. Once you get past the T. Rex-y vocals (not a bad thing, just distracting) and the whole “wait, didn’t I hear this back around the turn of the century?” vibe, there’s a whole lotta “pretty good” going on in here. Related: When did we reach a cultural consensus on the idea that we would just put Christmas lights on everything? It is a development I do not object to, but I missed the memo when we decided that it had transitioned from “tacky” to acceptable. Anyway, here’s this, enjoy.

“Younger New Yorkers might be shocked to hear that the blocks around Bloomie’s were once a place for action. Dylan’s Candy Bar’s kiddie legions can’t replace the trendies who flocked to Yellowfinger’s. Cinemas I, II and III can’t touch the original Cinema I, where another generation lined up for hours to see ‘A Clockwork Orange’ rather than to eat at Mission Chinese.”

“Not exactly who you’d want to encounter on the streets in Gatlinburg,” says the lady from the Today show about the bear shown here wandering through town, but, being familiar with the demographics of East Tennessee, I am hard pressed to imagine who I might actually prefer to run into. The bear sort of seems the best option.

So long, ocean! We had a nice run.

“Nigeria’s film industry, popularly known as ‘Nollywood’, has also been producing a growing number of films with erotic themes, such as Bold 5 Babes, described as “an erotic comedy about a group of women with supernatural powers they use to seduce men and turn them into BlackBerry Bold 5 smartphones”, and other titles like I Slept with my Boss’s Wife and Strippers in Love.”

On first hearing this I thought to myself, “Wow, the dudes from Foxygen were really at the forefront of mining a certain kind of retro sound seam,” but it turns out this is one of the dudes from Foxygen, so maybe not so much. It is a sound that I enjoy, though, so it could be a lot worse. [Via]

I was thinking the other day as I was reading this piece on people who suffer from “’Truman Show’ delusion” that there ought to be a word for the anxiety one feels when reading a New Yorker medical piece as to whether or not the person who stars as the anecdotal lead will survive to the story’s end. With that in mind, I want to assure you that the woman who tells her harrowing tale here of having spent a week eating nothing but chopped salads for lunch does, in fact, make it through unscathed.

SEE YOU NEVER, ANTHONY WEINER, YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PUTZ. What a great day for New York City though!

by Matthew J.X. Malady

People are always saying things on the Internet all the time. But sometimes that’s not enough for us. We like details. So we have to ask.

Well, it finally happened. One of my neighbors witnessed my pantsless dash to pick up the Sunday NYT from my front sidewalk. Sorry, Martín.

— ann friedman (@annfriedman) August 25, 2013

Ann. So what happened here?

Like any other red-blooded literate American, I like to read The New York Times on Sunday. I prefer to do so while still in bed in my underwear. But first I must retrieve the paper from my front sidewalk. Understand that I live in a little 1920s bungalow, which faces a sort of courtyard and another row of little bungalows. (Like this.) It’s technically public space out there, so I should put on a robe, or pants, or something, but my neighbors are usually still asleep at this hour and I’ve never once run into them. Until last weekend.

Is Martín the type of person who would be appalled by such a thing, and have you and he spoken about what happened?

Martín is so chill. When I looked up from bending down to pick up the paper and saw him standing there, we just said hi and I went inside. He did not comment on the fact that I wasn’t wearing pants. What a guy.

Lesson learned (if any)?

Get to know your neighbors. The cluster of bungalows where I live is a microcosm of my L.A. neighborhood. Echo Park is at that gentrification tipping point where the neighborhood is about half Latino and half not. It’s generally safer than it was 10 years ago, now home to a few new farm-to-table restaurants, but not yet unaffordable for families. The four bungalows on my side of the courtyard are owned by a white landlord and all occupied by white people. The four bungalows across the way are owned by a Latino landlord and all occupied by Latino people. It is a point of personal pride that I am on a friendly, first-name basis with my neighbors on both sides.

Just one more thing.

A few months ago I was barbecuing in the courtyard with my Latino neighbors, many of whom have lived here for 30 years or more, and I asked if they think the neighborhood has changed for the better over the past decade. Overwhelmingly, unanimously, they said yes. As someone with a lot of gentrifier-guilt, I confess to feeling super relieved. I really hope that this neighborhood manages to maintain its delicate balance, and that people like Martín — who gets up at 5 a.m. every weekday to work in the kitchen of a staffing services company downtown — aren’t pushed out by rising rents. It’s good to have neighbors I can count on to be nonchalant about my pantslessness.

Matthew J.X. Malady is a writer and editor in New York. Previously: Tell Us More.