Why Baby Boomers are the Worst, Cont.

YOU'RE GOING TO DIE ONE DAY.  GET OVER IT.

NYTimes: Who Are You Calling Grandma?

Sam Sifton is Great, Pt. 2

"White people! Don’t you love them?"


NYTimes: My Wife's Mad at Me, and Other Issues

See Part One

Existential Crisis, Well Done

“Forty is old, man, it’s getting up there, it’s like half a lifetime. It’s not for eating ribs with a bunch of kids in white baseball caps who drive Jettas and listen to Phish.”

NYTimes: Hey, Mr. Critic!

Hot Stuff

"“It’s good for a while, then there will be some dishes left out, and then someone will have a blowup,” Isaacson said. “And then everyone will pick up their things again, and it’ll be fine for another couple days. Then there’ll be another blowup.”


See, curling is cool!


NYTimes: The Neighborhood Curling Team

Boston fury

A.O. Scott's beef with bad imitations of Boston accents continues.  In related news, a woman from Brooklyn struck up a conversation with me at the sandwich shop on Tuesday and hearing her voice (and seeing her sporting a full-length fur coat, a rare article in these parts but fairly common in my homeland) threw me into a homesick funk from which I have still not fully recovered. So it really matters!


"Mr. DiCaprio, having grown perhaps overly fond of his accent from “The Departed,”brings it along for the ride, and it spreads through the movie like a contagious disease. Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo, is supposed to be from the Pacific Northwest but he seems to have left all his R’s back in Seattle."


NYTimes: Shutter Island review

Ouch

“Valentine’s Day” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Everyone is strongly cautioned.


NYTimes: Movie Review: Valentine's Day

Firecracker

This guy probably wouldn't have a prayer in an election today.  Also:

"Charlie was 13 when his dog strayed and a neighbor apparently fed it something that contained crushed glass. The boy first doused the man’s garden with gasoline and set it on fire. He then realized that the neighbor was a City Council member and used his learner’s permit to drive black voters to the polls to vote against him. The neighbor lost his seat by 16 votes."

NYTimes: Charlie Wilson, Texas Congressman Linked to Foreign Intrigue, Dies at 76

Preach It: A.O. Scott on movie Boston accents

"As someone who was born — or should I say bahn? — in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I appreciate the special music of New England speech as much as anyone, but honestly, guys, give it a rest. If I had a dollar for every dropped “r” in “Edge of Darkness,” I could finance a sequel."


Having heard the genuine article firsthand for the past 25 years, I feel his pain (not saying anything about Julianne Moore in 30Rock, they're both too great under other circumstances). Movie versions of the tangy tones of my native Greater New York Area are also pretty painful.


NYTimes: Edge of Darkness review

Cost of Twelve Days of Christmas

The eight milking maids received an automatic minimum wage increase, to $7.25 an hour. Even so, they totaled a mere $58, up $5.60 from last year. The eight ladies dancing fared far better, with a 15 percent raise, to $5,473 for each performance based on figures from the Philadelphia modern dance company, Philadanco.
But other performers were not as fortunate, reflecting a jobless rate that doubled this year after hovering around 5 percent for much of the decade, Mr. Dunigan said. Pay was flat for the 12 drummers drumming, at $2,475, 11 pipers piping, at $2,284, and 10 lords-a-leaping, at $4,414.


NYTimes: 12 Days of Gift-Giving Cost True Love $21,466

The guilty sweater

The Copenhagen climate talks have forced me to think a little about my own carbon footprint.  Unfortunately, that foot is wrapped in a soft, luxurious cashmere sock.

NYTimes: Pastoralism Unraveling in Mongolia

One does want a hint of color

It goes along with a very depressing story but I thought this photo was interesting, it looks almost like it was taken in black and white and then a few spots were colorized.

Modern-Day Buffalo

Another exotic animal that isn't in such high demand these days: alligator.


"Stolid men wade into shallow tanks and pull the alligators out by hand. Biting happens. After the gators are killed with a stab to the brain, they are skinned and sorted: heads and claws for the French Quarter souvenir shops, meat for the Cajun restaurants, guts for turtles, dogs or anything else whose tastes run that way."


NYTimes: As Sales Vanish, Skins Stay on Alligators

Is This a Real Thing? Swedish Nail Bed Craze

A Hindu spirit is stalking the streets of Stockholm, armed with this Nordic capital’s latest fad: the nail bed.
...
Of course, as with all health fads, the mats’ salutary effects can be exaggerated, with some people promising cures for everything “from schizophrenia to dandruff,” Ms. Rolfsdotter-Jansson said. But many nail mat users claim relief from sleep problems, migraines and even asthma.


NYTimes: A Bed Where Comfort is Not The Point

Is This a Real Thing? Bachelor Pads Dying Out

BS trend piece of the week: the recession is making it difficult to maintain a swinging bachelor pad.  That and the difficulty in finding repairmen who know how to fix a revolving wet bar.

NYTimes: The Decline and Fall of the Bachelor Pad

Bad puppets!

It's a shame that"exhaustion with political correctness", when translated into action, usually means "white guy wants to make jokes about gay, black, or Chinese people".

NYTimes: Comedy for Dummies

aaaaand snap: What We Talk About When We Talk About Jeff Dunham

The Midnight Oil

This makes me feel so guilty for every class I skipped in college.

NYT: New Meaning for Night Class at 2 Year Colleges

There's a sitcom in here somewhere.

'Oh, yes, we are in Room 1223 at the Ho-Chunk Casino in lovely Baraboo, where the days blur and the chitchat says this is no quilting bee:

“I had been kicking chorus in Cleveland ... I worked with Champagne glasses ... It took 10 guys to get the snake off of her. And I said, ‘So now I understand why you don’t work Massachusetts.’ ”'

NYTimes: Burlesque Days Again for the Feather Boa Crowd

How can we make this about US?

"“It makes you feel much more vulnerable and that life is a lot more fragile than the statistics are now saying,” Ms. Pearl said. “It’s just another reminder aside from all the little indignities of growing older, of your own age, your own mortality. I think that’s why it’s been a particularly teary time.” Going by actuarial tables, the boomers, now age 45 to 63, can expect to live to age 83, thanks to modern health care.

So more than the fear of death, some experts said, this age group is concerned about its legacy. In a survey last year of 1,000 Americans age 44 to 79 conducted by AARP, 55 percent said they believed they would leave the world worse off than they found it."

The tab for this story read "Notable Deaths Trouble Self-Reflective Baby Boomers". Is there any other kind?

NYT: The Summer of the Celebrity Deaths?

Grammar Police

Picky as I am about grammar, this was news to me:

'As a follow-up to last week’s diatribe, here are two more words that we’ve used loosely or imprecisely in recent articles.

As a verb, “advocate” is properly used transitively — that is, it takes a direct object, the thing which one advocates: She advocated a change in the law; He advocated a tougher strategy. Its use is parallel to that of “support.”

Using “advocate” intransitively, with a preposition like to or for, has a faddish or buzzword feel that we should avoid. '

NYT: More Words to Watch

Get the ball, throw the ball

Part of me wishes Isaac Mizrahi would abandon fashion, or at least scale back a little, so he'll go back to hosting my favorite talk show ever.

NYT: A Designer Reinvents Himself