From part I: “But I’m not setting out to quibble with Gopnik in particular so much as I want to use him as a representative of a long line of New York complainers about the same things: the grit’s gone, the rent’s too high for the middle class; that there may have been more crime [...]
Hang around New York long enough — 15 or 16 minutes, say — and you’ll hear someone complain about how nothing’s the way it used to be: that all the soulful grit’s gone, not to mention the middle class, and left in its place is something that feels, day by day, a little more like [...]
David Archuleta, Murray, UT, age 17. The new Donny Osmond?
Any additional thoughts on dropping the opening verses? He kept them here, when he was only 13:
Marketing like that + talent like that = shoe in shoo in? [Ed: oops.]
Whatever the case, that’s a risky song choice, for any number of reasons.
Dig a little deeper? Here’s [...]
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” my friend Dave wrote at the head of his birthday invitation. Karaoke, wilds of Brooklyn, at a place that was decidedly un-hip. The Carriage House. Sounded more like a place to get married — and how wild could the wilds of Brooklyn be if we were still talking Park [...]
I’m kind of glad I missed the opening — and first few weeks — of Stefan Sagmeister’s book-launch show at Deitch Projects, one of the few interesting art spots left in our neighborhood. (And by “interesting” I mean all the delicious, snotty ambivalence that word tends to conjure.) The reason I’m glad? Because the exhibit [...]