SPEAKING OF BITCHES … Did anyone read the State the Unions column in Sunday Styles and think that the marriage was doomed and their kids were in trouble? And as long as we're on the topic of Vows, the New York Times seems desperate for couples for their video feature. The couple this week met on Craigslist.
While we were working off our hangover, intern Anastasia was reading the Sunday Times. That girl is ambitious. And she noticed a small coincidence: Namely, that Alex Williams seems to have plagiarized himself.
His article about environmentalism in the suburbs, “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You” was eerily similar to a piece he wrote two years ago, “Greening Up With the Joneses.”
They both start with anecdotal leads about regular folks from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. They both detail how suburban life is not so environmentally friendly (have you heard of these “S.U.V.s”?). Then they tell you how those regular old suburbanites are greening it up status symbols like hybrid cars and retro techniques like clotheslines. CONTINUED »
Let’s start at the beginning. Sunday morning starts with a trip to the bodega for a banana and the Sunday Times.
And where do we begin with that five pound paper? One hint: we have two X chromosomes and we live in New York.
The Vows section, obviously. And after that, it’s Modern Love, which alternatively leaves us misanthropic or self-hating, depending on whether we can relate to the column. Feel free to judge. We already have.
As the most emailed list proves, the column is insanely popular. Since 2004, the space has led to nine book deals.
That may seem ridiculous to those who start the Sunday paper with the Week In Review. But really, Modern Love is like The Hills for smart people. An intelligent person articulating what’s wrong with his or her love life: What could be better, other than attractive person doing the same with wide shots over Hollywood? CONTINUED »
NO ALARMS AND NO SURPRISES On Super Bowl weekend, Sunday Styles is bereft of its happy couples from Ivy League colleges and/or schools that cost as much Ivy League ones, and must turn to trends. The latest: celebrities living it up in Vegas, where they given freedom to pimp themselves on their own terms. “In Vegas, I don’t have to worry about photographers waiting outside my house every day because they can’t wait outside my hotel room,” Spencer Pratt says. His girlfriend, Heidi Montag's thoughts on the matter, or any matter whatsoever? Silence. [NYT]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his GF Carla Bruni were the subject of a fawning profile in the Sunday Styles this weekend. But it turns out, the two might also be worthy of a vows video feature. French papers are reporting that the two may have married at Elysee palace last week.
Some may say the fact that the French paparazzi care about the possible marriage of their president while our paparazzi care about the very real mental deterioration of a former teen idol makes them better than us. But we think we're just more honest.
“The older professions are great, they’re wonderful,” said Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life” (Basic Books, 2003). “But they’ve lost their allure, their status. And it isn’t about money.”
OR at least, it is not all about money. The pay is still good (sometimes very good), and the in-laws aren’t exactly complaining. Still, something is missing, say many doctors, lawyers and career experts: the old sense of purpose, of respect, of living at the center of American society and embodying its definition of “success.”
-Alex Williams, "The Falling Down Professions," New York Times
As it turned out, “train wreck” was not only the perfect expression to describe Ms. Spears’s listless lip-synching, but a recurring theme for 2007, a year when many prominent figures from every arena of public life did harm to their reputations and livelihoods in devastating fashion.
This year celebrities seemed incapable of limiting their misdeeds to isolated bad choices: a flop movie, a regrettable interview quote, an on-air feud with Rosie O’Donnell. At times, their behavior was flat-out abnormal. If you were hoping to see your least favorite Hollywood princess fall on her crown, 2007 provided a parade of tempestuous starlets shaving heads (Ms. Spears), crashing sports cars (Lindsay Lohan) and checking into rehab (Ms. Spears and Ms. Lohan) or prison (Paris Hilton).
-"A One-Way Ticket to Disaster," Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, on why we're excited to get hell out of 2007.
[Photo Credit: DitMartian via Flickr]
Sunday Styles messed up big time. Stephanie Rosenbloom’s piece on vajayjay claimed that the word originated on Grey’s Anatomy. In fact, the expression was used six years earlier according to a commenter on Fimoculous:
MC Paul Barman song 'MTV get off the air pt.2' from his 2000 EP It's Very Stimulating, in which he trades retardedly brilliant sex rhymes with Princess Superstar. Among other gems, this appears towards the end of the song: ‘Lady, one more complaint/and I'll shove a rape-whistle up the Mrs. Va-J-J.
Rape-whistle exploitation always leads to scandal.
Trend spotting for the Times must be a difficult endeavor. After all, it’s hard to tell if just a small group of people are feeling dissatisfied with their South Hampton homes, or if it’s part of larger, widespread movement that speaks to the way we live now.
In this week’s Sunday Styles, Guy Trebay does find a real story: racism in modeling. He even talks to several black professionals in the modeling industry, including Jay Alexander. Yes, that Jay Alexander, the guy who teaches women in their twenties how to walk in heels.
This is a trend story paradox. By talking to Alexander, Trebay implies that America’s Next Top Model has some legitimacy, which is suspect enough. But the article proves that a non-white winner will be too “ethnic” to work outside of her Cover Girl ad.
And we just thought she would be too fat.
Oh, we should have known better. Once again, the Thursday Styles folks are recycling their stories.
Or at least they're burying the "this trend started a year ago" disclaimer in the middle of the article, and following up by saying the same thing that was said in the same column a year ago. From the April 28, 2005 Thursday Styles page:
On the downtown streets of New York, in the hipster hangouts of Los Angeles and on college campuses in between, the young and style-conscious are affecting a look that until recently could not claim to be either
Just a reminder, today's read something like:
It's a sign of the times," Mr. Martin said. "People are into beards right now." At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons.
Apparently the trend is especially popular among advertising execs at music mags and the staff of Cargo. The April 28 article uses Cargo's style director Bruce Pask and Spin's advertising director Carl Kiesel as sources. Today, they quote Vice's advertising director John Martin and Cargo's EIC Ariel Foxman. Oh, yeah, and Bruce Pask again.
The bearded celebs in April were Luke Wilson and Matthew Mcconaughey, today, they are George Clooney and Hugo Weaving.
The only major difference was that today's article used the word "bushy" a lot more than last year's. Oh, yeah, and somehow they tried to replace the "punk" aspect with the appeal of looking like a lumberjack. We bet next year, the cowboys will get beards.
Shaggy Chic: The Call of the Semi-Wild [David Coleman, New York Times]
Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol [Eric Wilson, New York Times]
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