If only every company were as humble and helpful with their cheap, novelty products as are the #PenisPans #Cake folks http://t.co/zSzIV8smnd
Bio: Mark Hay attends Columbia University where he is the Editor-in-Chief of Awaaz: The Voice of South Asia and the Columbia Political Review, and writes for Bwog and the Blue and White.
Representative Anthony Weiner has broken his uncharacteristic silence about the Ground Zero mosque, but rather than issuing an official statement to the clamoring press, he produced a brief letter to Mayor Bloomberg applauding him on his speech.
Emphasis here must be placed on the word "brief." The letter contains six measured and reserved sentences, much less than commentators expected from a man who last week shouted himself to the edge of an aneurysm attacking Republicans in the service of a bill to provide healthcare for early responders to the 9/11 attacks. More
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on August 6th, 2010 5:06pmBreaking an awkward silence on the matter of the “Ground Zero Mosque” over the past weeks, at least a small number of New York's House and Senate delegation have pivoted off Michael Bloomberg’s instantly historic pro-mosque speech on Aug. 3 to voice their own support of for project.
Of 12 House members whose districts are mostly or entirely in New York City, and the state's two Senators, three have praised Bloomberg's speech and another has issued a statement supporting a Landmarks Preservation Commission decision to deny landmark status to a building the mosque is supposed to replace without mentioning the mayor's speech. One has issued a noncommittal statement. And nine have balked, entirely: one no-comment and eight non-responses to requests for comment. More
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on August 6th, 2010 8:33amLove Story’s world is one in which literacy is a thing of the past. The protagonist, Lenny Abramov, has come to an America on the brink of collapse, where literature is met with disdain and where every citizen is hooked into a device called an äaut;pparäaut;t, the invasive and sinister descendant of the iPhone, which taps into the biometrics of its wearer and broadcasts to the world his heart rate, emotions, even his "fuckability rating."
But Shteyngart's novel is satire, and therefore is very serious stuff. Shteyngart is railing against not a fanciful, metaphorical future but one dangerously plausible and close.
“It’s set slightly in the future, when people can no longer read," he told the crowd. "So next Tuesday is what we’re shooting for, I think." More
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on July 28th, 2010 8:48amLady Gaga's entire New York trip, complete with a string of sold out shows at Madison Square Garden, appears to be the fulfillment of a high school wish. While it's fashionable to mine her high school acting career to find the predictors for her current fame, we found people who remember her from that time are less effusive. In fact, in Rockefeller Plaza last week, Gaga showed that the mining of her New York youth for the formation of the persona of Lady Gaga has only just begun. More
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on July 15th, 2010 6:49amPast the gamut, last night, ten or fewer patrons milled around the “Rubbers” exhibit, a third of those in “Action,” and few stayed very long. This is perhaps a reflection of the fact that he exhibit is...challenging. “Rubbers” is a text-heavy exhibit, with most of the artifacts serving to frame or illuminate a PSA-style narrative. It even includes a PSA, one of the only audio-visual components, although it is a unique one. Corners of the exhibit meander into tangential territory, abandoning condoms to discuss HIV, STIs, and sex education. More
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on July 14th, 2010 7:16am“We don’t have the old tenement buildings they’ve got in Chinatown,” said Kurt Trenkman, an on-site owner and operator of eight buildings in Soho which were put up by his great-grandfather in the late 19th century. “When you go into Chinatown and you walk up and down Mott Street, you see lots of Chinese people in the market buying things...We don’t have those kinds of open markets and that’s where a lot of the filth comes from and the foot traffic and the congestion.” More
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on July 12th, 2010 9:04am“We are gathered to celebrate our independence from foreign domination,” said Judge, a compact young man with bright orange hair and, like most of the men in attendance, a thick goatee. "And our independence from corruption and for reform.”
Judge and fifteen club members and guests had gathered atop the roof of former congressional candidate and vice chair of the King’s County Republican Party Susan Cleary, simply to celebrate, they all said. Also in attendance were Lucretia Regina-Potter, the B.Y.R.-backed candidate running for State Assembly against Peter Abbate in the 49th district, and Joseph Hayon, a N.Y.-9 Congressional candidate who is running on religious values. (Hayon says his candidacy is not supported by the B.Y.R., but that he is a member of the group, meaning he is on its email-invite list.) More
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on July 6th, 2010 10:06amThe rhetoric was firmly centrist, consistent with the Blue Dog, Democrat of the South political profile that charactized Ford at all points in his career until this year, briefly, when his convervatism made an already-implausible threat to a vulnerable-from-the-left incumbent that much more unlikely. More
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on June 30th, 2010 8:08am“Without listening to Do Enka,” said Japanese ambassador and consul general Shinichi Nishimiya, “I don’t think I understood what it was going to be like.”
The performance didn't initially do much to dispel the confusion. The lights dimmed, and speakers on the stage played the first strains of a traditional Japanese melody, similar to “Itsuki’s Lullaby." Over the calm and quiet music, to the palpable surprise of many patrons, came a crashing and growling introduction by a voice ripped from the soundtrack of a blaxploitation film. More
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on June 28th, 2010 12:32pmLast night over a hundred fans of the novelist Bret Easton Ellis packed into a third-floor space on the third floor of the Barnes and Noble on the north side of Union Square, overflowing the chairs placed out for them and milling about in a wide aisle between the World History and Decorating sections.
Most were clutching copies of the writer’s latest, Imperial Bedrooms, from which the author himself would be reading. More
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on June 23rd, 2010 6:10am
