quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/the-hangover-and-the-age-of-the-jokeless-comedy.html

Riff
‘The Hangover’ and the Age of the Jokeless Comedy
By ADAM STERNBERGH

...riff?

best quote from Alias's linked story:

"David Brooks’ level of mental sophistication makes that one episode of Beavis and Butthead where Beavis gets stuck in a pipe look like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire… crossed with Ulysses!"

link found via ihatenyt: http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-most-emailed-new-york-times-article-ever

i lolled in my mouth a little

I like that piece about the hangover a lot

really?

as far as describing the current reigning style of movie comedy, ok, but going about diagnosing that as some kind of problem? rap music more like crap music!!

we already talked about that 'most emailed' piece some months ago upthread? or somewhere else. but it really is pretty fantastic on a sentence by sentence level:

""The toll collectors on the New York Thruway are becoming close friends," cracks Anna's father, referring to the highway connecting New York City to the Catskills."

yeah i think its def been linked somewhere on ilx

the parks and recreation article linked to the "most e-mailed NYT article" story is pretty interesting BTW.

GLAMPING

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/travel/14green-1.html

perfect

glamping sounds like some sort of porn with the elderly subgenre

jfc

Though dismissed by hard-core leave-no-trace campers (who don’t so much as move a rock for fear of affecting the area), glamping can still be an environmentally sound outdoor experience, even if it does include creature comforts (like not having too many creatures inside your tent).

So basically there are two kinds of campers: those who "glamp" and those who not only avoid moving even the very rocks themselves, but actively enjoy have animals inside their tents.

Good research, Jennifer Conlin. Presumably you interviewed some of these "hard core" campers? The ones who "dismiss" your totally fake "trend". Right? Otherwise what dismissal are you talking about?

I know I shouldn't respond. It doesn't bring out the best in me. It's like the New York Times personally trolls me every day just by existing.

Also that article is a couple of years old, so glamping has been going on all this time without our knowledge and it's probably "over" by now.

What are you, some kind of grind-your-own-flour nerd?

Some kind of armpit composter?

xpost the "Beavis and Butthead" pipe episode is comedy gold. Best punchline ever.

arent you like one of those neti pot using flax-eating people who use tom's deodorant and shit stfu

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 9:28 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cold stone glampin'

i was writing press releases about glamping in 2008, and it was a year-old "package" on one of the hgtv sites back then

as far as describing the current reigning style of movie comedy, ok, but going about diagnosing that as some kind of problem?

smashing my head against the punk rock

that the reigning style of movie comedy foretells the coming idiocracy is the most undeniable truth of American life

idiocracy was not a comedy in the reigning style, fwiw

Glamping it old school:

http://images.screenrush.co.uk/r_760_x/medias/nmedia/18/66/32/78/18930518.jpg

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/start-up-offers-new-hires-ten-grand-lifetime-supply-of-beer/?hp

glampers to the left of me, hipsters to the right, here i am

cold glampin

I would rather go glamping with Dominique Strauss-Kahn than work at "Hipster."

"PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon, for those who are not hip)."

like, just write Pabst Blue Ribbon if you're afraid your audience won't know what PBR is; don't be self effacingly snide

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/nyregion/a-chronicler-of-the-creative-underground.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Doesn't quite count, but I gotta big-up Tod

the hipster thing is amusing because the company is being goofy - but what I wanna know is why would anyone leave Google to go work at a shitty Yelp knockoff?

PBR dood

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/world/americas/04venez.html?hp

this is very hard to understand.

quiddities and agonies of the penal class

that prison sounds like it's one step away from a visit by a times style page writer. i'm praying, at least.

good article but don't think it fits te criteria of this thread

who are you, the thread police?

i can do whatever i want inside as long as i don't try to leave.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/nyregion/a-chronicler-of-the-creative-underground.html
^all i could think about while reading this article was this thread. So many choice quotes:

“He’s a guy who’s always had an interest in the extreme — in interesting, envelope-pushing opportunities,” said Mr. Seelie’s friend, Todd Patrick, a music promoter better known in Brooklyn circles as Todd P. “He’s all about showing smart, sometimes privileged, people doing stuff they probably haven’t done before. He likes to catch upper-middle-class white kids actually doing interesting things.”

“Most of the things I’m drawn to are done by D.I.Y. people who make what they want to happen, happen,” Mr. Seelie said. “You want to put on a play? Great. Find an abandoned power plant.”

Mr. Seelie and his circle of friends have known each other for many years, from bike kills (rallies of competing ganglike bicycle clubs) and from secret parties in abandoned or illegal spaces, said one of those friends, a disc jockey who goes by the nightclub moniker D. J. Dirtyfinger. “His people in New York are people who don’t do stuff within the confines of standard bars or parties. They’re out there being creative almost to a renegade level.

“Ultimately, Tod’s passion is for experiences that are only really possible if you’re living at the extreme,” Mr. Patrick said.

That maddening aspiration of most working artists — the big break — has so far eluded him, but the seeds of such a break may be found in his latest and most ambitious project: a book-length collection of images documenting the last 10 years of the underground art scene. Stored in boxes and on hard-drives, the photographs depict, Mr. Seelie said, the dawning of the New York street-art movement, the birth of the local chapter of the Black Label Bike Club and the early years of bands like Black Dice, Japanther and Matt & Kim. While the material may not mean much to those unfamiliar with these groups and events, Mr. Seelie speaks with a historian’s pride when he says, “I’ve got shots of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs literally playing in an auto parts garage.”

LITERALLY

“You want to put on a play? Great. Find an abandoned power plant.” <<i always say that

i'd be more impressed by people who say "you want to generate your own electricity? Find an abandoned theater."

"upper-middle-class white kids actually doing interesting things"

'race traitors'

i guess that article is kind of appropriate (<3 u tod)

being creative almost to a renegade level. almost.

Joseph Higbee, a spokesman for the electrical manufacturers association, offered his take on the situation: “Unfortunately people do not yet understand this lighting transition, and mistakenly think they won’t be able to buy incandescent light bulbs. This misinformation has been promoted by a number of media outlets. Incandescent light bulbs are not being banned (...)"

Probably this is because articles about light bulb legislation are incredibly boring, and articles about the end of the light bulb as we know it are less so.

(...) one day very soon, traditional incandescent bulbs won’t be available in stores anymore. They’re about to be effectively outlawed.