This is the least confident defense of the short short I’ve ever read, and it leaves me deeply disappointed with the NYT and my beloved T magazine. Mr. Stoddard begins this article with a positive outlook on shorts, one, I’d say, that willingly defies social conceits:
“[M]en’s shorts have been inching away from their own breviloquent description. My call for a return to a common-sense inseam has been met over time with complacency, staunch resistance and — on the occasions I’ve dared to lead by example — merciless ribbing. Just as I was beginning to lose heart, it was revealed that several designers are featuring shorter men’s shorts for spring.” (“A Leg Man,” Grant Stoddard, 3/10/2011, NYT)
Stoddard is more than willing to strut his stuff in beautifully crafted outfits — assembled of garments and by art directors/stylists at the pinnacle of the short game — in theory, but quickly goes turncoat. It’s hard for me to feel bad for somewhere swathed in Yves Saint Laurent while being trailed by photographers, but I can commiserate with anyone playing the odd man out.
One can feel Stoddard itching to tug at the cuffs of his scantly shorts, well within arms reach, as he makes his way down the Sunset Strip, “a couple of motorists cared enough to slow down and holler, ‘Nice shorts!’ with seeming sincerity, though the guy who yelled ‘Sexy legs!’ didn’t sound all that convincing” (ibid).
The rest of the article continues to chronicle his feelings of peculiarity in his new digs, from tourists snapping photos to people at a farmers’ market [sic] looking on skeptically. Well no shit, people are going to look at you funny when “[t]he length of the blazer obscured the shorts completely from most angles. This meant the looks I drew were due to suspicions that I was completely pantsless” (ibid). This, however, does not mean it’s time to accept defeat and put on a pair of flood pants.
If Stoddard is earnestly calling for shorts to live up to their name, it’s at this moment, when his desire to demure is so palpable, that he must hike those shorts up, put on a pair of sunglasses, and stop giving a fuck. I’d appreciate this article so much more if Stoddard made it sound like he enjoyed himself, rather than concluding fashion designers may affect the lengths of work-a-day shorts coming to a store near you (a stunning insight). Instead, he’s practically made a mockery of those of us who would wear shorts that hit well above the knee; at the very least he calls into question one’s ability to rock some short shorts with confidence. Frankly, this article does little to advocate for shorter shorts, I’d argue it leaves them less accessible and more “high fashion” than if Stoddard had left the subject unearthed. And for that, Mr. Stoddard, I will never forgive you, but I hope you got to keep them YSL joints.
Today is that most hallowed of holidays, International Women’s Day, and I, woman, rose with the sun hyper-aware of each minute flaw and filled with an orgiastic desire common to all womenfolk: the desire to be skinnier. After listening to “Someday You Will Be Loved” by Death Cab for Cutie and watching myself cry in the mirror (you know, the usual morning routine) I had the craziest thought: What if there was a magic serum that I could inject into my skin that would make me beautiful? With this injection, I could leave my endless worries behind with those countless hours spent on the treadmill running to nowhere. I could lose fat in all of my problem areas (read: belly, back of neck, arch of left foot) without actually doing anything. See you later, adipocytic danger zones! I dismissed this thought as pure hogswallop and made my way to work, all the while silently comparing myself to every other woman I encountered on my commute.
Only upon opening our dear New York Times at work was I greeted with an International Women’s Day MIRACLE: that very magic serum of my girlish daydreams exists. I had foolishly been trying to increase my self worth Facebook photo album by Facebook photo album, when I could just be increasing it shot by shot of baby-making potion.
“…unlike other popular diet supplements, hCG, which is derived from the urine of pregnant women, has acquired an aura of respectability because the injections are available only by prescription.”
An aura of respectability, you say? Aside from the injections, you only have to limit your daily caloric intake to 500 kilocalories calories kilocalories calories. How can this wunderdrug possibly work? As the Doctor told one patient:
“Dr. Blyer looked uneasy. ‘Your legs are thin, your face is thin,’ he told her. ‘You’re a very attractive woman.’ But he reassured her that she would lose weight where she wanted to, in her stomach. The hCG, Dr. Blyer said, ‘tricks your body into a state of pregnancy; it burns off fat so the fetus can get enough calories, but it protects muscle.’”
So, you inject pee into your body to conceive a ghost baby who then prevents you from feeling hunger or pain until you are beautiful and svelte? Where do I sign up?
Recently, in response to a nationwide quandry, the NYT deployed its finest grammarians to investigate the burning issue of the apostrophe in “a holiday called Presidents’ Day or President’s Day or Presidents Day.” Our savvy readers will no doubt instantly note the identity crisis striking at the heart of our already polarized nation: we the people have no idea how to punctuate that (al)most patriotic of domestic holidays, President(‘)s(‘) Day. No wonder Republicans, Democrats, and Tea Baggers cannot sit down and rationally converse!
In addition to pointing a virtual but undoubtedly chalk-dusted finger at the divided state of our politics, this article also addresses economic issues. In southern Louisiana, “punctuation and tight budgets have collided. New welcome-to-the-parish signs urge visitors to ‘please put litter in it’s place.’ Local officials acknowledge the blunder, but they have told reporters that they simply have no money for replacement signs.” Quelle horreur, as MKS would say.
Any NYT article that begins with such fine investigative journalism as citations of signage from not one but four big box chain stores must end with a reference to Twitter. Clyde Haberman, our eager grammarian, does not disappoint. By confining tweets to 140 characters, he writes, “the punctuation mark is often the first thing to disappear.” Meanings blur when words are deprived of our familiar dots and squiggles. Whether this malleability cheapens or enriches tweettext remains to be determined. His final series of puns, for example, almost undermine his defense of clarity through their potential for rich ambiguity: “if won’t is your wont, you simply can’t stand the cant.” Where is the categorical imperative here?
My real question, though, and this query is surely something that burns in everyone’s heart of hearts, involves the placement of the apostrophe in “farmer(‘)s(‘) market.” How am I supposed to blog confidently about recent purchases of organic rainbow chard and raw milk camembert from the Hudson Valley if I cannot correctly punctuate the source of these finds? Surely when the NYT Magazine does a Brooklyn-related follow-up, all my anxieties will be dissolved.
With a few days now between us and the Academy Awards, it only now feels appropriate to look back on coverage of the media earthquake felt even here in the Philippines (just kidding, no one gives a shit here). Wading through the NYT’s anticipatory and ‘post-game’ coverage, one article shone through as particularly dispensable.
The article profiles Zachary Quinto, who serves the Academy Awards’ lawyer. Double-snore, but ok, please continue. Mr. Quinto handles most of the “day-to-day Oscar work”. What might “day-to-day Oscar work” entail? Mostly trolling e-Bay for people selling Oscar statues and sending cease-and-desist letters to street DVD vendors in Vietnam (good luck!).
Naturally, the real glamour comes on Oscar night when Mr. Quinto is charged with hunting down gate crashers. This is also the best part of the article: the climax of an anecdote about the time he detained a man posing as Jack Valenti where “[Mr. Quinto] just said very loudly, ‘O.K., these are the first three arrests of the evening,’. Easy there, Columbo! We all agree with you, the Academy Awards are really important and justify your Judge Dredd-like ability to not only prosecute but also arrest party crashers, but you have to admire the gall of trying to sneak in by posing as THE PRESIDENT of the Academy. Way to bury the lede, NYT. This profile should be on that guy.
Obviously this is just a fluff piece that we needn’t be mad at, unless we’re any one of the visitors to Mr. Quinto’s office over the next twenty years who happens to get caught glancing at the framed copy of this profile on the wall of his office and end up subjected to the faux-modest story-behind-it. But otherwise harmless, and the reporter knows it and takes the opportunity to sprinkle the piece with these gems:
“It was as ominous a moment as any in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”
“His power is greater than that of a bouncer’s.”
“Some of the more memorable culprits: shops peddling pornographic Oscar statuettes;”
Oh, NYT, how I’ve missed thee. Lazing about, growing content with my ignorance - well, no more! Not with such eyebrow raisers as “Perfect, With Childbearing Hips,” by Andrea Askowitz (The NYT, 02/17/11). Yes, this is a “Modern Love” piece, and yes, it may be cheating, but I been on my break, so let’s giddy up:
Askowitz, a Miami native and most notably (seemingly, given the NYT coverage), author of “My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy,” chronicles her journey through pregnancy and impregnation (sic) through this article: “The donor I picked was 6-foot-2, played baseball in college and said in his audio interview that he loved his mother.” (ibid). Mother-loving aside, this article lacks some steam for me.
Sure, she faces adversity, but that’s not the point, she just seems averse to having a second child: “I hated pregnancy and delivery. I would never get pregnant again. But I could make another woman pregnant. I had sperm” (ibid). Oh man, if I had a nickel for every time I said that to myself.
No LGBT appeal, no real-world appeal, what are we to take from this article? Askowitz launches into a description of a woman’s waist-to-hip ratio, “Scientists have discovered that the lower the body’s waist-hip ratio (medically known as the WHR), the more attractive the woman. Marilyn Monroe, for example, had a 0.7 WHR, meaning her waist was 30 percent smaller than her hips. Salma Hayek and the Venus de Milo also have small waists relative to the size of their hips” (ibid). Well, if the Venus de Milo had it, it must be true.
Askowitz follows with play-by-play of her match.com history; finding a woman with a suitable WHR, who also happens to be considering childbirth, Askowitz strikes: “On our first date, Victoria told me she was planning to have a baby, alone if she had to. She knew I had done it alone, but she didn’t know I still had eight viable sperm vials. I don’t normally believe in love at first sight, but at the end of that first lunch, I wanted to offer Victoria my sperm” (ibid). Creepy, right?
Eventually, Victoria decides she’s ready to do it, have identical half-children with her partner: “The nurse instructed me to stand between Victoria’s legs. I held the syringe steady with my first two fingers, like a cigarette. I looked into Victoria’s eyes again and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ Today, we have a 7-year-old daughter and a son approaching 2. They have the same almond-shaped eyes and pudgy feet, like little muffins. They share half of their biology, but much more, they share two mommies, the family I always wanted” (ibid). First, I’d like to thank the NYT for offering a stage for us newavers, how would we live healthy, fulfilled, alt lives without this kind of coverage? Second, “I held the syringe steady…like a cigarette,” gross.
“The trial gods are very powerful,” said Peter E. Quijano. “You respect them. You make little offerings.”
For three straight days while awaiting a verdict in the recent terrorism trial of his client Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Mr. Quijano ordered a cheddar burger and bloody mary from the same waitress in the same booth at the Whiskey Tavern on Baxter Street.
Mr. Quijano, as he did in that case, also tries to insert the name of his Scottish terrier, Watson, into summations.
“It’s part of the human condition that no matter how many years of education you’ve had, you still have faith in certain totems,” said Arthur R. Miller, a law professor at New York University. He added, “I won’t go to court without a three-piece suit and without a red tie, and without a red pocket square.”
Every day since this article was published on February 18th, 2011, EMH has eaten a everything bagel with lox, capers, red onions, and cream cheese Cheddar burger and bloody Mary ordered from the same MKS waitress in the same clothes booth at the Chinatown Coffee Company on H Street. She will win this case. EMH
“Pets as Bedmates,” or “Doggie Do’s and Doggie Dont’s” is an emotionally-laden caveat against welcoming filthy animals into your lovenest for the Fido generation. You’re lonely, you’re anxious, you wake up to the sound of your own sobs in the middle of the night from a dream about the one who got away boffing your best friend only to be comforted by your real best friend: Man’s best friend. We’ve all been there; some of us more than others.
While it may be tempting to cozy up to your pot-bellied pig (read: little spoon) every night, this misunderstanding of the term “animal husbandry” could easily summon the Black Death to descend upon your pillow palace. Don’t be too quick to give fluffy the boot, however as:
“…kicking pets out of bed isn’t likely to be an option for many people. First of all, it’s difficult to retrain animals once they have established a routine. Erica Lehrer and Richard Goldman of Houston learned that when they tried to keep their three cats out of the bedroom after installing an expensive black carpet.
“They staged a protest: cried all night, pounded with their cat paws on the door,” said Ms. Lehrer, 52, a writer. After three sleepless nights, she said: “They won and moved back in. We bought a really good vacuum cleaner.”
“Now we know that white carpet is better than black if you have cats,” added Mr. Goldman, a 54-year-old business consultant who disliked all cats before he married Ms. Lehrer, and finds himself in the guest room when the two in his home are too active in the bed. “Marriage is a journey, and this is part of it.”
While this cat in a hot twin bed might be just another bump in the proverbial road that is marriage for the Lehrers, Kathy Ruttenberg’s “upstate menagerie” consisting of 160 animals has proven to be less of an aphrodisiac. Her mother worries that the animals may put Kathy, 53, in the permanent zone of marriage ineligability.
“The truth is, with all my animals around me, I feel loved here, and I always have someone to come home to and someone who misses me when I’m away,” said Ms. Ruttenberg, who grew up on the Upper East Side and got her first pet, a dog, 20 years ago, after a terrible romantic breakup.”
Has humanity finally become redundant? Not entirely, assures the NYT, but almost. South Korean robots trained to teach English are rapidly becoming useful assistant teachers, perhaps more reliable than their human counterparts. Also used as robotic Doras, androids are being tentatively introduced into preschools in California. Considering their current governor, this preparation for the real world may be doubly appropriate. Even shrinks have cause for concern; the closing line of this NYT clip features a robotic voice droning, “don’t be depressed.” Until we analyze their dreams, however, I see ample cause for anxiety. ARC
The NYT staff whips out their decoder rings in an attempt to solve an oddly contorted neck and beard in the Sistine Chapel.
Art historians and scientists have teamed up to produce an article that justifies anyone’s dire predictions for the death of art history. Some brainiacs at Johns Hopkins University claim to have discovered the outline of a human brain and stem in Michelangelo’s “The Separation of Light from Darkness.” Apparently, however, this isn’t even the first hidden anatomy lesson postulated to exist in the Sistine Chapel:
“In 1990, in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a physician described what he saw as a rendering of the human brain in the Creation of Adam, the panel showing God touching Adam’s finger. And one physician, a professor of medicine at Baylor University, published an article in a medical journal in 2000 suggesting that Michelangelo had included a drawing of a kidney in another ceiling panel. The author was, perhaps not coincidentally, a kidney specialist.”
The journal Neurosurgery, however, is hardly eBay, and these gentlemen are (hopefully) no amateurs of Dan Brown. A University of Pennsylvania associate professor saucily recalls Sigmund Freud by warning that “sometimes a neck is just a neck,” and we ourselves must suppress an awkward gulp at what organ seems most apparent in the helpful black outlines above. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes…well, maybe I’ve been looking at too much Georgia O’Keefe. ARC
![This is the least confident defense of the short short I’ve ever read, and it leaves me deeply disappointed with the NYT and my beloved T magazine. Mr. Stoddard begins this article with a positive outlook on shorts, one, I’d say, that willingly defies social conceits:
“[M]en’s shorts have been inching away from their own breviloquent description. My call for a return to a common-sense inseam has been met over time with complacency, staunch resistance and — on the occasions I’ve dared to lead by example — merciless ribbing. Just as I was beginning to lose heart, it was revealed that several designers are featuring shorter men’s shorts for spring.” (“A Leg Man,” Grant Stoddard, 3/10/2011, NYT)
Stoddard is more than willing to strut his stuff in beautifully crafted outfits — assembled of garments and by art directors/stylists at the pinnacle of the short game — in theory, but quickly goes turncoat. It’s hard for me to feel bad for somewhere swathed in Yves Saint Laurent while being trailed by photographers, but I can commiserate with anyone playing the odd man out.
One can feel Stoddard itching to tug at the cuffs of his scantly shorts, well within arms reach, as he makes his way down the Sunset Strip, “a couple of motorists cared enough to slow down and holler, ‘Nice shorts!’ with seeming sincerity, though the guy who yelled ‘Sexy legs!’ didn’t sound all that convincing” (ibid).
The rest of the article continues to chronicle his feelings of peculiarity in his new digs, from tourists snapping photos to people at a farmers’ market [sic] looking on skeptically. Well no shit, people are going to look at you funny when “[t]he length of the blazer obscured the shorts completely from most angles. This meant the looks I drew were due to suspicions that I was completely pantsless” (ibid). This, however, does not mean it’s time to accept defeat and put on a pair of flood pants.
If Stoddard is earnestly calling for shorts to live up to their name, it’s at this moment, when his desire to demure is so palpable, that he must hike those shorts up, put on a pair of sunglasses, and stop giving a fuck. I’d appreciate this article so much more if Stoddard made it sound like he enjoyed himself, rather than concluding fashion designers may affect the lengths of work-a-day shorts coming to a store near you (a stunning insight). Instead, he’s practically made a mockery of those of us who would wear shorts that hit well above the knee; at the very least he calls into question one’s ability to rock some short shorts with confidence. Frankly, this article does little to advocate for shorter shorts, I’d argue it leaves them less accessible and more “high fashion” than if Stoddard had left the subject unearthed. And for that, Mr. Stoddard, I will never forgive you, but I hope you got to keep them YSL joints.
MKS](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lis4mvR2vz1qbtgj4o1_400.jpg)
![With a few days now between us and the Academy Awards, it only now feels appropriate to look back on coverage of the media earthquake felt even here in the Philippines (just kidding, no one gives a shit here). Wading through the NYT’s anticipatory and ‘post-game’ coverage, one article shone through as particularly dispensable. The article profiles Zachary Quinto, who serves the Academy Awards’ lawyer. Double-snore, but ok, please continue. Mr. Quinto handles most of the “day-to-day Oscar work”. What might “day-to-day Oscar work” entail? Mostly trolling e-Bay for people selling Oscar statues and sending cease-and-desist letters to street DVD vendors in Vietnam (good luck!). Naturally, the real glamour comes on Oscar night when Mr. Quinto is charged with hunting down gate crashers. This is also the best part of the article: the climax of an anecdote about the time he detained a man posing as Jack Valenti where “[Mr. Quinto] just said very loudly, ‘O.K., these are the first three arrests of the evening,’. Easy there, Columbo! We all agree with you, the Academy Awards are really important and justify your Judge Dredd-like ability to not only prosecute but also arrest party crashers, but you have to admire the gall of trying to sneak in by posing as THE PRESIDENT of the Academy. Way to bury the lede, NYT. This profile should be on that guy. Obviously this is just a fluff piece that we needn’t be mad at, unless we’re any one of the visitors to Mr. Quinto’s office over the next twenty years who happens to get caught glancing at the framed copy of this profile on the wall of his office and end up subjected to the faux-modest story-behind-it. But otherwise harmless, and the reporter knows it and takes the opportunity to sprinkle the piece with these gems:“It was as ominous a moment as any in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”“His power is greater than that of a bouncer’s.”“Some of the more memorable culprits: shops peddling pornographic Oscar statuettes;” WJS](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/allthenewsthatsfittoblog/3613832393/1/tumblr_lhgqbgc6yV1qbtgj4)
