Urban Kvetch: Wobbly Tables
Wobbly Tables This is a flipping four-star restaurant. The sauteed skate we ordered came with cauliflower that you spent a week and a half caramelizing and a caper-raisin emulsion that required a Ph.D. in Chemistry to produce. You could at least seat us at a table with four legs of equal length. We’ve spilled so...
Urban Kvetch: The Demise Of The Fortune Cookie
The Demise Of The Fortune Cookie Remember fortunes? Something that foretells a new job, love or financial windfall; a prediction that eerily rings true that you’ll superstitiously keep in your wallet; or at least something that sounds funny with the words “in bed” tacked onto the end. I didn’t wrestle with that cellophane packaging for...
Urban Kvetch: Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution Quit claiming it’s “just like Guitar Hero.” Dance Dance Revolution is to Guitar Hero what Napoleon Dynamite is to Justin Timberlake. Anyone who attempted their DDR “dance moves” in the real world would look like they were a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Jackass? Yes, GH and DDR have similar...
Urban Kvetch: The Locker Room At The Friar’s Club
The Locker Room At The Friar’s Club To all of those Christian groups dedicated to “curing” homosexuality through “reparative therapy”: just send Ted Haggard to the locker room at the Friars Club and expose him to all of those hairy bellies, veiny legs and tiny wieners, and he’ll come out as straight as John Wayne....
Urban Kvetch: Your First Day On The Job
Your First Day On The Job You get introduced to the same people five times and you still can’t remember anyone’s name, then you’re seated at a desk and given nothing to do, so you spend the afternoon straightening out your piles of Post-It notes and grinning like an idiot at your busy new colleagues...
Urban Kvetch: Mr. Met
Mr. Met Mets fans aren’t some sushi-rolling, lemonade-sipping pansy-asses. The blue in the team logo is a reflection of the hue around our collars. We may have some sentimentality for team mascot Mr. Met, but mostly he’s just an embarrassing, arcane reminder of the days when patronizing gimmickry was a boon to the spirits of...
Good Chemistry
Remembered for her zany hats and pubescent troubles on the sitcom _Blossom_, Mayim Bialik could have easily entered pop culture’s stable of desperate reality TV stars. But save an appearance on _Curb Your Enthusiasm_, these days the 31-year-old is more academic than actress. For the last seven years, Bialik has been working on a Ph.D....
The Ballad Of Marissa Nadler
Marissa Nadler’s music seems to exist in a world of its own. Most songs consist of little more than a carefully finger-picked acoustic guitar and a wispy, disembodied voice that recalls Hope Sandoval’s reverb-drenched sighs or a sort of gothic singing saw. Nadler’s sound is intimidatingly gloomy, both out-of-time and—thanks to the hoopla surrounding Devendra...
Joan of Snark
Love her or hate her, Joan Rivers is a comic force to be reckoned with. She's well into her career's third act and Jay Ruttenberg brings you the legend in all her glory.
The _Heeb_ Hundred
We give you portraits of the 100 up-and-coming stars in the _Heeb_ pantheon.
The Gospel According to A.J.
The market for gimmick books—shtick lit, as it were—has enjoyed a surprising shelf life. There are authors who pledge not to spend money for a year, those who promise to say yes to everything and, of course, those who only eat food made by 21st century chemical processes. Writing one seems simple enough: You need...
