For the Love of Media

You're not anybody in this town unless you make a list. 

It's proof that you are either wealthy, famous, or powerful. It makes you important. We desperately want to have a clear, definitive, and quantifiable number of people that we can designate as the "movers and shakers" who shape the world the rest of us anonymous shlubs live in.

Hence the Observer's Media Power Couples list: these are the various lovebirds in NYC who work hard at various levels of TV, radio, magazines, books, and all things digital to push out the stuff that we the media consumers consume. Oh yes, they is important. They is the most important people in town. They're so much better than the rest of us.

And then they're not making hot media, they're making hot love!

Naturally I'm not envious of these people at all. Come to think of it, as someone who also works in media, I've very lucky to have a life partner who does not. And, of course, Mr NYC would never want to make any kind of list whatsoever. Of course not! I would hate being put on any kind of list like this.

Unless, of course, I am.  

List of NYC Movies

If you love movies set in NYC and want to add some to your Netflix queue, then click here for the most comprehensive list I could find of movies set in our fair city. There's roughly a hundred years worth of flicks on here, including some that will be coming out in the next year or so. Some good, some are bad, some great, some are truly awful, but all of them have a great setting.

WTF with Marc Maron

If you love comedy and happen to suffer from Sunday night insomnia, then switch on WNYC AM 820 at 11 PM Sunday night. Here you can listen to brilliant comedian (and former Astoria resident) Marc Maron interview the biggest names in comedy like Conan O'Brien, Judd Apatow, and Louis C.K on his show WTF (I have no idea what that stands for *wink wink*). 

WTF began a podcast and has proven so popular that public radio came callin'. New technology meets the old, I guess.

If, on the other hand, you're actually able to fall asleep on Sunday nights, then you can hit the WNYC website and listen to it later. And it's definitely worth it.

Lower East Side Blues

Quite often on this blog, I bemoan the disappearance of old NYC. How the gritty, unique soul of this city is being ripped out and sanitized. Case in point: this article about the closure of Mars Bar, the diviest of divey dive bars on the Lower East Side, a now-gone vestige of the time when that part of Manhattan could be called "funky." Like CBGBs before it -- where a condo and retail stores now sit -- doubtless Mars Bar will be eradicated and replaced with something equally boring.

In 21st century NYC, they took all the dive bars and they put them in a dive bar museum.

Derek Jeter Joins 3000-Hit Club In Style

This is officially the funniest headline I've ever read and it wasn't even in the Onion

'Brady Bunch' mom Florence Henderson admits ex-mayor John Lindsay gave her crabs in one-night-stand

Here's the story of a lovely lady ... 

[INSERT YOUR OWN JOKES HERE]

Gay Marriage Means Mo' Money

In all the arguments that were made for the passage of marriage, one very powerful argument that was not frequently made was -- and is -- this: money. Namely, the amount of money that gay nuptials will generate for the NYC economy.

Think about it: in these economically distressed times, a whole new business will be created out of gray marriage. Tthe Gay Wedding Industrial Complex! 

Caterers and florists and wedding planners will see their businesses flourish, more people than ever will be booking spaces for weddings, friends and families will be coming into town will patronize our hotels and restaurants, boosting business. All in all, gay marriage will be great for the city's economy. That reason alone is enough to justify the legalization of gay marriage.

And as someone who got married in NYC two years ago, I can tell you this: the greatest city in the world is the greatest place to get married in.

One of Mayor Bloomberg's few remaining virtues is his knowledge about what makes money and he knows that gay marriage will make money for NYC. In fact, he's already boosting NYC as a gay marriage destination. 

So come one, come all! Step right up and marry your boyfriend and girlfriend! (And drop your cash here while you're at it).

So Long H&H

A staple of the Upper West Side identity, H&H Bagels, has closed. On Tuesday, it shuttered its doors after almost forty years.

Stunning. But not entirely.

While the closure of many a New York institution either has to do with skyrocketing rents (i.e. CBGBs), or declining patronage (i.e. Elaine's), the closure of H&H has less do with either than the fact that the owner was a crook who grossly mismanaged the store's finances. It went bankrupt and closed not because it didn't have loyal customers but because it had a disloyal boss. Also, the store got a little too big for its britches: they wouldn't toast their bagels for customers and, every time I went there, they treated us with contempt. Granted, their bagels were very, very good -- but not their attitude or their management. So its demise couldn't be helped. 

Still, it's a lost part of the New York alloy, and it will be missed.

Some thoughts ...

... on marriage equality in particular and social justice in general.

Like many New Yorkers, I am proud and happy that the state of my birth voted last night to recognize marriage equality. This is an amazing, historic moment and, for once, the New York State legislature should be proud of itself. The reactionary forces of hatred and oppression lost last night -- and thank God for that. For once, progress for humanity was made and we need to celebrate it since it's an all too rare occurrence. 

NYC has always been the biggest and greatest city in America -- and last night it got even greater.

But I wouldn't be a true-blue New Yorker if I didn't get a little neurotic about this. The argument that I always made for marriage-equality was that it was about basic fairness: why should loving, consenting adult gay couples be denied the same rights as loving, consenting straight couples? There was no legal argument against this -- just one based in religious or political ideology or plain ol' bigotry. The issue of recognizing basic human fairness underlined this struggle as it has underlined all the great civil rights struggles in American history.

Yet here's the rub: this marriage equality victory is happening at the same time that union and middle-class workers are under siege both in New York and around the country. It's happening at a time where they are losing raises, pensions, and collective bargaining rights. Where their jobs are dissapearing and their wages are buying less. Where they -- the victims of our current economic doldrms -- are being scapegoated by politicians and the media and special interests for somehow being the cause of it. And where the richest people aren't being asked to pay even a penny more in taxes (even getting their taxes cut) or make any sacrifices whatsoever. 

Many of the same people who support marriage equality and are socially progressive also support  hurting the middle class and are economically regressive. I was recently reading the New York Observer where the editorial pages were strongly supporting gay marriage while also bashing unions and the working class while also ranting about how taxes must never go up on the rich.  

And why is this the case? Because many of the same people who support marriage equality and are rich know gay people -- and it's hard to hate people you know. But many of these same people don't know union or working class people so hating them and blaming them is easy. When you or your friends are the subject of an injustice, fighting it is easy. Yet when you don't know the victims, who cares? 

Equality should be about full respect for all human dignity, and this includes the right to marry and the right to earn a respectable living that can feed yourself and your family -- and also the right not to be scapegoated (i.e. gays are a threat to marriage, unions and poor people destroyed the economy). 

In New York, the war on homosexuals may have ended but the war on the middle-class rages on. And it's a war that all those who truly care about social justice need to fight.

Gay Marriage Now Legal in New York