It’s Funny Because It’s True

So The Onion had a cute little diddy this week about how much living in New York City sucks. Most of it was, incidentally, not untrue! And while most of the people who shared it on their Facebook walls, etc. took the tone of, “Haha! LOLZ!” I found it less funny and more, um, uncomfortably accurate.

Especially this part (emphasis mine):

“I always had this perverted sense of pride because I was managing to scrape by here,” said Brooklyn resident Andrew McQuade, who, after watching two subway rats gnawing on a third bloody rat carcass, finally determined that New York City was a giant sprawling cancer. “Well, fuck that. I don’t need to pay $2,000 a month to share a doghouse-sized apartment with some random Craigslist dipshit to prove my worth. I want to live like a goddamn human being.”

“You see this?” added McQuade, pointing at a real estate listing for a duplex in Hagerstown, MD. “Two bedrooms, two baths, a den—a fucking den—and a patio. Twelve hundred a month. That’s total, not per person.”

One of the funny — and by funny, I mean frustrating — things about New York (and, I imagine, most other major American cities, although I wouldn’t know firsthand. Except LA, which like New York is expensive and full of horrible people, plus it’s also hot and you have to drive everywhere) is the sickening wealth gap and perversely inflated living costs.

Another thing that is not actually “funny,” but, in fact, disgusting, is how Jersey Shore’s Snooki makes $30,000 per episode or watching Lindsay Lohan hit babies in a Maserati. That doesn’t make me laugh or even shake my head in shame. It just makes me want to kill everyone around me (and then myself) out of bitterness and spite and the maddening realization that while I spend the next 10 years underemployed and paying down a mountain of student loan debt, these girls will be squandering whatever’s left of their fortunes on tanning salon memberships and cocaine. (Also upsetting? Reading about how Cyndi Lauper once sued her landlord at the Apthorp to roll back her rent from $3,250 to $508. Look, I know nobody likes or deserves to get ripped off, but you’re fucking Cyndi Lauper, you bitch. Those units now sell for $54,000 a month, which is probably still less you spend on make-up and peroxide in a given week, anyway.)

I know, it’s my own fault for going to an expensive school to study the very lucrative field of — guffaw! — journalism. What a joke! I should have studied economics! Or transferred to Stern and sold my soul to some Wall Street investment firm for a six-figure entry-level salary and 80-hour work week. Because you know what? I really wouldn’t mind slaving away at some mind-numbing job I hate if it means coming home to my own apartment, with a bedroom that’s actually large enough open the door into and still accommodate furniture. Like a bed.

“But it’s New York! The capital of the world! Everything is here!”

Fuck that. More »

Confessions of an Orphaned Intern

So I know these Oprah posts are bringing in killer pageviews and all (an aggregate 138,000 so far), but I’m kind of bummed (although not surprised) that this “Mickey Kaus Oppo Research Project” post isn’t getting a little more attention. It was actually a lot of fun to work on, and these two comments totally made my day:

destor23: The mere fact that you were able to figure out who Mickey Kaus is means that serious candidates should hire you guys for big money.

accountabilibuddy: Mental note: Be on good terms with Gawker staff before running for office. The level of research that went into torpedoing a candidacy of zero importance for the fun of it is rarely seen outside of bored 4chans.

Also, look into hiring John and Sergio to destroy enemies.

Great stuff gentlemen.

A fellow intern asked me today how I was “dealing” with John Cook’s departure. Incidentally, today was his last day at Gawker, and it is — of course — a bummer (even though my internship ends in three weeks, anyway).

But more importantly I’m excited to see what happens next (for him at Yahoo, and for me… um, in life?), and all I can say is I’m grateful for the chance to have worked with and learn from him, and humbled to be now or ever have been considered anywhere near even just the orbit of this dude’s league.

‘She Said I’ve Reached Another Adolescent Monsoon’

On Monday, I had the great pleasure of having a tooth extracted. It was a surgical extraction, although it wasn’t really that bad except it had been postponed several hours and I was tired and hungry and the procedure’s cost bankrupted my checking account.

I got shot up with a very large needle of novocaine and had to listen to some extremely unpleasant crunching sounds as the doctor prodded my mouth with a drill and forceps, and there was bleeding and several gauze pads and some extra-strength ibuprofen, but it didn’t hurt at all, not during surgery or afterwards.

In fact, the bottle of Vicodin on my desk is still full. I’ve been popping generic brand ibuprofens like crazy, but mostly just for the soreness and swelling.

There were a few moments during the procedure when I thought, “Oh god, that was the drill; this is going to fucking hurt,” but they were fleeting and I quickly realized I was fine: it wasn’t really pain, just some uncomfortable pressure.

It’s hard to distinguish the two, sometimes.
More »

An Ode to John and My Supreme Court Peeps

I took a class last semester with 15 freshmen and taught by NYU President John Sexton. We had a little “class dinner reunion” tonight at the “presidential penthouse” (which, um, is sick), and afterwards, John asked me to make a few “closing remarks” about the class. I kept it brief, but then I thought about it on the walk home, and ended up with 1,300 words. Heh.

I first met John Sexton when I was but a wee freshman staff reporter for NYU’s student newspaper.

I had been assigned the “university senate beat,” presumably because I was the only rookie without class when the senate convened from 2-4 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month, and while Sexton chaired these meetings, I didn’t actually meet him until November.

My other beat (yes, I had two!) was higher education, and in September, Margaret Spellings (the then-Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education) had published a report proposing a series of initiatives to “reform” American higher ed.

Sexton had vaguely criticized the so-called Spellings Report in October, and I had so impressed the paper’s editor by then that when she decided to arrange a sit-down interview about Sexton’s (and NYU’s) “reaction” to the Report, she handpicked me to do it.

“I told Sexton today that you’re coming, too, and now my plan is to sit back and smile and let you interview him,” she said.

Sarah had come to the first senate meeting with me to “show me the ropes;” I remember she would point out who was who among the school’s administrators, and we would write little jokes and comments to each other about the funny (and frequently ridiculous) things people said. Someone, maybe Sexton himself, made some ridiculous remark about NYU as a “gas giant” of American universities, so I drew a picture of Jupiter in the margins of my notebook.

“You take good notes,” she scribbled. More »

I’m Teething

Oh, LOOK WHAT I HAVE.

I was really hoping I’d be one of those highly-evolved genetic mutants who never get their wisdom teeth, but I guess now I can at least look forward to popping some heavy duty painkillers.

UPDATE: OH! And the doctor just told me that the molar which is bothering me (tooth number 32, in case you were wondering) could be really close to the lingual nerve (it’s impossible to tell from a 2D x-ray), so whoever extracts them will need to “really knows what they’re doing.” GREAT!!!