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Happy Endings

Book BFFs Karen Abbott and Julia Cheiffetz Reunite for 10 Times the Pay

Squares

No Gorditas For Lolitas: Skins Too Spicy for Taco Bell

Sundance

Watch Kevin Smith Rant At Sundance Before Buying His Own Movie

Kim Jong-un doesn't brake for starving children.
Hackers

Kim Jong Un Got Hacked For His Birthday

By Ben Popper | January 11, 2011 | 10:08 am

North Korea has a website. As in, a single website. It also has one Twitter account and one YouTube account. That's how stuff works in a crazy, despotic dictatorship. Anyways, this past weekend marked the birthday of Kim Jong-Un, scion of the increasingly unhinged Kim Jong-il and closely watched heir to the throne. Jong-Un was probably expecting the same old thing, a bunch of parades in his honor and maybe a stadium full of rhythmic... MORE»

Karl Lagerfeld
Words

Let's All Marvel At Karl Lagerfeld's Chic and Well-Stocked Library!

By Nate Freeman | January 10, 2011 | 6:40 pm

Like King Midas, Karl Lagerfeld can bestow a princely glow to whatever surrounding he graces with his presence. He's Karl Lagerfeld, ruler of Chanel, reigning titan of... MORE»

Spider-Man, cover boy.
Turn Off The Dark

The New Yorker Cover Pokes Fun at Spider-Man Musical Woes

By Nate Freeman | January 10, 2011 | 6:24 pm

Julie Taymor's web-slinging extravaganza Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark has encountered its fair share of speed bumps: premiere delays, exceeded budgets, life-threatening injuries, etc. It's the kind of stuff that's really ripe for parody, and this week, The New Yorker took the bait. Here's this week's cover in all its glory, courtesy The New Yorker's... MORE»

Courtney Love. Off Twitter. <em>Sigh.</em>
Love Lost

With Lawsuit Pending, Courtney Love Takes Down Her Beloved Twitter Account

By Nate Freeman | January 10, 2011 | 5:16 pm

For some time, Courtney Love's Twitter feed was a rich and hilarious corner of the internet. There, you could find anything from rambling, incoherent diatribes, fashion advice, and the occasional NSFW picture of her and Paz de la Huerta making out with their tops slipping off. Transcendent... MORE»

Ceaselessly Into the past

The Great Gatsby in 3D: An Idea So Abysmally Awful It Just Might Work?

By Nate Freeman | January 10, 2011 | 4:10 pm

Those familiar with director Baz Luhrmann's fixation with excess had every reason to look forward to his upcoming adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Sure, the subtle analysis of class warfare, sexuality, and post-war mores that enhance F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterwork will probably be excised, but who cares! Filtered through Baz's indulgence-happy approach to the cinema, Gatsby will be all sex, gin, wild all-night parties, gat-toting gangsters, palace-sized houses, flappers dancing in pearls and of course beautiful shirts.... MORE»

DuMont, in Williamsburg, takes reservations.
Borough Wars

Sam Sifton Provides Solace For Those Afflicted by 'That Brooklyn No-Reservation Thing'

By Nate Freeman | January 10, 2011 | 11:57 am

Has it gotten to the point when one cannot talk about dining in Brooklyn without an us-versus-them, Manhattan-is-for-snobs mentality? The buzz on Twitter and, in today's "Hey, Mr. Critic" post on The New York Times' Diner's Journal, seems to suggest as much. Last week saw a bit of a catalyst in the guise of former Times food critic Mimi Sheraton's blanket dismissal of the borough of... MORE»

Tube workers intimidated, blinded by the shininess of Kate Middleton's hair.
The Royals

Subway Strike to Prevent Britons From Witnessing Wills and Kate's Matrimonial Glory

By Nate Freeman | January 10, 2011 | 10:30 am

Don't get your knickers in a knot, Londoners, but the Tube queue come the day of your prince and princess' holy matrimony may be longer than the one at a pub loo during a big football match. The ASLEF union of underground drivers is threatening to strike on April 29, that fateful day of marriage, over what they feel to be unfair pay during "bank holiday." They staged a walkout on Boxing Day and intend to do the same when it comes time for the future sovereigns to come together.... MORE»

'Til 'death' do them part.
Mazel Tov!

Tao Lin Will Have Megan Boyle’s Hand in Marriage

By Christian Lorentzen | January 8, 2011 | 9:23 pm

The Observer was sitting at his desk on Saturday afternoon. He clicked the tab for Twitter on his Web browser. Five Tweets down on his Timeline he saw a Tweet by @Beach_Sloth that read, http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/tao-lin-and-megan-boyle-of-mdma-films-are-married/ @xsssy @heusar @tao_lin @meganboyle Congrats newly... MORE»

Lena Dunham.
TV

'Girls' On Film: Lena Dunham's Hot Streak Continues As HBO Picks Up Show

By Nate Freeman | January 7, 2011 | 6:58 pm

Lena Dunham will be moving from Tiny Furniture to small screens. HBO announced today that it's ordered a full season of "Girls," a show created by Dunham that will follow three, um, girls as they go through the usual adolescent holding patterns in New York City. Duham wrote, directed, and starred in the pilot. She's also an executive producer, but she'll get some help from the comedy world's puppet master, Judd... MORE»

The new Broad Art Foundation (above) and the new Alice Tully Hall (below).
Starchitects

The New Broad Museum Is Not Unlike the New Lincoln Center (And That's Good for New York)

By Matt Chaban | January 7, 2011 | 4:11 pm

L.A. art king Eli Broad unveiled the new designs for the Broad Art Foundation museum yesterday. We know, we know, the City of Angeles is a cultural wasteland to which New York should pay little, if any, heed. Still, the news is important for one big reason: the firm designing the museum is one of our very own, and the project pretty much solidifies it as an international powerhouse, our very own Frank Gehry, as it were. (Looks like we're trading... MORE»

Slideshow

Scandal Report: Ringing In The New Year With Breakups and Split Dresses

By Nate Freeman | January 7, 2011 | 2:14 pm

I know what you're thinking: how could you do it, Scandal Report? How could you take two weeks off like that? We missed you, we needed you. How would we know which papers rocked their A-game during Christmas time and nabbed the best scoops and juciest items? Listen up, Scandal Report. Gossip never takes vacation. Gossip never sips egg nog by the fireplace. Gossip never gorges on chocolate while watching It's A Wonderful Life. Gossip happens regardless of the circumstances and the papers are there to cover it. Gossip never sleeps. Gossip is always... MORE»

Drink

The Hophead: The Nanobreweries Next-Door

By Tom Acitelli | January 7, 2011 | 12:06 pm

Long Island has in the last year become a tender hub of nanobreweries: As many as four are in operation or will be in operation by the middle of 2011. Two of those distribute in the city (which itself hosts no nanobreweries, as far as I was able to find—if I missed one, please let me know:... MORE»

Enthusiasm!

Book Pushes The Times Toward Unprecedented Exclamation Mark Usage

By Nate Freeman | January 6, 2011 | 6:20 pm

The exclamation point can be overused, gratuitous -- and misunderstood, unfairly maligned. It can be applied to highlight a legitimate crescendo at the end of a sentence and bring home a victorious achievement described in prose. It can articulate rising volume in dialogue. Or it can underscore an irony, thus having an effect opposite of its original intent. Or, it can be used twice. Twice in a row. In The New York... MORE»

Art on the Go

Share A Cab with Chuck Close and Kehinde Wiley

By Matt Chaban | January 6, 2011 | 6:19 pm

Which is greater, the odds of catching the Cash Cab or sharing a taxi with Chuck Close? For the month of January, certainly the latter. For the second year now, ShowMedia, the company that supplies all the advertising to the cabs is turning 500 taxi toppers into roving canvases. There are two works on the street, a pair of eyes by the bespectacled Close and a prostrate gangsta by Kehinda Wiley. Last year's inaugural artists were Alex Katz, Shirin Neshat and Yoko... MORE»

Just think: seven <em>million</em> cans of Four Loko
La Vida Loko

Four Loko Afterlife! Truckloads of Blackout in a Can Go to Ethanol Heaven

By Nate Freeman | January 6, 2011 | 5:03 pm

Four Loko already seems like a relic from the long-gone 2010. Yes, some bodegas dipped into their backroom hordes on New Year's Eve and sold marked-up cans despite the statewide ban, but for all intents and purposes the drink is gone from our lives, no longer terrorizing the youth, forcefully and swiftly euthanized -- an artifact of wide-awake drunk nights of the... MORE»