Apple iPod

Will Oldham has always been fascinated with pop icons (check out this video for Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me”). He’ll take on R. Kelly, Danzig, and Bjork with his Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy outfit release Ask Forgiveness. It will include eight covers in all.

New York Mag inspires us to finish The Brothers Karamozov starting tonight. We swear!

Jay-Z will come out of his 23rd retirement to perform at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Nov. 13.

iTunes revs up their film archives. Selma Blair’s boobs, which star in Ed Burns’ new movie Purple Violets, are going to look mighty tiny on the iPod screen.

A documentary about Karl Lagerfield will screen at Film Forum tomorrow night, with the director on hand for discussion about black clothes and Nicole Kidman.

I'm Mad as Hell!   To the editor:    read more »

Think Small: Moses’ Tiny City In Queens    read more »

Think Small: Moses’ Tiny City In Queens    read more »

Memo to: Al Gore From: Ari Gold Subject: Your Oscar Speech   Dear Al:    read more »

Jonathan Raban’s third novel, Surveillance, opens with a school-bus explosion, the rescue work  read more »

Every year, the media tends to beat certain words, phrases and concepts to death.  Remember the  read more »

“I think it’s kind of ridiculous,” Robert F.  read more »

• Glorious 2007 will bring us Brooklyn's first gated community. Hoorah! Mill Harbor Waterview Residences (pictured above) will be a nine-building complex of 1-to-3-bedroom condos for between $400,000 and $700,000. The creepy community will even get a pool, patio, Jacuzzi, and "clubhouse." [Multi-Housing News]
• The juicy year-end recaps are still coming, and The Real Deal has summarized the "plenty of records [that] fell last year." The numbers range from $66.65 per square foot (record average asking rent for Manhattan Class A office space) to $36,000,000,000 (biggest leveraged buyout). [TRD]
• Who knew Brooklyn had its very own Skidmore, Owings and Merrill-designed Urban Renewal apartment complex? It's sort of beautiful but imposing, or maybe even "clever and dull." [Brownstoner]
• Adam Platt picks his 10 favorite new restaurants of the year, which have fancy names like Sfoglia, A Voce and L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon. [New York]
• Iridescent Black Brick is very hot right now in East Chelsea--and among modernist Australian architects. [See after the jump]
- Max Abelson  read more »
• 0 comments

My dream is to make a rhinestone-studded ceiling,” said Jennifer Oz LeRoy, owner of Tavern on  read more »

My dream is to make a rhinestone-studded ceiling,” said Jennifer Oz LeRoy, owner of Tavern on the  read more »

Maybe people are so used to learning disturbing things about Wal-Mart that the latest news from Amer  read more »

Maybe people are so used to learning disturbing things about Wal-Mart that the latest news from Amer  read more »

We've spent months pining for a Flatiron Apple store. First we thought the iPod-people would be opening up on 136 Fifth Avenue, but our hopes were dashed when a middle aged-ladies' clothing store went there instead.  read more »

As long-awaited recomense, there is some thrillingly anti-PC news this morning: Apple is opening it's third Manhattan locale, at West 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. It's not Flatiron, but it'll do just fine.

The Real Deal says the space will be 50 by 75 by 100 feet, and we're looking into other wonderful numbers. - Max Abelson

Albert Sipzener puts in 60- to 70-hour weeks as vice president of Shikiar Asset Management, an inves  read more »

Congressman Steve Israel delivers iPods donated by the Plumbers Union to New York National Guard members in Hauppauge.

Council Member Tony Avella announces a new anti-grafitti initiative at Bonnie Brite Cleaners in Flushing.

Carolyn Maloney and the NYC Breastfeeding Promotion Leadership Committee and the Brooklyn Alliance for Breastfeeding Empowerment will hold their 3rd annual subway breastfeeding caravan to mark World Breastfeeding Week.

—Nicole Brydson

From the A.P., May 8, 2006:  “Iran’s leader has written to President Bush, in the f  read more »

I just got the page proofs of my latest book, my eighth. Will it also be my last?  read more »

If you’ve ever visited a former Communist republic, you know that graffiti can be a problem.  read more »

If you’ve ever visited a former Communist republic, you know that graffiti can be a problem.  read more »

You know those pain-in-the-ass (literally) counter stools they have at places like Starbucks and you  read more »

And so we’ve come to the final days of 2005.    read more »

iPod, Therefore I Am: Thinking Inside the White Box, by Dylan Jones. Bloomsbury, 288 pages, $14.95.  read more »

iPod, Therefore I Am: Thinking Inside the White Box, by Dylan Jones.  read more »

In keeping with the magazine industry's longtime love affair with lists ("Top 5 Things Magazines Love: Lists, Sex Advice, iPods, Eva Longoria, and... Surprises!"), the American Society of Magazine Editors has announced their Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years.

Making the list are some predictable choices: Saul Steinberg's "View of the World from 9th Avenue," in The New Yorker; George Lois' Andy Warhol drowning in Campbell's soup for Esquire, and... surprises!

But less well-publicized was ASME's Worst 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years. Twenty of the selected covers were of the cast of Desperate Housewives in various configurations. The remaining 20 are listed below:

Vanity Fair, September 2005 (Paris Hilton Wearing White Her Way!).

Tie: Rolling Stone, November 27, 2003 (Housewife of the Year: Jessica Simpson); January 17, 1985 (The Secret Life of Hall and Oates).

New York, August 16, 2004 (Defending Joel Steinberg). Spin, September 2000 (Creed Confess Their Sins).

Tie: TIME, July 5, 1999 (Cruise & Kidman Like You've Never Seen Them); January 24, 2000 (The Big Deal: How The AOL-Time Warner Merger Happened).

Esquire, December 1995 (Jim Carrey Feels No Pain). The New Yorker, January 31, 1994 (AKA, 'Anthropomorphic Hassidic Bull with Horns').

Eleven-Way Tie: GQ, February 1998 (Big Ben: Ben Affleck Bellies Up to Stardom); Details, July 1999 (Ben Affleck: Armageddon's Rocket Man); Premiere, August 1999 (Ben Affleck Kicks Asteroid!); Vanity Fair, October 1999 (Ben Affleck: Gwyneth, Girl Talk, And the Whole Matt Thing); Talk, October 2000 (Ben Affleck: "People say I should live like a rock star"); People, February 21, 2000 (The Real Ben Affleck); GQ, May 2001 (Ben Affleck's Journey To Manhood); Details, April 2002 (Ben Affleck's True Hollywood Story); US Weekly, August 12, 2002 (J.Lo & Ben's Hot New Love); People, August 12, 2002 (J.Lo & Ben Affleck's Red-Hot Romance); US Weekly, November 4, 2002 (J.Lo & Ben Wedding on the Way?).  read more »

—Matt Haber

Urban living presents many dilemmas, and one of them—perhaps not quite the most acute, but signifi  read more »

Urban living presents many dilemmas, and one of them—perhaps not quite the most acute, but sig  read more »

David Colby sat in the café of Coliseum Books, just blocks from the Algonquin Hotel where he&  read more »

Back when summer actually meant a few months of relaxing and down time to New Yorkers, one of the mo  read more »

Back when summer actually meant a few months of relaxing and down time to New Yorkers, one of the mo  read more »

In today's New York Post, Michael Kane writes about a religious movement even stranger than Scientology: The Cult of The Klosterman.

Like this summer's other much covered alternative religion, The Cult of The Klosterman has a writer and self-styled expert on everything at its core: SPIN editor and Esquire columnist Chuck Klosterman, whose new book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story was released in late June.

Kane scans a reading Klosterman gave at a Barnes & Noble and identifies his people:

These are the Klostermaniacs, the ever-growing Cult of Chuck that includes bookworms, bloggers and even uber-goober Seth Cohen on "The O.C.," who hailed Chuck's geek wisdom on an episode last season.

Like L. Ron Hubbard, this godhead has vocal detractors as well: In 2003, The New York Press' Mark Ames called Klosterman the a "metaphor for everything vile in [his] generation."

A close reading of Kane's Post article reveals that Klosterman is clearly a metaphor for everything nerdy in his generation. A tally of vocabulary used in the thousand-or-so word article:

Nerd or its variants (e.g. 'nerdy') : 7

Hipster: 8

Geek or its variants (e.g. 'geeky'): 4

Dweeb or its variants (e.g. 'dweebiac') : 2

Glasses, as in "Buddy Holly glasses": 3

iPod: 2

Goober: 1  read more »

—Matt Haber

Feeling a bit goofy from my cousin's wedding, my son and I emerged around midnight from the D.J.  read more »

"We're about history. Apple's about the future.  read more »

You've seen the ad: Shadowy figures wearing white earpieces gyrate against brightly colored backdrop  read more »

On a recent F train commute to work, I missed my stop.  read more »

It's apropos that New York's Apple Store is in the old Soho P.O.  read more »

Marauding Miscreants' Motto:'Bring Us Your Weak'  read more »