Anyone for math books? When I go to a bookstore that’s the shelf I’m interested in. Is there any female reading this who is sympathetic to such a person? Unfortunately, I can guess the answer to that question.
— Posted by Mathematician
Once I brought a girl home to see my apartment, and, a couple of steps inside the door, she said, “What are you doing with all these books?” One year later, I was sorry I didn’t end things right there.
— Posted by Pale Ramón
the Beats, especially Jack Kerouac. Not only does he have bad taste but he will justify cheating on you philosophically.
— Posted by Abby
I DESPISE Mitch Albom!!
— Posted by stephanie
If you really want to talk about the type of liturature that is an indicator of a persons intellectual curiosity, extending to the concepts of Multiverses and Deep Time, there is SCIENCE FICTION. If you talk about “life changing” all astronauts, cosmonauts, and even taikonauts will cite being familiar with the writings of the late Arthur C. Clarke as will many others in Science and AeroSpace. Alvin Toffler said SCIENCE FICTION is your best insulator aginst “Future Shock” as we plunge headlong into a life-changing FUTURE where the aforementioned books are useless and trivial. To a great degree many of those titles are a tribute to the psychological mastery of the principles of mass marketing to which many oommenters here are obvious victims.
— Posted by Doug C.
During an online dating phase, I discovered that anyone who named “The Alchemist” as his favorite book was basically revealing that he was a sensitive stoner—to be avoided at all costs.[snip]
— Posted by Kim
malcolm gladwell is an immediate dealbreaker, even for friendship. as is thomas friedman–sorry nytimes.
— Posted by snot?
All enthusiasm for middle and low-brow stuff is a dealbreaker, since books that merely entertain, as opposed to expand consciousness, are, well… a waste of time (and yes, I mean you, Stephen King, Harry Potter, and all your legions.) But otherwise, if she’s a serious literary reader, as I am, then I think things have a chance, as long as there is some overlap in the things we like and… love (but of course such book compatibility is hardly sufficient for a successful pairing.) There’s plenty of good stuff out there (most of it not contemporary), and I’m happy to hear a different perspective on books, as long as it’s informed and understanding. My own literary love is for Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kafka, Woolf, Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, and DeLillo (oh, how beautiful “Underworld” is, despite its flaws, how I’ve loved that book as much as any woman over the past ten years…), but as I always hope to continue to grow in my understanding of literature, I am eager to have a very intelligent woman tell me about her own ideas about books. Usually the exchange is entirely quickening, though not always, well… successful. Unfortunately, we live in an age that is becoming less and less literary, where literary studies themselves are cheapened, if not destroyed, at the college-level by the overemphasis on gender and cultural politics. And come to think of it, a woman who privileges literary theory over the literary would probably be a dealbreaker for me, for such a stance is a dealbreaker for life itself. (I would say, by the way, that if you like literature, and especially if you love literature, you should not go to graduate school, that miasma of theory and pretension.) I wonder how much literary theory might figure in some people’s serious reading, and how it might affect the respective relationship potentials…
So, she just has to be a genuinely smart literary reader, and preferably… a writer, one of necessary fiction. But alas… how many such potentials are there out there?
— Posted by "Hulga frère" in rural MD
I’m a huge book snob, but it’s a devotion to the overpraised middle ground, the NPR and Oprah-approved canon that would turn me off a person.
Give me a lover of James Patterson and Nora Roberts any day over someone who thinks Lethem and Safran Foer are geniuses. Who likes a striver?
The sight of a woman reading Javier Marias, Robert Musil, Frank O’Hara or just about any of the NYRB titles and I’m immediately smitten.
— Posted by matt king
My dating philosophy is simple when it comes to books. If you don’t like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, I don’t like you.
— Posted by JLAdam
People who reject others for reading a particular book have either:
1) read the book themselves to merit their rejection of its content, in which case they are hyppocrites for dumping other readers of the same book
2) demonstrated dishonesty and sterotype by dumping someone based on a book they have never read themselves and of which they cannot, with integrity, state what they object about it.
— Posted by Student
Times: It’s Not You, It’s Your Books
Times: Literary Dealbreakers
An article on March 16 profiling three sex workers in the wake of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation after revelations that he patronized prostitutes misconstrued how two of the women, identified by the pseudonyms Faith O’Donnell and Sally Anderson, said they earned a living. The resulting misrepresentation of the two women’s work included a headline that referred to them as “high-priced call girls” and a paragraph that said they practiced “the 21st-century version of the oldest profession.”
The reporter who interviewed them, one of two who worked on the article, never explicitly asked the women whether they traded sex for money or were prostitutes, call girls or escorts; he used the term “sex workers,” a term they used themselves that describes strippers and lap dancers as well as prostitutes. Though Ms. Anderson advertises herself as a “dominatrix with a holistic approach,” he did not ask her whether that meant she also performed sex acts for money, nor did he ask Ms. O’Donnell what her work actually was before characterizing it. He and the editors should have explored whether he had determined these things precisely.
After the article was published, both women contacted The Times and said they do not perform sex for money; Ms. O’Donnell refused to be specific about what she does.
Old lede, which has been cut, plus excerpts that have also been cut:
Faith O'Donnell is a full-time video artist and a part-time prostitute who sees herself as little different from the legions of ambitious New Yorkers who harness the Internet to hawk their corporeal assets, in her case for $500 an hour....
Ms. O'Donnell, 25, is a Williamsburg hipster with entrancing blue eyes who carries a Junot Diaz novel in her NPR tote bag.
She came to New York after college to pursue acting, and has been working in the sex industry for six years, first as a stripper and lap dancer, lately as a call girl who books her own appointments. She said she relished the time spent with her clients as much as the easy money...
Ms. O'Donnell said she earned about $2,000 a week from a dozen steadies, mostly corporate executives and high-tech geeks who come back two, three or four times a month for the natural breasts, the russet bangs and the coquettish nerdiness she markets online.
[Times via Doree] (Photo via Everystockphoto)
In October, the site hired a new chief executive, Betsy Morgan, from CBS Interactive, and this summer the site will take an ambitious step by introducing its version of a metropolitan section: local versions for major cities.
Depending on specifics, HuffPo's local expansion could put the site into competition with local blog networks like Gothamist and Curbed.
[Times]
The Times' Touré ultimately decided he had no choice but to rat out the crack house:
I was tacitly aiding and abetting their immoral, illegal and dangerous behavior. What if one of the crackheads attacked my wife as she walked home? What if a kid from the day care center near the crack house found a vial on the sidewalk?
Ha ha, no such moral qualms for our tipster!
I used to live in that brownstone on the left. 129
South Oxford! We called it Oxford Manor, we had a
myspace for it and everything. This was September
06-March 07.
The crack house was right across the
street and I used to love to sit on my stoop with a
martini and watch shit go down. I would never call
the cops on those folks....they never bothered me.
The only thing that kind of bugged was the "WHOOOOP!"
sound that was constantly coming from that direction.
It became part of our vocabulary (my roommate's and
I). "Who wants to go to dinner?" "WHOOOP!"
One day,
we thought it was all over because we came out of the
house to go to dinner, and the whole street was filled
with undercover cop cars and cops all in front of the
crack house. That must have been after that black guy
snitched. But, soon after, the whooping and the shady
window transactions continued.
t is so crazy to go
on Gawker and see your old apartment. I wonder if the
guy who wrote that article is the same guy who lived
two doors down and had dread locks that were really
long that he wrapped around his neck like a choker.
There weren't really that many other black guys on
that part of the street.
Her basic income, which she says is in the six figures, comes largely from her job as an editor-at-large for the gossip tabloid The Star, for which her prime activity is not editing or writing but appearing as an expert on celebrities on cable television shows.
Runner-up for best moment: when Allison talks about her "pink-encased loaded weapon," a reference to her, uh, laptop.
The previous day my roommate took me to Leatherman (NSFW), a fetish leather store in the West Village, to pick out a harness. After selecting one, I was ordered to "Strip!" by a tall, heavyset, bald man with incredibly powerful body odor. "This is not the time to be shy," he said as he fitted my harness by placing black chrome snaps at various intersections of leather and metal. I'm surrounded by glass cases filled with assorted, oddly-shaped metallic objects for which I have absolutely no clue of their purpose. I don't ask.
With a harness selected, I needed something for the lower part of my body. My sales bear asked me, "Are you a zipper-back or zipper-front kind of guy?" I think the look in my face said enough, and he moved on to neoprene shorts, which I tried on and admittedly looked quite atrocious in.
"I'll just wear jeans."
At 1:30 AM my roommate calls and instructs me to be at Roseland Ballroom in 15 minutes. I suit up, wearing just my new harness, jeans, and a coat, and take a few shots of JD for the road. There is no line when I arrive and we head to the downstairs coat check, which is rebranded "clothes check" and is a massive operation. I scan the crowd, already seeing several people I know. The dress is pretty homogenous, either harnesses or no shirt at all, jeans or jock straps, and in many cases the only coverage was boots and a cock ring (I wonder where these people are keeping their clothes check tickets). The crowd is a mixture of people who seem to be very into "the lifestyle" and others who seem to be in it for the once-yearly novelty.
With our clothes stowed away, we head upstairs and immediately run into our first "sex show." There is a crowd of people standing around a gated-off area, and inside, two fit men tied up on a pool table. One is on his back and receiving a hand job, while the other is sitting up on his knees. Behind him, a large muscular man is greasing up the blunt end of a pool cue. The cue was inserted into the ass of one of the bound men, while the other was fitted with a condom. After being sodomized by the pool cue, the guy is guided down, ass first, onto the condom-clad dick of the other. They started fucking and we decided to walk around; it was like watching porn but we couldn't fast forward through the boring parts.
In the center of the venue is the dance floor, which is insanely crowded and we don't even dare going inside. There is an odd paradox watching these tough-looking, muscular men in fetish gear dancing to club music and remixed pop songs. On our way past the dance floor my roommate points out gay porn legend cum musician Colton Ford, who is large and very handsome in person.
We head upstairs, where things are supposed to be even more interesting. There is another sex show starting up here on a large, elevated, square stage. I recognize the first performer as famous French narcissist François Sagat (NSFW). He is shirtless and looking ripped, although much shorter than I'd imagined. He is joined by a very large, muscular black man. They wrestle around for a few minutes before the black guy opens his pants, removes his penis and starts pissing on François. First on his chest, then in his mouth, and then he turns the water gun upwards and pisses in his own mouth. This honestly doesn't do it for me, and yet I can't stop watching. They both stand up and the crowd applauds. François jumps off the stage to exit, and I quickly duck out of his way for fear of getting bumped into by this urine-soaked frenchman.
Back upstairs, we head into a large tent set up in a corner, where I trip over someone and realize a third of the people in this tent are on their knees. There are several groups of people in here, each encircling a guy getting blown. You quickly notice the two species of people: those who are shamelessly indulging in the sexual activities, and those who are shamelessly watching. A staff person walks through carrying a tray like a casino cocktail waitress, and the tray is filled with various types of free condoms and lube packets. I notice two guys fucking in one of the corners. At this point I've drank enough not to be embarrassed that I'm being a total voyeur, but when someone grabs my crotch I decide it's time to exit this tent and continue on exploring. On my way out, a guy approaches me, "Can I suck you?" I politely decline and head out.
I rejoin my friends and we decide to tour the "dark room," which is actually more of a hallway that leads to an unused exit. Near the entrance there are some drag queens sitting at a table yelling "Get your condoms and lube!" We go in, and notice some people getting blow jobs and others copulating against the walls of the hallway. It is dark, very dark. The further back you go the darker it gets. It is kind of a let-down because by the time you get to where anything interesting is possibly happening in the furthest part, it is nearly pitch black. You can hear moans, but see nothing. As we turn around and are exiting, someone accidentally hits the light switch and the vulgar truth of the dark hallway is exposed.
It is nearly 6 AM now and the bars have stopped serving alcohol, but the party is showing no signs of letting up. The downstairs pool table scene has been replaced with a bunch of women (yes, biological females) with tits out and strap-ons. My friends are lost now, and since everyone looks the same I know I'll never find them. I head back upstairs for one last round and there is another sex show at the square stage. Three young guys are on the stage, two are bound with ropes and the third is walking around with a leather whip. The one with the whip is very hot, but they all look bored, and I again wish I could fast-forward. The hot one is wearing pants, and makes another guy go down on him, but you can't really see anything and I lose patience and walk away. At $125 per admission (which does not include drinks and is so New York), I'm here to get my money's worth.
I collect my clothes and recognize the attendant as a model-about-town named Justin. He tells me I'm cute and I thank him politely, realizing that he has "dated" almost every one of my friends at some point.
I leave Roseland completely sober and enter the daylight. And even though it is 8:30 AM now, the party behind me is still raging and — somehow — I feel like I'm leaving early.
But of course the most famous feature (and the one that ruined the mint condition of all my MADs) were artist Al Jaffee's back page fold-ins. The Times has recreated a selection of the ingenious goofs from throughout the ages. They're fully interactive (you can "fold" them online!) and they're here.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Pitt? Not so fast.
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