Jane is an administrative assistant living in Brooklyn. She was born in Palo Alto in 1983. Her grandmother grew up in Nebraska next door to a little boy who sat depressed on the porch report card in hand and said, "Damn teacher knows I can't read." He called his big sister "Old Bev," and for her Jane's column is named. Email: [email protected]
Esther was the sister of a close friend of mine, and we were in a hair salon in a lavish resort in Fethiye at the end of several weeks in Turkey. Our other friends were somewhere else, maybe on a boat or in the bar, and I was sitting in a cracked leather couch in…
Four people live on the 5th floor at 470 Flushing Ave in Brooklyn. They either walk the stairs or use the freight elevator, and I suspect that based on the amount of freight in their home the elevator gets quite a bit of use. Two of the residents are production designers and brothers, and they’ve…
1. Brief Narrative on the Purpose and History of Wisher and Wish Whether it is possible to isolate one’s essence even from one’s own species will, I suppose, determine the approval of this proposal. More often than I’d like to admit I’ve rested my forehead on a cool spot of my desk, and with the…
The babies are here! Boy (Gwyneth’s Moses), Girl (Brooke’s Grier), Girl (Angelina’s Shiloh), Boy (Gwen’s Kingston). But where is Suri Cruise? For me the story starts in March 2005. I was walking up Third Avenue in the early evening and passed by Katie Holmes. She stood in front of Pop Bar and wore a white…
Cockroaches of New York, I’m sorry. I’ll understand if you decline to read this letter; that’s why I’ve put what’s important up top. I’ve said some mean things about you. I find your little eyes revolting, and your little knot-sized heart makes me panic, and I hate the little click your adult body makes when…
Professor Robert Langdon, hero of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, is a well-known symbologist, American, and bachelor. In the space of a few days in Paris and London, Langdon is accused of murder, seeks the Holy Grail, and gets the first date he’s had in years. He’s a classic bumbling hero, roused from a hotel…
Issues 1-3 of n+1 feature a section titled “The Intellectual Situation” which “usually scrutinizes the products of our culture and the problems of everyday life.” (A typical scrutiny, from Issue 2: “A reading is like a bedside visit. The audience extends a giant moist hand and strokes the poor reader’s hair.”) But in Issue 4,…
The cover of this week’s STAR Magazine features photos of Katie Holmes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Brooke Shields, Angelina Jolie, and Gwen Stefani (all heavily pregnant) and the yellow headline “Ready to POP!” Each pregnancy, according to Star, is in some way catastrophic – Katie’s dreading her silent Scientology birth, Gwyneth drank a beer the other night,…
There’s nothing about nunchucks that makes C. Alice Newman smile. They’re “violent, flashy, and outmoded,” she told me last week over pie. When her stepson, Ben, buzzed her doorbell, Alice saw him on the security camera, saw his plastic nunchucks, and pressed the intercom. “I told him to get rid of them before he came…
Dear Dr. Conley, You won’t remember me. I took your “Introduction to Sociology” lecture in the Fall of 2001 at New York University; I received a B+ in the course and we never spoke. I liked your class because it was full of good conversation starters and softball assignments and my only complaint was that…
For nearly a year after S. and I moved to Scholes Street, the laundry around the corner was operated by a broad-faced, solid, and grinning man we called Mr. Danny. He was a source of much discussion between us; in the early morning S. once saw Mr. Danny leaving the home of another neighborhood icon,…