Englishman in New York

Oh, the irony. (Via Andrea Harner.)

My sister arrives any second. Posting will be light for the next week.

Bookmark to:

An attempt to rescue EiNY from the gutter after Truck Nutz. Horowitz at Carnegie Hall, one of television’s better moments from the 1960’s.

Related:
Vladimir Horowitz (Wiki)

Bookmark to:

An Englishman in New York (not me) uses emotional blackmail to find an American in New York for an Englishman in England on Craigslist:

If you need a nice husband and you’d like to see 2 old pals re-united in the land of the free, this opportunity should not be missed

Related:
Englishman seeks American Sweetheart - 33 (Park Slope) (Craigslist)

Bookmark to:

I usually try to avoid linking to stories that reinforce the stereotype of Americans as truck-loving, gas-guzzling, gun-toting, Constitution-waving, dare I say it, rednecks. But it’s Friday and this story is too good to pass up:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Senate lawmakers in Florida have voted to ban the fake bull testicles that dangle from the trailer hitches of many trucks and cars throughout the state.

Republican Sen. Cary Baker, a gun shop owner from Eustis, Florida, called the adornments offensive and proposed the ban. Motorists would be fined $60 for displaying the novelty items, which are known by brand names like “Truck Nutz” and resemble the south end of a bull moving north.

The Florida Senate voted last week to add the measure to a broader transportation bill, but it is not included in the House version.

In a spirited debate laced with double entendre, Senate lawmakers questioned whether the state should curtail freedom of expression in vehicle accessories.

Critics of the ban included the Senate Rules Chairman, Sen. Jim King, a Jacksonville Republican whose truck sported a pair until his wife protested.

Related:
Florida moves to ban fake testicles on vehicles (Reuters)
State shaped like penis bans Truck Nutz (Autoblog)
Photos of Truck Nutz (Flickr)

(Via Metafilter)

Bookmark to:

The outcome of yesterday’s contest in Pennsylvania seems to depend upon which New York newspaper you pick up this morning. On a sliding scale, the front pages declare that Clinton “slammed” Obama (Post), “outdueled” Obama (Times), “stayed alive” (Journal) and, according to the Daily News “Another Primary and Dems Still Can’t Pick a Winner.”

Bookmark to:

The arrival of spring always heralds the beginning of what you might call New York Street Bargains Season. Sofie and I half furnished our previous apartment using items that we found in and around the streets of Prospect Heights/Park Slope, including a coffee table, lamp, chest of drawers, filing cabinet, and the wooden schoolteacher’s desk that I am currently sitting at.

When I came across this “cozy deal” at the weekend, I wasn’t totally convinced that I needed a well-used chair or these “broken in” pants. But I was impressed with the lengths the previous owner had gone to sell them, despite the fact that s/he didn’t stand to make a penny. Just goes to show that the marketing instinct is alive and well in America, even when goods are free.

Related:
From the Sidewalk to Your Living Room (New York Magazine)

Bookmark to:

One of my few gripes about The New Yorker is that the magazine doesn’t make enough of its content available online. More than once in the past couple of months, I’ve wanted to link to an article only to find it published as an abstract only. Thankfully, this recent profile of George Clooney is on the Web in full. The opening few pages will soon be pinned to my corkboard as an example of writing to strive for. Here’s a taster from the first page, Clooney at an Oscar-related panel discussion about acting and filmmaking:

The event, organized by Newsweek, was leisurely, designed to encourage a degree of self-analysis, but Clooney (looking about as skinny as a young Sinatra, his sunglasses hooked over the opening of his collar) seemed to have set himself the task of resisting group drift toward actorly grandeur or celebrity griping. He was unremittingly affable. “We have time for one more question,” he said, after taking his seat. He traded running jokes with McAvoy, and made mock-scornful comments about Day-Lewis’s exalted reputation. (“You just kill it for the rest of us; we’ll take care of you, pal.”) He capped a conversation about paparazzi intrusions with a politic acknowledgment of the privileges of fame. His manner—nonchalance underpinned, it seemed, by vigilance and self-scrutiny—carried the suggestion that almost any divergence from banter was unforgivable artsy narcissism.

This is probably the performance for which Clooney, now forty-six, is still best known, even as he has become a Hollywood emperor, not to mention a left-leaning activist and a friend of Senator Barack Obama’s. Clooney is America’s national flirt, a pitchman on talk shows and red carpets who, against the background hum of the world’s lust and envy, is lightly ironic, clever, and self-deprecating, with furrowed brow and bobbing head, and a gyration in the lower jaw suggesting something being moved around under his tongue.

Related:
Somebody Has to Be in Control (TNY)

Bookmark to:

How times have changed. (Via Gabriel.)

Translation

1.

Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics,
Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
Created in struggle by will of the people,
United and mighty, our Soviet land!

CHORUS:

Sing to the Fatherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism’s triumph lead us on!

2.

Through tempests the sunrays of freedom have cheered us,
Along the new path where great Lenin did lead.
To a righteous cause he raised up the peoples,
Inspired them to labour and valourous deed.

CHORUS

3.

In the victory of Communism’s deathless ideal,
We see the future of our dear land.
And to her fluttering scarlet banner,
Selflessly true we always shall stand!

CHORUS

Bookmark to:

Rosh Hashanah Girl and the Jewish Robot are back, this time with a Passover music video. Happy Pesach everyone.

Bookmark to: