No place is safe from the unmarriage movement: MM is guerilla marketing his book to T riders in Boston. Perhaps this can be incorporated into the Craigslist Language?
· Metro [cohabitationation.com via mop phone call]
· Bizarre Secret Craig's List Language [gawker]

USA Today discovers meta. (Insofar as the author of the article attended Brown, we're thinking this must be a tad tongue in cheek.)
· Hipsters Never Met Meta-Hyperbole They Didn't Like [usatoday via MBS]

One year later, and a mere eight months after deadline, the renovated north side station of the Delancey Street F Train re-opened this past weekend. Just imagine: New poured concrete floors. Walls of brushed metal. An upscale shopping boutique. The new Jean Georges burgers-and-beer comfort food emporium. Actually, there are none of these things. But the escalator works again and the old joint does look a little cleaner. The long nightmare for Rivington residents is over.

Some fresh scenery over at Josh's web presence.
· JoshAlbertson.com [joshalbertson.com]

Deal Lunch offers a good peek at the direction of literary fiction. It seems the sprawling modern novel is getting, well, more sprawling.

Iowa Writers' Workshop student Robert Rosenberg's first novel SHAKE THE EARTH ON WHICH I STANDS, both a love story and a contemporary parable of people caught between the call of age-old traditions and the allure of the modern world, set in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, interweaving the stories of an entrepreneurial Kyrgyz man and his beautiful daughter, an idealistic U.S. aid worker, and a young Apache man trying to get as far as possible from the reservation, brought together by fate in Istanbul, Turkey, on the eve of the tragic earthquake of 1999, to Heidi Pitlor at Houghton Mifflin, in a very good deal, in a pre-empt, by Dorian Karchmar at Lowenstein-Yost (NA).

Best Gawker post ever.
· Tease Marketing [gawker.com]

I'd been following this tale on FC earlier this week, but Nick Denton has the goods on a hilarious memo gone very wrong.
· Julie Meyer and the Missing Stationery [nickdenton.org]
· The Missing Stationery [internalmemos.com]

Sometimes, I think the only person who enjoys reality TV more than me (or Basta) is Matt Drudge:

AMERICAN IDOL' [17.5 RATING/24 SHARE] ROCKETS FOX [15.5/22] /// MURDOCH NET PULLED IN NEARLY DOUBLE THE AUDIENCE OF ITS CLOSEST COMPETITORS [NBC [9.2/13]; ABC [8.4/12]; CBS [6.9/10]] WEDNESDAY NIGHT... ABC'S 'BACHELORETTE' [9.1/13] LATEST CASUALTY OF 'IDOL'; 'WEST WING' [7.9/11] FROZEN OUT; CBS '60 MINS 2' [6.8/10] BACKROWED... 'IDOL' MAX 28 SHARE LOS ANGELES; 28 CHICAGO; 32 SHARE DALLAS... MORE...

JVG is revving up the Book of Ages hype machine. Brace yourself. Only nine months until publication. (Personal to focus group members: A cover has been chosen. The first one.)
· Book of Ages Sneak Preview [jvg.com]
· Book of Ages [bookofages.com] coming someday: actual content!

Aaron Bailey ups the ante with Google molestation.
· More Google Molestation [601am.com]

He of the teashop, Moby weighs in on Fark's "Photoshop Moby" thread. What a mensch.
· Photoshop Moby [fark.com]
· Photoshop Moby Feedback [moby.com via anil dash]

When this guy does get around to searching for himself on Google, he's sure going to be surprised by all the new results.
· In Search of Chris Otto [cohabitationation.com]

MOP has an update on his Google experiment ("My post is now the fifth entry on Google"), but the big news is his posting of what might be called the Palmermix Year in Music 2002. For those new to MC Palmermix, he leans singer-songwriter but surfs virtually all musical genres. Plenty of good picks, plus some amusing pans: Steve Earle's Jerusalem ("A complete disappointment"), Beth Orton's Daybreaker ("Zzzzzzzzz"). As one of the lucky who'll receive the Palmermix 2002 CD collection, we're already excited.
· Year in Review [palmermix.com]
· Experiment, part two [palmermix.com]

This morning, Palmermix is trying an interesting experiment involving Real Networks and Google, while over at Antagozine, JVG is taking me to task. (UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis has given MOP's Google hack a name: "Google Calling.")
· Experiment [palmermix.com]
· Antagozine Inbox [antagozine.com]

MM emails: "Actually, I believe the quote from you was 'single worst designed site on the web.'"

It's a shame the franking privilege doesn't apply to city councilmembers, because I'd love to be hearing more from District 1 Councilmember Alan Jay Gerson. His recent mailing to residents of the LES and surrounding areas indicates that he's single-handedly responsible for solving many of our city's ills. A sampler:

I was one of the first government officials to object to the premise that all 11 million square feet of office space had to be restored to the World Trade Center site. I launched an unprecendented urban planning initiative, brining together the families of victims, downtown residents and noted architects, to work together on plans for the site...

I succeeded in redirecting more than $150 million in federal relief funds to help local residents and small 'mom and pop' businesses...

I am working to prevent over-develpment in low-rise sensitive areas like NoHo, SoHo, the East Village, South Street Seaport and TriBeCa... [noted: absence of LES from list]

I have created coalitions of community organizations to perpetuate viable manufacturing, to provide human services, to preserve affordable housing, to establish an Asian-American cultural center and to create a new downtown recreational facility...

Southampton... Haven for unmarriage?
· Passionate Response to Registry Plan [newsday via Cohabitation Nation]

1) Justice Ginsburg: "Petitioners do not challenge the 'life plus 70 years' time span itself... Whether such referents mark the outer boundary of 'limited Times' is not before us today." Interesting.
2) Justice Ginsburg: (re above point): "Justice Breyer's dissent is not similarly restrained."
3) Justice Breyer: "Even if it is difficult to draw a single clear bright line, this Court could easily decide (as I would decide) that this particular example goes too far."
4) Justice Ginsburg: "Calibrating rational economic incentive, however... is a task primarily for Congress, not the courts. Congress heard testimony from a number of prominent artists; each expressed the belief that the copyright system's assurance of fair compensation for themselves and their heirs was an incentive to create... [see] statement of Bob Dylan; statement of Don Henley; statement of Carlos Santana." What a lineup! Palmermix, how about some analysis?
5) Justice Breyer: "Could it justify yet further extension of the copyright on the song 'Happy Birthday to You' (meolody first published in 1893, song copyrighted after litigation in 1935) still in effect and currently owned by a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner?"
6) Justice Stevens: "If Congress may not extend the scope of a patent monopoly, it also may not extend the life of a copyright beyond its expiration date."

JCN emails, "A search on LS.com for 'pants' reveals a startling number of links hilighting the term 'points.' I smell conspiracy." Why, you may ask, is JCN searching for pants? He has a strange obsession with the word. In other JCN news, he's currently the best looking person in Finland.
· LS.com 'pants' Search [atomz.com] Atomz... man, that is technology
· Best Looking Person in Finland [sony-europe.com] JVG beat us to this one. Curses!

The Supreme Court has rejected our challenge to the Sonny Bono Law." I'm heading to lunch to read the opinions.
· Lawrence Lessig Weblog [cyberlaw.stanford.edu]
· Eldred Links [corante via scripting news]

From today's Times corrections:

A picture on Saturday with a profile of John Chang, a Taiwan politician, carried an incorrect credit. It should have read "carstenschael.com," not Carsten Schael.

If it's mid-January, it's time to start thinking about summer shares in the Hamptons. From my perch at HC&G, I touched base with one of the Hamptons' top brokers, who shared this perspective: "The market is dead out here. Moribund. Flatlined. Deserted. Still dinner cost $225 for two last friday at N&T." Last year, the smart move was to wait out the rental market, which usually picks up in early spring but never really got going until May. This year, it looks like it will be lucky to pick up at all. We're browsing the summer rental catalog from Allan Schneider, and prices are down. The sellers market is even more hilarious. Sez our broker pal, "The buyers with limitless funds are not buying but rather laughing at the extraordinary hutzpa of the sellers." Sez my boss, "In my 25 years in the Hamptons, I've never seen as many For Sale signs as there are this winter."
· State of the Market Report [hcandg.com]
· Allan M. Schneider Associates [allanschneider.com]

From a blogging neighbor, another perspective on the new hotel:

so that is what the structure is, a new hotel. i resent it. this thing is literally in my backyard. first of all, during the summer i could not sleep past seven am without hearing the construction OR their music. once, i was playing janni's comp of new order rarities. and as i was listening from my bathroom (which is all the way on the other side of the apartment from the terrace which faces the hotel), i wondered, is this a new remix of temptation? i don't remember a remix having such a strong salsa backing track. i went back to my room and then i realised that it was coming from the construction workers and it was fucking loud.

secondly, the structure is pretty tall and it is blocking the light. will i be able to sit on the terrace and read on nice summer afternoons this year? i had better, or i'm going to throw rotten eggs at the motherfuckers.

PCs in the press room at CES proved impossible to access once attendance spiked last Thursday, so we opted for a five-day Internet vacation. In this fast-moving world, that was enough time for MM (creator of a personal website once charitably labeled "the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen") to launch a very promising cohabitation-centric weblog, and score a Salon interview. Looks like another big year for the scone eaters at ATMP.
· Cohabitation Nation [cohabitationation.com]
· Unwedded Bliss [salon.com]
· Alternatives to Marriage Project [unmarried.org]

I knew there was a reason I used to skip these things. The only reason to come out a day before the show opens (other than to see Bill Gates talk for the nth time) is to sythesize some of the 1,000 media kits. (This year has the added bonus that, in an unexpected twist, I wrote three of the damn kits: one for an obscure Taiwanese concern, one for an obscure (but cool -- more tomorrow) U.S concern, and one for a major CE player whose name will not be revealed here: Samsung.) But of course none of the major players drop their press kits until tomorrow. They're missing a free media bonanza.

So, who to plug? Well, a new "illuminated keyboard" company called eluminX is sponsoring the keyboards in the press lounge, like the one I'm using now. Is this a good product? Think of the first iMac keyboard crossed with the ca. 1984 IBM PC Jr. "chicklet" keyboard and you'll have an idea. As an added bonus, the keyboard seems to light up, which I envision will be a boon to struggling typists working in windowless, lightless spaces.

Also noted: it's desperation time for satellite radio. I put a fork in 'em last spring, and it's clear from the crazed propoganda going on about me -- Sirius has a press tent out front of the convention center, which XM counters with a giant inflatable radio, and XM is sponsoring the press badges in a desperate plea for publicity -- that it's now or never. Subscriber figures for XM are out today, and though XM's subscriber base is now up to 360,000, the reality is that they are far, far from the number needed just to break even. As for Sirius, the ugly younger sister of the two, the future's so bright... well, you get the idea.
· The Future Is Bright! [eluminx.com]
· XM Satellite Radio Lifts Stock [Yahoo Finance]
· Sirius Available for Hertz Customers in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver [Yahoo Finance] Big news!

Vegas, baby. Vegas.

Busy day. We almost missed the famous Oatsie1, mother of the O P clan, making a Times appearance:

"What social life?" asked Mary Louise Oates, a writer who, with her husband, Bob Shrum, a Democratic consultant and speechwriter, presides over a kind of perpetual open house for Democratic politicians, aides, Hollywood celebrities and journalists.

"It's sure different. We don't know who's in the White House as far as guests. We don't know what time parties begin. We know they end early. When you stop and think of the thousands of inches given to George Stephanopoulos as an eligible bachelor and his hair style, and to the names of people who had midlevel jobs in the Clinton administration, I think it's a very different, different world now. There's no anecdotal relief."

I'm not in Vegas yet, but already I'm feeling queasy.

Gartenberg added that getting digital content into portable devices will be a key theme throughout the year and that there will be significant attention paid to Microsoft and its Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT) as the software giant moves beyond PCs and handhelds to appliances... SPOT is software that allows devices, such as alarm clocks, to run Microsoft's .Net Compact Framework and gain access to data stored on a central PC. [emphasis mine]

.Net alarm clocks? As Bill Simmons would say, I will now light myself on fire.
· Gadgets Galore at CES [news.com via gizmodo]

If JVG was blogging Macworld, I think it would read something like this.
· LIVE Keynote Coverage! [crazyapplerumors.com]

This has gotta be one of the best weeks of reality TV in recent memory. Last night, Joe Millionaire. Wednesday, The Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole Hawaii (though we can't condone missing The West Wing or MC Palmermix will hunt us down). Thursday, rerun of the High School Reunion premier and the debut of This Surreal Life. Life is good.
· It Was So Stupid, I Couldn't Stop Laughing [nypost.com]
· Enter the Gold Diggers [realitytvonline.com via sirlinksalot]
· Nice (Student) Body [nypost.com]
· Reality TV Wrapup [pagesix via yahoo news]

Getting ready for early AM departure tomorrow to Vegas. Funny how everyone thinks I'm going to Comdex. Funny too how no one (all two conversations I've had about this, natch) believes me when I tell them that CES has always been bigger in terms of exhibitors, even at the height of the tech boom in the late 1990s. Sam Diaz of the Merc News wrote a column Sunday about the rise of CES:

In previous years, Comdex would have offered more eyes to view the products. But CES is clearly catching up -- ready to take the lead as the biggest tech show. The show has already registered more than 100,000 people, down from the peak of 120,000 in 2001 but up from last year's 99,000. By comparison, Comdex brought about 125,000 people to Las Vegas in November, about the same as the year before but down from the 200,000 who attended in 2000. Likewise, the number of exhibitors has shifted. CES will bring 2,040 companies to the show floor this year, up slightly from last year's 2,000. Comdex saw 1,100 exhibitors in November, down from almost 1,700 the year before.

JVG has an idea for a new neighborhood ackronym: SloWiTe ("slo-wee-tay").
· Brooklyn Update: BoCoCa [jvg.com]

We'd sworn ourselves off LES news this week, being that we're heading to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show and then a weekend of good times, but the proprietors of Verlaine hooked us up with some big neighborhood scoop when we were hanging out there post-2am on Saturday night... and we just can't resist.

It seems the looming monstrosity across the street from my place won't be a W Hotel after all, but rather one from André Balazs, proprietor of the Standard hotels in LA and the Mercer Hotel (actual name: Hotel (The Mercer)), here in NYC. Other details leaked by the Verlaine crew: there'll be a "three-star restaurant" (how Michelin) on the first floor, a spacious lounge/bar on the third or fourth floor, and glass sheathing covering the whole damn thing. (Hope they enjoy our rooftop barbecues.) Opening? "One year. We've been asking them for two years when it will be ready, and they always say the same thing: one year." So is it true about no W? Take the news with a grain of salt. After all, it was the Verlaine guys who first told us, lo these many months ago, that the hotel would be a W. Calls to André Balazs to confirm were not... uh, made.
· Mercer Hotel [mercerhotel.com]
· The Standard [standardhotel.com] Note: groovy tunes
· Concept of Hotels [designforum.fi] Includes quote, "On the other hand, alcohol consumption has increased substantially, despite the cooling economy. Perhaps this is not such a surprise after all."

Michael Wolff is just on an absolute roll these days. This week's column jumps from Bloomberg to Lott to Weinstein to Gore to Bush to Bloomberg as naturally as the driven snow, all to show that it's the media, stupid.

I will tell you: The press needs to be handled. If you’re not taking care of me, stroking me, anticipating my whims -- and gently threatening me, too -- you must be doing something wrong. If you’re not doing everything to get me to write positively about you, then you’re a screwup. If you can’t fool me, then you’re the fool.

Adult World. It's Adult World.

Thanks to nice links from nice people, some new readers found our little Web Presence this week. (Example: My downstairs neighbor, who thought maybe he had written the part about the giant inflatable rat outside our building.) In a city where "ahead of the curve" is a lifestyle, not just a parlor game, we're not surprised that they know the LES as well (hell, probably better) than we do. These kind souls have filled in some gaps from our LES Awards. Read on...

From the lovely SA, our secret source on most everything food and wine related:
1. "'Elita' was coined by Soren Larson at Time Out. I'm sure he'll accept royalty checks in lieu of a shoutout..." No, we'll go with the shoutout.
2. "Error in name of Adult Space...Not telling what correct name is till we work out a royalties agreement." Hmm. We're feeling 10% less cool all of a sudden.
3. "Please keep trashing Gatsby's till it gives up and goes away. Please. Ditto Mooza, Charbon."

From our downstairs neighbor Chris:
1. "What is Adult Space?" Er, it's so secret that that's not even its name.
2. "No mention of Pianos?" We visited Pianos, Ludlow's new posh spot, back in October and gave it a thumbs-up. Then we questioned its signage in November. One alert reader emailed us to say that the signage was actually the original pianos sign from a pianos store on that site. To us, though, it looked like a faux "original" piano sign -- an even more damning aesthetic crime in our book. We're happy to report that all is well and good: they removed the sign last month to make room for a metal grate retraction device.
3. "You've never been to El Castillo de Jaugua? that place is great." N.B. This is the place that won our award for "Best Moment of Pure Poetic Justice." Attendance unlikely.

From the estimable Susan W.:
1. "I wonder if I've missed an LS.com comment on the restaurant Dish (Allen St.?). Been reading good things about it." Fair point. We haven't made it into Dish yet, being that our policy is to let the Daily Candy crowds thin for a month before attending. But wait! What crowds? We walked by Dish last week and peered in at dinner time, and the place was eerily empty. Like, tumbleweed city, baby. Conclusions: 1) Daily Candy's drawing power is overrated. 2) LS.com drawing power is underrated. 3) No conculsion can accurately be drawn from this rather flimsy dataset. 4) We enjoy sequentially numbered lists.

From alert reader and fellow LES food and nightlife junkie Brad W.:
1. "General Store is wonderful -- don't be put off by the Junior Cracker Barrel look from the street. It's worth going for the hot chocolate alone. It's not 'Avenue'-level hot chocolate, mind you, but it's the best I have had downtown. It's also my favorite new brunch place. The plates aren't as big as Clinton Street Bakery's but the amount of food is the same, and you get seated immediately." This is the new Lower Ave. B place mentioned here a few months back. We'll give it a try.
2. "On a sad note, Café Fanfulla (6 Clinton) seems to have closed permanently. I always loved that place, but it just never caught on."
3. "I had a drink at Tenement the other night. It brought to mind the phrase "Epcot exhibit of an Upper East Side Lounge." There were maybe five people total in attendance: me, my date, the bartender, his date, and a North Orchard refugee (on his cell, of course). When thinking about ordering a second round I asked about food and got the usual "kitchen isn't open." I asked if we could get grilled cheese sandwiches from across the street. "No. Because we have a food license, regulations prevent us from allowing people to bring in outside food." So we left and the clientele was back to three."

One Bonus Award:
Most Disturbing Search Request from Our Referrer Logs This Week
"new york city restaurant urinate wine." We leave you with that.

You know the New Year is off to a great start when, on its third day, the Times tells you that you're a member of a cult you didn't even know existed.

In a city where casual lawbreaking seems like a birthright, the out-of-state plate has become the jaywalking of automotive crime. And while several other states and cities have begun cracking down on illegal registrations, saying that they drive up insurance rates, encourage fraud and hurt tax revenues, New York has continued to look the other way — even when both the city and state face huge budget shortfalls and could use any extra money they could find.

The New York Post ran a great story yesterday about the evils of fennel that captured my feelings about this noxious root. But I can't find it anywhere on the Post's website. The fennel conspiracy continues.

Didn't make it to Phish's comeback concert on New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden, but this is cool: Live Phish Downloads, a new MP3-on-demand service from Phish that's already offering the New Year's show for your listening pleasure ($11.95). By the by, informed sources say that was not Tom Hanks onstage with the band (as reported today by the Times), but rather a Tom Hanks look-alike.
· Live Phish 12/31/02 [livephish.com]
· Live Phish [livephish.com]
· The New Year Ambles In to a Phish Refrain [nytimes.com]

Recovery still underway. Catch up on recent events in the life of the proprietor of this site via other people's blogs.
· Night Before New Year's Eve Party [jvg.com]
· NYC and "As Lock" [palmermix.com]