Gotta ketchup 'em all!

Rock Center's short-lived Pokémon store (2001-2005) sold the odd piece of Pikachu-themed candy — we should know, we were there all the time — but it was nothing like this deluxe Pikachu burger, which is set to be served at a pop-up café in Tokyo that's themed entirely around the little guy. Chez Pikachu is timed to promote the new movie Pokemon the Movie XY, and other offerings include a literally stellar Pikachu beef curry and this less-than-nutritious-looking parfait, which has been retweeted 8,900 times, so it must be doing something right. Our only complaint would be that the Pikachuburger is served with tortilla chips and salsa on the side instead of fries. Let's just hope it's Pika de gallo in that ramekin. [Eataku]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: pika-pika!, pikachu, pikachu burger, pokemon, pokemon the moviexy

Hey, I did Questionable Content.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, discussing the escalating Israeli air strikes in Gaza and the rockets fired into Israel from Palestinian militant groups there, said at a press conference Friday that this latest violence shows why Israel cannot withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank as it did in 2005 from Gaza. While many have interpreted this as opposition to any two-state solution whatsoever, it reads to me as something a little different: a major Israeli requirement for any peace deal to work, and one that precludes Israel from ending its West Bank occupation without Palestinians agreeing to a deal that would satisfy that requirement.

Netanyahu says Israel cannot 'relinquish security control' in the West Bank

"I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan," Netanyahu said in response to a reporter's question. That's according to a translation from Netanyahu's Hebrew by the Times of Israel's David Horovitz, who explains that the press event received little attention in the English-language press.

In other words, a lesson that Netanyahu has drawn from the seven years since Israel unilaterally withdrew all of its military occupation forces and settlers from Gaza is that they cannot do the same thing in the West Bank, because it would too badly compromise Israeli security. (Netanyahu opposed the 2005 Gaza withdrawal at the time.) Whether you agree with his analysis or not, and surely many will not, the point is that Israel's head of government has categorically ruled out any peace plan by which Israel unilaterally pulls up stakes and leaves the West Bank outright.

Some, including Horovitz, have interpreted this as meaning that Netanyahu opposes any two-state peace plan or independent Palestinian state at all. Michael Omer-Man of 972 Magazine writes, "It's official. Not that this should really surprise anyone, as long as Netanyahu is the Israeli prime minister the occupation is forever and there will be no sovereign Palestine." While Netanyahu has previously declared his support for a two-state solution, it was under heavy American pressure and there is widespread speculation that he was not sincere.

Israeli tanks roll near Israel's border with northern Gaza (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images)

I'm not sure I share this analysis. There are valid and numerous reasons to doubt Netanyahu's commitment to reaching a two-state peace deal that would establish Palestine as an independent state, but this latest comment does not appear, to me anyway, to say that.

peace plans do exist that could grant palestine independence while meeting israeli security concerns

There are a number of two-state peace plans that simultaneously grant Palestine an independent state while also meeting Israeli security concerns. This would most likely require at least some infringements on Palestinian sovereignty over security matters, for example by allowing a long-term mutli-national peacekeeping force in the West Bank, and a number of Palestinians are skeptical of any such deal on those grounds.

The point, though, is that it is within the realm of possibility to simultaneously end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank while also meeting Netanyahu's apparent demand for some continued Israeli security control. However, it's only possible to do both as part of a negotiated peace deal agreed to by Israelis and Palestinians, since it would require Israeli and Palestinian cooperation over West Bank security issues. In other words, it is not possible to do this by Israel unilaterally withdrawing from its occupation of the West Bank, as it did from Gaza in 2005.

That, to me, is the big takeaway from Netanyahu's comments here: he has drawn, from the latest Gaza violence, the lesson that Israel can only end its occupation of the West Bank if there is a deal to grant Israel some continued role in West Bank security matters. That is not to endorse his logic, but to recognize the condition he is apparently setting on peace and what it means for the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Palestinian people are often in the news, especially when tensions run high with Israel. How much do you know about their culture, history, and traditions?

This simple, four-line chart is amazing news for the federal budget. It shows that the government is expected to spend about $50 billion less paying for the Medicare program this year than it had expected to just four years ago.

What this chart shows is how much the Congressional Budget Office expects we'll need to pay for each and every Medicare beneficiary. And over the past four years, the forecasting agency has consistently downgraded the price of covering one senior's health care costs.

Saving $1,000 per patient adds up quickly in a program that covers about 50 million people. More precisely, it adds up to about $50 billion in savings this year. The reduction in expected costs grows to $2,369 in 2019. With an expected 60 million seniors enrolled in Medicare that year, it would work out to more than $120 billion shaved off the total cost of the program.

"The numbers are impressive, and the consecutive year-to-year reductions in projected Medicare spending are unprecedented," Kaiser Family Foundation's Tricia Neuman and Juliette Cubanski, who drew up the above chart, write. "The unexpected $1,000 per beneficiary reduction in spending this year may ease short-term budgetary pressures on Medicare and could provide an opportunity for thoughtful consideration of ways to bolster the program for an aging population."

As to what is driving the lower than expected spending, that's not completely clear. But Neuman and Cubanski have a few guesses.

Unnecessary readmissions are dropping

Unnecessary readmissions — when someone turns up at the hospital a second time because something went wrong on the first visit — are bad for patients and for budgets.

The good news on unnecessary readmissions is they're becoming less frequent among Medicare patients, a drop that started at just about the same time as CBO began revising downward the cost of covering a Medicare patient.

When there are fewer trips to the hospital, insurance coverage becomes, unsurprisingly, less expensive — and that could be part of the explanation for the downward changes.

Obamacare changed the way doctors get paid

The health care law included lots of changes to the way that doctors get paid within the Medicare program, all aimed at getting doctors to provide better care at lower costs. That's true, for example, with readmissions: Obamacare now penalizes hospitals when their patient shows up for a second visit that didn't need to happen, if everything had gone right the first time.

There are dozens of changes like this that could be playing a role in explaining why Medicare may cost significantly less than initially expected. This theory, as Neuman and Cubanksi acknowledge, is still somewhat speculative. Some of these programs didn't start until 2012, which makes it difficult to attribute the revised estimates in 2010 and 2011 to health reform.

The sequester cut Medicare doctor payments

The Budget Control Act of 2011 included a 2 percent cut to Medicare doctor payments. This was significantly less than the across-the-board spending reductions of 8.6 percent that other federal agencies saw, but it might have played a role in the downward revision between 2010 and 2011.

Again though, its not a full explanation: CBO knew about the sequester in every forecast after 2011. So the agency thinks something else is going on that would drive down Medicare costs even further than the BCA can explain.

Without any clear explanation of why expected Medicare cost growth has slowed so much, Neuman and Cubanksi dub it a bit of a "mystery" — one that has incredibly good implications for the budget.

"Whatever the causes may be, the slowdown in spending is good news for Medicare, the federal budget and for beneficiaries-at least for now, and as long as it does not adversely affect access to or quality of care," they write. "Lower costs lead directly to lower Medicare premiums and cost sharing."

Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins, has recently added a most innovative apparatus: a self-serve beer machine, along the main concourse on the third-base side. This is how it works, according to The Star Tribune: There are four beer options, which…

The post Self-Serve Beer Stations Debut at Target Field appeared first on FirstWeFeast.com.

For our second scamming-related story today, we turn to those pink used-clothing bins that have been popping up all over the city and especially in Brooklyn. In case you missed it, they’re an absolute crock.

According to the Times, the bins from Narciso Recycling Company/Viltex do not “Provide Money to Charities” as their labels claim, but instead, sell donated clothing to thrift shops and businesses overseas, directly benefitting the for-profit companies. What’s more, the bins are blocking public sidewalks, which is a violation of city law and an eyesore for those of us who live near them.

So, now that you know that they’re terrible, here are your options: If a new bin pops up near your apartment, feel free to place a call to the 311 hotline. The bin will be tagged and the owner will have 30 days to remove the offending receptacle. Cool. Unfortunately, that’s not the most effective way to deal with the bins. This year, the Department of Sanitation has tagged 2,006 of the bins, but only six percent, or 132 bins, have been hauled away.

The burden falls to us to stop using them. It doesn’t matter if that garbage bag full of acid wash jeans and peasant shirts is burning a hole in the corner of your room and you can’t bear to look at it for one more minute, don’t put it in those bins! Here’s a list of non-profits in Brooklyn that would love to take those used clothes off your hands. If enough of us stop using those piece-of-crap bins, maybe they’ll disappear for good.

Follow Nikita Richardson on Twitter @nikitarbk

 

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Max Pam was twenty years old when he left Australia, in 1969, to work as a photography assistant. His interest in Islamic culture and history eventually led him to Yemen, where, in 1993, he spent the month of Ramadan travelling throughout the country. While visiting Shibam, Taiz, Al Mukallah, and Sanaa, he shot sixty rolls of black-and-white film with his medium-format camera, and kept a journal to document his journey. Pam’s photographic diary was published, in 2011, as “Ramadan in Yemen,” a limited-edition, ninety-two-page book. Its images will be exhibited at the East Wing Gallery, in Doha, this month, coinciding with Ramadan.

All photographs courtesy of Max Pam/East Wing Gallery.

...read more

Third most popular Sina Weibo microblog post of the past 24 hours…

From Sina Weibo:

@微博搞笑排行榜: A restaurant in Chengdu hired foreign male model to be a server!! Business has exploded!!!!

Comments from Sina Weibo:

山涧小院子：

Tisk tisk, seeing so many people in the comments criticizing these girls for worshiping the foreign and fawning over foreigners, really, that’s enough now! If if were a group of Heavenly Kingdom [Chinese] handsome guys, we’d be just as excited, okay?

曾静薇_：

Pshaw! What’s worth commenting about the selling sex? I just want to say: Where in Chengdu?

官网美瞳喵：

An offense to public morality! Every time I see this kind of news, my first reaction is: tell me the address!

lovewonwon：

Look at the pile of men who can’t get any eating sour grapes, as if they wouldn’t go if it were women dressed scantily as servers, hehe.

维生素Dddd：

Look at the female customers smiling and laughing so much they can’t even keep heir legs together…

喵难揍：

What can men do these days other than grumbling/complaining?! If you looked as handsome as them, there’d also be a pile of girls unable to keep their legs together for you! Unable to eat grapes so saying the grapes are sour! You’re not handsome, so you complain about women liking handsome guys; you don’t have money so you complain about beautiful girls living off rich men; you don’t have a lot of academic achievement so you complain about others having high scores but low ability! Which is to say you spend all day YY about beautiful women throwing themselves into your arms. If you have nothing better to do, then just rub one out [masturbate].

逗比-南波吐：

I see the one being carried is my girlfriend. What should I do? Should I break up with her?

扒蒜老妹儿-：

There are guys saying this group of girls worship the foreign and fawn over foreigners. Are you guys stupid or what? When you see a wave of beautiful women, do you first think of their nationality? Fuck, of course you’ll be looking at their bodies. If you had an eight-pack of abs, a face like Daniel Wu, you could be from Tieling Xiweizi Village and no one would care. Fuck, foreign worship can be dragged into even this.

我不是大龄女青年：

Fuck! What’s the address?! Get out of my way!

此号无人使用20140120：

In this kind of microblog post, it will definitely be girls being happy, guys hurling abuse, insecurities laid bare.

Like, are you kidding me with this?

1. The Good Wife

This is just so sad. It's sad, of course, because in its fifth year CBS's The Good Wife put together one of the most remarkable seasons of a drama. Ever. Across all of television (and the internet), there were many wonderful things to see during the nomination period, and we can see those represented in the Best Drama category (especially in Breaking Bad's last eight episodes, the first half of Mad Men's final season, and in HBO's explosive True Detective). But not even those shows did what The Good Wife, led by its creators, Robert and Michelle King, did for a full network season of 22 episodes. The show reinvented itself, twisting the plot and characters' relationships into a new and often troubling configuration, leading to the shocking death of Will (Josh Charles, who was nominated, thank the lord) and its aftermath. Every week, The Good Wife was delightful. In its fifth season! Anyway. As I said, it's sad. But the saddest part of all is that the Television Academy couldn’t get out of its rut to reward this show, which, after all, was the Best Drama of 2013–'14. —Kate Aurthur

CBS

2. The Americans 3. Keri Russell 4. Matthew Rhys

FX's The Americans is a slow burn and a challenge. It's gray and it's serious and it's violent. Also, the Academy has a history of shunning FX dramas for reasons I don't understand. So that explains — maybe — why this show was shut out for its second season. It does not explain why Keri Russell wasn't nominated for Best Actress in a Drama. Did she not go through enough playing a KGB spy trying to do spy shit while also being a loving parent and spouse? Did she not wear enough wigs? I always hate to point fingers at those who were nominated instead, because — well, it's not nice! But I can't help myself here: Claire Danes' Homeland spy character has devolved into parody, and Russell's Elizabeth Jenkins contains a thousand shades. Also: Matthew Rhys wasn't a consensus pick among Emmys pundits (Russell was), but he is her equal partner on this show, playing the emotional, conflicted Phillip. —KA

Craig Blankenhorn/FX

5. Scandal

Scandal wasn't any sort of given in the Best Drama category. Its soapiness is the opposite of the dour manliness of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad — though its moral compass may actually be exactly like Breaking Bad (in that it doesn’t have one). But would it be so wrong for the Emmys to reward the show that a huge number of people talk about and freak out over every week? I don't know whether ABC spent any money campaigning for Scandal — Kerry Washington was nominated, as she should be. Considering what Shonda Rhimes has done for television, not only in her diversity revolution, but Scandal's breakneck pacing, I don't get why Scandal isn't considered more worthy here than, say, the waning Downton Abbey. —KA

Ron Tom / ABC

6. Masters of Sex 7. Michael Sheen

Double snub for one of TV’s most intelligent dramas and the quiet but meaningful performance delivered each week by star Michael Sheen. Yes, the show was (rightly) celebrated elsewhere — a Lead Actress nomination for Lizzy Caplan, a Guest Actress nom for Allison Janney, and a Guest Actor nod for Beau Bridges — but, like the groundbreaking scientist he plays on the show, Sheen elevates the work of everyone around him. —Jarett Wieselman

Michael Desmond / Showtime

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View Entire List ›

I searched "Business Group Teamwork" on Getty and sifted through 41,177 photos to bring you this post. For authenticity, I didn't sign in to remove the watermarks.
Click photos to enlarge.

2. These "coworkers" have absolutely nothing in their offices. Not one fucking thing.

3. Title: "Authority".
That's it. That's all it said.

4. Title: "Acting Savagely".
Lord of the Flies office.

5. Just turn in your reports,
you metaphorical doofus.

6. All three women are wearing the exact same pair of fuck-me pumps. Nice work, stylist.

7. I have nothing to add.

8. On the floor.

9. Cliche + Racism = Awkward Stock Photo Hall of Fame.

 10. Subtle, Getty.

11. Part of the "business people outside with colored big balls" series. There are also "yellow ball" and "white ball" sets.

12. The man is using two water glasses as binoculars. This is not mentioned in the description.

13. I believe they're headed to a scheduled mass suicide.

14. I don't know.

15. Either making sure they haven't hired any black people, or clean hands = clean decks, or something.

16. It's "Red Shirt Friday", Mary.
WHERE'S YOUR RED SHIRT?

17. HERE IT IS, TEAM.
THE "MISSING PIECE TO THE PUZZLE".

18. Happy Birthday, Boss.

19. Lastly, there's this grey- and blue-besuited group of pale white middle managers looking for divine intervention to save their useless jobs.

For Sunday’s casual-dining review, Bryan Fitzgerald visited Shwe Mandalay, the area’s first Burmese restaurant. Short version:

The menu is a dash of Southeast Asia, a few parts Middle Eastern. There are curries and biryani, rice noodles and coconut. But beyond an amalgam of the regional cuisines of Burma’s neighbors, the most eye-catching and excellent fare here is in its own fun little realm that mashes and mixes gobs of heat, sweet and salt in ways that may seem, to American palates, to range from adventurous to downright odd.

Fish and shrimp are salted, pounded into paste and whipped into bamboo shoots and hibiscus leaves. There is a salad of tofu, shrimp powder and tamarind. Mutton is ground down, dried and fried in curry.

The ubiquitous condiment served with each entree is a small ramekin of salted fish that’s been pulverized into pebbles and fried, colored with scorching chilies to a brilliant red. If sold in bulk at the eatery, a container of the busily briny and searingly hot mix would instantly replace the bottle of Cholula hot sauce I keep on my desk at work.

Photo of tea-leaf salad by Lori Van Buren/Times Union.

Just as the neighborhood got rid of its only heavy metal bar, Park Slope has a terrifying new problem on its hands: A local resident’s pregnant Mexican Red Rump tarantula is missing.

According to Gothamist (via Reddit), the “mostly harmless” Penelope went missing from her South Slope home recently. Her loving owner has been taping up posters featuring this message around the neighborhood:

Have you seen Penelope? She’s a Mexican Red Rump Tarantula

I know she looks crazy scary, but she’s mostly harmless. She’s pregnant, so I’m hoping to find her before she has her babies. She’s mostly active at night and likes to hide in dark corners. She shouldn’t bite, but sometimes jumps when frightened. If you find her, please try to catch her and put her in a tupperware bowl with a few holes in the top for air. Then please call me and I will come and get her.

Then there’s a phone number, but unfortunately it’s been cut off in all the pictures we have available.

Wikipedia confirms the owner’s claims, saying that Mexican Red Rumps are “typically docile” and that females like Penelope can live for up to 15 years! Pretty interesting. Here’s hoping she’s reunited with her owner sooner rather than later.

Follow Nikita Richardson on Twitter @nikitarbk

[All photos by Robert Sietsema]

Union Turnpike and Hillside Avenue at Queens' far eastern border, a suburban enclave that hardly seems like New York City, boasts an inordinate number of fantastic South Asian restaurants, some of which are unbelievably inexpensive. Taste of Kerala Kitchen is a comfortable spot that showcases the cuisine of India's southernmost state, featuring lots of coconut milk, seafood, pungent beef, lamb, and poultry curries, and — brace yourself! — pork. When was the last time you saw pork served in an Indian restaurant? Here, it's a clear legacy of a historic Portuguese presence in Kerala, a colonial influence is still being felt in the food.

There are many unfamiliar dishes on the menu that might make you wonder just what kind of restaurant you're in, and one great introduction is the thali called "Kerala Meals." Given the quantity and quality of the food, the price is astonishing: $7 at lunch and $10 in the evening. Bobbing on its metal tray are 11 dishes and condiments, propelled by a big serving of polished rice and a papadam, and including thoran — a vegetarian mince of yard beans flavored with coconut, a bright orange mango-and-yogurt mixture called pulissery, and a fish curry and meat curry that vary according to what the restaurateurs feel like serving on a given day. Under ordinary circumstances, you could share this with another diner and be perfectly satisfied, so rich are the selections. 267-05 Hillside Ave, Glen Oaks, Queens, 718-470-1702.

Years ago it was located at the busy corner of Ninth Avenue and 34th Street; nowadays it hides on 28th midblock, just north of the FIT campus. Soul Fixins' (punctuation theirs) is one of those soul food spots that used to dot the dining landscape, but are now largely disappeared — though the menu of ribs, oxtails, mac and cheese, collards, and chicken done several ways will still be instantly familiar. Most dinners come in at less than $10, which is something of a minor miracle in modern Midtown Manhattan, and specials at lunch whittle the price down a bit. One is available most of the day, offering a quarter fried chicken, and a good one, along with mixed veggies, mashed potatoes with copious gravy, and cornbread for $7.95. It's probably one of the cheapest fried-chicken dinners of this size available in the borough. 225 W 28th St, 212-736-1345.

Yun Nan Flavour Snack has been a fixture of Sunset Park's Chinatown for more than a decade, dispensing noodles that originated in a province of China that lies right across the border from Southeast Asia. The place was cramped; the noodles heavy on offal. Not long ago an amplified version of the noodlery named Yun Nan Flavour Garden appeared, with infinitely more comfy surroundings, but a menu that wasn't really much bigger, if you reduce all the iterations of rice and noodle dishes to their common elements. Priced at $5.25 to $6, these are a great deal, featuring pork, lamb, and chicken stews and soups, some of them spicy. But the real revelation of the menu — apart from a cold series of dishes like pig ear, seaweed, and spicy cucumber that might have been borrowed from a Sichuan restaurant — was the recipe called Crossing the Bridge Noodles, featuring a steaming bowl of plain broth in which you cook things like thin-sliced pork, a piece of black medicinal chicken, quail eggs, garlic, chives, bean cured sheets, sprouts, and spaghetti-like soft noodles. Priced at $8.75, one bowl feeds two. 5121 8th Ave, Brooklyn, 718-633-3090.

· All Posts By Sietsema [~ENY~]
· All Coverage of Cheap Restaurants [~ENY~]

On Monday, we published a piece on classic rock — about how data analysis is crucial to defining it and which songs it comprises. We also looked at the artists who — at least on classic rock radio stations — were most disproportionately represented by a single song.

But then there’s the question that formed the piece: Why did I hear Green Day on a classic rock station? The simple answer: After some market research, a programmer decided that a sprinkling of “American Idiot” was precisely what the demographic the radio station wanted to hit would want to hear. The more interesting answer: “American Idiot” is probably becoming classic rock, sooner or later and whether I like it or not.

So what, precisely, is the beginning and end of classic rock, as radio currently defines it?

Looking at my data on the release year for each song in the current classic rock playlist, The Beatles, in the early 1960s, mark the earliest rumblings of the genre. Then, in 1967, we see a jump in the number of plays, thanks to The Doors’ eponymous first album, The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and lots of Jimi Hendrix. Six years later, it’s 1973, the biggest year in the current definition of classic rock:

So when does “classic rock” end? That’s the thornier question.

If we’re being very liberal with our threshold, it hasn’t. We saw that a few songs from recent years were played on stations that bill themselves as classic.

If we’re being even slightly stringent with what qualifies, the most recent song with more than 10 spins across the 25 stations I monitored was “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down (released in 2000). But even that seems a bit late.

So what about a somewhat inclusive definition centered around the median classic rock song? Of the 1,652 songs for which we have accurate release year data, the median song was released in 1977. If our definition is the middle 90 percent of songs — essentially, cutting out the earliest 5 percent and latest 5 percent — that gives us a range of 1966 to 1995, which is reasonable.

But including the early 1990s makes some people squirm. Of 1,350 spins of songs released in the 1990s, 699 were released in 1990 or 1991 — so maybe that’s our end date? Indeed, 1991 was an important year in rock, according to Eric Wellman, the station director of Q104.3 FM in New York and the classic rock brand manager at Clear Channel. According to Wellman, “1991, as your data actually says accurately, was where it all splinters to hell.”

Before Nirvana, the hair metal of the ’80s, soft rock of the ’70s and pop rock of the ’60s all found a station to cohabit. “Nirvana came along, and we all went, ‘What?’ ” Wellman said.

Nirvana’s entrance splintered rock-and-roll into any multitude of emulators and reactions. Classic rock radio operates on the idea — as we explored in Monday’s piece — that if you ask people what they consider classic, they will tell you and you can play that. But Nirvana muddied the waters.

“The funny thing is, we play Nirvana now,” Wellman said. “There’s only a handful of songs that you’d play on a classic rock station, but the biggest ones, we play. And you know why? Because the baby that was on the cover of ‘Nevermind’ just graduated from college. That album is 23 years old. Guess what? It’s classic.”

So for the time being, if you want a timeline, classic rock is the stuff between The Beatles …

… and Nirvana.

Defining this stuff is tricky, but that’s what data analysis is for. Will classic rock continue to expand? Only time — and of course, observable market forces — can tell.

If you’ve ever walked down Flatbush Avenue, then you know the telltale clownish honking sound that means a dollar van is approaching. The dollar vans—an informal network of thirteen-seat buses that operate in areas of New York largely unserviced by public transportation—are periodically under scrutiny by the NYPD and the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Since they are largely unregulated, there is no way to learn about their routes except from people who drive or ride the dollar vans. Until now.

In an investigative project for the New Yorker, journalist Aaron Reiss created the first interactive, extensive map of the dollar van networks that run in New York City. Through videos and interviews with drivers, Reiss looks at each of the major lines: the vans that run from Manhattan’s Chinatown to the ones in Elmhurst, Flushing, and Sunset Park, the ones that run down the length of Flatbush Avenue, the vans in Eastern Queens, and a network of mini-buses that connects Eastern New Jersey with the Port Authority station. Reiss traces the routes on each section, though he notes that they “change slightly from day to day owing to needs of passengers, road maintenance, or the caprice of drivers.”

The shadow transit system was borne out of necessity after a 1980 transit strike, but its operation fills the voids that the MTA doesn’t cover. The vans are also cheap—usually the fare is $2—and, because they’re small and nimble, can better operate in times of crisis or subway outage. Perhaps the most striking part of Reiss’ project is just how wide the network of vans is, and how many different groups of people use them regularly to commute to work. It’s an interesting look at a side of New York that Manhattan dwellers rarely think about. Go check it out.

The Wall Street Journal has again published the insane complaints of clueless rich people. This time, Fed chair Janet Yellen's neighbors are upset about her security guards' "doughnut bellies."

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The single biggest obstacle to craft and home brewers alike is packaging. It’s cost-prohibitive—not to mention worse for the environment—to bottle beer if your operation is very small. Growlers are really only good for beer if you’re going to drink…

The post The Synek Draft System is Like a Keurig, But For Craft Beer appeared first on FirstWeFeast.com.

In their most common form, government-sanctioned redactions obscure text: names and code names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, the classified and top-secret—each a tiny black site housing a discrete, unknowable entity. For all of their apparent precision, each redaction expresses a set of underlying assumptions about identity and recognition, about the way we discipline noise into information.

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Hatred, anger, and desires for revenge are being driven ever higher by the dynamic of unequal violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

These actors just can’t escape the clutches of the law.

We already learned that half the cast of Orange Is The New Black has been on Law And Order at some point in their careers, but more and more are being discovered!

youtube.com

Maybe Benson and Stabler will show up in Season 3 of OITNB?! #showswap

giphy.com

“We hope that people will interact with each other, not just with the boobs,” said Museum of Sex director of exhibitions Mark Snyder, gesturing to the moonbounce behind him made of enormous inflatable breasts. The erotic bouncy castle is part of the Museum’s new exhibition, “Funland,” a large-scale art show that looks like a cross between a carnival, a peep show, and psychedelic nightmare John Waters would have.

The artists behind the exhibit, Sam Bompas and Henry Parr, gained fame in the UK for such projects as an inhabitable gin and tonic, a fruit-themed boating lake, and the world’s first glow-in-the-dark ice cream cone. For “Funland,” the two collaborated with Vanessa Toulmin, the director of the UK national fairground archive, to brew up a showcase “designed to stimulate he sense in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways,” as the press release says.

Bompas & Parr also extended their waggish touches to the Museum’s café, Play, by working with chef Humberto Gualipa and bartender Jeff Kearns to introduce a series of snacks and intricately titled cocktails, like “Julia Child’s Fan Mail” and “Lady Chatterly’s Bicycle Seat,” or, my favorite, “Loose Women and Pickpockets.”

Attractions include a “Foreplay Derby,” a game reminiscent of the ones on Coney Island where competitors aim streams of water at a target in order to propel forward a racehorse. Except here, the horses are replaced with gold-painted dildos. (The designers at PAN Studio helped designer the “racing wang” technology.)

The beginning of the exhibit is a “Tunnel of Love,” a dimly lit hall of mirrors that leads visitors on their journey to find the “G-Spot” at the end. (The G-spot at the send is actually a theremin embedded in a mound of flesh-colored plastic.) There’s also a modest climbing wall, “Grope Mountain,” where the handholds are all shaped like genitalia.

“We want people to be surprised, and to open up a little bit,” Snyder said. “The idea is to recreate that element of carnivals that made them such good places to bring a date. They’re places that leave you slightly off-kilter, giving you an excuse to grab on to someone’s shoulder or reach for a steadying hand.”

The centerpiece of the show is clearly the all-boob moonbounce, titled “Jump for Joy.” What is it like to jump in a bouncy castle made of towering breasts? Not unpleasant, if vaguely Freudian. A soundtrack of moans set to a brisk techno beat plays around you as you careen off the mountainous lady lumps that protrude from the walls and floor. It’s hard not to envision Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) where a runaway breast terrorizes the countryside.

But you can only sustain analytical thoughts for so long in a moonbounce. Even Snyder, who had been standing outside while I attempted to navigate the landscape of jugs, soon jumped into the fray and began compulsively giggling. Whatever else “Funland” is—an exploration of the overlaps between erotica and carnival culture, a sly wink at the Jeff Koons-ian large-scale exhibitions overtaking the rest of the city—it’s just flat-out fun. There’s a refreshing element of silliness about it. The whole effect is a show that’s more whimsical than titillating, more gleeful than seductive, more Willy Wonka than Al Goldstein.

It’s a wise move. After all, it’s pretty hard to shock museum-going New Yorkers these days. It’s a way more interesting challenge to get them to crack a smile.

Funland is open now at the Museum of Sex, 233 5th Avenue.

Follow Margaret Eby on Twitter @margareteby

Steve James’s Roger Ebert documentary, Life Itself, is a tender portrait of the late film critic, who managed to put an apparently Brobdingnagian ego to benevolent, ultimately life-affirming ends. James—whose Hoop Dreams was the beneficiary of a fervent campaign by Ebert—cuts back and forth between Ebert’s last days and the story of his rise, first as a daily newspaper critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, then as co-host with Gene Siskel of Sneak Previews (later Siskel & Ebert & the Movies). Friends and colleagues allude to the hugeness, the Chicago-ness of the man—the appetite for food, booze (until he sobered up in 1979), raucous storytelling, and sex. (“He had the worst taste in women … gold-diggers, opportunists, or psychos,” says one old pal.) But that portrait is ­poignantly at odds with the man who appears on-camera missing much of his lower face, a flap of skin hanging in the approximate shape of a chin. The surgery—which eliminated Ebert’s ability to speak, eat, or drink—gives his face a simpleminded, Quasimodo-like cast that is constantly belied by the words he types and that are spoken aloud by a computer. Not even The Diving Bell and the Butterfly drives home the mind-body schism as movingly.

According to friends and colleagues, Ebert was “facile”—he never spent longer than half an hour writing a review. He was an old-fashioned newspaperman: clear, succinct, logical. His concentration was phenomenal. He had the ability to outline in his head, to write (and speak) in whole paragraphs. That’s one reason he paired so well with Siskel, no less an egomaniac but a random sputterer, an often touchingly vulnerable blowhard.

James does a superb job chronicling their hate-love relationship, suggesting in the end that apart from his wife, Chaz, Ebert never had a truer bond. That might be because no one else got away with challenging him—he hated being jarred out of those elegant paragraphs. Nevertheless, he reached out to other critics. A few of the best—A. O. Scott, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Richard Corliss—attest to his influence and personal generosity. More surprising is the number of directors who appear and with whom he hobnobbed: Werner Herzog, who calls Ebert “a soldier of cinema, a wounded comrade,” and Martin Scorsese, who credits Ebert and Siskel with shoring him up at a very low point in his career. But it’s easy to see why they deferred to him. He was, for a time, the most powerful critic in America and a TV celebrity. He was one of them.

Love him or not, the modern film critic must define himself or herself against Roger Ebert—especially in how he adapted to changing technology, finally building a community via blogging and tweeting around his titanic self. The modern human being must define himself against how he lived his final years, when he lost his (big) mouth and discovered an even stronger, truer voice.    

*This article appears in the June 30, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.

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Filed Under: roger ebert ,steve james ,life itself ,movie review ,movies ,new york magazine