nyt-picking

There is such a blog! It is all things snarky and good, and sometimes fun.

I rely on the NYT for a lot of news, don't get me wrong. But on my hate list:

1. Modern Love columns, although sometimes you can't tear your eyes away from trainwrecks of humanity.
2. Lisa Belkin's Life's Work column or anything by Lisa Belkin
3. The Wedding announcements, because they read like those yearly Christmas newsletters and I am too petty a person not to suffer from envy.
4. Bogus trend columns using "many" or "most" or "more" as pseudo-statistically significant terms about stupid shit like how more heterosexual men are becoming cat owners or more Ivy League women are dropping out of the workforce, and you can tell that the writers are just interviewing their friends because they're fucking lazy.
5. Columns about rich people getting either richer or less rich and buying fewer luxury goods or secretly buying luxury goods out of recessionista guilt, as if this was important financial reporting or as if the NYT were the society pages.

Anyway, column that made me hate on the NYT today:

Young hipsters try to shave with straight razors for no apparent reason than the cool allure of nostalgia; nearly slice their throats in the service of journalistic irony. Look, I had a grandfather who grew up during the Indochine era, and I too am nostalgic about pocket watches, three-piece suits, panama hats, fedoras, linen suits, seersucker pajamas, Dunhills, opium and cognac, and those old-timey tortoiseshell-handled razors (not straight razors). But this is just dumb. You ain't that cool. Did you grow up in French-occupied Vietnam and survive too many wars to count? No. Stop trying. You ain't that cool, and cutting yourself isn't cool, and don't let those emo teenagers with little slit-marks tell you different.