Maggie Shnayerson

This is quite possibly the best thing I’ve seen in at least six months.

Honestly? There really are no appropriate circumstances under which it is acceptable to use the word “interface” as a verb. None. I don’t want to hear it, IT folks. None.

I’m guest-editing over at New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog for the next week. Stop on by! Or don’t! But do read something, it’s good for the complexion.

I particularly like the moment in this new JCPenney ad where the little girl reaches through the slats of the wondrous bed-in-the-wood to play, ever so tenderly, with the towish and touseled hair of the little boy. Come on now, Madison Avenue. It’s titillating and controversial when Abercrombie & Fitch does this with male models. But um, this is just skeevy.

But they did give him his wife’s voicemail message back:

“…Verizon had archived all the old greetings and messages. Company spokesman John Bonomo said Tuesday that a contractor found the recording and restored it to the new voicemail system. ‘I’m glad they rescued it,’ Whiting said. “I’m very happy.’” [WNBC]

“An 80-year-old Westchester man who kept the voice of his dead wife on his phone message, lost her voice when Verizon upgraded his service. Charles Whiting says he stayed connected to his wife, by calling the phone everyday to hear his wife’s voice saying ‘the Whitings aren’t home.’ Whiting said he immediately called Verizon and waited for an hour for help. He got disconnected, so he called back. After another 90 minutes, he said he was told he couldn’t get the message back and that he would just have to record a new one.” [WNBC]

“Multiple award-winning 7-day daily” is a real winner of a phrase, but nevertheless. Which Western U.S newspaper, “without question, the leading newspaper in the market,” has a 40-person newsroom and an about-to-be-fired editor?

Great news, everybody!

“Eco-friendly actor Leonardo DiCaprio has added his name to a new campaign to banish junk mail. The superstar has signed a petition demanding the US government acts to allow citizens to opt out of unwanted post. Dubbed ‘Do Not Mail’, the campaign is the brainchild of international environmental group ForestEthics.” - Ireland Online

Thank God someone’s finally doing something about this issue—I’m constantly hounded through the mail by all these CauseHead actors, and it’s really such a waste of environmental resources. For instance, this weekend, I got yet another horribly vague and unconvincing piece of direct mail from an “actor and environmentalist,” upon which I of course immediately spilled coffee and I—oh. Oh dear. Hmm.



Leo tells me he’s working with “America’s most effective environmental action group.” Hey, maybe sending two pounds of paper pulp to my house is more environmentally effective than writing me an email, what the hell do I know? I’m not an actor or anything. Fucking polar bears. Should you care to check out the rest of Mr. DiCaprio’s missive and his horrifying signature, it’s after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Which one of the Parker Brothers came up with this hideous and probably long-overdue concept of giving Rich Uncle Pennybags a debit card and a fucking Segway on which to token his way around the board? Okay, so this particular travesty is about two years old, but it’s new and fresh to me, as is my deep and unabiding indignation over this perversion of my—nay, the American—childhood.

The gamemakers tried to keep the spirit of Monopoly’s delusional real estate market alive—in this version, you can buy Times Square for a couple million bucks. But since you can also mortgage your property at a subprime adjustable rate to a predatory lender who will suck both your reality show winnings and you dry—and not in a good way—they still blow for this one. Hard.

Sigh. Possibly I too am finally, undeniably, incontrovertibly, officially, irrevocably old. Or maybe I’m just a cranky sentimental crab. Balk?

Any others I missed?