For now, I guess.

DO YOU BELONG IN NYC?
Yes, but sometimes you wish there were a better option.
You do love New York, and you fit in here better than you have anywhere else. You're committed to the city, and you take advantage of all of its amazing food, culture, nightlife and arts. But you have nagging doubts about this relationship. Spend your whole life here? Not sure about that. Sometimes you wonder about that farm in your fantasies or even just a smaller city. But in reality, you know there's nowhere better.

Do you belong in New York City?

whoa, NY is strange

a performance art group from NY will bring their very, uh, unique interpretation of how to dramatize the situation of domestic workers at an upcoming event i'm working on.

other groups are bringing workers and supportive employers to testify, making food to share, singing songs.

these artists will PERFORM. they will draw upon:

• Dualian theory (???)
• spec-actors (spectator-actors)
• "nothing more specific because it'll be improvised"

Time to surrender the corporate car, Mr. NYT reporter

The author of this story about China's L.A. moment (cars or transit?)...

"On my salary, the maintenance costs are a pressure,” he said. “But it gives me great pleasure and the feeling of a higher standard of living.”

And few subway rides do that, even for those who build them.

...must not have experienced MTA's new subway cars. Just yesterday, Ms. Mighty Blogging Machine noted with glee that the pokey, dirty F train finally got a batch of the shiny beauties. Fast, quiet, clean trains can improve quality of life. (Although the new cars have their downside, too).

and they call it the dismal science?

hell, this guy's optimism is unshakable.

“If American households are losing ground to inflation,” said Adam S. Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, “and they can’t resort to automatic cost-of-living adjustments or union power, they’ll find some other way, through their demands on the political process and through their expectations.”

you know, if you don't have means to achieve actual leverage, your "expectations" will do just as well. Except of course they haven't:

How to know when you've "made it"?

You can be sure when Oli Stone shows up to create insane fantasies and commit the dreck to celluloid!

"Oliver Stone will likely travel to Tehran to hold discussions with Iranian officials on his proposal to make a biopic about President Mahmud Ahmadinejad...Ahmadinejad’s art advisor [said] Stone would not be allowed to invent any scenarios."

Chalk up another instance where the writers' strike is saving us all.

American leadership qualities

"People had told me all along that he was a hard worker and an honest Christian man."

What more could you ask of a union president giving away the store while strong-arming dissidents (pdf) and brokering bribes to pass the deal?

A different take, from "a nonprofit that gives voice to union activists who are critical of labor leaders." natch.

just before the dawn

i love blue velvet and other such music box-fare as much as the next guy, but really, have you heard the extent of roy's oeuvre? i haven't. his idea of the workers' paradise is pretty off, even if he admits to wanting to kill the boss. how does he resolve the old conflict? he wants to BE the man. the dream of levittown, i guess.