Monthly Archives: April 2010

Web clip: Walmart, shmalmart

Posted on April 28, 2010 | Leave a comment
walmart

falling prices, landing soon?

(From Brokelyn 4/27)

Like professional soccer, Budweiser American Ale and turning off your car alarm, megaultrahyper retailer Walmart has never really caught on in New York City. But don’t think they’re sitting there in Arkansas saying to themselves: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Target Town.” News came out this week that Walmart is planning yet another New York City invasion, and this time they could land on the shores of Jamaica Bay at the new Gateway II shopping center, reports Crain’s New York.

Walmart (whose total square footage of its stores is larger than Manhattan, btw) has attempted a few other incursions into the city before. But every time they try to crack the city, community and labor groups rise up in protest and block the way. Community leaders in Jamaica Bay are already vowing a fight too, but maybe they should save their energy. Because even if Walmart does come to Brooklyn, that doesn’t mean Brooklyn will come to Walmart.

READ THE REST because it comes with an industrial tube of mayonaise and a High School Musical-themed laxative

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Friday Happy/Inverted Soapbox heartily endorses…

Posted on April 23, 2010 | 3 Comments

Now here’s an advertising mechanism for newspapers that we should support. The Newspaper Picture festivalat Film Forum is an amazing act of collective werd-nerd nostalgia that, I hope, is more wistful and celebratory than creepy and necrophilic. I caught a double feature on Sunday that included what may now be my favorite movie of all time, Park Row, the story of hard-charging, fair-minded idealistic reporters who escape the sensationalist cloud of their yellow journalism publisher and strike out to start their own scrappy new rag (printed on butcher paper, at first) in an already saturated New York newspaper market.

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Posted in Friday Happy, Inverted Soapbox heartily endorses

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Pro-newspaper ads are just really effing stupid

Posted on April 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

Oh, Newspaper Project. I like you so much. Just hearing a name of a group like this that exists gives me hope some days. Then you go and do something like, and suddenly my forehead hurts from palm-slapping:

The project last month released these two ads it said were to run in newspapers nationwide:

creating dubiously reliable websites since 1997

ah gad

Newspaper Project, let’s have a quick little ed meeting here right now. Some issues with the above we need to discuss at once:

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Posted in newspapers

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Fine, I guess I am a Blogger, and other thoughts on the BK Blogs meetup

Posted on April 22, 2010 | 5 Comments

Brokelyn's Lauren Cannon gets blogged on at The Bell House (photo by jillysp)

New Yorkers, I have come to learn, never really need an overarching excuse to get together, tip a few drinks and be social, whether this be for business negotiations, quiet commiseration or just drunkenly arguing over the added societal value of increased usage of portmanteau (or increausortmanteau).

Yet still, I am, by nature, highly skeptical of organized media events — press briefings, journalism conferences, awards ceremonies, any sort of general charlie foxtrot breaking news situation, and the like.  All these have done little in the past to dissuade the adage of “hell is other journalists,” whether it be from being pestered for breaking news updates from TV reporters too lazy to do their own reporting or trying to get a question in edgewise to Seann William Scott during a roudtable interview when a woman kept pestering his time with non Bulletproof-Monk-related questions related to the anti-drug campaign.

So it is with this trepidation that I went into the BKBlogs event at Bell House last Wednesday night, knowing full well that any event that involved willfully immersing oneself in a sea of bloggerers and twitterers was a recipe for a hot mess of self-promotion stew.

But Brooklyn, as ever, is full of pleasant surprises. Brokelyn was asked to help host this event with Fucked in Park Slope and Brooklyn Based, with no other intended purpose than to get together at a cool bar and network the shit out of each other and see what the faces of those pajama-clad carpal tunnel-rocked wretches of the Brooklyn bloggerati look like.

People responded well to the event, and a few hundred filled the front lounge of the Bell House, far outcrowding the pink-haired, wallet chained, fedora-adorned Cherry Poppin’ Daddies fans (concurrent concert in the back room. And hey, Cherry Poppin’ Daddies are still around! Zoot!). Continue reading →

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Posted in brooklyn, writing

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Web clip: Cheap, last-minute tax advice for procrastinators

Posted on April 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

tax_19

socialism doesn't pay for itself, you know

(Brokelyn 4/9) Let’s see… elaborate April Fool’s day prank involving fake job offer for roommate: check. Annual passive-aggressive spring cleaning e-mail to roommates on the state of the dishes in the sink: check. Last year’s jeans turned into this-year’s cut-offs: check. What else are we forgetting about in Apri… ah gad, taxes! And just one week left!

Have no fear, because you wanna know the big secret about taxes? They’re actually kind of a snap to do by yourself, so long as you don’t have a home, large family or stakes in several multi-national corporations. And there are plenty of places that will help you for free. We talked to a few attorneys and put together some last-minute tax resources to help you and Uncle Sam continue your cease-fire relationship.

READ THE REST because there’s a sweet IRS of WWF fame reference that I’d hate to see go unappreciated.

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Freelance whages

Posted on April 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

In honor of my first full year feeling the burn of April taxes from freelance writing, please enjoy this tax day lulz from the New York Times Op Art:

Only if these were real deductions:

“That/which deduction: deduct $1 for every grammatical error in a sign or poster that you pointed out to someone else.”

“Sherlock Holmes deduction: Deduct 100 percent of the cost of blockbuster movies you didn’t really want to see”

And glad that these aren’t real:

That whole twitter tax formula, and:

“Delayed Adulthood Penalty: Multiply the number of years since your 25th birthday by the number of roommates you currently have and multiply the results by $-10.”

So I would have owed another $200 just from that alone.

[PS--the head of this post references the band Freelance Whales, who, as of last update, were neither whales nor employed on a freelance basis. Try the song "Hannah" because it's fun and happy and will make your delayed adulthood seem worthwhile.]

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Friday Happy: Retro games are to die for

Posted on April 9, 2010 | 2 Comments

This great video is worth all the attention its getting on the internet this week:

Of course, this is highly reminiscent of the Futurama Episode “Anthology of Interest” wherein Fry queries to the what-if machine: what if life were more like a video game?

Increase speed! Drop down! Reverse direction!

Video gamez rule.

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Posted in Friday Happy

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