[Photo from Urban Habitat]

Feel that breeze? Unless you forgot to throw on underwear this morning, it’s probably the collective exhale of a million screenwriters and their overworked spouses. As of this Saturday, the writer’s strike may come to an excruciatingly overdue finale. Well, maybe anyway. What this means for you:

The late night heavyweights can stop writing their own tired monologues and get a decent shave. Gossip Girl can regain its rightful place at the top of my Tivo list (and Holly can stop writing her own show scripts).  Broadway can continue sucking. Most importantly, you may still be able to plan your Oscar parties in all their white-wine-estrogen-overloaded glory. With the threat of the Academy Awards becoming another televised train wreck on par with the pitiful Golden Globes , a resolution may be near, and I can stop watching Project Runway reruns. How many times can you hear Tim Gunn say “Get it done” before your eardrums start bleeding. The answer is seventeen. Plus, without the Vanity Fair soiree, the chance of seeing headlines like “Clooney Drops Trou, World Weeps,” should drop dramatically.

[Photo via Traveler's Digest]

Note from GofG: We asked our blogger friend Golf Widow to write us about her visit to our fair city. It is such a nice look into a visitor's perspective, and makes us remember how lucky we are to call this magical place home. Please visit her site and offer your support, her writing speaks for itself:

An Armchair Traveler Steps Out
by
Sondra Harris

I never go anywhere and I never get to do anything and I never have any fun, ever ever ever ever.

This is, of course, entirely my own fault. As if exorbitant fuel costs, time and budgetary constraints, not to mention arthritis that makes excessive walking prohibitive, weren't sufficient, I made the foolish mistake of marrying for love.

To a man who hates big cities.

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[Photo via Racked]

I am so thankful to my friends over at Racked today for posting this picture they snapped of the Tins outside the tents. Can you believe it? She mixed up her wardrobe! Though it's very similar (green is the new blue, pink the new red), at least she's trying.

[Tinsley Mortimer Plagiarizes Herself]

[Photo via Grub Street]

In Grub Street's NY Diet today, they get the down low on Mireille Guiliano's
diet.  She is, of course, the famous "non-dieter" who wrote the bestselling novel "French Women Don't Get Fat."  In the article she goes over the ways in which the French woman is superior to her American counterpart....yet she is a complete contradiction of herself.  Mireille highlights the frugality of the French women (they make their own yogurt people!), yet also insists (with an air of righteousness) that they are less disgusting than Americans because they simply MUST eat at a table, and only a quiet one at that (Balthazaar?!) ...sounds more high maintenance than frugal if you ask me.  If you care to read just exactly how to become "French",  here are some of the things I took away:

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[Photo via A Capitol Blog]

A group of male ex-sex offenders are living under a Miami bridge with the local governments' disgruntled approval.  The laws barring them from living near schools, parks and other places children gather has literally given them no other choice.  They have set up a full on kitchen, living room and sleeping area, and even have pets they share.  Not your typical household environment, and a sad story indeed.  Upon hearing it, I immediately started to think about the book "The Family Under the Bridge" about those homeless children living under a bridge in Paris.  Thankfully, the state takes better care of it's juvenile offenders, we wouldn't want these guys to have to move AGAIN.

ewhere around the country to bar sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places children gather.

[Left Image Courtesy of The New Yorker, Right, Courtesy of IMDB]

The New Yorker recently asked its readers to give Eustace Tilley an "artist's-eye for the dandy-guy" type makeover. Eustace Tilley is the dandy cartoon character who appeared on the New Yorker's first cover in February of 1925, and reappears every year on anniversary issues. They have posted a slide-show of some of the covers they received.

Some of the submissions are very interesting to say the least, I especially liked "Tilley da Tagger" submitted by Liz Rathke of Madison, Wisconsin, and his semblance to Vanilla Ice. It's been about fifteen years since Ice has come close to even remotely gracing a cover and not even at his apogee did he ever come close to The New Yorker. Maybe Ice's exposure in these pictures at Stereo is starting a ground-swell comeback...or maybe not.

[Don't Bogart That Joint Vanilla Ice]

[Photo via PostSecret]

I lost a camera two and a half years ago.  It was brand new.  Had probably close to 300 pictures on it.  I.was.devastated.  To this day I still get sad when I think about the photos that I lost. Pictures are my most valuable possession, which is why I now try and download my photos immediately after I take them, I try to back them up all over the place too (I have accounts at Flickr, Snapfish, and Facebook.)  When I saw this post up on PostSecret today I thought it was one of the greatest things I have seen....I really believe that there are good people out there that want to return things (especially cameras) to their rightful owners.  Someone else did too, and thus the blog "Found Cameras and Orphan Pictures" was created.  Though still small, they've already had a success story.  If you, like me, are missing out on your party pics, take a gander through the site....

Well-known food blogger, and best seller of the "How to Cook Everything" series, Mark Bittman is becoming a more permanent fixture over at the New York Times. Writing the "Minimalist" column, which runs weekly in the newspaper's Dining section, they have decided to give him is own blog, in keeping with their "branching out into new media theme" [The Moment].

"Bitten" as it's aptly called will "use food as a window into the world"...looking at "great food made with everyday ingredients and readily achievable techniques... not food as something to be admired from afar, but as a part of daily life." His latest post title? "My Conversation to Sun-Dried Tomatoes."

[Vanity Fair Party '07 via AskMen.com]

Graydon Carter has a lot of explaining to do. Not just to me, but to the hundreds of ultra fabulous Oscar attendees that will now have to endure sitting through the long award ceremony without anything to look forward to afterwards. Yesterday, Vanity Fair released this statement:

After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party. We want to congratulate all of this year’s nominees and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year.

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Happy Fat Tuesday! For many people, this means the end of the Carnival season, and the start of Lent tomorrow (Ash Wednesday). Growing up in a Catholic traditional household, this meant eating as much of whatever it was that I picked to give up that year for lent. See, going to a Catholic grade school, I was pretty sheltered from the outside world. I thought that everybody gave up something for Lent and that if I didn't, God would hate me (okay kidding...a little). Plus, we always had to write down what we were giving up for Lent in Religion class anyway, so it's not like I had a choice on the matter. Mine usually varied from "candy" to "soda" to "not fighting with my sister" (though I was told the last one wasn't valid because it wasn't a thing, and because I should be doing that year round, not just during Lent). Anyway, I would obviously force myself into shoving my face with Snickers and Dr. Pepper on Fat Tuesday, in an effort to get it all out of my system for the upcoming drought (much in the same way I have done throughout my 20's with alcohol before I have to "settle down"). I haven't really felt the "Fat Tuesday" momentum in New York today, maybe because there's so much else going on....I'll tell you one thing, seeing all the models strutting their shit down at Bryant isn't putting me in the mood for shoving chocolate down my face anytime soon....New York is the best city for many things, Fat Tuesday isn't one of them.

Emily Blunt, Amy Adams, Jessica Biel, Anne Hathaway, Alice Braga, Ellen Page, Zoë Saldana, Elizabeth Banks, Ginnifer Goodwin, and America Ferrera.

Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue "Fresh Faces" cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz.

[Photo via NY Mag]

Steven Gutierrez and Anthony James were this week's subjects in New York Magazine's Look Book.  Finally, they give us some interesting characters to dissect.  Both are students, but we are going to have to assume they mean "students at life" as no more information is given.  Steven loves to mix and match his Harajuku Lovers sweatshirts, his style is punk, it's Japanese, it's Gwen Stefani.  But it's Anthony that I adore as he "goes for a theme most days", something I try and do whenever I get the chance.  The two met at the community center in the village a couple of years ago.  Anthony's dreams of becoming a model are not going as fast as he hoped (quick somebody help him).  And poor Steven is dating a country clubish golf instructor, though he's smart, saying: "I don't really talk to him much about it."  For the full article go here.

The Look Book - Theme Loving Students [NY Mag]