In response to the criticism by us and many others of her article on Thelma and Louise, Judith Warner in her latest column in The Times has come back to the table, prepared to admit how “shocked” she was by the reaction, but nevertheless maintaining that “[since] the 1970s and 1980s… I [can] attest to [...]

Although it is far from being classified as a specimen plant in the garden of the gay recluse, the firethorn (Pyrachantha‘Mohave’) is valued not only for the depth of its evergreen leaves and the length of its ferocious needles, but for the perfect orange tone of its berries, which provide such welcome interest to the [...]

In today’s Times, we read an opinion piece — “Where Everybody Knows Your Team” — by an author who grew up in Pittsburgh and — having now returned — wants us to know how watching the Steelers has long been an important thread of her life. “As any native can tell you,” she declares, “we [...]

The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and politicians? Not even footnotes in this story, which is about the aggregation of capital and the relentless rise of the metropolis.

In the elevator today, we were asked by an acquaintance what book we were reading, and in response displayed Emile Zola’s Nana. Noting his blank expression, we elaborated: “It’s an old French novel.”
“Is it good?”
Not wanting to digress into our true reasons for reading the book — namely, to better understand the context out of [...]

To those who complain about our subway station, we will not dispute your claims regarding the legions of rats who live on the upper platform, the large underground cavern now filled with trash that has long been closed off to riders; nor will we deny that the smell of piss is pervasive, and that at [...]

As promised, we agreed to have the president of Iran over for tea on Monday afternoon to discuss The Magic Mountain, the magnus opus by Thomas Mann. President Ahmadinejad has long defended the work — as he did (somewhat controversially) in his speech a few blocks south of us at Columbia University — as one [...]

Did you not see it? Did you not experience the thrill of David Schwimmer emerging from a limousine to shine his brilliant aura across the travertine plaza to the vaunted Roman arches of the Metropolitan Opera? (How many times have we been enraptured by his finely nuanced work and thought, “If only we could see [...]

There are many games of dominoes in Washington Heights, but we prefer to avoid those on Broadway — populated by noisy, drunken louts — in favor of the more intense and serious version found on the side streets leading up to Amsterdam. Here the diamond-studded drug lord steps out of an armored SUV to take [...]

Opening the gate that leads from our front yard to the street, we were met by a short, scrawny man with veiny arms that seemed to swell grotesquely at the elbow. He wore jeans and a dingy t-shirt on which the faded outlines of a corporate logo could be seen. His eyes were gaunt, but [...]

Of all the groundcovers we have introduced into the garden this year, Corsican mint (Mentha requienii) has attained a particular affection for us as we consider it now, with the growing season on the wane. Although it has thrived in several places in the garden, it is most spectacular in the crevices of our stone [...]

Nor, with regard to the Times’ coverage of the murder trial in Brooklyn, can we resist commenting on the following description of the courtroom:
“All of them [i.e., the defendants] were watched by a vibrant cultural divide of a spectators’ gallery. To one side, dressed in conservative attire, sat supporters of the defendants, arriving from the [...]

From today’s Times, we now turn to an article regarding the trial of the three hooligans accused of luring a man into a parking lot in Sheepshead Bay, which ultimately led the man — attempting to escape — to run into the nearby highway, where he was struck by a car and ultimately killed.
Although we [...]

In yesterday’s Times, we read an “Op-Extra” column by Judith Warner called ‘Thelma and Louise’ in the Rear-View Mirror,” in which we were informed that such a “dark” and “disturbing” movie could not have been made in the present, given that in 1991, “[a]ll the talk, nationally, was of sexual harassment, date rape and crimes [...]

On Broadway last night we passed a man, older and bearded, wearing a broad-rimmed hat. We felt his eyes on our back and then — more alarmingly — a hand on our elbow. But the grip seemed far more imploring than threatening, and so we did not protest as he guided us toward the nearby [...]

We were woken up by the crash of something large and fragile, not in the bedroom but somewhere close, definitely inside the apartment. The first inclination was to blame Dante or Zephyr, but they seemed equally perplexed as we examined the crystal decanters in the dining room and the earthenware collection in the living room [...]

Of all the Manhattan venues available to the gay recluse, Washington Heights is undoubtedly the preferred. Here we live among extremes of material decadence and breathtaking neglect, apparent in the crumbling cornices of Ft. Washington Avenue and eroding limestone facades of St. Nicholas, not to mention the tiled mosaics in the entrance foyers of the [...]

We begin by noting that — even more than “freedom” — the word “community” has entered a new and perhaps unprecedented level of (mis)use from which the gay recluse will wish to completely disassociate himself. Particularly noxious are those forms of community — e.g., the gay community, the Irish community, the international community — regularly [...]