In Other News...

Here's a digest of stuff currently running through my brain.

• Crisis? What Crisis?
Last week I somehow ended up in Times Square 3 times. I saw two Broadway shows (both meh) and took visiting friends to a Jazz gig at Iridium. To judge from the stampedes of tourists, most of them evidently American, running around Times Square like the bulls in Pamplona, I can announce to you that the economy, both national and foreign, has recovered. Otherwise, how do we explain the hordes of tourists that have descended upon our fair megalopolis? I've been living in this city for almost 20 years and I have never seen so many tourists. And so many American tourists. They are going to Broadway shows in droves, which ain't cheap, even if they're buying tickets in bulk. They are staying in overpriced hotels and they are being happily ripped off at  tourist traps. New York is expensive.
So stop the economic whining, Red Staters, cause I'm on to you. You are not so bad off, and you secretly love New York and wish with all your might you could be so cool as to live here. Alas, you are not.
I am an unapologetic New York snob, (and with good reason: I live here!) but do not misunderstand me. I do not dislike tourists. I love helping them find their way. And telling them what to order at Joe's Shanghai. And steering them away from eating in Little Italy. And trying not to strangle them when they walk 5 deep in slow motion on the street.

• Bendygate!
Don't get me wrong, but Sarah Palin reminds me of Hitler. Wait! Let me explain why. Because I'm deathly afraid of her, that's why. Because I cannot fathom how there could possibly be people who don't see her for what she is: a dangerous, ignorant arriviste, resentful, mean-spirited, provincial, petty, arrogant and hungry for power.  That there are people out there who are still drinking her Kool-Aid (with bendy straws!) is very worrisome to me. This latest fracas is a gift for those of us people of sense who can tell a psycho-hypocrite-demagogue when we see one. Turns out that her "public speaking" demands (as if what comes out of her mouth is speech) outstrip any entertainment diva's.  Suffer the little people. It is not in her interest that the "folks" who so adore her find out how craven and two-faced she is. So people have to fish out the details of her speaking contracts from the garbage, which, if you think about it, is where they rightfully belong.