If you’re packing a Y-chromosome, you’re (almost literally) a marked man lately, because there’s a gender divide characterizing the onset of this softening economy:

From last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, according to the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). At the same time, American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs. You might even say American men are in recession, and American women are not.

What’s going on? Simply put, men have the misfortune of being concentrated in the two sectors that are doing the worst: manufacturing and construction. Women are concentrated in sectors that are still growing, such as education and health care.

Based on this trending, it might be time for us guys to get in touch with our feminine sides — purely for vocational reasons.

Sue Simmons is a bona fide institution in New York City local news media, second only to her co-anchor Chuck Scarborough. Personally, I can’t remember when they weren’t occupying Channel 4; they were a firm part of my childhood channel-surfing.

Which is what makes her live-TV “What the fuck are you doing??” flub today all the more shocking (in a fun way!):

The shit hit the fan, of course, prompting an obligatory apology from Sue. Order is restored at the local NBC flagship affiliate.

Way to cash in, Moldy Peaches.

It was only a few months ago when you were compelled to reunite as part of the soundtrack for indieflick-hit Juno. Having gotten a taste of that — which included mass-audience gawking via “The View” — you’ve now lent your signature song, “Anyone Else But You”, to Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island for their latest TV commercial.

And probably worse, it’s not even the original song, but rather the melody with some reworked, marketing-specific lyrics grafted on. Selling out doesn’t get any more customized. I’d say the indie cred has flown right out the window…

I wish I could find the commercial online; I guess it’s too new to have been YouTubed.

A bumper sticker I spied not too long ago, upstate (I snapped a cameraphone photo of it, but it came out too crappy to use):

LIBERALS ARE PEOPLE TOO
THERE JUST POLITICALLY INCORRECT!

Yup, “there”, instead of “they’re”. No better way to sabotage an otherwise bold statement than via a boneheaded misspelling.

I would attribute this to a recent rash of mad-as-hell grammatical challenges, except that it appears this doofus has been displaying his cluelessness for a couple of years.

There are two ways of looking at Cablevision’s $650 million purchase of Newsday from Tribune Co.:

1. Underlying the apparent mismatch between a dominant cable provider and an entrenched but struggling newspaper is a potentially lucrative synergy:

But even if the prospective deal has an element of vanity to it, Cablevision could make the following argument. It has roughly three million cable subscribers in Long Island, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, while Newsday has about 300,000 subscribers. Cablevision’s customer relationships could help it sell more subscriptions, while overlapping ad sales forces at the two companies could result in cost savings. And Cablevision owns a 24-hour local news channel in Long Island, which could use the news gathering capacity of Newsday — and in theory cut costs.

This makes the acquisition of Newsday the equivalent of securing an established and dedicated advertising channel for Cablevision. Nassau County is prime demographic territory, so any additional inroads a media company can make and present to ad clients is extremely valuable.

2. In order to extract the maximum value out of its unwanted asset, Tribune owner Sam Zell orchestrated an elaborate competition among Newsday’s suitors:

The trick was for Zell to turn this into a bidding war. That was difficult at first. The three interested parties acted as if they had the upper hand. Cablevision did some tire kicking, but the Dolans didn’t make an offer. [New York Daily News owner Mort] Zuckerman reportedly made a lowball bid.

Zell turned up the heat by entering into negotiations with News Corp. to accept $580 million for a majority stake in Newsday. [Rupert] Murdoch clearly felt he had the inside track. He began courting Long Island’s political leaders whose support he would surely need to get the deal approved by the FCC in Washington. That’s because News Corp. already owns the [New York] Post and two New York City television stations.

It now appears Zell was using News Corp.’s offer to establish a floor for the bidding. Zuckerman soon matched News Corp.’s offer. Then Cablevision did what non-strategic bidders often do in such situations. It offered to pay a higher price than either newspaper publisher.

And viola, Newsday becomes a hot property. Where it goes from here under the Dolans’ stewardship remains to be seen.

From one of my most fave-o-reet episodes of “The Simpsons”, I present “Skinner & the Superintendent”, or (as I prefer) “Steamed Hams”:

And for good measure, the key exchange:

Superintendent Chalmers: I thought we were having steamed clams.
Seymour Skinner: Oh, no, I said steamed hams. That’s what I call hamburgers.
Superintendent Chalmers: You call hamburgers steamed hams?
Seymour Skinner: Yes, it’s a regional dialect.
Superintendent Chalmers: Uh-huh. What region?
Seymour Skinner: Uhh… Upstate New York.
Superintendent Chalmers: Really? Well, I’m from Utica, and I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase ’steamed hams.’
Seymour Skinner: Oh, not in Utica. No, it’s an Albany expression.
Superintendent Chalmers: I see.
[Chalmers bites into a steamed ham.]
Superintendent Chalmers: You know, these hamburgers are quite similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burger.
Seymour Skinner: Oh ho ho, no. Patented Skinner burgers. Old family recipe.
Superintendent Chalmers: For steamed hams…
Seymour Skinner: Yes…
Superintendent Chalmers: Yes, and you call them steamed hams despite the fact that they are obviously grilled.

One last tidbit: Along with the obvious allusions to Pulp Fiction throughout, this episode also owes its title — “22 Short Films About Springfield” — to Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. The title and structure of which, in turn, was inspired by the 32 pieces that comprise Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

What you see pictured above (snapped by me, with my cameraphone in Times Square) is but one outcropping of an epidemic that’s overtaken New York City: The spread of knockoff baseball caps emblazoned with “NY” logos, designed to look just enough like official Yankees or Mets gear to pass the glance test.

Seriously, I’ve seen these hats all over the place — subways, on the street, in clubs… Frankly, I’d be embarrassed to be seen wearing one. They’re downright shoddy-looking.

I’m guessing the only reason Major League Baseball (and any other sports league) isn’t filing infringement lawsuits is that those chunky-fonted logos are just distinguishable enough to not be considered credible copies of their obvious inspirations. But come on — there’s no mistaking their appeal, funky colors and patterns aside. They’re faux team colors for $5 off the street, versus the $20-and-up for the real deal.

The above is a crop from a bus-shelter ad I cameraphone-snapped a month ago, somewhere in midtown Manhattan. I like the composition, in that it used the familiar symbol signs for the human form to get its point across about the alienating effect of social phobia.

Not to mention that I have a touch of that particular anxiety myself. So I really identify with that black standalone glyph — much as I’d prefer to be one of those multicolored in-the-crowd types.

Consider these assessments by playwright Yasmina Reza of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, gleaned from her yearlong stint as insider on his 2007 campaign trail:

“One of the things that I liked about him — there are many things, but this really seduced me — was his insolence,” she recalled. “But he has not understood that power is itself insolent and that he could not continue with his habitual insolences. During the campaign his insolence seemed like an expression of freedom, frankness. But in office he has not curbed it, he has misjudged its effect.”…

Ms. Reza was not surprised when Mr. Sarkozy was next seen dating the former model Carla Bruni, whom he married in February. “He’s the kind of man who is incapable of being alone,” she said. “I don’t think he can spend a night alone, an evening alone. There may be passing affairs, but he needs someone real. So quickly someone serious entered his life.”…

“I think he is a tragic personality, a man bent on self-destruction,” she said. “It wasn’t clear during the campaign, but I am convinced that he has a powerful faculty for self-destruction.”

With all that in mind, let me throw this out there:

Is Sarkozy just France’s version of Bill Clinton, appropriately amped up for a Gallic political culture? Both men came into office as establishment-challenging reformers, after all. And as far as spotlight moments: Imagine the Monica Lewinsky scandal culminating not in impeachment, but rather in a divorce and remarriage… And you’ve got the Carla Bruni episode.

If all this holds, I guess we’ll be seeing a meltdown from the Presidential Palace in Paris before all’s done.

Something out of my current fiction-reading that rings true for me:

“…I’ve always found the minute portraiture of nineteenth-century fiction fairly useless. For me, those precise descriptions of the hero’s nose/mouth/eyes/moles/forehead never come together as an actual face. Maybe it’s a failure of synthetic imagination on my part, but in my mind they always end up jumbled, like a portrait in the analytic cubist mode. It’s always easier to visualize the minor characters, with their bestial analogues, done in the broad stroke of caricature — Mr. Fox, Mr. Rat, Miss Sheep. Then, too, as a reader I like to take a certain amount of responsibility for filling in the details.”

- Connor McKnight, protagonist from Jay McInerney’s “Model Behavior”

I’ve always experienced a similar shortcoming whenever trying to mentally reconstruct a detailed description of some literary character. It never gets to the “cubist mode” stage for me, though — I simply don’t bother to connect the intended dots, and the visages just remain vague.

For that reason, I avoid prose that goes into such exacting detail, because it does nothing for me, and in facts bogs down the flow. I prefer a sacrifice in that area in favor of better-paced plot and dialogue. And I guess I take that “responsibility for filling in the details” to heart — give me enough of the framework, for character and even setting, and I’ll come up with the construct.

(Yes, my “current” reading material is a decade old. What can I say, I’ve been pretty disappointed by the new releases I’ve sampled lately, and so have gone back to the well, author-wise. And actually, there’s a lot of McInerney that I’ve never read before, including this novel.)

Funny thing. It was a miserably rainy day the last time I was inspired to post an iPod Random 8 list, and so it is again today. Must be a trend.

Anyway, here’s the latest shuffle-determined string of output from my iPod Touch (or “iTouch”, if you prefer). Length of said string synced to 8trk, which I’m told is progressing nicely.

1. “Let Me Think About It (club mix)”, Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand - That I am the true way towards ecstasy.

2. “F-cking Boyfriend (Peaches Remix)”, The Bird And The Bee - When you lay down with me, you never slept that night.

3. “Mysterious Ways”, Angelique Kidjo - She sees the man inside the child.

4. “Mer du Japon (Remix by Kris Menace)”, AIR - J’en perds la raison (I lost my mind).

5. “Relaxation Spa Treatment”, Dan the Automator - [instrumental, no lyrics]

6. “Good Love”, Isaac Hayes (as Chef from “South Park”) - You’ll recommend me to your mother, your sisters, your aunts and your nieces.

7. “Let’s Stay Together”, Al Green - Loving you whether, whether.

8. “Colours”, Donovan - Freedom is a word I rarely use.

For several years, the gaming industry has kept up a steady drumbeat about how, based on sales figures, videogames are now a more significant part of the entertainment-media world than the former king of the hill, movies.

Note that “based on sales figures” part, because it’s an obvious reason why the argument doesn’t hold up:

Software publisher Take-Two Interactive bandied the behemoth sales figures [of more than $500 million, for new release “Grand Theft Auto IV”] on Wednesday, days after “Iron Man” vaunted an unexpectedly huge opening weekend box office [of $200 million]. The eye-popping digits left many wondering how such a blockbuster could be so soundly trounced by a controverisal video game.

The simple answer: “GTA IV” costs more to buy…

The standard edition of “GTA IV” is $59.99, while a special edition goes for $89.99 and comes with a soundtrack, art book, duffel bag and safety deposit box. Either way, every time a copy of the game is rung up, what’s added to the week’s tally is significantly more than the $7 average ticket price to see a movie in the U.S.

It’s not hard to figure it out: If Product A costs some nine times more than Product B, naturally a dollar-for-dollar comparison will favor the higher-ticket product, even when unit sales are much lower. Bottom line, there are a lot fewer people buying game discs than there are people waiting in lines outside multiplexes. And as far as what influences the popular consciousness, that’s what counts — movies trump videogames in everyday parlance.

This would seem to be intuitive — except somehow, it’s not. I guess it’s fueled by gamer fervor more than anything else — a desire to deflect the persistent characterization of gaming (especially console videogames) as strictly niche. When Take-Two announced the $500 million-plus opening-week sales of “GTA IV”, it made sure to couch it in language that stacked it against other media: “Breaks Entertainment Launch Records” according to the headline. That’s technically true, and because three-quarters of news-scanners won’t read any further for clarification, a meme is born that videogames have gotten “bigger” than movies and everything else — whatever that means.

In any case, I give AP reporter Derrik J. Lang some credit for bothering to dissect the obvious. It won’t dispel the common misconceptions floating around, but at least it’s out there for the record.

It’s official: Isabella Rossellini has gone crazy.

Or “buggy”, which would be more in line with the theme behind her “Green Porno” series of insect-sex (”insext”?) short films for Sundance Channel. I mean, it’s one thing to produce nature documentaries on the same reproductive topic — that give it a veneer of scientificness. But to (sorta) dress up as a spider, a dragonfly, etc. and act out the wild wiggling? Cute, but way out there, man.

Although, maybe she’s on the crest of a trend. Perhaps Jerry Seinfeld cracked open the door with Bee Movie, with everyone else just now catching on.

The latest and greatest addicting online timewaster from the Flash gamemasters at Pixeljam: Dino Run (probably have more luck loading the game from the mirror site):

A giant asteroid has crash landed and extinction may just be inevitable. You are a Velociraptor — and you should probably start running for your life! Run, jump, catch a ride with a Pterodactyl, eat power-up plants & other things, save all the dino eggs you can!

Jump into the multiplayer and test your speed against your fellow dinos as you race for glory — and to avoid extinction!

It’s dead simple as far as gameplay: Just keep your finger pressed down on the right-arrow key at all costs. Unless you want to experience the Big Black Wall of Doom coming from the left. Which, actually, you should do, just once — it’s as fearsome as a retro-pixelated disaster scene gets.

It was cruel, but admittedly novel as far as Web vandalism goes: The forums section of the Epilepsy Foundation of America was hacked recently, with hundreds of seizure-inducing blink-animated images, and links to such images, being planted on the forum pages.

This reminds me: I’m thinking that MySpace, in general, would be off-limits to epileptics. Considering that design atrocities like this (adjust volume accordingly before clicking) are allowed to roam freely in that online garden.

The National Hockey League Eastern Conference Final begins tomorrow night between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers. This all-Pennsylvania playoff series has the Keystone State all geeked up, as fans from each city are plotting public-monument desecrations in the rival towns.

Top target in Philly: The statue of Rocky.

The attack may have already happened overnight - just as a similar outrage was apparently committed by Montreal Canadien fans during the previous hockey series.

The evidence: On the pavement in front of the bronze Italian Stallion lay a black No. 87 Sidney Crosby jersey around 9:30 this morning. The sleeves appeared to have been cut off, perhaps to facilitate draping it over Rocky.

In retaliation, Brotherly Lovers are putting the cross-state call out:

I am recruiting a Philly native and loyal Flyers fan that is living in Pittsburgh to place a Flyers jersey on a significant landmark in Pittsburgh (panther statue on Pitt campus, in front of Mellon Arena or anything you can think of) and send me a photo of it to submit to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It’s all pretty childish, but hey, both cities are thirsting for a championship. Nice to see some passion for the postseason. And at this rate, I think Pennsylvania is giving Minnesota a run for its money for that “State of Hockey” moniker.

The general fixation on whether or not the economy’s in recession overlooks one key element: Just what metrics are being used to define “recession”, and if they’re correct.

Ignorance about recessions has taken hold because of a simplistic idea that a recession is two successive quarterly declines in gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of the nation’s output.

The idea originated in a 1974 New York Times article by Julius Shiskin, who provided a laundry list of recession-spotting rules of thumb, including two down quarters of GDP. Over the years the rest of his rules somehow dropped away, leaving behind only “two down quarters of GDP.”

Like most rules of thumb, it’s far from perfect. It failed in the 2001 recession, for example. At the time and until July 2002, data showed just one down quarter of GDP, leading policy makers to claim there had been no recession. Yet, later that month, revisions showed GDP down for three straight quarters. Complicating matters further, with the benefit of time, we now know that GDP actually zigzagged between negative and positive readings, never showing two negative quarters in a row.

The far more important issue in 2001 was the loss of 2.7 million jobs - more than in any postwar recession. Even taking into account labor force growth, those job losses were greater than in most recessions over the past 50 years.

Shorthand tags for labeling economic conditions seem to have more to do with spin control than anything else. Fact is, the Bush administration is loathe to “officially” declare a recession on its watch because it’s such a black eye; and so it’ll tweak the numbers just enough to avoid the obvious. That sustains itself on Wall Street, where ever more media-conscious analysts play along with the blind-man’s game because there’s been no “official” pronouncement. All pretty foolish, but that’s the mechanism at play these days.

All told, if I were to go with a rule of thumb for describing the economy, I’ll stick with Harry Truman’s succinct and distinct delineation between “recession” and “depression”. Frankly, it’s much more apt than the other nonsense.

This should be interesting: I just got a guaranteed ticket to see today’s taping of “Late Show with David Letterman”, airing tonight!

How? The weirdest sequence of events: I was walking up Broadway, killing time while getting within the vicinity of a couple of afternoon appointments. At around 50th Street, it occurred to me that I was getting close to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which reminded me of my seldom-invoked intentions of attending a Letterman taping. I dismissed today’s possibility right away, simply because I didn’t think there’d be any tickets available as late as this afternoon.

Then, I walk by a girl who’s hawking “Late Show” tickets. She’s pissed because the two guys she was already talking to were “assholes”, in her words; so she turns to me. She confirms she’s with Worldwide Pants, the show’s production arm. After some preliminaries, she hands me a confirmation form letter with my name on it. According to that slip of paper (photo of which I’ll add later, after I get home — having some issues trying to email it to myself right now), I’m guaranteed a seat in chilly Ed Sullivan! (No joke, they really do tell you ahead of time to bring a sweater; I happen to be wearing a light jacket, so I’m set.)

I have to trek back down there in about half an hour to confirm, then head back there again for the 4:30-5:30 taping. They’re not kidding about this thing eating up your whole day. Fortunately, I was able to move around my meetings for this afternoon, or else I’d have to chuck this adventure. As it is, I’m currently cooling my heels in a damned *$ on 60th.

So, hopefully, I’ll finally get to see Dave live and in person, doing his thing. According to the TV schedule, guests tonight will be Ashton Kutcher, magician Mac King (because this is, after all, Magician Week on the “Late Show”), and musical legend Steve Winwood. Not the lineup I would have picked, but it’ll do.

UPDATE: Here’s the photo proof — first the confirmation letter:

And the resultant ticket:
Well worth the sacrifice of an afternoon. I won’t bother with a show recap; you can find that here. But here’s some general impressions:

- I actually didn’t find the famously deep-frozen theater to be all that cold. I wouldn’t want to sit there in just shorts and tshirt, but in a shirt and dress pants, I was fine.

- The theater stage is surprisingly compact — looks a lot bigger on TV.

- Even though everything was live and only a few yards away, I couldn’t shake how it still looked like a televised presentation — even though I was watching with my unaided eye. I guess it was the lighting doing its job, because somehow, I didn’t get the feeling that I was really there in the same room with Dave, Paul et al.

- “Johnny Twain” may be a lame filler segment. But he can belt out “Hooked On A Feeling” with muy, muy gusto! (I’m guessing that performance won’t be making the telecast.)

- Steve Winwood rocks.

They’re no longer in Montreal, but the Washington Nationals are still saddled with a familiar problem: Anemic attendance, despite a spanking-new stadium.

Since we can’t blame a hockey-distracted populace this time around — or some sort of franchise curse — a trickle-down effect in DC’s political mechanics may be to blame for all the empty seats, particularly the highly-visible ones:

Then Jack Abramoff tried to buy off all of Washington. New lobbying laws soon followed, and now the maximum gift given to a lawmaker cannot exceed $50. Which means all the [behind home-plate] Presidential tickets – $325 for single-game ones, $335 on Saturday and $400 for the front row, all more than the best seat at Yankee Stadium, which goes for $250 – that should have gone from lobbyist to Congressman to hard-working staffer no longer exist, and the market won’t get any hotter unless the Nationals do, too.

So cleaner politics means bad business for the nation’s (alleged) pasttime in the nation’s capital. Emblematic of the times, no?

You learn something new every day. Like about the existence of vog, a volcanic smog that’s currently plaguing the Hawaiian islands:

Kilauea on the Big Island has been erupting continuously since 1983. But in mid-March, a new vent formed at the summit, giving Kilauea two large sulfur dioxide outlets instead of one.

Sulfur dioxide, a pollutant that is also generated by burning coal and oil, can lead to asthma and other respiratory illnesses and aggravate lung and heart disease. When combined with dust and sunlight, it makes vog.

I guess the lava and debris that vulcan activity coughs up isn’t enough — air pollution completes the environmental trifecta.

Xobni (pronunciation above) is a software startup that makes Microsoft Outlook into something closer to user-friendly.

But, since I haven’t used a local email client of any kind in years, I don’t care too much about all that. What I do care about:

“Xobni” is “inbox” spelled backwards. Not all that original, but creative nonetheless.