misfortune 500

it's so difficult to keep up with today's trends in political correctness and social consciousness. it's ok now to ask "where's the beef," thanks to mr. atkins, but make sure that you're not wearing one of those beefy Ts manufactured by a child's hands in a distant country where geography quizzes die happily.

to make our lives easier so that we can keep up with angelina jolie's next cause, the Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) launched MisFortune500, (www.misfortune500.org) a project profiling fortune 500 companies that uncovers their abuses against women through the denial of rights to decent work, a clean and healthy environment, and access to land, water, food and quality public services.

before you buy your entire summer wardrobe at american apparel, the "sweatshop-free" clothing line for socially responsible consumers with fashion needs, make sure you read about how the CEO is sweating with lawsuits. some of the charges include: "using crude language and gestures, conducting job interviews in his underwear, ordering the hiring of women in whom he had a sexual interest and giving one of the plaintiffs a vibrator."

american apparel is now american appalling.

sidewalk glow

the humming glow of the new york streets guide me home.

nyc portrait

nyc proved to be profound last week. it was graphic in its emotions.

the furious sky heaved heavily in a blackness so black that all of the city's flaws were alight. the electric silver breath of the steel landscape imposed its permanence on such a temperamental sky. the ablution of the heavens, nyc's purification was carried out with the same fervor of a meticulously dutiful aunt smothering a cowlick into place. the skies cried a cry that only a virgin knows. it was a cry of trepid joy marking the end of her innocence, an innocence she will later wish she could recapture with every misstepped heartbreak.

nyc summers cry out for a new love affair within the comfortable retreats of its old lover glints. you reintroduce yourself, reinvent yourself for the city as you have grown older in age with the confidence of a teenager in full abandonment, but with a maturity you cannot buy on the home shopping network.

new yorkers are officially born again with the launch of sunday brunches outdoors. the city is lusty in its everything, knowing the power of the jazz of nyc summers and the kinetic beat of possibilities: bryant park movies, the p.s.1 warm-up series, summer stage and the snap crackle and pop of me trying to keep up to the supersonic bikers in central park. they move air like a can of pringles potato chips being freshly opened. once you pop, you can't stop.