As you might imagine, this information became humiliating to me right around the time I sprouted my own breasts (sixth grade or seventh grade, depending on which breast you want to date from—they were Irish twins). It didn’t help that my mother, a childbirth education teacher, liked to brag about it to her equally liberal-minded friends and colleagues. But hindsight tends to put things into perspective, and so while I might still harbor some adolescent shame, I must at least give my mother retroactive props for not posing on the cover of a national magazine with me latched to her breast.

When I clicked the link to TIME’s recent “Are You Mom Enough?” cover I was, coincidentally, breastfeeding my nearly 8-month-old son while idly scrolling through my Facebook feed. When I saw it, I cringed, and not because of the little towhead in camo cargo pants staring out quizzically with a faceful of aureole—my first instinct was to give him a fist bump of solidarity—but because I could instantly see the national titty fit that would ensue. The tweets, the blog posts, the op-eds and the seemingly straight reporting would all pack a subtly judgmental punch. Breastfeeding, like sleep-training or circumcision, is one of those topics sure to incite riots in the never-ending “mommy wars,” a largely online conflict forever hovering at a tedious and hostile stalemate that more or less boils down to “Parenting: You’re Doing It Wrong.” The TIME article was bait for pearl-clutchers and co-sleepers alike, and it worked.

Now, I don’t believe many people—excepting, perhaps, those who stand to profit from formula sales—would seriously argue that breastfeeding for some length of time isn’t a good idea, assuming the mother is capable. The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends breastfeeding children for at least their entire first year of life, and even noted misogynist Rush Limbaugh has advocated for it on his show. But the cultural sticking points remain duration and location. “If they can ask for it, they’re too old,” is a common refrain, and many opine that breastfeeding outside the home should be avoided whenever possible. Some go so far as to liken babies dining al fresco to public urination.

Having been raised by civil rights champions, my feelings on the topic have always been best expressed (as so many things are) by Shakira lyrics: Whenever, wherever. But I understand that I am an outlier, so I turned to a few lactating friends for research. (I wanted to poll my fellow Park Slope Parents, but after my last column I received a stern email from the chair of the advisory board chastising me for my “breach of netiquette” in quoting from the email threads, and revoking my membership. Two weeks later, however, I am still receiving a dozen daily Yahoo blasts, which I can only assume is a part of my punishment.)

One friend, a WASP-y type who has literally clutched her pearls in my presence, weaned her baby after three months of harrowing hooter hiding on the Upper West Side so that she could go back to work. She brought this up in a mother’s group and was met with pitying stares, the kind most New Yorkers reserve for people trying to score a walk-in table at Momofuku Ko. Another, a part-time working mom with an Aretha Franklin-level rack, stopped at seven months simply because of the physics involved, especially in mixed company. A third is happily breastfeeding her 1-year-old with no plans to stop anytime soon and has casually eaten dinner with her in-laws while completely topless.So I don’t know where that leaves me. Sometime before kindergarten. Somewhere between “under cover of Slanket” and “on the cover of TIME.”

Breastfeeding is hard. It’s harder than it looks, and that goes double if the person you see breastfeeding is doing it in a crowded space (I consider surreptitiously feeding my baby on a rush-hour subway my most significant athletic achievement since winning an 800-meter race at a high school track meet in 1997). Choosing to breastfeed means sacrificing time, energy, ownership of your body—and the majority of your most flattering tops. It also often means willingly inserting your nipples into suction cups and standing in your office bathroom stall like a Holstein while your co-workers are grabbing lunch and taking smoking breaks. It means shoeless haggling with TSA agents over coolers full of breast milk and watching helplessly as two wet blossoms spread across your chest when a baby cries within earshot during lunch with your boss.

What I’m saying is, it’s not nearly as easy as public urination. It’s an endeavor that most women do not take lightly—especially if they choose to do it for a number of years. It is also not a sexual act. It’s not fair for us as a culture to make breasts into comically carnal advertising orbs used to fill Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy® Crochet-lace Demi Bras and sell beer and then deny them their primary biological function, just because we’ve gotten used to having to enter a credit card number in order to see someone’s nipples.

So, to the question: Are you mom enough? Unless you’ve appeared on Toddlers & Tiaras instructing your over-caffeinated 4-year-old to say “a dollar makes me holler,” the answer is probably yes. If you love and support your children, chances are they will turn out fine, or at least no more emotionally scathed than the average person, which works out to roughly three cumulative years of therapy. Incidentally, having breastfed well past the age of the boy on the TIME cover, I’m thrilled to report that I am not—according to The New York Times Magazine’s recent checklist—a documented psychopath. And I’m going to milk that for all it’s worth.
editorial@observer.com

In the interest of full disclosure, I was eating a pint of ice cream—well, gelato—when I received my weekly PSP digest, which was otherwise a lovely and harmless collection of stories about people getting help spying on their nannies using iPhone apps, or choosing the right Jewish day school, that read like an ever-so-slightly ethnic Nicholas Sparks novel. But when I got to the blast about the the ice cream incident, I pushed back my stracciatella in shame.

It all started when someone posting under the innocuous-enough pen name “Sarah” emailed the list serve with her plight: “We were at 9th Street playground... and two different people came into the actual playground with ice cream/Italian ice push carts... I left with a crying 4 year old because I would not let him get ice cream...” “Sarah” then wondered if the vendors were even legal, prompting a self-described “curmudgeon” named Crystal to opine, “We could list other illegal activities in the playgrounds... public urination, selling drugs... And yet... unlicensed food carts... are somehow more acceptable?”

Now, normally things named Crystal disagree with me—crystal meth, Crystal Pepsi, that natural deodorant that looks like the lovechild of a golf ball and Troy from Out of This World—but this one really struck a chord.

When I was coming of age in the early nineties, I wasn’t allowed to walk in Prospect Park alone due to the likelihood of running into a heroin pusher or a Crip; who knew it could get so much worse, so fast? That the sound of the Mister Softee jingle—a cloying riff on “Pop Goes the Weasel,” itself an incredibly threatening nursery rhyme when you think about it—would become tantamount to Peter Lorre’s creepy pedophilic whistling in M?

A lot of people have gotten upset over the suggestion that frozen treat purveyors should be outlawed from peddling their popsicles during spring and summer, their busiest seasons, and use this kerfuffle as yet another excuse to bash what one Gothamist commenter called Park Slope’s “whiny bitchass” parents.

Here, however, I must disagree. In fact, I’ll take it a step further. Why limit the ban to mobile carts? I can’t count how many times I pass Ample Hills Creamery, the popular ice cream spot on my corner, and flash forward to the day when my son will demand a cup of the small-batch brand’s “Salted Crack Caramel,” so named for the diabetes-courting mixture of saltines, butter, sugar and chocolate mixed in to the base flavor.

I’m already working with my life coach to prepare for the first time I’ll have to deny my child pleasure; to see his angelic little face redden, his rosebud lips twisting into a grimace as he experiences soul-shredding rejection for the first time.

But honestly, what about toy stores? Pet stores? Restaurants that carelessly leave Dixie cups full of tempting crayons out on their tables, forcing me to sternly remind my son that he is not the next Basquiat? What of the artisanal mayonnaise store opening mere blocks from my apartment? I shudder to think of a beautiful day of bonding ruined when my child stops in his tracks, hurls his ciabatta BLT to the sidewalk and pleads with me to buy him a tub of white-truffle mayo to bring out the flavor of the house-smoked heritage bacon. Oscar Wilde was so right when he wrote, “I can resist anything except temptation.” And it’s everywhere.

(Incidentally, to those judgmental dictators who implore, in the parlance of Nancy Reagan, that parents just say “no”: We don’t say “the N word” in my house. Instead we say, “Whatever would mean the most to you emotionally,” while making the sign language gesture for “freedom”.)

I think it’s interesting that the Hester Prynne of this urban fable, the PSP-er identified only as “Sarah,” limited her complaint to vendors in the playgrounds, when deep down we all know the playgrounds themselves are the real problem. How many times has a perfectly good walk in the park been sullied when a child stops short, unable to resist the siren song (banshee shriek is more like it) of the tire swing, that staph infection on chains that calls to mind something pulled out of the Tin Man’s rotting S&M dungeon. Or the mealy, festering sandbox? And don’t even get me started on slides. Did Chutes and Ladders teach us nothing? How will squeaking down a white-hot gauntlet of gnarled metal help my son get into Dalton?

For Christmas last year my father had the audacity to give my son the Fisher Price Chatter Telephone! In addition to confusing a post-millennial child with its obscenely large handset and alien rotary dial, its “pull cord” might as well have arrived from the factory tied in a noose.

Oh, and newsflash to the 16 people who gave the Play-Doh Fun Factory a five-star rating on Amazon: it’s not so “fun” for kids with celiac disease and a penchant for eating brightly-colored clay, or for young foodies who want to learn to make a decent hand-cut tagliatelle. Sheesh.

These things—these fripperies—may seem as harmless as a soft-serve cone, but as we now see, even that is a trauma waiting to happen.

And what of Sarah and Crystal’s inquiry as to whether the ice-cream vendor’s presence was legal? Turns out it’s not—Megan’s law does not have a Sno-Kone proviso. Look for a Park Slope Parents citizen’s arrest initiative soon.

A clown.

A word of warning: if you are frightened by clowns, do not—I repeat, do not—see The Last Circus, a madcap, macabre fable from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia, who has been compared to Guillermo del Toro but who, in this film at least, seems to be channeling some horror fanboy hybrid of Fellini and Almodóvar. Highly stylized and brutally dramatic, The Last Circus, which premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival, can be stunning, captivating and frightening—that is, until it loses its mind halfway through and becomes a bizarre and nightmarish telenovela.

In 1937, a circus is stormed by soldiers recruiting men to fight in the Spanish Civil War. A clown (Santiago Segura) is taken against his will, as his young son tearfully clings to him. He’s given a weapon and sent into battle in full costume (“A clown with a machete? You’ll scare the shit out of them!” his commander reasons), a role he takes to with surprising gusto. But after gutting an entire battalion, he’s captured by the rebels, and when they win the war he’s held in prison indefinitely. His now-teenage son, Javier, visits him. “Your lot in life is to play the sad clown,” father tells son. Soon after, Javier sneaks into the mine where his father is forced to labor, attempts to blow it up, attacks a colonel and watches his dad get trampled to death by a horse.

Fast-forward to 1973. Javier (taking the portly, somber adult form of Carlos Areces) is literally playing the sad clown, auditioning for a kooky circus troupe straight out of 8½. The “happy” clown, Sergio (Antonio de la Torre), is a sneering, abusive, alcoholic menace who tells Javier that he became a clown because, if he hadn’t, “I’d be a murderer.” Sergio enjoys telling dead-baby jokes and beating the daylights out of his beautiful girlfriend, Natalia (Carolina Bang), who also happens to be the troupe’s trapeze artist—and the new object of Javier’s affections, despite warnings from his fellow performers. At first Javier just wants to befriend Natalia, but, seemingly desperate to escape Sergio’s violent outbursts, she seduces him. It’s only a matter of time before Sergio comes around, and as soon as he does The Last Circus devolves into a horror farce.

First, Sergio beats Javier to within an inch of his life using a carnival mallet. Then, Javier escapes from the hospital and runs back to the circus tents bare-assed to maim Sergio with a meat hook. The carneys, who don’t want to report the crime to the police, carry Sergio’s body by elephant to a farm doctor who saves his life but leaves him horribly disfigured. Meanwhile, Javier escapes naked into the woods and lives off of raw deer meat until he’s discovered one day by—guess who?—the colonel he blinded as a teenager, who enslaves him and treats him (literally) like a dog. Instead of waiting patiently to be killed, Javier allows himself to free-fall into a complete psychotic breakdown in which he burns his face into a grotesque clown mask, dons a pope costume, procures two machine guns and goes on a killing spree.

With no end in sight despite the plot’s dive off the deep end, the movie heads into a plodding parade of camp carnage. Perhaps Mr. De la Iglesia intended to make a fatalistic farce, but even so, the loud three-ring circus he creates robs the film of any real meaning. It’s visually jarring—the film jumps back and forth between black and white, color, and some comic-book combination of the two—and the characters, who were, if not realistic, at least possible to relate to in the film’s first act, become garish monsters. After a certain point, there is nothing to feel except repulsion.

Sergio reemerges, his face a melted mess of stitches and teeth, and both he and Javier roam the streets trying to find Natalia and win her back—or to kill each other, whichever opportunity presents itself first (considering that the police are searching for Javier, and that his outfit and heavy artillery make him, let’s just say, conspicuous, he doesn’t seem to have any trouble walking around in broad daylight and terrorizing passersby). Eventually, the two clowns and their beloved acrobat end up atop a statue of a giant cross, battling to the death, but by the time the end finally comes, there’s no relief. You’re left with the vague recollection of an interesting movie you were watching before you got kidnapped and subjected to over an hour of torture porn starring a fat, sadistic clown.

Good luck sleeping tonight.

ulamarche@observer.com

THE LAST CIRCUS

Running time 107 minutes

Written and directed by Álex de la Iglesia

Starring Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Carolina Bang

1/4

Rudd.

Ever since he broke out in the 1995 Jane Austen-goes-to-the-Valley romp Clueless, earning teen idol status for the somewhat questionable act of kissing his underage onscreen step-sister, Paul Rudd has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as the go-to hapless everyman. Most of his roles fall into two categories: the hapless, disarming romantic lead (I Love You, Man, How Do You Know), and the hapless, hammy sidekick (Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wet Hot American Summer). But in Our Idiot Brother, a warm and witty comedy from brother-sister team Jesse and Evgenia Peretz, Mr. Rudd has found a perfect role that showcases his considerable charm and comic talent without robbing him of his hap.

This is not to say that Ned, the titular “idiot brother,” isn’t occasionally very unlucky. A laid-back biodynamic farmer fond of Crocs and Fair Isle sweaters, Ned finds himself in jail after naïvely selling pot to a uniformed police officer, only to return home a few months later to find that his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn, sporting a head full of dreadlocks and an air of delightful, deluded self-righteousness) has taken a new lover/farmhand and wants him gone. Robbed of his paycheck, his dignity and his beloved golden retriever, Willie Nelson, Ned moves back in with his mother (Shirley Knight), but soon prevails upon his three Manhattanite sisters to put him up while he figures out his next step. One by one, he unwittingly ruins their lives with his granola-crunchy goodwill.

The oldest sister, Liz (Emily Mortimer), is a mousy, insecure, stay-at-home mom married to pompous documentary filmmaker Dylan (Steve Coogan, in a role that seems to be a send-up of first-time screenwriter—and real life documentarian—David Schisgall). Dylan reluctantly agrees to give Ned a low-paying production assistant job in exchange for free childcare, but neither works out well. To Liz and Dylan’s horror, Ned allows their son, River, to watch The Pink Panther after bedtime and teaches him mixed martial arts after noticing how badly River wants to join a karate class instead of the all-girls modern dance class his parents have enrolled him in. And at work, Ned walks in on Dylan in flagrante with his prima ballerina subject (ever the innocent, Ned buys Dylan’s excuse that nakedness encourages uninhibited interviews).

When Liz and Dylan send him packing, Ned takes up residence on the couch of middle sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks, playing a variation of her ruthlessly ambitious, utterly narcissistic 30 Rock character), a neurotic Vanity Fair staffer—just like co-writer Evgenia Peretz!—on the verge of her big break: a feature interview with an heiress fresh out of a scandalous relationship that’s been the toast of the tabloids. But Miranda doesn’t have the grace or guts to ask tough questions, coming away with a puff piece about the socialite’s pet charity. It’s only the gregarious Ned who’s able to unwittingly coax the real story out of the buttoned-up, P.R.-wary subject, and Miranda wastes no time in attempting to exploit her brother’s knowledge for professional gain. But Ned’s good intentions get in the way of his sister’s agenda—in addition to sabotaging her article, he meddles in Miranda’s personal life, trying to make sparks fly with her next-door neighbor and best friend, Jeremy (Adam Scott)—and soon he’s pounding the pavement once again.

The final, youngest sister, Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), is a struggling stand-up comedian in a loving lesbian relationship with a woman named Cindy (Rashida Jones, forced for some reason by the costume designer to dress like Peewee Herman) who maintains a dangerous flirtation with a male artist friend (Hugh Dancy). When Natalie makes an impetuous mistake with life-altering ramifications, Ned is there to support her—until he accidentally spills the beans to Cindy. Now all three sisters aren’t speaking to him, he still misses Willie Nelson, and he’s back in jail thanks to an ill-advised heart-to-heart with his parole office (turns out you’re not supposed to tell them when you get high with the kid across the street).

With his Jesus beard, earnest eco-friendliness and childlike naïveté, Ned is unquestionably a stereotype (think The Big Lebowski’s The Dude merged with Tom Hanks in Big), and in the hands of any other actor, his hippie-dippy, laissez-faire follies might become unbearable after the first 30 minutes. But Mr. Rudd imbues Ned with an easy, charming sweetness and unpatronizing wisdom that make him seem simply guileless, not stupid. Indeed, the greatest flaw of Our Idiot Brother is in making Ned too saintly—despite the title, it’s clearly the sisters who are the morons. Petty, vapid and criminally self-absorbed, they blame Ned for being the only person to identify the problems keeping them from being happy … until they realize, in a neat, somewhat lazy wrap-up that qualifies, in Oprah-speak, as an “aha moment,” that by ruining their lives, Ned actually has fixed them. Oh, well. It is to the credit of the filmmakers that they manage to recoup and give the movie an ending that’s as winning and winsome as its star.

Our Idiot Brother may not be perfect, but, Crocs and all, Paul Rudd’s performance is idiot-proof.

ulamarche@observer.com

Running time 90 minutes

Written by Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall

Directed by Jesse Peretz

Starring Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer

3/4

Flypaper.

Every once in a while a movie comes along that is so bad it makes you feel terrible for everyone involved. Flypaper, a new indie that’s little more than a haphazard assemblage of clichés, clunky camera tricks and cringe-worthy dialogue, is just such a film. Directed by Rob Minkoff (best known for Disney’s The Lion King and the Stuart Little movies, but out of his depth in live-action adult fare) and written, presumably on a bender, by The Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, Flypaper tries extremely hard to be a zany bank heist farce-slash-mystery, a kind of whimsical cross between Ocean’s Eleven and Clue. And while it may succeed in theory, it fails—spectacularly—in practice.

The knee-slapping premise is that two sets of bank robbers arrive at the same bank at the same time, only to discover that they are pawns in the game of yet another criminal. The more professional trio is made up of Mekhi Phifer, John Ventimiglia and Matt Ryan, while Tim Blake Nelson and Pruitt Taylor Vince are Peanut Butter and Jelly, a pair of redneck morons with Sling Blade-level intellects and goofy, deep-South accents that serve only to make their dialogue sound more idiotic than it already is (sample line: “When an ugly chick dies, it’s like, they probably sucked anyways. But when a hot chick dies, it’s tragic”). The hostages offer even more lazy character stereotypes: Ashley Judd is Kaitlin, a perky, mild-mannered bank teller; Octavia Spencer is Madge, the more marginal sassy black teller; Jeffrey Tambor is the bumbling bank manager; and Adrian Martinez is the creepy Latino security guard. Oh, and Patrick Dempsey stars as a mysterious customer named Tripp who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, turning in a performance so manic it’s a wonder he didn’t have an aneurysm midshoot.

A considerable amount of disbelief-suspension is required to endure the ridiculous plot. After a brief shoot-out that leaves a man dead, Tripp convinces the two groups of bad guys not to kill each other, but to rob the bank at the same time, since Peanut Butter and Jelly just want to hit the A.T.M.’s while the other three are after the vault money. The hostages are taken to an office upstairs, after which they are promptly forgotten about, since before long they are roaming the bank unsupervised like overgrown versions of The Breakfast Club kids. Tripp in particular cannot seem to keep himself from meddling in all aspects of the robberies-in-progress, but the criminals are too dumb to just shoot him and put us all out of our misery. Ms. Judd, despite being an above-the-line star, has little to do but sit around looking bored, except for a flimsy subplot involving—what else?—her character’s flirtation with Tripp, a totally predictable development that feels like an afterthought tacked onto an already overstuffed narrative.

By the time Mr. Dempsey, drenched and sputtering like Rain Man after a few hours in a sweat lodge, discovers that the heists have been set up by a criminal mastermind named Marcellus Drum who wants everyone else dead and who numbers among the survivors in the bank (“Don’t you see? The money’s like flypaper!” Tripp exclaims, seemingly gleeful that he has uncovered the mystery of the title), it’s hard to work up any enthusiasm over whodunit. It doesn’t help that in lieu of real storytelling, Mr. Minkoff relies on a hodge-podge of flashbacks in which various characters theorize as to who the killer might be, and it doesn’t matter anyway, since none of the characters has been developed enough to make a convincing puppet master. The climactic reveal is suitably disappointing, and the final scene in which (spoiler alert?) Tripp and Kaitlin ride off into the sunset is a big, hackneyed yawn—even with a weak twist ending thrown in for good measure.

You know there’s something wrong with a comedy when you’d rather see the main characters killed off than live happily ever after.

ulamarche@observer.com

FLYPAPER

Running time 87 minutes

Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

Directed by Rob Minkoff

Starring Patrick Dempsey, Ashley Judd, Tim Blake Nelson, Jeffrey Tambor

0/4

Perry.

The riots in London seem finally to have subsided, but strange things are afoot stateside this week, so much so that we’re starting to wonder if Mercury, which went retrograde Aug. 3, is currently doing to the entire planet what it once did so publicly to Jeremy Piven. (Also, when does the statute of limitations on that joke run out?)

It all started last weekend, even before the city was deluged with cloudbursts of biblical proportions, when Texas governor Rick Perry threw his 10-gallon hat into the G.O.P. ring just as votes were being counted in the Iowa Straw Poll—an event that sounds like it involves blue ribbons for accurate jelly bean counting but that is actually a significant temperature-taking exercise for 2012 Republican voters. On Saturday night, the poll handed a slim but decisive victory to Michelle Bachmann, the woman Tina Brown recently dubbed “The Queen of Rage” on the cover of Newsweek (alongside a wide-eyed photo that would give Steve Buscemi nightmares), and on Sunday, milquetoasty Minnesota governor and “Obamneycare” coiner Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the race. Meanwhile, everyone pretty much ignored Ron Paul.

In other public slights, Steve Jobs earned an enemy in Marty Markowitz when the ailing tech mogul failed to respond to the borough president’s whimsical iPad video pleading for an Apple store in Brooklyn. Mr. Markowitz announced that Mr. Jobs and his company won’t “reach the big-time” until they land in the city’s most Safran-Foer-rich district, but seeing as Apple survived last week’s stock market free-fall with barely a dent, we think Marty needs to fuggedaboudit (at this point he’d have better luck buying a black market baby, and even then there’s no guarantee they’d get a spot at the new Grace Church high school). George Soros is being sued by his ex-girlfriend Adriana Ferreyr after reportedly making her eat dinner at the kids’ table. And Arianna Huffington may finally be hitting a paywall after solicitations for free HuffPo graphic design submissions from readers prompted widespread outrage.

More evidence of universal chaos: Lady Gaga will design the seasonal window displays at Barneys (flank steak will make a perfect coat for Santa!), someone paid $70,000 for a tour of Facebook’s headquarters—an honor we suspect any U.P.S. delivery man bearing Mark Zuckerberg’s new Adidas sandals from Zappos gets for free—and a “flash mob” looted a Maryland 7-11 without even throwing in any hastily conceived choreography for good measure. In addition, New Yorkers despondent over the crashing economy flocked to city landmarks to take their own lives (two suicide attempts—one at Rockefeller Center and one on a Statue of Liberty-bound ferry—were, happily, thwarted by first responders), an unidentified body was discovered floating in Niagara Falls, and on Thursday in Tulsa, Okla., a man climbed a 300-foot tower and, while showing no signs of jumping, he has refused to come down for five days (he did, however, order a cappuccino).

With all signs pointing to an astrological system gone horribly awry, maybe it’s a good thing that New York police spent last weekend practicing riot drills on Randall’s Island. Like the state lotto constantly reminds us, hey—you never know.

A grand piano had been pushed to the wall to accommodate a series of folding tables, and a fan was rotating lazily, attempting to combat the 98-degree heat. At the door, a volunteer handed out raffle tickets and solicited pizza preferences for lunch. The guests—mostly in their 20s and overwhelmingly in favor of facial hair and cargo shorts—milled around, but no one strayed far from a table at the front of the room, which was covered end-to-end with My Little Pony merchandise. Lording over the spread of glittering pastel wares was a stocky man with graying hair and glasses who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a pink pony and the words “HATERS GONNA HATE.” Hello, his name tag read, My name is Cupcakes.

Welcome to the world of the Bronies. Read More

Murdoch.

It’s officially too hot in New York. Look, the 70’s were fun and the 80’s were tolerable, but the 90’s are much better suited to Ace of Base and the United Colors of Benetton than to average temperatures in Central Park. Riding the subway has felt like descending into the fiery pits of Hades—especially over the weekend, when swarms of black-cloaked wizards gathered en route to see the final Harry Potter movie, which shattered box office records with a $168 million opening weekend (and tortured one of our reporters—see page 14). Meanwhile, Sarah Palin’s The Undefeated continued to undermine its own title with a take that failed to crack $100,000 and an approval score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, a feat matched only by such classics as The Garbage Pail Kids Movie and Highlander II: The Quickening.

Similarly defeated this week was News Corp.’s flame-haired executive Rebekah Brooks, whose blood has been lusted for by the public since the hacking scandal broke. Good news, though—the website hasrebekahbrooksbeenarrestedyet.com finally got updated Sunday, when the erstwhile CEO
of Rupert Murdoch’s News International was taken into police custody following her Friday resignation! For those keeping score (or organizing News of the World Fantasy Leagues, in which case, we want in), this makes 11 arrests, seven resignations—including the head of Scotland Yard—and one death (a former NotW journalist and early whistleblower who was found dead Monday), unless you count Murdoch Sr.’s fake-out demise, reported on the front page of The Sun’s website Tuesday morning courtesy of hacker group LulzSec. The media mogul apparently “ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden,” which might not seem like such a bad idea if LulzSec makes good on its promise to release incriminating emails. (Then again, he could just unleash his wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, who swiftly deflected a guerilla pie attack intended for Mr. Murdoch at Tuesday’s parliament hearing—and then, according to eyewitnesses, shoved the confection in the attacker’s face.)

Not that we don’t have some pie on our faces stateside. Casey Anthony was released from jail, and may be planning reconstructive surgery to avoid the vigilante beat-downs that have already been visited upon innocent lookalikes. Auto-tune YouTube sensation Rebecca Black released a second single. L.A.’s overhyped closing of the 405 freeway last weekend—prematurely dubbed Carmaggedon—failed to make traffic any worse than usual. People’s Daily, a Chinese Communist newspaper, leased space in capitalist icon (and seasonal, oversized LiteBrite) the Empire State Building. The Times’s second most popular David, David Brooks, once again took the GOP to task for failing to take the opportunity to cut government spending, writing that Ms. Palin and Michele Bachmann “produce tweets, not laws.” (Burn!)

And, of course, there was the U.S women’s soccer team, who suffered defeat at the hands (feet?) of Japan in the World Cup Final Sunday—but not before President Obama took a time-out from his debt-ceiling stress eating to tweet a message of support to the team, signing it “Let’s go. –BO”, which sounds like a winning reelection campaign slogan (or deodorant tagline) if we’ve ever heard one. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton boasted to The National Memo that he would raise the debt ceiling all by his lonesome and “force the courts to stop me” rather than letting Congress stall. So far, Congress seems unimpressed.

In happier news, the courts can no longer stop same-sex couples from marrying legally in the state of New York, starting June 24—a rare Sunday opening for the county clerk’s office that’s drawn so many applications that Mayor Bloomberg has instituted a lottery system to choose who’s first in line to wed. Sure, it’s supposed to close in on 100 degrees this weekend, but that fills us with a whole different kind of warmth.

Strauss-Kahn.

The fireworks have died down (hope you enjoyed the show, Jersey … better luck next year, Brooklyn and Queens) and all that’s left of this year’s patriotic festivities are the tiny flags littering the West Side Highway, the distended abdomens of the contestants in Nathan’s annual hot dog-eating contest and the sobering knowledge that, according to a new Marist poll, nearly half of the country doesn’t know when—or from what—America declared its independence. (We blame Will Smith.)

But in some ways it’s understandable. The heat can make you do crazy things. You might forget your U.S. history, you might hack into Fox News’s Twitter feed to announce President Obama’s assassination, you might decide to take a shower on the subway using a jug of water—as one woman did this weekend, in front of the city’s ever-present flock of iPhone journalists—or you might, like Time’s Mark Halperin, call the president a colloquial name for the penis on live television. Vice President Joe Biden’s summer fever manifested itself in the creation of a Twitter account, while Thaddeus McCotter’s led him to jump out of nowhere into the G.O.P. presidential race, an announcement which the obscure, Dickensian-named congressman followed by playing electric guitar on stage in Whitmore Lake, Mich.

Of course, that kind of thing wouldn’t scare the French, some of whom are still gunning for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to run for president despite the fact that he is still being held in New York pending the resolution of serious sexual assault charges (see page 8 for the latest details). Suspicion has been cast upon the testimony of his accuser, a Guinean housekeeper at Sofitel, but the fact that he had extramarital relations with a maid and then ran naked down a public hallway does not seem to be in question. And to think, we impeached Bill Clinton!

In other distressing news, the Senate’s at an impasse on the debt ceiling, Shia LaBoeuf announced plans to direct a Marilyn Manson documentary and Glenn Beck failed to cry during his final Fox broadcast last Thursday. The pasty pundit did, however, find time to flip through a stack of legal tender, free-associating in rhyme as he went. (“Oh, can we eat some cherry pie? I cannot tell a lie!” he exclaimed upon coming across a one-dollar bill. And we wonder why 26 percent of Americans cannot identify Great Britain as our motherland.)

But if it was a sad week for U.S. history teachers it was, at least, a good one for the tech world. Google+, which hopes to soon walk in Mark Zuckerberg’s well-worn Adidas sandals as the dominant force in social networking, stopped adding users to the invitation-only beta site just hours after its launch, citing “insane demand.” (Not that they don’t still have a lot to prove. Two words: Google Buzz.) Meanwhile, Zynga, the gaming network you probably know best from ignoring the repeated pleas of your Facebook friends to relieve them of their sweet seasonal ham surplus via the Café World app, revealed an I.P.O. prospectus that reports revenue of $597 million, proving thereby that people are willing to pay for fake real estate assets that have no underlying value somewhere besides Wall Street.

But social media wasn’t good for everybody this week. Entenmann’s, the baked goods company whose products have the half-life of uranium, issued an unfortunate tweet following the acquittal of accused toddler-killer Casey Anthony. “Who’s #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?!” tweeted @entenmann’s Tuesday afternoon. The company later apologized. We understand, though. It’s the heat, we’re sure. Sometimes it just really gets to you.

Like the State Legislature, it's all a balancing act.

Andrew Cuomo's schedule has probably felt like a three-ring circus lately, with major bills on rent regulation, property tax caps, university tuition, and, of course, same-sex marriage hitting the floor of the Senate and Assembly this week. But now the circus metaphor is getting ... literal.

According to the AP, Nik Wallenda, a seventh-generation scion of the high-flying family, is lobbying the state to be allowed to cross the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope sometime this summer. In fact, a bill in support of Wallenda, sponsored by western New York Democrat Dennis Gabryszak, has already passed through the Senate and, according to reports, was expected to come before the Assembly as early as Tuesday.

Yes, Tuesday. The day the much-anticipated vote on same-sex marriage should have taken place. Seriously, Andy, we love a good daredevil stunt as much as the next person, but it's important to prioritize.

And Nik--did Philippe Petit need a permission slip from the state to take on the Twin Towers? Just load up on dental floss (unwaxed!) at Duane Reade, book an Amtrak ticket and go.