John Swansburg. (Photo: Slate).

Slate's editorial director John Swansburg was on Reddit today, answering readers' questions, which the counterintuitive webmag handily made into an easily digestible post.

What did we learn? Good question! Well, if given the choice between fighting one panda-sized David Plotz and 100 David Plotz-sized pandas, Mr. Swansburg would choose the latter. In the event of a Zombie attack, Mr. Swansburg "would surrender immediately and throw [himself] on the mercy of the undead," he wrote. But then again, he is "not a zombie guy, never have been." Sometimes, his own writing can be a powerful tool for social change. For example, ever since he wrote about how much he hates birthday dinners in 2008, Mr. Swansburg hasn't been invited to a single one. He views this accomplishment as a direct result of his seminal piece. 

"I'm proud to say that I have been told by several people that my piece has been instrumental in thwarting plans for birthday dinners. An email chain starts suggesting such an event, and someone on the list sends around my piece, and the dinner is scuttled," he wrote. "That's why I got into this business. Changing lives. I like to think that my own lack of birthday dinner invites is a result of having changed behavioral norms. But more likely people just think I'm anti-social now."

What about practical advice? Like, say, how to write for Slate.

Like most editors, Mr. Swansburg likes good cover letters. Be concise, but not too concise. Be familiar, but not too familiar. Get that Slate tone down. And remember, everyone likes flattery.

"Most important, perhaps, is conveying that you know the place you're applying to. I like it when someone gets across that they read Slate, they like Slate, they really could imagine contributing to Slate," Mr. Swansburg replied when asked for advice by a soon-to-graduate college journalism major with no actual job experience. "I suppose some part of that is falling prey to flattery, but I want to know you've done your homework and thought about the job and the employer." Mr. Swansburg points out that Slate is a free web mag, so there is really no excuse.

What about the future of long form journalism?

Mr. Swansburg is optimistic, even though Slate has gotten "faster and shorter" in the past six years, people still click on the long stories. And Instapaper! And The Atavist! "I think the future is bright. Personally, I find myself reading more of it than ever. I'm a huge Instapaper guy, both because I like reading in the app and because it helps me clip pieces during the day for reading in the evening. And places like the Atavist are creating new platforms, and revenue models, for long-form work, which is exciting."

And finally, using the email sign-off "tight lines," which Mr. Swansburg recently admitted to, is almost as embarrassing as thinking that "the symmetry of J.R. Swansburg Jr." is "kinda badass." But then, we all make mistakes when we are young. "I'm not proud of it, but it happened," Mr. Swansburg said of his email signature.

Alex DeLuca (left), founder of an online gaybro forum, with moderator Greg Keeley.

Slade Sohmer, the 33-year-old founder of the blog network HyperVocal, lives in Brooklyn and loves Liverpool Football Club. He was dismayed when the team sold its star player Fernando Torres to a rival, partly because Mr. Sohmer had a most unhooligan-like crush on the blond-haired striker.

His sports fandom was one of the reasons Mr. Sohmer waited to come out until he was 27. “I just never identified with the community,” he said. “There was nothing in my life that said you can play fantasy football and be gay. That didn’t exist in my world.”

By some definition—though not his own—Mr. Sohmer is what’s known as a “gaybro,” a subset of guy’s guys who don’t want to be defined by their sexual orientation so much as their manly interests. More at home at a tailgate than a Lady Gaga concert, the gaybro can be an awkward fit. This is also a problem on the Internet, where politically minded gay blogs like Joe My God or Towleroad cater to aspiring grooms rather than NFL fans. “They say nothing to the people that watch sports, listen to classic rock or pound beers,” said Mr. Sohmer.

The gaybro army takes its cues from the private but newly proud Anderson Cooper and the bearded rugby player Ben Cohen. They meet up using geolocation-based hookup app Scruff, where chest hair and mustaches get a warmer reception than on Grindr, the more popular app that tends to feature hairless, younger, more “scene” guys. Gaybros also have a growing Internet presence thanks to Alex DeLuca, a 23-year-old who is creating a site specifically for them.

The gaybro, said Mr. DeLuca, is “your best bud, the guy you played sports with in high school, the guy you went on a camping trip with last summer, the guy you meet at the bar for a drink after work on Fridays.

“He makes fun of your picks for fantasy football, or he shows you the right way to do a keg stand. He would identify himself through his interests and character before anything else. He just so happens to be gay.”

On a chilly Saturday in February, The Observer sat down at The Boiler Room in the East Village. Mostly empty at first, the room slowly filled up with the diverse crowd that the shadowy East Fourth Street bar draws—NYU twinks, muscled East Village yuppies and Stonewall-era old-timers.

There’s an unspoken rule that Lady Gaga shouldn’t be played on the jukebox (however, Robyn is fine). It was therefore the perfect place to meet Mr. DeLuca, who was appropriately clad in a green letterman jacket.

Mr. DeLuca describes himself as “a guy’s guy” who’s into sports—specifically hockey, Xbox and shooting. But others who share his interests haven’t always been into him. While posting on his favorite online hunting forum, he would find that mentioning his boyfriend begat angry emails from other subscribers telling him to stop “shoving it in people’s faces.” Frustrated by the hate-messaging, he wanted a space where he could talk about grilling, games and guns and not worry when he wanted to discuss his date nights too.

In January 2012, he took to Reddit, the social news site that bills itself as “the front page of the Internet,” and founded a subreddit called gaybros. There, as elsewhere on Reddit, members can post links or texts of interest to the group and other users can vote on what content gets to rise to the top.

Reddit was already teeming with LGBT-related subreddits such as gaymers (a network that caters to gay video game enthusiasts), and Mr. DeLuca’s gaybros subreddit took off quickly. Now, little more than a year later, it has almost 23,000 subscribers. Some of the items posted this week included a news update about the NHL’s work encouraging young gays to play hockey, a solicitation for tips on how to stop your gag reflex and a discussion on what the group thinks of crossing your legs.

Mr. DeLuca is now trying to organize the group en masse, via a website that’s being built from the ground up by an all-gay coding team. They just netted over $2,700 from an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. The idea for the new site came after “several big-name media companies” approached him and wanted him to helm new gay-focused media properties. (Apparently, this is a thing—Vox Media, which publishes SB Nation, The Verge and Polygon, just bought Outsports, a gay sports site.)

Gayatri Gopinath, a professor at NYU who focuses on gender and sexuality studies, wasn’t surprised to hear about the emergence of gaybros as the latest fetishization of hypermasculinity in the gay scene. She pointed to famous 1970s illustrations by the artist Tom of Finland, who depicted bikers, lumberjacks and construction workers as Adonises. What, then, is so different about red-meat-loving, high-fiving jocks in search of same? “This is a moment of the mainstreaming of gay life,” said Ms. Gopinath. “The fact that there is now an emerging subculture of ‘straight-acting’ gay men who are attracted to others like themselves isn’t surprising.”

Living in a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been repealed, Ellen DeGeneres feels like a family friend and gay marriage is growing in acceptance around the country, being a 20-something bro like the jerks in college is the rare gay identity that actually feels transgressive. The military, the chapel and some sports fields are now open—so why not the frat house too?

As for the “bro” part of the equation, the definition is ever-shifting. Sean Penn played the loveable original stoner-bro Jeff Spicoli in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and then Matthew McConaughey defined the bro as a pervy stud in 1993’s Dazed and Confused.

In the 2006 YouTube hit “Bro Rape,” which stars Community’s Donald Glover as the titular character, the bro was defined as an “18-to-24-year-old male who wears Birkenstock sandals, watches Family Guy, plays ultimate frisbee and wears an upside down visor with a pre-frayed brim.” Last year, Mike Lacher’s “On the Bro’d,” a scene-by-scene parody of Jack Kerouac’s most famous work, defined the archetype via Ed Hardy T-shirts and bottles of Natty (Natural) Light.

While the term is frequently deployed as a dig, there is a contingent that embraces the term, albeit in a slightly self-mocking way, and they seem open to embracing gaybros too. Brandon Wenerd is a senior editor at Brobible, the website that chronicles college bro culture and related news. When asked whether he thought gaybros might have their place in the scene as well, Mr. Wenerd was open to the possibility. “As far as Brobible goes, we don’t define bro using sexuality,” he said “I don’t think that bros define themselves by their sexuality—it’s a hobbies and interest thing.”

Additionally, an informal poll of current fraternity members at the University of Maryland and Penn State revealed a fairly blasé attitude toward gaybros, as long as they walk the walk. “I think gaybros can easily coexist with bro-bros as long as they stick to their bro guns,” said a Maryland frat boy. “For example, if three straight bros and a gaybro are drinking and playing video games, the gaybro can’t suddenly be like, ‘Do you guys want to go shopping?’ But if he’s doing bro stuff, I see no qualms.”

editorial@observer.com

The classiest swinger/sex club to recieve a noise complaint in the FlatIron district. (TastePartiesNYC.com)

On Reddit today, an angry letter was posted as a .jpeg regarding "Taste," a "Swingers/Sex Club Illegally Operating at 45 East 34th Street #3." The anonymous Samaritan who hung up the sign encouraged others to call 311 in an effort to shut down the "BDSM (bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism) events" that have been going on after dark, every other night of the week.

"During the day," the letter reads, "various other businesses are run out of Suite 3, including "Basha Gallery," "Bienvenue Ballroom Dance Center" and something called the "Dragonfly Body Workshop." (We tried to contact all three "day businesses" at the location, as well as the people behind Taste, but have yet to hear a response.)

We don't like to assume here at The Observer (it makes an ass out of you and your gimp slave), but it seems awfully naive of the note-writer ... sounds like Taste is running a sex operation during the day as well.

But look at how legitimate Taste is! For a sex/swingers club, but still. They've got a pretty classy website going on.

See, they even say "Not sleazy!" And they were so above board, they had their own review from an Examiner.com:

A far cry from the cheesy swinger clubs with décor that looks like something straight out of “Boogie Nights”, complete with disco balls and glitter, Taste’s parties embody a level of sophistication that simply doesn’t exist at other such get-togethers. Not to say that they aren’t wildly fun. For their second anniversary party, there were two professional pole dancers performing impressive feats while revelers mingled and gyrated to great music. There are two playrooms, separated from the main space by a glass door rather than hidden in some back room. Exposed brick and imported furniture complete the classy aura.

It seems very above-board. Maybe the neighbor is just jealous, as the Examiner piece mentions that some may "perceive Taste’s strict rules to be a bit pretentious." A pretentious swinger club? LOVE IT.

Here's the original letter as well.

We’re not going to rehash everything about every event each week as it just gets repetitive. We’ll just give you detailed info about the new parties and a summary of the regular/weekly events.

La Trapeze On Premise (NYC) Limp

When: Wed/Thu/Fri/Sat

Who: Couples only
Cost: $110/$120

Carousel On Premise (NYC) Limp

When: Mon/Wed/Fri/Sat

Who: Cpls/Singles Mon/Wed/Fri. Cpls only Sat

Cost: $120ish

Checkmate On Premise (NYC) Semi

When: Fri/Sat

Who: Cpls only

Cost: $120ish

Amantes On Premise (Brooklyn) Semi

When: Thu/Fri/Sat

Who: Cpls/Singles Thu/Fri. Cpls only Sat
Cost: $80-$120ish

Casbar On Premise (Brooklyn) Semi

When: Fri

Who: Cpls/Singles
Cost: Cpls $50. Guys $150

And as an eagle-eyed Redditor pointed out, Taste's website boasts of a "100% totally Private” space with a Moroccan-style tent VIP room, hookah pipe, deejay booth 'with an unmatched NYC Club sound system' and 'full lighting effects,' available for 'before and after clubbing' as well as for anniversaries, baby showers and adult parties."

Nothing like a screaming baby to bug the crap out of the neighbors at 3 a.m. But that's what ball-gags are for, right? No, wrong. Very, very wrong.

"Proof" (Imgur)

Arnold Schwarzenegger, apropos of nothing except his new film The Last Stand co-starring Johnny Knoxville (in theaters Friday!), showed up on Reddit's IAmA (Ask Me Anything) subforum today to answer questions in beautiful cursive handwriting on his iPad, which he then uploaded onto the site. Adorable!

Let's look at some of the better responses.

"How has the shift back to Hollywood from the Governor's office been?"

"My daughter Chloe who is 9 is a big fan of yours. She would like to ask which role is more fun to prepare for action or comedic roles?"

"What is the best piece of advice you've ever recieved in your life?"


"Arnold, you've lived three lives in one. You were the reason I started working out when I was a kid, you're an inspiration to all. A bodybuilder, actor then Governor. Which has been the most challenging role in your life?"

And the question on everyone's mind: "Will you be making Twins 2?"

This bonus question wasn't answered in cursive, but it still bears repeating: When asked what he most regretted, Mr. Schwarzenegger responded:

I most regret not doing The Rock. I love the movie, and it turned out well. When it was offered to me there was only an 80 page script with a lot of handwriting and scribbles and it didn't seem fully baked. But they obviously did a fantastic job.

But who would he have played? Nic Cage? Sean Connery? We don't think he'd have been believable as a  government chemist.

But other than that, the assumptions of publicists, clients and journalists—that being featured matters, that being written about will drive awareness or sales or public image—are a collective chimera. The widespread belief is that the media has "reach."

Trust me, they don't. Not anymore. It's become almost pathetic.

It hit me the other day when I snagged a profile for a client on a well-known website. The day it ran, the editor sent me an email: "Hey, we hate to ask but could you guys be sure to tweet and share the article for us?”

Dear God, I realized, my client has more readers than they do. The website needed us to attract an audience for them. They wanted the subject of the piece to send his readers over to them rather than the other way around.

This is our new media reality.

Today, after a media outlet or a blog writes about someone or something, the outlet typically engages in a frank discussion with that subject on how they can promote the piece together. The bigger the draw or online presence of the subject (whether an individual or a brand) being written about, the more conflicted the media is. A publisher can hardly expect to do solid journalism when the real reason they’re agreeing to the article is because the person has a lot of Twitter followers or a big email list.

The problem is, unlike the old days, when a media outlet could count on a set number of subscribers or tune-in viewers or newsstand sales, online there is more competition for everyone’s attention and no guarantee of anyone seeing what gets published.

Check out Forbes.com or Business Insider, two sites honest (or stupid) enough to show their pageview stats. Despite the sites’ huge viral reach, it’s not uncommon to catch articles with 250 views. Or 25. Or 2. Gawker has a better floor, but from time to time you’ll see a post do less than 1,000 views. Sure, these numbers are better than nothing, but these sites claim to have millions of “readers” each month. Many sites get far less. Which means that placing an item (as we used to say) is akin to pissing in the wind unless you’re willing to do the extra legwork of promoting it’s existence.

Check online versions of articles from some major magazines and you’ll notice the same thing: Most pieces draw zero comments (another way of saying nobody read it or cares). It’s true for this column as well: if I don't get it started on social media, there is a risk it could go unnoticed.

In an environment with zero publishing constraints—where it doesn’t cost anything to publish and there is infinite editorial space—most modern media outlets have adopted the simple but self-defeating strategy of publishing everything they possibly can. Translation: throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and hoping something sticks. Well, most doesn't.

Unsurprisingly, readers have an awkward relationship with this kind of content. Mostly, they don’t value or trust it much. So nobody—or basically nobody—reads Business Insider every morning. They read articles from Business Insider (or Politico or Buzzfeed or Huffington Post or Bleacher Report), in a one-off capacity. Most readers have probably never even seen the home pages of these sites.

Pulling up one site and browsing for good stuff is increasingly rare. Instead, we read the links that get passed around or come up in web searches. Or we see them on aggregators like Reddit or Google or Yahoo News. In other words, we’re an audience of glancers, and sites have to do whatever it takes to catch our eyes.

Aside from the obvious implications of this One Off reality—which mostly means more of the kind of content that is easy and fun to share, like BuzzFeed listicles—it undermines an important power once reserved by media outlets. They used to have an audience they served and could count on. This gave them an upper hand when it came to what or what not to write about. It allowed them to preserve an editorial mission and perspective.

Either that or was necessary illusion, because when nobody really knew how many old media subscribers actually plowed through that 7000 word feature on Richard Gere, we could at least hold onto hope. The media was in the driver’s seat because there wasn’t sufficient evidence to dispute their right to it.

Today, when stories risk going unread or unnoticed, the subjects of such coverage must ask themselves why they should bother cooperating at all. (For a small business, the equivalent is when Groupon or LivingSocial asks you to advertise their offer to your existing customers. Um, I thought you had your own audience and if you don't, why are we working together?) The purpose of getting media is exposure, to spread the word through an impartial source. If the media no longer has a dedicated audience, what good is it? Why would Taylor Swift (21.3M followers) ever need the New York Times (6.7M followers)? In the future, the Times might think twice about bashing Guy Fieri, considering he’s got nearly 1M of his own followers, a television platform and I’m sure an enormous mailing list.

As PR person, this means I’m doing two jobs. I take one of my clients and get them an excerpt or an article or a guest post on a "respected" outlet and then also have to drive an audience to it if I want people to know that it happened. Why not cut out the middleman and publish myself?

Simply put, it’s more effective to borrow a publication’s name. It makes an article seem less self-serving, more objective. And the website goes along with it because they need the pageviews. We create the news and then launder it via your “trusted” media outlets.

The saddest part is how the desperation for traffic makes media brands so easy to hijack. Marketing firms—the smart ones, anyway—will get an article published, then drive tens or hundreds of thousands of "visitors" to it through paid traffic sources like StumbleUpon in order to make sure that the article seems like a hit—driving it to the front page or most popular lists. (The same happens on YouTube, where the first 50-100,000 views might well be fake.) From here, cumulative advantage takes care of the rest.

How much longer media brands can greedily spend down the credibility that took decades to build? They sure aren’t making many deposits these days. In my view, it’s akin to a high fashion brand that started off doing a little bit of licensing with third parties but then grew addicted to the cheap cash flow. At some point, when you say yes to everything, you start undermining the intangibles that made the brand worth licensing in the first place…and the whole house comes crashing down.

It's a short term play by both parties—exploiting the difference between perception and reality. Outlets hoping to catch handfuls of the audiences they've lost their grips on, marketers and brands leveraging their own access to fans in order to get the "credibility" that comes from being featured. The result is readers being fed more crap news.

It’s going to stay that way—and getting press will continue to be of less and less value—until media outlets start thinking about a new business model.

Until then, I, along with every other public figure, brand, and business, am stuck tweeting about my own article. So please, for the love of god, share this on Facebook and Twitter for me. Thanks!

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of  Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator and a PR strategist for brands and writers. Follow him on Twitter: @RyanHoliday.

Kevin Clash resigns. (PBS)

– Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, has resigned from his role on Sesame Street after a second young man stepped forward to accuse the Academy Award-nominated documentary subject of being a sexual predator. 24-year-old Cecil Singleton is asking for $5 million from Mr. Clash, after claiming he met the voice actor on a phone sex line when he was 15. Then he made a pretty large leap in logic, claiming that Clash spent his days at Sesame "preying on teenage boys to satisfy his depraved sexual interests."

– So in addition to bringing new chapters of Trapped in the Closet to IFC, R. Kelly is now bringing his hip-hopera to the Great White Way. Hey, it can't be any worse than Ghost: The Musical.

– Finally, Anne Hathaway (sort of) fesses up that her co-hosting of 2011s Academy Awards was a shitshow. "I came off as slightly manic," she admits.

Now we can forgive her and move on to buying our advance tickets to Les Mis.

– Wayne Brady went all nutty on Reddit's AMA today. But at this point, second-rate celebrities going on Reddit is akin to them guest-starring on Parks and Recreation. Sorry, the heads of our country have already gone there, Wayne Brady! What will you contribute?

One thing leads to another.

We all know how this will end. A Korean woman who lives with her Caucasian fiancé needs to borrow an apartment with female roommates to trick her visiting brother, who's been sent by the family back home to make sure little sis is doing okay in the big city. And not, you know, living in sin with a white guy whom she plans to marry. And definitely not dreaming up intricate ruses to deceive her overprotective family about the fact that she is living with a white guy whom she plans to marry.

The woman posted her quandary on Reddit "Offering $100 (or more) for help with a weird request," where it was thankfully spotted by Gothamist. Apparently this woman has never seen The Wedding Banquet. But, as anyone who has ever created a multifaceted lie to cover up the most basic realities of his or her life (or anyone who has ever watched a romantic comedy) knows, these things have a way of spiraling out of control.

"I'm a Asian foreign student who is now engaged to my lovely boyfriend - who is white. My loving and protective Korean mother does not know any of this, and I have (unfortunately) been lying to her for nearly a year now. Amongst a slew of other issues/lies involved here regarding faking my activities in New York (this story only goes deeper), she is now sending my brother to NYC for the first time to visit me, and check up on me. He is arriving in the next few days to stay until the end of October."

But don't worry, this woman has already taken care of the complicated footwork that this kind of deception requires!

I have convinced my mother and my brother that my boyfriend's friend left town for work for a few weeks, and just so happens to be the same time my brother is coming, and is able to hook us up with his apartment to stay at.

Big sigh of relief, right? Everything's going to be fine? Nope! Perhaps sensing that something fishy is going on, her family is demanding to see her apartment.

Unfortunately, my mother and brother both want to see my 'apartment' that I live in, in which I have told her I have female roommates in a 2/3 bedroom apartment. I will have to take my brother to this mysterious apartment in the next few weeks, albeit for just an hour to look around to make sure I'm doing good in the big city.

So here's what she's proposing:

I'm offering $100 to anyone, preferably female in a 2/3 bedroom apt with other female roommates, to let me use their room for an hour to pretend it's mine. It has to be furnished but doesn't need anything special since he doesn't know what furniture I have, would just bring along a school textbook, picture and what not. Extra cash for pretending to be my roommate!

Naturally, this plan can only go wrong in an infinite number of terrible ways. The brother sees something in the bedroom that's even worse than living with one's fiancé! One of her friends accidentally betrays the fact that she's engaged! The brother falls in love with one of the fake roommates and insists on going back to the pseudo-apartment all the time! Hilarity, and of course heartbreak, ensues.

kvelsey@observer.com

Reddit user "Mebbeatroaway" took to the message board late last night to answer questions that have "cropped up due to last weeks [sic] shooting.”

Needless to say, he's got some pretty interesting things to say about Guns and The City. Emphasis ours ...

Who He Is:

Born and raised here, doing what I always wanted, but the politics is terrible. I don't think I could leave, all my family is here and despite what everyone sees, it's real easy to fall in love with NY. Hopefully something will change when our mayor leaves.

On the NYPD's Gun Training Regimen:

Any average CCW [concealed-carry weapon] citizen who practices more then twice a year pretty much has most of the department beat in terms of training.

On NYPD Bureaucrats Changing the Gun Training Regimen Due to Public Complaints:

I honestly don't think they will listen. Change has to come from within the department. Maybe a PC [police chief] more interested in tactics then sending detectives to New Jersey and middle America to hunt 'terrorist' college clubs.

On Whether or Not Anyone Pushes for Changes in the NYPD Training Regimen:

There are many that do, and they are ignored, because a majority don't care. Certain 'tactics' sessions we have involve bullshitting about deferred compensation or who went on disability. It's fucking disgusting. But anyone that speaks up is considered a 'buff'.

'Shouldn't we be discussing active shooter situations?'

'WHOA EASY THERE COWBOY. First let's look at some slides a chief in Queens made about preteens joining gangs, then take an hour break and come back and sit down playing on your iPhones some more'

To be fair, a lot of the people 'training' us are cops who have back problems from wearing gunbelts for too long & never exercising so they stuck them in some crap teaching gig. It's despicable.

On What Cops Make, and Whether or Not He Loves His Job:

Here's the thing, I honestly don't know. [The salaries] are all posted online ... All I know is I'm making around 70 this year and I'm six years in. I went in the academy at 21 because that's all I've ever wanted to do. I'd shovel shit for pay and do this for free if I had too. I don't love this job because of the shit training, but because I actually love dealing with people out there that might need my help. Living in the boroughs is expensive, but I make enough to be happy.

On Gun Training Standars:

The majority of the NYPD has never been trained on any of the M4's, MP5's or Ithaca shotguns we have. The last four academy classes were allowed to shoot 5 rounds each from an M4, and now they are all 'rifle qualified'. When I ever get an AR [assault rifle], it will be my own.

There's more where that came from.

If the thread and the user in question are in fact legitimate—and they certainly seem to be—at the very least, it's an enlightening and refreshing change of pace from the constant obfuscation of matters like these that typically emerges from the department (in the form of NYPD spokesman DCPI Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne). In other words, savor what little is there. What most New Yorkers know about their police force and the way they deal with guns is likely cloudy at best, and despite the slight light this may shed on the matter, there likely won't be more where this came from.

Or as the supposed cop in question, "Mebbeatroaway”—who hasn't provided verification that he is an NYPD officer—put it: "My job has a zero tolerance policy on officers making it look bad online."

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Martin Scorsese in the new iPhone ad (YouTube)

Zooey Deschanel orders tomato soup. John Malkovich demands a joke. Samuel L. Jackson makes his own tomato soup (Hot-spacho!)

The iPhone 4S ads have drawn some A-list names to promote its new feature: indentured robotic servant Siri. Because Apple won't rest until the singularity is here and everything Isaac Asimov predicted comes true.

The latest spot, released yesterday, stars director Martin Scorsese in the back of a taxi cab. In 1976's Taxi Driver, it was Mr. Scorsese himself who made the cameo as a creepy backseat passenger. Now, he's returning the favor.

See if you can spot the Taxi Driver shout-out in the iconic director's commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z714Fnylf5s&feature=player_embedded#!

Did you see it? As Redditors pointed out, Mr. Scorsese is apparently still riding in Travis Bickle's cab: the car has the same license plate as the one in the DeNiro film.

Even though the Tribeca area has been gentrified since Taxi Driver was first released (thanks in large part to Mr. DeNiro himself), it's still nice to know that the city is still be kept safe by vigilante cab drivers...at least those willing to sell out for a phone commercial.

You may know Reddit as that wonderful social media community that yields things like AMA, or "Ask Me Anything" threads, wherein people who have had life experiences (like surviving being shot in the head) or jobs (like being a celebrity, or an investment banker) get asked by the public what it's really like out there. But today, a thread like this appeared not in the AMA section of Reddit, but in one of the New York City-specific threads, wherein a paramedic moving to the city was looking for information about jobs.

The help they got from Reddit was practical, sure. On the whole, though, for the general public, it's fairly enlightening.

For example, on the job quality of New York City paramedics:

It's not that great. NYC has about 1.4 million calls per year - around 4,500 calls a day with an EMS staff of around 3,000 people total - that includes lieutenants not involved with patient care and those who are off that day entirely. With the exception of a few areas (and all of Staten Island), you'll probably be busy no matter where you are...

On how paramedics are treated:

Not that great, but it depends on your lieutenants. I have a bunch that are really awesome and that I know that as long as I do the right thing they'll have my back. Others are just there to bust balls.

On EMS' relationship with the FDNY:

EMS, as a whole, is the red-headed step child of the FDNY. The thing about working for the hospitals is that FDNY [lieutenants] are also your supervisors, and have the power to write you up as well, even if you are not FDNY. Usually they won't go anywhere, but you'll have to deal with our LTs and your hospital supervisors - just another layer of nonsense to deal with. The EMS system in NYC is breaking, if it's not already broken.

On what it's like working for FDNY lieutenants:

One the whole, most [FDNY lieutenants] probably don't have your back. [...] They need to make a name for themselves in order to get promoted to Captain (like I said before, it's all appointed after LT), and in order to make a name for themselves they need to write up as many people as possible and they won't think twice about screwing you over to get it.

Finally, on what you can expect to spend most of your working hours doing:

You'll spend the vast amount of your time transporting drunks that come in as unconscious and colds and flus that come in as chest pains because they have a cough. It's even worse for EMTs.

Good news, however:

There are definitely good jobs to be had out there - shootings, stabbings, MIs, serious MVAs or Pedestrian Strucks, etc, but there are so many units out there to deal with all the bullshit they'll be few and far in-between. Some days will be better than others, however - a few months ago I got a violent guy on PCP, a legit diff breather, a legit fire with people trapped, and a shooting all in the same day. So those days do exist where you'll really go to work and they're a ton of fun.

Emphasis all ours, and now you know: All it all, it would appear much hasn't changed since Bringing Out The Dead.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek