Sundance! (Sundance.com)

Sundance Film Festival, perhaps the most sporty/mainstream of all the cinema fests (Cannes more about getting drunk in the sun and being weird, SXSW is more about being the next Lena Dunham), is currently full swing. Which means that all the celebrities have mercifully vacated the premises for a week and are up in Utah, pretending to know what those white, flaky stuff on the ground happens to be. Though we haven't seen the film selection this year because we're still not allowed in NC-17-rated films, we do have our own Grand Jury selection awards to hand out for Excellence in Sundancing. Take a look.

Blue steel! (MTA)

The "I Survived the Frankenstorm" shirts had already hit street corners and Etsy shops within days of the hurricane battering New York. But here's some Sandy swag that actually goes toward a good cause. The MTA has created a limited edition line of H train memorabilia, including T-shirts, hoodies, pins and magnets, and all proceeds go to the Graybeards, a Rockaways charity that has been helping out with the superstorm recovery. And who better to model the new line than MTA chief Joe Lhota, hero of the storm.

“We were looking for a way to use our licensed products to help out in the recovery efforts taking place in the Rockaways,” Mark Heavey, MTA Director of Marketing & Communications, said in a release. “The H Line has piqued a lot of interest in subway service in the Rockaways and, with the help of a few of our product licensees, presented us with a unique opportunity to promote the service and to provide tangible assistance to efforts to rebuild that community.”

The gear is available on the MTA's Transit Museum online store.

The H train began running a few weeks ago, providing free shuttle service within the storm-battered peninsula. After the Broad Channel crossing was nearly destroyed by Sandy, it will take months for A train service to resume as normal.

Correction:The gear is only available online, not at the Transit Museum's retail outlets in Brooklyn and Grand Central, as previously reported. The Observer regrets the error.

So, what are Buzzfeed's newly minted hundred-thousandaires doing with all that cash? Making it rain...lattes.

Former Rolling Stone editor Doree Shafrir writes for The Billfold in a feature about how she spent her most recent Benjamin. Where the coffee is concerned:

$4.25: Latte @ Cafe Grumpy on 20th St., a few blocks from my office. I get a latte there every day, almost always between 3 and 3:30.

One (1) $4.25 latte from Cafe Grumpy five (5) times a week adds up to $21.25 (hopefully, it's more, as she's ideally tipping her Barista, something for the purposes of quasi-accurate math, we should not assume).

$21.25 a week, multiplied fifty-two (52) times—for the number of weeks in a year—adds up to $1,105.00 $1007.25 (figure updated, see below). Which, really, even if Ms. Shafrir grossed $50,000 a year, would still only be a little over two (2) percent of her yearly gross earnings, and could probably reasonably be written off for tax purposes as a work expense; after all, who doesn't need a decent cup of coffee every day?

Buzzfeed staffers. Because as Ms. Shafrir goes on to note:

It’s kind of an indulgence, especially since we have free Stumptown coffee at BuzzFeed, but it’s nice to get out for a bit when I feel myself starting to droop in the mid-afternoon. I usually listen to music on my way there and back and just zone out for a few minutes.

Then again, when you got it, spend it.

[For context: The entire coffee budget for the Wall Street Journal—an institution far larger and richer than Buzzfeed—is $100,000 a year. And their coffee is that notoriously shitty one-cup stuff.]

UPDATED We've since been informed of a mitigating factor in our math: Cafe Grumpy offers a free drink as the eleventh punch on a ten punch punch-card, which would result in about 23 of a year's weekday lattes being free (giving Ms. Shafrir the benefit of the doubt as far as vigilance in remembering to use her punch-card is concerned). As such, the adjusted figure is somewhere around $1007.25. Also, let the record show that Buzzfeed—while they do serve Stumptown coffee—does not serve the espresso drinks to satisfy their editors' specific blood-thirst for caffeine. Yet.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

A guess procures a swag bag the Heeb party.

The publisher of a 10-year-old Jewish periodical that is no longer in print still has plenty of things to worry about.

“Are the knishes kosher?” one partygoer kvetched to Heeb magazine’s David Kelsey last week, before sinking her teeth into the uninviting clump of potato.

“They’re kosher, but not Glatt kosher,” said Kelsey, as the guest scurried off to nosh.

Mr. Kelsey has been running Heeb for the past two years, as it transitioned to a purely digital product. The magazine’s niche has leaned toward young secular Jews since New York Times scribe Jennifer Bleyer founded it in 2002. One year later, publisher Joshua Neuman refashioned it to encompass an entire lifestyle of ironic urban living.

And while Mr. Neuman and the pulp are gone, the pithy commentary and the festivities—including the decennary anniversary party at Fontana’s—remain.

And yet.

“I miss the euphoria of an issue hitting,” said Mr. Kelsey. “That’s so exciting when you’re a quarterly, as opposed to when you’re a daily.”

The Observer said we missed the covers, especially the ones featuring Israeli model Bar Rafaeli in a swimsuit and Sarah Silverman wrapped in a white bed sheet.

“I totally miss the covers,” he agreed. “That’s probably what I miss the most.”

We rarely make a point of arriving early, but the city’s most controversial spirit, Wodka Vodka, was one of the party’s sponsors. The brand is known for its blunt, some would say offensive, advertising and Fontana’s offered free mixed vodka drinks from 8 to 9 pm. Like many of Heeb’s guests, we wanted to try it without paying for it.  As it turns out, we made the right call.

“I’m not a vodka drinker,” said Heeb’s Jonathan Poritsky. “It’s free and I’m not one to judge.

Mr. Kelsey corraled more Heeb staffers including Jeff Newelt, who edited Harvey Pekar’s (American Splendor)  web comic series "The Pekar Project" and has even been a character in the author’s comics. (He reported his pride in Pekar’s posthumous novel, Cleveland, which he also edited and arrives next month.)

“Harvey was more of a mensch, more of a Jewish grandmother than a curmudgeon,” Newelt said. “The movie focused on his grumpy side, but he was the most appreciative person on the planet.”
And the vodka?

“It’s pretty damn smooth. No bite. Nice finish. I’m a vodka drinker. I’ve yet to cringe. The drink special ended just as a line started to forms downstairs, where mini-knishes were being served.

“Have you ever seen Jews stand in line before for food?” asked the Jewish Daily Forward’s associate publisher Barry Surman. “Usually they push their way to the buffet.”
Heeb managing editor Abigail Greenbaum said that she had in fact witnessed such a line.
“I grew up in the Catskills,” she explained.

We asked Ms. Greenbaum whether Wodka sponsored the party in order to repair its image among the Jewish community after one of its billboards led to a New York Post story, headlined, “Booze ruse screws Jews.”

“There was nothing they needed to repair,” she said.

In the back room there were about 150 Heeb gift bags neatly arranged on a pool table.

At past events, guests enjoyed a sundry bag of self-hating Jewish commodities, such as bacon-flavored lip gloss and a vibrator. This year? Office supplies.

The swag included: a copy of the Forward, a disposable Flat Rate Moving pen, a plastic Flat Rate paper clamp, a stack of J Space Post-It notes, a Flat Rate tape measure, a Modern Tribe chocolate gelt candy, a gold-colored Heeb lapel pin and postcard of Yonah Shimmel’s Knish Bakery

On our way out, we spotted Orthodox bike maven Baruch Herzfeld (best known for once shoving a caffeine suppository into his posterior before Rosh Hashanah, for an article he was writing) perched himself near the stairs.

He was chatting up a woman named Sarah who left a strict Hasidic sect in Boro Park (but does not have a book coming out about her experience.) She asked if we had a joint. We didn’t.

Jackie Mason’s daughter, Sheba Mason, happened by. She said the event was a “lovely party,” but could have used more dancing.

In addition, she found the cuisine somewhat typecast.

“Knishes are a stereotypical food,” Mason noted. “[Jews] also eat chips and salsa sometimes.”

AOL Music industry relations rep Adam Horne wrote in an email yesterday:

"Oakland-based, Odd Future-approved, Arby's-hating rapper Kreayshawn will be coming by the office to play some music and visit the staff tomorrow at 11:30am. You might recognize her from the Summer anthem (and viral hit), 'Gucci Gucci.'"

With just the one viral video--and in spite of less obvious obstacles like being flat chested and not having cable--Kreayshawn signed a record deal with Columbia this week. An Oakland-based 21-year-old, she has largely been described as female corollary to Odd Future, for whom "swag pump[s] out her ovaries." Not unlike noted sex symbol Arianna Huffington!

Huffers: Send photos of Kreayshawn and Arianna, unreleased tracks, and answers to the question "For what crime was V-Nasty locked up?" to kstoeffel@observer.com