two-twenty

a trivial pursuit • post/haste

Our answers to Manhattan User's Guide's Quiz, because we apparently have nothing better to do -- or have nothing we'd prefer to do.

Q. What was the department store at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street?
A. B. Altman (now a branch of the New York Public Library)

Q. At the U.S. Open, the main court of the National Tennis Center in Queens is named for whom?
A. Arthur Ashe

Q. Who is the mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper?
A. Gloria Vanderbilt

Q. Who is the father of The Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas?
A. John Casablancas, founder of Elite model agency (and perhaps, a lech)

Q. Louis Sullivan designed one building in NY. What is it?
A. The Bayard-Condict building, on Bleecker Street

Q. Which Italian family took over the Rainbow Room and closed it to the public (except one night a week)?
A. Cipriani

Q. What word has The Daily Show with Jon Stewart coined to refer to the war in Iraq?
A. "The War on Error"

Q. What club features a mermaid swimming in an aquarium?
A. Coral Room

Q. Which highly-regarded restaurateur has named three of his restaurants after NYC parks?
A. Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe, Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern)

Q. What was the name of the beloved city magazine in the 1980s, edited by Adam Moss?
A. 7 Days

Q. What crime was Leona Helmsley convicted of?
A. Tax evasion

Q. Re-spell Gawker writer Choire Sicha's name as it's pronounced.
A. Corey Seek-a

Q. Which stage and screen actor made his debut in Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy"?
A. Matthew Broderick, who went on to appear in the film

dammit, my jo can out-ho j. lo • post/haste

Surprising no one, Janet Jackson recently announced that she suffers from acute schizophrenia. Her multiple personalities include "Strawberry", "the most sexual of them all; the wildest," and "Damita Jo", who is "quick to put you in your place." In other words, it makes perfect sense that she would pull a wildly sexually inappropriate publicity stunt during one of the nation's most-watched television events, and then lash out at the media for singling her out and persecuting her with the hours of airtime and miles of column-inches they devoted to her. That about-face had nothing to do with hypocritical narcisssism, or even damage control, people, it's her personality. Er, personalities. Perhaps it runs in the family...

Janet Says She Has a Sexual Mind | msn entertainment

mother fucking working mother, a rant | joanna • post/haste

As you've probably figured out, two-twenty is on Summer vacation. Or has just gotten really, really lazy. Or preoccupied. Or whatever. No matter...

About a week ago I spied a telephone kiosk poster advertising Working Mother Magazine. Redundant, no? Hell yes. Isn't the fact that it's a titanic job to raise kids -- especially ones who don't turn out to be peer-shooting, crack-smoking monsters -- what the non-monkey members of society have learned over the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the magazine's inception? I certainly hope so. I also may have been overreacting (perhaps strangely, as all members of two-twenty are the progeny of "Working Mothers" -- their definition, not ours).

But when I took a gander at executive editor Betty S. Wong's advice on how to pitch to the mag, my temporarily lowered hackles shot back up.

According to Wong, "Our readers want to know about women like themselves -- someone who had to go back to school while juggling two kids, women who are one cog in a big machine, but who have still carved out some success."

Okay, fine, but here comes the qualifier: "Not women who are too successful or too entrepreneurial." At the same time, she adds, don't pitch someone who's too average: "There has to be a lesson learned from this woman."

Lessons I've learned from Betty S. Wong and her magazine:
1. A woman is only a working mother if she has a job that she has to balance with raising children.
2. Balancing a job outside the home with raising children is only interesting to 25-49 year old readers if the working woman has to "juggle".
3. Reading about women who have some degree of success offers lessons to learn; reading about women who are "too successful" does not.

God my head hurts. I didn't see that piece of glass.

Articles: How to Pitch: Working Mother | mediabistro.com (access restricted to members of Avant Guild)