Weekend Update

Nicole Atkins at the Bowery. Whoever produced her CD should be tried for strangling this woman's wailing voice, because live? It goes right through you, bounces against the wall behind you, and then goes back through you in the other direction.



I'm with you, Jessica:

Charles Bock, whose first novel, “Beautiful Children,” comes out on Tuesday, used to be one of the horde of struggling, would-be writers who still flock to New York, even though novel-writing isn’t what it used to be. They hang on because every now and then a first-timer — a Colson Whitehead, a Zadie Smith, a Gary Shteyngart — hits the jackpot and makes the game seem worth staying in for just a little longer. You can spot them in coffee shops in Brooklyn and the West Village, clicking away on their laptops — when they’re not wasting time on Gawker, that is. You also see them at readings at Housing Works, KGB Bar and the Half King, dressed in black, leaning forward intently and sometimes venturing to ask a probing question. They idolize Lethem, Chabon, Eggers. They study The New Yorker religiously so that they can complain about how predictable the fiction is.

Wow, Charles McGrath. You just destroyed every single shred of interest I had in reading Beautiful Children in one paragraph.


The Simpsons Movie. On the big screen? Laugh out loud funny. On the small screen? Season 15. At best.