And it's really a shame, because its future was looking so bright before that mosque bombing.

It's damned hard to find decent, interesting writing jobs these days, as we all know. And it's even hard for recent graduates of prestigious Ivy League schools.

In today's Styles section, Guy Trebay declares that in the ever-fascinating world of fashion, "sex is back." Oh, really? Because we thought...

The Times PR staff has notified us that the image above at right is the preferred headshot for chairman and publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. Note the serious but pleasant gaze, the grown-up suit jacket, and the carefully groomed hair.

Apparently, they like hamburgers.

It can be a challenge, sometimes, to wait all the way till Wednesday for the chance to let Alex Kuczynski tell us how rich people shop. The Dining In/Dining Out section, which appears a full day earlier, on Wednesdays, feels our pain. Starting today, it introduces a new, monthly column by Alex Witchel — a.k.a. Mrs. Frank Rich — that will instead tell us how rich people eat. In the first installment of Feed Me, Witchel regales with tales of her hoity-toity dinner party (the foie gras that is apparently now served instead of caviar, of which the rich have tired, the lamb chops so exquisitely tiny they could have been another appetizer, the conversation of "the late great society walker Jerry Zipkin) and explores the mystery of the finger bowl.

Got plans for March 7? Because we know now what we'll be doing: It's State of the Times time! From an all-staff email sent very, very early this morning:

For Borat Sagdiyev of Kazakhstan, on the other hand, there will be a whole different set of challenges.

New York Times

Last week the Times's Metro metrosexual Nick Confessore brought us an elegiac 750 words, teased prominently on B1, relaying the general-contracting news that a Windsor Terrace bar is replacing its floor.

This memo went out to the Times business-news staff Friday afternoon from the department's administrator:

"These 'Housewives,' en Espa ol, Are Heard but Never Seen," by Mireya Navarro, The New York Times, Sunday Styles, yesterday:

The Times reported yesterday on the completion of its 94th annual Neediest Cases Fund charity drive, which from November through the start of this month raised a bit more than $7 million. The paper was particularly impressed with the donation corralled by a group of three young investment bankers — or, judging from the accompanying photo, perhaps two young investment bankers and one extra from Growing Up Gotti — who presented the Fund with $236,000 raised from fellow analysts at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and CIBC. Explained the Times:

We don't know about you kids, but we're thoroughly hungover from this blogfuck stuff. Last Monday brought New York mag's cover story on blog hierarchy (a subject relevant to so very few, we'd venture that, come year's end, last week's issue will be the lowest-selling for all of 2006). Thursday had Slate's Daniel Gross telling us that blogs are so over, due in no small part to that silly New York article. Late Friday, Trevor Butterworth at the Financial Times chimed in with his aptly titled thinkpiece, "Time for the Last Post." And Sunday brought good ol' William Safire's "On Language" column for the Times magazine, in which he explored — what freaking else? — funny words in the blogosphere.

Just noticed a funny thing while flipping through today's Weekend Arts section. At left is the official poster for the Public Theater's Measure for Pleasure. At right is the version apparently deemed suitable for publication in the Times. It would seem the Gray Lady finds ass-fucking, even obscured, too obscene for its pages.

Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni's blog really steps it up a notch today, boldly going where no haute foodie has gone before: Hooters, everyone's favorite sports-and-boobs restaurant. Inside, he finds the buffalo wings to be tangy but the Philly cheesesteak to contain "assiduously minced" meat. Bruni also learns that doorgirls wear white shorts while waitresses wear orange, Swedish tourists love the joint, and that service is cheerful and funny.

This week, Alex Kuczynski discovers the Apple Store in Soho, and uses it as an opportunity to fill us in on the technology fabulousness of her life. There's the iBook G4 wedding present from the financier husband, the G5, the 23-inch monitor, Harmon/Kardon sound system, and the 100 operas and 5,000 songs saved in her iTunes. And there's also this:

A neighborhood bar in Windsor Terrace closes. For a few days. To replace its floor. And somehow Metro metrosexual Nick Confessore spins that general-contracting squib into an elegaic 750-word narrative with a huge B1 teaser.

From — where else? — today's Thursday Styles:

We don't know what it is about this day in particular, but apparently today, Wednesday the 15th of February, is the preferred day for respectable newspapers to launch blogs. Perhaps it's the hangover from Valentine's Day self-loathing — we've found that depression and emotional darkness tend to lead to blogging. Whatever the case, both the Times and the Observer have launched new blogs today: Frank Bruni's Diner's Journal and the appropriately pink Bridal Blog, respectively.

Most of you, we imagine, spent Sunday comfortably indoors, watching it snow a little, watching TV a lot, and most likely debating whether it was mean to the delivery guy to order takeout. (On the one hand, he lives on tips; on the other hand, who wants to go out in that?) It was pretty for a bit, yes, but it was also wet and frustrating and it was sure, you knew, to make walking around the city unpleasant for the rest of the week.