Note: Two former WSN editor-in-chiefs declined to comment; they actually have print jobs one has a print job and the other a job at a website (though his e-mail to us read, “Man, I wish I had a print job.”) One former WSN news editor didn’t write back, but the last time we saw her she seemed drunk and told us: “Yeah, I worked in journalism for a while. Now I work at a shoe boutique.” If any of you NYU-grads out there want to participate, e-mail us.

After the jump, the testimonies of our three contributors.

Justin Spees, Gallatin ‘09:

First of all, I’m not sure how much the Employers’ Union in New York knows about Gallatin, but I have yet to be asked about my individualized concentration. Understand that all start up jobs are simple jobs, and I wonder if things would be any different were I bearing an English degree, or even a law degree, beyond the fact that my prospective employers would be wearing ties. The job market is a difficult business right now, and hats off if you’ve found credible work, but if you’re giving serious thought to what your prospects look like because they don’t look like much, this one’s for you.

The act plays out like this: qualifications: college grad, NYULocal non-editor, WSN contributor, a music blog that wasn’t pitchfork or stereogum. Events: dozens of unanswered applications responding to postings on mediabistro, craiglist, and careernet, a brief interview with a fashion magazine, two phone interviews with a media blog and its sister marketing company, and a tutorial preceding possible follow-up interview for an editorial position. All internships. All unpaid. Results: none. Keep kicking. I try to go to a lot of parties. The whole ordeal has been made less barren by a summer job a friend found for me with a state delegate in Northern Virginia, but the point remains: if your heart is set on media, start now. Or know somebody.

Also, know the industry. The reason blogs remain such a militant power in journalism is because there are enough people willing to contribute to them for free. Most online companies are very small, they don’t spend a lot of money, and they’re flooded with capable staff writers who have accepted that they’re employment is contingent on their designation as interns. Internships theoretically provide long term opportunity, so we take them. What they actually provide is experience, which translates primarily into a chance to show somebody that you’re good at what you do. So be good at what you do. Be very good at what you do, and expect as little as possible from it. That’s how you get a media job in New York.

Sarah Portlock, CAS ‘07:

I graduated from NYU in May 2007 and since then, I’ve been working as a fulltime freelancer in New York as a breaking news reporter for Newsday, hyper-local news blogger for the Brooklyn Heights Blog, and real estate reporter for The Real Deal magazine, as well as writing articles for various other publications. I have a wide variety of interesting clips to show for it, I’ve paid every bill in full and on time, and, yes, I had a lucrative flexible schedule. But it hasn’t been easy.

For nine months I was a staff reporter at the Brooklyn Paper, but was laid off in January owing to cost cuts at the paper. Rupert Murdoch bought it one month later. After graduation, I worked at the New York Sun, but was laid of in January 2008 when the paper let its freelancers go. The paper folded nine months later. I was an on-call reporter for Newsday, but as the paper underwent its sale from Tribune to Cablevision, the phone rang less often. I came to understand that each layoff was through no fault of my own.

To say the industry is shaky out there is an understatement. The best thing you can do — and what I am doing now — is to differentiate yourself from the pack, and get multimedia skills. And network.

At NYU, I was editor-in-chief of the Washington Square News right at the time we were realizing the importance of revamping its Web site and creating a strong web presence. I am now studying digital journalism at Columbia University, and despite relearning how to write a lede, the skills classes where I learn how to shoot and edit audio and video are worth it.

To calm your fears, yes, there will always be a need for solid reporters who can write quickly, and well, on deadline, but we are very fortunate and of a generation that is still young enough to reinvent ourselves as online reporters. Stay in touch with editors, internship coordinators, and your professors — you never know where the next job lead will come from. Sometimes, what an editor needs is a good cub reporter who knows how to use a camera as a photojournalist. When the editor says, “Can you work?” and it’s 8 pm on a Thursday, or 8 am on a Saturday, the answer is always, “Yes.” Prove yourself, and the jobs will come.

Joe Coscarelli, CAS ‘09:

I started my first journalism internship in January of my freshmen year and I graduated from NYU a year early with an undergraduate degree in journalism. But this isn’t bragging, it’s self-deprecation. Almost three years later all I have to prove my worth is a lot of clips (today we call them links) and decent search engine optimization. (Google me!)

I have occasionally been paid to write and report; I have more often done it for free. And in journalism classes and “for credit internships,” I have essentially paid to write. I am no longer a student but I am not financially independent, and I consider myself lucky that up to this point, I have not struggled for my own livelihood. I’ve had help in pursuing what many have told me is an impossible goal.

Five weeks after finishing my last class, I am struggling to break into what appears to be a dying industry. I have nearly exhausted three years of mostly tepid NYC media contacts and have fired off Gmails with a wish, a prayer and some of those aforementioned links, hoping to somehow transform overnight from disposable free labor to… someone’s assistant or fact-checker. “Welcome to the American working class.”

To say I’ve landed on my feet is too generous — I’ve settled for landing on my knees. I intern five days a week for a noticeable, but ultimately unfair stipend, but am fortunate enough to live a blogger’s dream: I write about things that interest me; I work from home in the mornings; I wear the clothes I want; and I make no money.

I need a bigger paycheck, and will do whatever it takes to find one, but I’ve already picked an industry and my skill set and experience are rather focused. And if in six months or one year, I’m back in my parents’ house or applying for graduate programs and for more student loans, I will also continue to write for free — again and again — because what else would I do? And because, for now, I’m green enough to believe that they’d pay me if they could.

Adapted and updated from what I originally wrote here.

“I heard, through the grapevine, that he was interested in playing a show in New York and I looked up the number for Corwood Industries – his dummy label – in the yellow pages,” Blair said.

“My interactions with Jandek were exactly what you’d expect- for a couple of months, I was speaking to a nameless ‘representative of Corwood Industries’ every couple of days until some trust was established. If I missed a Corwood call and called back immediately, I’d still have to leave a voicemail and wait for a return call. The line is never picked up.”

Sonic Youth’s Thurstoon More was in talks to share the stage with Jandek, Blair said, but had to skip off to Europe to promote his new album. Instead, Jandek will play with dance accompaniment from Biba Belle, a dancer/artist/scholar of some sort.

We look forward to seeing the NYU community’s unpredictable reaction, as Program Board’s shows tend to be hit or miss. Earlier in the year, High Places put on a hypnotizing but sparsely-attended performance. The awkward delight of a Kimmel show was best expressed in 2007 when The Blow’s Mikhaela Maricich stared back at the crowed and admitted, “I feel like you guys are judging me.” But with the Washington Square ambiance growing increasingly delightful with the season and Jandek’s indie credibility teflon tough, we’re expecting a warmer reception.

Jandek’s show will be free, all-ages, and open to the public, on Thursday, April 23rd, at NYU’s E & L Auditorium in the Kimmel Center [60 Washington Square South, 4th floor]. Door open at 8, show begins at 9

But, if only because it’s the next best thing to having produced this show ourselves—(ahem, this writer may or may not have once carried around a video camera freshman year only to lose/burn the tapes later in life)—we’re going to watch anyway.

Onwards, then.

Jordan: He’s got MTV’s bases covered as a half-black boy who doesn’t like the “mob mentality” of campus life and can’t wait get away from his “parents’ rules” and his religious suburb. If one of them rediscovers his sexuality this season, we’re guessing it will be Jordan. Jordan’s mama cried when he took off and told him to “be good” and he said “I will.” The foreshadowing! Seriously, mom, stop this kid. Thus far, Jordan struggles with forming new comfortable friendships because of his mixed-race identity.

Andrea: She’s a Wisconsin-born Christian virgin with the heart of a whore. We predict she’ll lose her virginity and then some. This week, Andrea tries to define her relationship with her meaty ex-boyfriend, Jordan, who, we are constantly reminded, never sealed the deal. Jordan isn’t sure he can be friends with Andrea, since she’s so slutty, strangely, even though she’s a virgin. “When I tell a guy that I’m a virgin, I become somebody to conquer,” she says. And she may be right, because Jordan is still saying things like “You’re my property,” and, finally, “I’m sick of the way you treat me!” All while he chugs apple juice from the bottle, which we have to admit did hit a note of honesty, that odd cross between adulthood and adolescence that is college life. Sigh.

Alex: The hippest and prettiest of the bunch, Alex is already scarred from some past relationship. She says she has “trust issues” and we predict she’ll get debilitatingly depressed and drop out or transfer. In fact, she’s already gotten fucked over and “feels like a worthless piece of shit.” Cheer up, kiddo! You’ve still got three years of this ahead of you.

Kevin: Your total dude! All-around guy! Go Wisconsin! Kevin’s tiny dorm room is “party central” until they get busted. All of which reminds this writer of his freshman roommate who rarely showered and encouraged floormates to take brief peyote trips in the room, all while this writer planned his getaway, eventually moving his stuff a few floors down one day, entirely unannounced. (I’m sorry! It wasn’t you! It was just a bad living situation, okay?)

Ah, freshman life! This accurately chaotic show reminds us: we don’t really miss it, after all.

There was a time when the New York Times speculated that African American culture had begun integrating with young, white people in urban milieus. Yes, I’m talking about “blipsters.” But by now, an arguable shift has seen a racial/cutural reverse: Pharrell’s Ice Cream waffle shoes, black fixed gear bike and BMX tricksters crowding Union Square, and Kanye West (cum Martin Louis King, Jr.) and his tastemaking blog. Young, stylistic people of both races are often taking their cues from a primarily black artist-led counter-culture.

The latest rapper to emphasize the “hip” is the T.I.-affiliated Yung L.A., a big, mohawked Southern rapper who has come up with a new, improved, and maybe post-racial term for hip: futuristic. “We Fly (Futuristic)” from his mixtape collaboration with Young Dro, Black Boy, White Boy, more or less justifies contemporary hipsterdom.

Over a gorgeous beat, mixing classical instruments with synthesized sounds, L.A. mumbles, “Welcome to the future…” before launching into the catchy chorus: “I’m so futuristic / I won’t even brush my hair / I’m so futuristic / man, which chain am I gonna wear? / I’m so futuristic / He’s so futuristic / She’s so futuristic / We’re so futuristic.”

Ah, yes: That sexily mussed haircut and those unwashed locks? The collection of expensive accessories? Those kids are not style-conscious without a cause; they’re futuristic—avant-garde, you know?

L.A. raps about post-modern drug use: “I’m so futuristic / I mix purple with the Kush.” He sings about his political disaffection: “I’m so futuristic / Mix Obama with the Bush.” Essentially, he dubs urban people (”futuristic bars / futuristic cars”), well-dressed people (”futuristic Prada bag to match my Prada shoes”), and counter-cultural sentiments “futuristic,” a term that makes unbrushed hair, in all its connotative glory, sound sort of lofty and worthwhile.

Annoying? Perhaps. But this big, post-racial team of cutting-edge kids is also the future. And I quote: we’re so futuristic. (We don’t even brush our hair.) Listen below.

Plus, a brief slideshow of Yung L.A. v. Young NYU:

 

We Fly (futuristic) Ft. J-Money – Yung LA

The show follows Whitney Port, a naïve, wide-eyed idealist moving to this big, cold, corrupt city, a literary narrative so well-established that Russian author Ivan Goncharov had already titled his similarly plotted novel The Same Old Story by 1847. But that well-worn arc is a popular parable for a reason; when told plausibly and correctly, the story’s compelling, the protagonist is endearing, and the milieu is chock full of moral landmines. The City’s characters pulled off this storyline over the course of the show’s first season by offering authentic personalities facing legitimate conflicts.

Catch up on everyone who matters after the jump so you too can become obsessed next season.

ON ERIN

Enter Erin (NYU alum!). In the show’s first episode, socialite Olivia Palermo invites protagonist Whitney and her wingwoman Erin to some swanky rooftop dinner party, where Palermo gets snooty about the seating and pesters Whitney about her new boyfriend, Jay, to no end. Whitney and Erin leave early, giggling. Despite an attempt on the part of an editor to make this some sort of social division, it’s clear that the girls exited early because the party was, well, boring. Erin didn’t throw Olivia any “dagger looks.” Arms around her galpal Whitney, she just walked out to go somewhere more fun. And thus, their genuine-seeming friendship was born.

Erin was, in some ways, all about fun: she dated multiple men at once, bouncing between a long-distance indie rocker and her high school flame. And she talked candidly about her sex life. When Jay moved in with Whitney, Erin said “he’d better be paying you in sexual favors.” But Erin, despite her candidness and many men, was not The Whore. She cried over love quite often. She wasn’t ashamed to be sexually active, but she wasn’t sexually hyper-active, either. We’re not going to throw around the term “feminist hero” like some publications, but we will say that for a single young woman on a primetime reality series to discuss her sexuality – without then being cast as Slut – is bold. And fun.

ON ALLIE

While the show’s other secondary characters might have, initially, seemed like interchangeable white girls, they all served a purpose. (All right- maybe not Samantha, but even she seemed kind of cool.) Enter Allie (ha!): a teeny, tiny, anxious, cat-walking girl model dating an arrogant, handsome male model. Allie might have been cast as the “aspiring” character: the young woman that middle American girls will unwisely move to New York in hopes of becoming. But then, on air, Allie’s life turned out to be pretty miserable. In fact, she was constantly crying. She cried outside Cafeteria when her boyfriend Adam seemed to be cheating on her. She cried at Socialista when Kelly Cutrone told her she looked too skinny. She cried at 10 Downing when Adam seemed to be cheating on her again. She cried to Whitney, and when Whitney was exhausted, she cried to Erin. The girl wept a virtual trail of tears around Manhattan. For such a strikingly pretty young woman, Allie started to resemble the Corpse Bride.

But Allie, for all her misery, wasn’t unlikeable. She was just paralyzingly insecure. Her boyfriend, your classic douche bag with a soft side, probably was cheating on her; and he probably did love her, he was just, well, young. By the end of the series, less glamorous everygirl Whitney evolved into a strong-willed young woman. Allie, on the other hand, just seemed tired. But bravely tired, because as Allie pointed out: pretty models get sad and tired, too.

ON JAY

It’s unlikely that MTV cast Jay as Whitney’s boyfriend: he’s got a lopsided face and an accent – two strikes against him from the production side. Unlike reality couples before them, Whitney and Jay expressed actual interest in one another’s lives. Jay went apartment hunting with Whitney, and she went to his concerts and supported his music career. They were also realistically affectionate. Jay told Whitney she looked “cute” and “amazing” and got nervous and bashful around her. For her part, “Whit,” as Jay called her, put on airs of sexy confidence that were obviously masking a schoolgirl’s adoration (”am I trying to make you jealous? No.”). And unlike the silent coffee dates Lauren Conrad used to suffer through, Whitney’s dates with Jay had real words in them, albeit frequently moronic ones. Jay had actual opinions, like telling Whitney to stay away from hipsters and mocking art dealer’s kids; plus, his Weezer-like band didn’t sound half-bad. In the nauseatingly cute scene in which the twosome makes it official, Jay shyly rolled his eyes when he asked “Whit” to be his girlfriend, while she tried to stop herself from crying and fucking him on the spot. “The dating game’s over for you, young lady,” he said. Aww.

ON OLIVIA

Then there is the Iago of The City. Her precursor, The Hills’ Heidi Montag, was many things (fascinatingly plastic, bizarrely loyal to her boyfriend), but she was never been a plausible villain. The most dramatic scene of Heidi’s whole three-season long feud with Lauren Conrad was one lousy club sequence in which Lauren screamed, “you know what you did!” without even saying what she did. But Palermo is a worthy villain. Not just because she’s pretty and skinny and condescending and uses words like “social” and name-drops like it’s her job. That helped, sure. But because she really is a detestable bitch.

Olivia seemed posed to steal the show’s thunder. But her charm and her cruelty wore thin – eventually, she just seemed immature, and sort of stupid, when juxtaposed with Whitney and Erin and Samantha and Allie. They, in contrast, didn’t appear to be mongering for fame (Erin never even dropped her real last name, Williams, as in the daughter of AC/DC bassist Cliff Williams.) Those girls, unlike Olivia, never really became enamored with the show’s glossy context. And regardless of the do they/don’t they really have jobs conundrum, stealing Whitney’s ideas at work was just unnecessary. Olivia wasn’t calculating and vengeful like Blair Waldorf (who is in high school, and fictional); she was just plain mean. But ultimately compelling. She wasn’t particularly likeable, but, to keep the narrative running, she didn’t need to be. Olivia became the character the show needed, the quintessential mean girl.

ON WHITNEY

Finally, there is Whitney Port. Before The City, Port was known as a soundboard for Lauren Conrad’s non-problems. Doll-faced and tight-lipped, Port didn’t seem like a girl who could anchor a television show, let alone a relatively interesting one. Whitney didn’t strike Olivia’s low-blows. She didn’t offer her needy friends much in the way of tough love, or even particularly insightful advice. She didn’t seem aggressive enough to excel at work, and she was dating a boy of questionable loyalty. But somewhere in there, Whitney turned out to be, bizarrely enough, kind of smart. Because maybe she didn’t need to act like her co-stars. Whitney’s friends were messes of their own making, and she wasn’t going to be able to fix that. Port was a diligent Diane Von Furstenberg staffer, but not an obnoxious career-climber.

Whitney constantly said she didn’t want to get “played like a fool,” which is sort of amazing to hear outside of the context of R&B lyrics, but, more importantly, she followed through on that. She had a legitimately romantic relationship and she did not allow Jay to push her past her breaking point. But when Jay did hurt her – when all he could say was “sorry, Whit” as he walked out of her apartment – she became even more endearing and realistic. And, somehow, Whitney Port became a positive role model. She didn’t take Jay back, after his probably authentic, final emotional confession. Instead, she picked herself up and walked back into the party, while her Mr. Big was left crying.

It took time to realize that Whitney wasn’t uninteresting. She just wasn’t a cast-member on I Love New York. She wasn’t another Hills denizen. She didn’t seek the validation of gossip columns. She was just, as it turns out, a real girl. And it’s that authenticity that turned The City, poised to be a parody of itself, into, of all things, legitimately good TV.

THE GIRLS IN REAL LIFE, VIA MOMENTARY ENCOUNTERS

If you’ve trucked through the endless analysis above, congratulations, you get some gossip. If you scrolled down here immediately, well, that’s fine, too. Anyway, this fine writer has had the pleasure of pestering Samantha, Erin, and even Olivia in person, at various, terrifying moments in his life. They seemed to conform to the above pictures of them. Erin, at the Bowery Hotel one evening, was on the rooftop deck even though it was cold and raining – that wild woman – and was chain-smoking cigarettes in a kind of cool way, alongside Samantha and a seemingly gay friend. She was chatty, candid, and kind. She told us she’s a “downtown” girl and that she goes to Ella when she feels “saucy.” She stopped reading blogs about the show after one of them called her fat, but added, “meh, let them talk.” After she met Duncan, he poked her on Facebook, she said. But she fell for him later: “he wrote me a really sweet song and performed it for me. I’m such a pussy, but I melted inside. God bless sexy musicians.”

Then there was Ms. Palermo – even skinner and more radiant in person, but just as much of a mean girl. At a party for Dylan’s Candy Bar, I asked her if she felt intimidated filling Lauren Conrad’s shoes (this was before the show premiered), which maybe wasn’t the best question. She literally glared at me and said “it’s not like that at all. We don’t look at it that way. It’s a completely different show.” Yeah, it’s only a spin-off. So there you have it. Olivia: pretty, mean in person, too.

Photos from MTV.com

The 41-year old with the persistent ex-boyfriend is the author of Prozac Nation and Bitch. More recently, she penned a controversial homage to the late David Foster Wallace for New York magazine.

And also, oddly, graduated from Yale Law School. She now does civil litigation for David Boies, the lawyer who represented Al Gore in Gore v. Bush; America, in the US v. Microsoft.

Despite her literary talent, pervasive depression, suicide attempts, brushes with fame, and encounters with notoriety, Ms. Wurtzel is now a successful and seemingly stable adult working in a powerful attorney’s office.

Wurtzel strolled into the business journalism class last week for something of a class-wide interview, and later corresponded with Local via e-mail. Too young to really know the author for the acclaim and infamy she achieved in the ’90s, most of the students in the class had only the knowledge of Wurtzel that they garnered from a Google search: a shaky Wikipedia bio that included unsympathetic 9/11 quotes, and an unclear relationship with Gawker that involved the epithet “cokehead slut.” Before Wurtzel walked in, a few aspiring journalists even half-joked about asking her “So, why’d you do it?” in reference to her allegedly plagiarizing stories for the Dallas Morning News.

But then Wurtzel did walk in: big lips, blonde hair, and those famously round eyes, still a cross between come hither and droopy. On her wrist, she donned an enormous, gold Michael Kors timepiece. On her shoulders, a dramatic fur coat. “I promise it’s vintage,” she told us. “Even PETA is okay with vintage fur, because at least then the animal’s death wasn’t in vain.”

For a four hour lecture, Wurtzel suddenly seemed like an interesting interview. Twenty years after the “psychodrama” she lived through at Harvard, ostensibly now winning the battle versus the “black wave” of depression she once described, a room of college students, she found, is still an audience she can connect with.

Interview after the jump.

Are you more of a writer or more of a lawyer now?

I think I just am a writer. I’m always in my head writing something. Whereas I don’t have voices in my head telling me ‘call this witness.’ I don’t know if you’re a very devoted accountant, you ever start dreaming of spreadsheets. But when you’re devoted to writing, it never leaves your head.

What’s your writing process right now?

I haven’t written anything in a while because I was, in theory, studying for the bar. And so I was at least making a show of not writing anything because I was studying. In truth, I might as well have been writing something.

Where did you write Prozac Nation?

I was at my friend’s parents’ house, to begin with. They live down in Florida, and that was really strange, because they had a condominium, it was maybe like a two-bedroom condominium, and it wasn’t idyllic at all. It was in Boca Raton. Which, if you know what it’s like there, it’s not exactly a writer’s haven. I’d get up in the morning and write for a while on their kitchen table, and if I was good I’d get to go to the Town Center Mall for the afternoon. That was kind of how I motivated myself. I would write for a few hours, and then I would go to the mall. So it doesn’t have to be perfect. I think that some place like Yaddo or the MacDowell Colony would really depress me, because you couldn’t go shopping. There’d just be no reward at the end of the day; there’d be no fun thing that you do.

Were you still going through depressive issues while writing Prozac Nation?

I have always and probably will always, in some way, struggle with depression.

Did you come up with the title of Prozac Nation?

It was the name of a chapter, and then my editor thought it should be the title. I wanted the book to be called “I Hate Myself and I Want To Die.” And everybody was against that! I thought it was pretty good. I still think it was pretty good. I’m working on something now that I want to call “Failure,” and my editor said ‘that’s so depressing.’ It’s interesting how people think about titles.

What was your thought process when you were selling Prozac Nation?

It was so strange—nobody really cared whether it got published or not. I don’t remember it being a burning thing. I didn’t have much of a plan. I don’t think I ever imagined that it was going to be published.

How did you feel about the reactions to the book?

It did seem like some people were terribly angry about something about the book, and I could never figure out what that was. But I always felt like if they knew me, they wouldn’t necessarily like me, but they would realize that it wasn’t worth the trouble of being so annoyed. I have to take the trash out, I have to make my bed everyday. My life was pretty much like anybody else’s—it still is.

How do you feel about the movie?

I didn’t like the movie. It was factually accurate but I don’t think it had the spirit of the book. It had no humor. The director so clearly didn’t get the milieu, so he should have just made it the story of someone depressed somewhere else under a different set of circumstances. Cristina Ricci was good; the thing that was bad was the script. It was a terrible script. I can’t say enough bad things about the script.

When you go back to your previous works, do you feel like a completely different person?

No, it doesn’t seem like a different person. I probably wouldn’t write it now, but it still seems like me. When I look at Prozac Nation, it seems like a pretty sloppy book to me. But it’s perfect for what I was trying to do then. I think it seems true to the experience that I was trying to convey at the time, and all I was trying to do was be authentic.

Did the book’s success change your life?

Not really. Not that much changes. I have relatives, aunts and uncles, who think “Thank God she went to law school, because now maybe she’ll be okay.”

What do you think about the pharmaceutical industry now?

When I was your age, or a little younger, you could tell doctors that you feel chemicals bouncing around in your head, and they’d say ‘no, you just need twenty years of therapy.’ They really didn’t give out medication until you were already in the hospital. But now you have the opposite problem, that you need therapy, and people just hand you medication. Both things are kind of a way of not taking the problem seriously. Like suddenly all these people are bipolar. That’s a really rare problem, to be bipolar. But whatever medication they have that works for something, they attach a disease to, because these diseases are all so similar, frankly.

At the same time there are people who need medication who are now getting it, so I think it’s a net gain. And then there are even people who just want medication, and who can say that it isn’t fine? If it’s not hurting them and they feel better, is there just a moral qualm about that?

Do you have friends who are artists or writers that motivate you?

I used to know a lot of writers and we’d hang out but I did feel like we were all very depressed and that it was not necessarily the healthiest thing.

Why were all your friends depressed?

It’s an occupational hazard, I think.

Did they have chemical imbalances?

I don’t know that they were literally depressed.

Some of that was fun. There have been times in my life when I really liked that. But an awful lot of my friends who at one time were editors at Spin magazine like went and got MBAs and now have software companies. There’s something wearying about writing. It’s a very hard life. So there’s any number of people I know who just lost their devotion to it.

Then there are the people who got married and moved to Brooklyn. Which is like, to me, this unfortunate thing that happens to people. And they’re all so happy! Everyone who lives in Brooklyn is happy. They like it. It’s a happy place. They’re completely happy. So I’m probably just wrong about this. But it’s become this determination on my part, like it’s Kabul, Afghanistan before it’s Cobble Hill. I can’t hear one more time that Brooklyn is the new Manhattan or just anything like that.

What motivates you to write?

Nowadays, I tend to write about current events, so I’m motivated by something that happened, that I can’t believe they’ve mistaken this for a good idea. I’ll tell you something that I haven’t written about but it’s driving me crazy—all these potential Obama cabinet nominees, and right now there’s only one person working in the Treasury Dept., because everybody who he wants to nominate has a tax problem. The take-home that everybody’s been getting, all these nominees don’t pay their taxes, is the wrong message. The message should be: the tax system is a mess! Nobody knows how to pay their taxes. Everybody that I know that doesn’t have taxes deducted from their payroll check every week is in trouble with the IRS. I mean these are people who worry about what the public thinks about them, so how bad could it be for somebody who doesn’t care? Think about what they’re doing. I took tax law when I was in law school so I can tell you that the code is crazy. It’s really insane.

Your stuff is pretty racy. I’m surprised to see you so calm. From the way you write and from past interviews—you’re a very outspoken person. But you seem very chill tonight.

[Long pause]

Oh. [Pause] Uhh… [pause] well. I think I’m fine.

What happens if you’re going on a date and somebody Googles your name?

Well… I don’t know. But people do that to everybody now. Everybody’s so publicly rendered, so it’s not just me. I would say there’s a reasonable balance. If I were to date somebody who weren’t at all interested in my writing, I would feel like that person doesn’t really like me at all, because it’s still part of me. But if somebody were too interested in it, it would also seem like they don’t like me at all, and they like something else. It’s that the person’s not getting who you are; not that they don’t know what you do.

Why did you switch to law?

When I was writing full-time, I wasn’t doing that much writing. I was mostly sitting around, walking my dog. I was wasting a lot of time. I ended up with this feeling that there was something else I could be doing to keep from wasting so much time.

Writers who have absolutely nothing else to do except write—I think it’s hard. Unless you just have that personality. And I don’t know what makes you have that personality but I think it might be a form of, like, sociopathy. I don’t think it’s normal to be able to totally motivate yourself in a room alone all the time.

What motivated you to go to law school?

There were the little indignities about life that I thought ‘if I were a lawyer, this wouldn’t happen.’ And it happens to be true. There’s a lot of things that happen on a daily basis that you wonder, ‘is this illegal or is it just annoying?’ And now I know it’s usually just annoying. But there’s not a single instance in life where you’re not better off knowing what the law is.

And I always wanted to go to law school. Renata Adler went to Yale Law School, so it was particularly there. And I always thought that it would be cool to do the same thing, but I never thought I could do it. I never thought I could take the LSATs or do the things you have to do to go to law school. And then there was a point in my life, some time after 9/11, when I was very sick of everything. I was very sick of everything I was trying to write, and I didn’t feel like writing anything anymore. There was nothing much going on in my life. There was nothing I felt like doing. There was a book I was supposed to write, I couldn’t get it done.

Was it in response to 9/11?

Well I lived opposite the World Trade Center, and my apartment had gotten wrecked. When the towers fell over, they fell on my building. My ceiling had caved in when the building crashed on my roof. I was in my apartment at the time it happened. So I was very scared by everything that had happened. I had been displaced, and I had a really hard time. I was in quite a bit of shock. I was astonished by about twenty different things having to do with that. It’s very strange emotional experience when an international event happens in your neighborhood; when something that changes the face of the world happens across the street.

I didn’t feel like moving after that. I felt like sitting in front of my TV and watching C-SPAN all day. And it felt like, this is the moment to go to law school. I felt like I was really wasting my life. I was having a conversation in my own head, and I felt like everybody around me was fairly irrational. And I felt like if I went to law school, people would be rational. And I was right about that. People are rational to a fault at law school.

In one interview you described 9/11 as someone pulling a turtleneck on.

It was an amazing thing to see—it was shocking. When they imploded, it was if they were built to implode. Apparently they were, as it turns out. But who knew that? I remember just being mesmerized. It had been so chaotic and everything was blowing everywhere, so when it folded in on itself, aesthetically, it was almost calming – it was strangely designed to do this. It was very still, time froze. It was really creepy. And very upsetting. The whole thing was just creepy and upsetting. To say I had never seen anything like it is not an exaggeration.

What do you do in your free time?

I watch Law & Order re-runs. I’m actually over SVU. I’m into the originals. I also watch a lot of PBS, which I’m embarrassed about, because I think there’s something really middlebrow about it. But I’ve learned so much from it, like I learned all about evolution, all these things I didn’t know.

You’ve had trouble with the Bar.

I don’t like that test. I have definite problem with the Bar. I feel that we misunderstand each other. I feel that it needs to understand me more than I need to learn to understand it, but I don’t think it agrees.

Are you going to take it again?

I don’t know.

Do you follow popular culture?

I actually just watched the E! True Hollywood Story on the Kardashians, and I saw what was so fascinating about them. I don’t want to get involved – I have too many things I’m involved in, like my TV shows, and it ruins my life, and I could see that this one could really ruin your life. But her mother wants her to pose for Playboy. Like, what is that?! When did that happen? I just thought, ‘that’s amazing.’ Because they seem like a nice family, in a weird way. They do seem like kind of a nice family except they end up in odd situations and they don’t go to college. But it seems like they don’t go to college though not because they’re not nice but almost because they’re old-fashioned. They all seem to live at home.

What about Octomom?

What is that about? What does that say? She’s had octuplets, and six others. I think the doctor who implanted her with these octuplets should be forced to have sex with her for the rest of his life. They should make a sex tape. That would definitely solve things.

Do you read gossip magazines?

What is the good one to read? Is it Us? Which one is the best gossip one? What about Life & Style? There was Star, but Bonnie Fuller took over and made it classy. And In Touch is the same deal? I just can’t keep up, but I do find it fun. Do you know why all that is protected by the First Amendment? Because it’s important that there be common conversation topics for people, or else we’d have no sense of community. So In Touch serves a higher good.

Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Wurtzel, Additional reporting by Lisa Qiu, Brandon Feldman, Ashleigh Stephan, and Damon Beres.

Beginning April 6th, MTV will squeeze every last bit of juice out of Lauren Conrad’s feud with Heidi Montag. In this dramatically scored trailer, The Hills showcases what it has to offer: absolutely nothing. Spencer still acts like a douche, Heidi is still obsessed with Lauren, and Lauren breaks the self-pity barometer. At this point, we wouldn’t even want any real action. A Hills without dead air and plotlessness is like The City without Allie’s sad mug and Olivia’s evil smirks. But can we PLEASE get more of that fortune teller?

“Shanghaiist is awesome,” she said. “The writing style is similar to snarky NYU Local, but they’re so unfamiliar with it [in China] that I can pass for being pretty good at it.”

You can check out Ray’s recent posts here.

[Ray is the first in our 'NYU Local's Where Are They Now?' series, which will update people who care (likely just other Local writers and their immediate friends) on the lives of former NYU Local writers.]

Let’s look at the ladies’ patented reactions:

Whitney, sweet and safe, if a bit incomprehensible, lends Allie a shoulder to cry on. She apologizes for Cutrone’s behavior and calls body image a “personal thing,” whatever that means. Port’s co-worker Olivia Palermo, desperately glamorous and jaded, joked that Shamu can’t come walking down the runway. (I love a pretty socialite as much as the next MTV denizen, but isn’t Palermo getting a little old to be a mean girl?) For her part, Allie bitches to her boyfriend who proceeds to call Kelly “jealous.”

So: blonde; bitch; weak.

Cutrone was genuinely concerned about the boney model. But in expressing this concern, she disregarded the rules of Allie’s polished, fabricated world, where nobody has real problems. Except that – beneath the big-budget camerawork and Manhattan montage sequences – they do, just like everyone else. And Kelly Cutrone is the only female in the room with the balls to confront them, and the moral impulse to try to help.

Cutrone was just as heroically brazen off-camera last week, coming under fire (and getting fired) for seating Ashley Alexandra Dupré at the Yigal Azrouel fashion show. Dupré, aka Kristen, is, of course, the infamous former prostitute who had sock-wearing sex with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

Like young ladies caught fellating politicians before her, Dupré is conventionally trashy. The 23-year old hails from the Jersey Shore and spent years dancing in Chelsea nightclubs. After the scandal erupted, she posed topless on the cover of the New York Post.

But you know what? Having an entire nation call you a whore isn’t easy. (Okay, I wouldn’t know, but I’d venture a guess.) Spitzer was just as much to blame—in fact, more so—for the illicit relationship, but now he’s writing columns for Slate! Ashley Alexandra Dupré has been through a lot.

She at least deserves the kindness of one fucking person.

Then Cutrone was fired for seating a big, trashy whore front-row at a chic, chic fashion show. And instead of purging up some excuse (and, rumor has it, Cutrone didn’t even invite Dupré to the show; she just didn’t have a cold enough heart to throw the girl out), she shrugged it off. “I’ve been fired before, and I’ll be fired again.” Classic Cutrone.  The reaction was blunt, ballsy, and honest. More importantly,she didn’t acquiesce to her haters; she stood by her decision, rare in the heyday of public apologies (Lohan, Cyrus, Spears, Phelps, etc. al.).

Though Cutrone has a bit of a cult following, she isn’t being hailed as a heroine. Instead, she’s come under further fire for her comment, in regards to her relationship with Dupré, “I am vehemently opposed to morality.”

The former factory girl (Warhol’s, that is) must have meant that she doesn’t ascribe to a conventional morality (and she won’t ignore eating disorders or scorn former hookers) because Cutrone is the most moral fashion figure to rise to prominence in years.

Helping Dupré mingle with the fashion elite is downright avant-garde and now Dupré is reportedly in talks for a magazine spread. Cutrone’s confrontational nature is bold and original and stylish and if it earns her enemies, she’s all the more fashionable for it. Other chic-ass role models might get a better placement at the next Yigal Azrouel show, but they’ll still be making the same expected pout, hiding any real personality behind big, tinted sunglasses; while Cutrone will remain uniquely sans make-up, the sort of role model a girl could use.

Photo: Patrick McMullan/New York Magazine

Photo: Cass Bird/New York Magazine