That swoon-inducing triple-decker of Politicians Whom I Think Could Hold A Conversation comes from "The Third Man", an article calling for Bloomberg's presidential candidacy in this week's New York magazine, a publication of which of which I've grown increasingly fond.

Certainly, it's got a solid head start: as a weekly concern, it's published with enough time between issues to catch its breath and come up with some novel, meandering explorations of (mostly pop-cultural or local) issues, yet often enough that it has the license to be slightly flippant: It's okay, folks, if you truly merit more on this subject, just tune in next time.

There's also been a string of recent gems, such as "Grupsters: The New Adulthood", a widely slandered profile of the "ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap". As one of them 23-year-olds slightly alarmed by the chalked sidewalk signs for Mommy Happy Hours all along Park Slope's Seventh Avenue, I can definitely understand the widespread discomfort for the uniformity of this emergent lifestyle. But you can't keep quaffing the hatorade on the article, as most blog mentions have been wont to do, for displeasure with its subject. <meta>Did I just use "quaff", "hatorade", and "wont" in the same sentence? Did I really? Wow. At least I never claimed not to be in need of some serious vocabulary soul-searching here.</meta>

Likewise: "The Close-Up Is Her Voodoo", an article on the Broadway debut of America's bona fide Sweetheart Julia Roberts, honest enough to visit the performance twice, thoughtful enough to surmise at reasons for criticisms, and engaged enough to draw comparisons to other movie-theatre flip-floppers. I'm not particularly drawn to the subject, but I'm captivated by the article.

On the other hand, "Big Love at Ganas" is far more sensationalistic than it needs to be, a greatly caricatured portrait of communal living whose angle is the communal attitude toward relationships.

Quite of few of New York's articles pick up some everyday pop culture, hold it under an inquisitive and frank magnifying glass, and put it back down just ever so slightly akimbo of where it used to be. I'll be keeping an eye out for more feel-good goodies, fingers crossed that this recent spate isn't just a lucky period.