Don't be mine

By MEDIA FARM

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HOLY SHIT! The Phoenix just discovered the MBTA, and wants you to do the same!

That's it. They've decided to introduce us to the T. In May. No further mockery is needed. Next joke, please!

A HELPFUL BIT OF ADVICE from Media Farm: It's usually best to delay splashing around in Web 2.0 until after you've graduated J-101. Otherwise, you'll get something like Sidekick writer Meredith Goldstein's attempt at recreating Ferris Bueller's Day Off –– in Boston!!! ("We managed to hit the sites he did in the movie (or at least their Boston equivalent), and we didn't even need to bring along a fringe-jacket-wearing girlfriend.")

We'll let an irate Farm emailer introduce the piece: "This is the single worst piece of video offal I think I've ever seen Goldstein generate, and she's responsible for some real stinkers." Well said, friend.

We'll quickly add that Meredith and some dead-in-the-eyes intern's thirst for "playing tourist" in town is the most succinct, poetic indictment of the Globe's lifestyle pages we've ever seen. Oh, and there's also this: The whole idea of taking a day to liberate your soul is predicated on the notion that you actually have a soul.

That said, Mark Shanahan's cameo in the video, sitting in his cube and mumbling, "I hear she's really sick," was actually kind of funny. When the guy's not writing or sitting at the same dinner table as you, he can be mildly charming. Who knew?

MEDIA FARM PICKED up the Globe Magazine this Sunday. Leafing through the Kmart circular probably would've been more entertaining.

We've been saying this for, like, two years, but apparently it bears repeating: If you're going to call a section "Tales from the City," it probably shouldn't be full of stories about whatever happened to some lady from New Hampshire at the Old Country Buffet. The idea is to connect readers with a compelling, specific sense of place, is it not? We're celebrating the uniqueness of the urban experience, right?

Probably not. Otherwise, the lead style spread wouldn't consist of a bunch of shit some girl bought at Old Navy and Target.

Still, the implication that living in the city means layering cheap, ubiquitous, mass-produced clothing tastelessly wasn't nearly as revolting as the foot-porn close-up that introduced a feature about a 61-year-old Globe copyeditor visiting the spa. And—surprise!—the prose that followed wasn't much more inviting: "If you begin your day with an Emerge pedicure, you better not have scheduled anything else more strenuous than strolling down a primrose path. Your totally relaxed feet keep whispering: 'We saw the Promised Land; why are we walking away?'"

What's more, you'd think a guy who works with grammar for a living would know better than to go dropping sentences like this on dudes' newly manicured toes: "Don't judge me till [sic] you've walked a mile in my deep-piled scented towel." Yeah. Guess that's what happens to journalism when massages and oil scrubs have left you "physically and mentally as tractable as linguini."

WE'D LIKE TO THANK the Times' Sunday Styles for putting forward the best this young generation has to offer. Really, thanks. Their Modern Love column's college essay contest netted over 1,200 responses, and apparently, the paper has decided that there's no one better suited to be the voice of young people who date other young people than a girl who, after gratuitously name-checking both Brooklyn and the East Village, drops this:

So, a few days after the chat with my mom, when I found myself downtown drinking tea with my friend Steven, I asked him what he thought about dating. He has a long-term girlfriend, and I was curious how he viewed their relationship. "The main thing," he said, "is I don't mind if she sleeps with other people. I mean, she's not my property, right? I'm just glad I get to hang out with her. Spend time with her. Because that's all we really have, you know? I don't want her to be mine, and I don't want to be anybody's."

VERY NEARLY SPEAKING OF, here's New Yorker editor David Remnick on the Miley-in-a-sheet controversy that's currently roiling in the 7pm-8pm block of network TV: "I mean, the issue of hypersexualization is a very legitimate one. And the magazines who promote that should be apologetic. Like the Atlantic. The Atlantic is very pro-child pornography."