Quote of the week, courtesy of Graydon Carter:

“In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a dirty diaper.”

Who better to clean up the mess than a mother?

By now Emily Gould and The Times Magazine have been thoroughly pilloried for her article about her addiction to blogging about herself, most notoriously on Gawker. But Gould’s story provides a rare, reflective look at Generation Overshare, even if the article is only about her own experience, and even if her ambition, coupled with her naivete, have sometimes made her look very, very stupid (see Jimmy Kimmel’s nationally televised attack on her). It’s refreshing how Gould owns up to her need for attention, attention, attention. I can relate. And even though they won’t admit it, so can vociferous detractors like the bloggers on New York’s website. As Gould well knows, every writer craves precisely the kind of attention she has succeeded in getting on such a large scale. Sour grapes, anyone?

If you’ve seen Gwyneth’s recent sex-pot reinvention failures on the red carpet, you probably wrote off the situation as hopeless. But miracle workers / “Iron Man” costume-design team Rebecca Bentjen and Laura Jean Shannon succeed fabulously in transforming the one-time Virgin Queen into the striking, S&M-inspired Virginia Potts. Granted, Gwyneth hobbled through the final chase scene in sky-high Louboutins. But damn, the girl looks hot.

Any therapist with a keen business sense should move her practice to Brooklyn and begin advertising on Brownstoner.com. After reading Adam Sternbergh’s New York mag account of the pathetic real-estate pathos that plays out in Brownstoner’s comments section, I felt a wave of relief wash over me, perched as I am in the old, Manhattan version of Brooklyn. Over here on the Upper West, our shopping is boring, and so is the restaurant scene, and we certainly don’t have young creatives doing neat stuff like Salon Adelphi (that’s a shout out to you, D). But no level of coolness is worth the bitter insanity. Besides, my fantasy is not a brownstone but a ranch house in the sky with a doorman, a super and other assorted helpmates. Which park it should overlook — Central or Riverside — I haven’t yet worked out. Thoughts?

Although she nailed the sublime ridiculousness of shopping at Catherine Malandrino’s Meatpacking boutique, I was hoping Cintra Wilson would address the store’s physical dangers as well. The racks undulate and so do the slippery floors, and an occasional step is randomly thrown in the mix too. I’m so afraid of ankle breaks, I can hardly concentrate on the clothes — which are often so unnecessarily intricate, they require quite a bit of concentration. Of course, as Sarah Larson aptly demonstrates, an injury is no excuse for neglecting red-carpet cuteness.