In today's New York Times there's an article called "The Ultimate Amenity: Grandparents." It examines the lives of a few young New Yorkers who recently purchased apartments, not for themselves, but for their parents.

On February 19 of this year, there was an avalanche in the Tunnel Creek drainage area of Washington's Stevens Pass ski area. Three skiers were killed. Tragic, but not extraordinary: over the past decade, an average of 25 people per year have been killed in the US in avalanches. In 2011, the death count was 34.

The Masters of the Universe can be identified by their socks. Their millions of dollars, their vast power over commerce, and their socks, which must protrude four inches below the cuff of their suit pants when seated. Any greater length of sock exposure would indicate that the wearer was sitting with his legs crossed. The Masters of the Universe sit with both feet on the floor. These are the alpha dogs.

Don't forget: today — 12/12/12 — is the last repetitive date you'll see in your life, unless you are very young and prone to longevity. Which means it's also the last time you'll see content-free fluff pieces seeking to assign some kind of meaning to the arbitrary assemblage of numbers spewed out by our latest pitiful attempt at measuring out the blank incoherence of time. New York magazine's Stefan Becket turned up the New York Times article from the last time this happened, "12-12-12: That's To-day, and It's a Long Time Till Another Strange Date Line," and it's a masterpiece of word-padding form:

Buried within the Movie section of this weekend's New York Times is an interview with Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen, who are promoting their upcoming project The Guilt Trip, a movie about which I have no opinion. Between the title ("It's a road trip with a physical destination, yes, but it's also an emotional trip, you know?") and the awful winking posters plastered everywhere, it seems safe to say it will not be good, but nothing is certain. That said, this interview is full of absolute treasures, every single one of which falls from Barbra Streisand's lips. Seth Rogen said things too, but they are of no interest for our purposes (he likes working but also being at home, he seems smart and unobjectionable and I have nothing else to say on the matter).

NY Times restaurant critic Pete Wells admits he is "skeptical of pasta salad." Media bias is everywhere.

The New York Times, like the rest of the newspaper industry, went through a painful series of buyouts after the 2008 financial collapse exacerbated the already ongoing collapse of the newspaper industry. In 2009, they cut 100 positions. In 2011, they had 20 more buyouts. This morning, they announced they want 30 more.

A thorough, deliberate hatchet job is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It is for this reason no one could remove their eyes from Pete Well's review of Guy's American Kitchen & Bar last month; it is for this reason that Adam Mars-Jones was given an award by newly-minted Hatchet Job of the Year for dismantling Michael Cunningham's (of "The Hours? They should call this thing The Weeks!" fame) new book, By Nightfall, earlier this year.

The New York Times has a fairly lengthy profile of the 28-year-old former recreational bodybuilder, University of Pennsylvania graduate, and "mastermind," Maria Popova.

We've called him a "seed-spilling sex creep," a "pale nerd king," and "a real-life The Matrix extra," so we figured it was about time to talk to Wikileaks founder and megalomaniacal Bond villain Julian Assange. In order to promote his new book, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, Assange agreed to a phone interview on the condition that we speak only about the book. I agreed, which was a lie.

Jodi Rudoren, the weirdly named Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, likes to keep in touch with friends and readers via the social networking web sites Twitter.com and Facebook.com, as literate human beings in the developed world are often wont to do these days. But she is a Timeswoman! And since someone, somewhere, might object to Rudoren's musings if they are reproduced without the intercession of a bureaucrat tasked with draining them of all immediacy and character, she is now being assigned a Twitter Editor.

There's a hidden curse to being a current or former top editor at the New York Times. Yes, you've held one of the most powerful positions in journalism. But who is going to edit you? Nobody, not very stringently, at least. So we find that when current or former NYT editors engage in writing for their paper, it often could have used a heavy round of editing, into the trashcan.

The New York Times published an op-ed on their Opinionator blog this morning called "Give Pot a Chance." It's a well argued defense of marijuana legalization by author Timothy Egan. So yes, the "paper of record" shall now be known as the "rolling papers of record." And perhaps she's got glaucoma in her old age, but somebody pass the Old Gray Lady a blunt already because she's jonesing for it.

The New York Times drew first blood in its war against the peroxide hairdo known as Guy Fieri. After Pete Wells wrote his now-viral review of Fieri's Times Square tourist-trap house-of-horrors restaurant, Guy's American Kitchen & Bar, Fieri fired back on national television.

Not being able to feel pain sounds like an okay deal. "No hangovers!" you shout, as you crack your sixth beer of the night. But, here's the thing about the human body: We feel pain so that we don't severely injure ourselves. This week, the New York Times Magazine has the story of Ashlyn Blocker, a 13 year old Georgia girl who has "congenital insensitivity to pain," which means exactly that — she feels no pain. Here are just some of the most stomach-churning anecdotes in the piece:

As you are probably aware, New York Times food critic Pete Wells became the most important man in America this week after eviscerating Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant for essentially being Guy Fieri in building form — a bloated, neon monstrosity serving unappetizing food obnoxiously. Here's the thing, though, about Guy's American Kitchen & Bar, which has now become ground zero for everything wrong or right with capitalism: Fieri serves way more revolting food at one of his other restaurants.

God bless Marilyn Hagerty. The octogenarian North Dakota columnist whose earnest Olive Garden review went viral earlier this year has been far too busy with her own exploits to keep up with the Great New York Times Donkey Sauce boondoggle.

Does the New York Times' contempt for its advertisers know no bounds?

Did you hear? New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells reviewed Guy Fieri's new Times Square restaurant, Guy's American Kitchen, and he really hated it. Can you believe that? America's haughtiest paper disliked America's bro-iest chef's new venture in America's crassest den of commercialism outside of Las Vegas. Amazing. And yet—it turns out that other people who have tested Guy's American Kitchen, which opened in mid-September, have actually really enjoyed themselves. Here are 10 of those people (sic throughout):

As you may have heard, noted food expert Guy Fieri opened a restaurant, the appropriately titled Guy's American Kitchen & Bar, in Times Square in September. From other reviews/common sense, we already know it's terrible. Nonetheless, Pete Wells, The New York Times' restaurant critic, decided to review it so we could learn the Times' Official Opinion. Consisting entirely of rhetorical questions directed at Fieri, the review is sort of funny. Here are some of the better lines/questions: