Oh no - it's everyone's worst nightmare, or at least everyone who has ever dated a writer: Opening up the New York Times Sunday Styles section and seeing your ex's version of the relationship in the "Modern Love" column. Thank goodness, it wasn't you who read this in the Paper of Record: "We invented elaborate skits that usually ended in incredible sex and intimacy" and "it wasn't enough to make a frog ribbit, you also had to do a ribbit and face of an emotionless frog, then the sound of an emotionless ape, then an ape pleading for emotional connection, then you had to stage a stare-down of emotionless frog versus pleading ape." Hot? Perhaps, but please, keep it to yourself.

Who wouldn' be mortified? (Especially with that illustration!)Thank goodness for the redress of The Black Table, where the ribbity woman in question - who may or may not have screamed "God, why do you shut me down all the time!" and burst into tears - tells her side of the story. Her classy version attempts to set the record straight because, as she says:

I know now to a certainty that there is no fact checking....In fact, dear readers, the entire "Modern Love" column is best read as pure fiction.

A Modern Love Story [The Black Table]
Froky Doesn't Play Around Here Anymore [NYT]

Related:
Dear Mr. Ex: Letters to Ex-Boyfriends [The Black Table]
Reading Your Ex-Girlfriend's Review Of Rebound Sex [The Black Table]

Chris Lehmann's seat on the Chinatown bus to DC is barely cold and already he's lobbing a salvo back at his former homestead, taking aim at the New York Times' recent series on class in America. Lehmann says that the NYT is incabable of exploring the complexities of the issue from their lofty position on high: "Social class is at the core of the Times' institutional identity, which prevents the paper from offering the sort of dispassionate, critically searching discussion the subject demands." (Gawker pointed this out in a telling juxtaposition between the series and the Times' media kit, which celebrates the affluence and high educational achievements of the typical Times reader)

Lehmann's thrust is that the same paper that glorifies the well-born, moneyed elite in the "Sunday Vows" section can't go far beyond marvelling at how the other half lives, relying on comparisons to demonstrate the gulf (Uma Thurman munching daintily on a spread prepared by faceless minimum-wage Mexicans; a lopsided marriage between a car salesman and an heiress) and examples of how different the mindsets are, thus implicitly limiting of social mobility:

When first stricken with her heart attack, Gora dismissed her husband's suggestion that she was seriously ill and needed an ambulance, and instead tried to collect herself with a glass of vodka; against explicit doctors' advice, she sneaks cigarettes and doughnuts, and even clips a cockamamie diet from a Polish magazine that permits her to eat generous portions of fried food and steak. And so [writer Janny] Scott's telltale moment of exasperation carries an unmistakable subtext: There's just nothing to be done with these people.

Choire Sicha, meanwhile, points out a telling yet unexplored fact:

Buried deep in today's New York Times article on college drop-outs and class mobility: "the upper middle class so dominates elite universities that high-income students, on average, actually get slightly more financial aid from colleges than low-income students do."

And now, it's time to shop for some Prada pumps on Bluefly. Ta-ta, darlings!

All classed up and nowhere to go [Boston Phoenix]
Class Matters: The Game [Gawker]
The Power of Our Brand and Our Audience [NYT Co.]

What's blue and pink and read all over? This story in the NYT...and in NYMag. Both pubs ran the story of The Blue Bench, a TriBeCa boutique specializing in baby and children's furniture who will keep the secret of your unborn baby's sex while arranging to have your nursery decorated accordingly. Apparently Blue Bench customers are pretty media-savvy, because acccording to proprietor Susan Johnson, each writer came by the story via separate clients of hers, and were unaware about the synchronized publication dates. "We thought it was pretty funny too," she said. In any case, thanks NYT and NYMag! Our seedless wombs are pleased to know that the perfect bedroom set awaits sometime in the distant future. We're totally going to get our mothers to do the work, too.

Apparently the naked swimmers at the New York Racquet and Tennis Club were underwhelmed by the exposé in last Thursday's NYT, and are conducting a "witch hunt" amongst its birthday-suit-clad, flag-saluting members to sniff out the culprits who tattled.

Also apparently, this story is from the New York Post, but we still can't get access to the darn site, despite repeated log-ins. We almost actually got dressed** to go buy a copy, thus propping up the Post's flattened circulation numbers, but were rescued by an angel of mercy: thanks, Pat Kiernan and "Headlines" on NY1!

**We're totally kidding. Like Linda Evangelista, we don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.