the Marc of a Madfan

We're often told: Write what you know.

But flipping through Russ's page-protected portfolio Sunday night, we laughed together about how it was more a researched anthology of "things I like" and less about what he actually knows.

Stories about Timbits, Andy Warhol, and other well-written, well-developed, and well, Russ-like things make up his present collection. And as we spoke more on what he likes, this week's New Yorker article on Marc Jacobs came up – so that night I read it.

As it turns out, Ariel Levy, the lass who penned the article, prefers to write about what she likes versus what she knows too. Fancy that.

The article, which I have been hearing so much about, falls flat on facts and reads more like a love letter than an editorial. Not until page two are we offered any form of real quotation, and up until that point, all we get is a diction hand-job. Not to mention the unnecessary and nonsensical Carrie Bradshaw references that are woven throughout the seven flip feature.

Contradicting her own creative clichés, Levy starts off by saying that "Jacobs used to be a chubby Jewish guy, with long hair and glasses…" and four pages later suggests that young Jacobs spent his youthful years at Studio 54, taking his notebooks with him so that Mr. Scene could morph into Mr. School come daybreak.

I was never there myself, but I don't think that fat, unfortunate looking Jewish teens were commonplace at the Studio.

I read once that color advertisements in the New Yorker run upwards of a million a piece. With seven pages, sixteen photographs and a whole lot of fluffing, one can only guess what an ad like that would have cost.

Obviously written by a fan, this article reeks of commercial incentive, and was likely fuelled by the writer's desire to meet the mogul himself, and maybe get a bag out of the deal.

I guess the difference between Russ and Ariel is that Russ likes what he knows, and likes to know what he can know with a bit of searching, while Ariel only knows what she likes, which is Sex and The City, Fran Lebowitz, and big, sloppy, glossy, guilty paycheques.