Josh & Josh are Rich and Famous

OMG, Josh Has An Identical Twin?!

On the right: Josh H as a lady person ("Moira") last night at 2:30 a.m., right after getting home from the Halloween party. On the left: Josh H, ten minutes later, after a thorough shower. The nails are still painted, the eyes faintly lined, but it's still kind of a fun before-and-after.

Josh & Josh On Assignment: Key West Edition

Josh and I are at La Guardia right now, on our way to Key West, Florida, on assignment for Passport magazine. We're excited, to say the least.

While we're in Florida, we thought we'd leave up the videos from our last assignment, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for you to check out.

Here's the first video from Copenhagen, and here's the second.

We'll both be Twittering from Key West, so check in if you want up-to-the-minute updates.

See you guys when we get back!

Josh & Josh

Happy Birthday, Josh K!

It's Josh K's birthday week, y'all. Feel free to join me in wishing him a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Met you when you were 21, kid, and I wasn't even of legal drinking age. Here we are all these years later. The stories we could tell. (And we do.)

Sendin' the love.

--Josh H.

Farewell, Biography Bookshop

Biography Bookshop, 11th St. and Bleecker St., West Village, NYC

They call it Biography Bookshop because (surprise!) they specialize in biographies, but the selection of books goes far beyond the namesake's genre. The tables of books lining the front of the store outside are must-browse selections, and at half off or more, they're nearly irresistible bargains. Thus, for the four years and change that I've lived in New York, it's been a dependable truth: If I'm in the West Village, I'm making a stop at Biography Bookshop (and, more than likely, not leaving empty-handed).

On Sunday night I ventured out into the neighborhood with my boyfriend, first for dinner at Moustache (an excellent, tidy spot on Bedford Street serving delicious Middle Eastern food) and then for a few show tunes over at Marie's Crisis, a piano bar steeped in West Village history and lore. It was a perfect fall night, streetlight streaming through leaves just beginning to change, and neither of us was quite ready to call it a night after carousing at Marie's.

We sauntered up Bleecker Street and ended up at Magnolia, the famed cupcake shop (hello there, Sex and the City fans), but after we'd polished off our cupcakes at the little park across the street (vanilla with dynamic swirly multitudes of thick chocolate frosting) my hunger had shifted.

Time for books. A few steps and we were there.

At Biography I like to grab books first and ask questions later. I snapped up four or five right away at the tables outside, hugging them to my chest as I perused the other goodies. After a few minutes I narrowed it down to two books and headed inside the studio apartment-sized shop, boyfriend in tow, to check out the new trade paperback offerings.

Just as I was about to pick up Wally Lamb's new book, I heard one of the workers talking to a customer, and the conversation stopped my fingers mid-air.

"Yep, we're closing at the end of the year," the young hipster-ish guy behind the counter said, ringing up a book.

The customer took in a sharp breath. "But why?"

"Well, just between us, the lease came up and the landlord raised the rent eight-fold, and when we couldn't keep up, Marc Jacobs swooped in and got the lease."

I turned to my boyfriend, wide-eyed.

"But doesn't Marc Jacobs have, like, six stores in this neighborhood already?" the customer asked.

The clerk shrugged. "I think this place will make the sixth. Guess they needed another location. But we're moving a few blocks down and reopening as Book Book."

Book Book? Really? I saw new bookmarkers on the checkout counter with the new logo printed beneath it.

I thought about all the books I'd bought at Biography over the years, tucking my purchases under my arm and taking them back to apartments all over the city, and on airplanes and vacations, stowed away in totes and backpacks and bags of varying shapes and sizes on my various adventures.

Those books had been with me through good times and bad, from one share apartment to another, into one boyfriend's apartment and then back out again, trailing around the city behind me like little literary ducklings. Biography Bookshop had always been a touchstone. No matter where I lived or what was going on in my life, Biography stayed the same, and it always kept me well stocked in little treasures that filled up my bookshelves.

I paid for my books (sixteen dollars for two great books!) and headed back into the fall night with my boyfriend. I stopped outside for a second and looked at the awning and the small group of people still pawing through the bargain tables.

"Ready?" my boyfriend asked me.

I nodded. I felt like I was leaving something behind. Irrational maybe, I know. But in my head I made a promise to visit one last time before I headed home to Minneapolis for Christmas to say a proper farewell to an old friend and, of course, buy a few last books.

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The Two That Left With Me

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

--Josh H.

The Day I Became One With Nomi Malone

So in Pilates class* we were doing this exercise called a back bridge and, when we started doing them in a long, exhausting sequence, I started laughing.

I couldn't help it.

All I could think of was Nomi Malone (aka Elizabeth Berkeley) in Showgirls, fiercely doing her back bridges a hundred miles an hour in stilettos. ("Thrust it, thrust it, thrust it!")

See for yourself at the 1:10 mark:

Just me and Nomi. Nomi and me. Finally one through the power, magic, and mystery of back bridges.

* Don't make fun! I'm going to Florida at the end of the month and I really need the core workout. Nothing will get the ol' tummy area beach-ready faster than some Pilates.

Conde Nast Folds Four More Magazines

The media bloodbath continues as Conde Nast announces it's folding Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride and Modern Bride. [Gawker]

The big cuts in magazines began in Fall 2008 and continued into 2009 (including my layoff in January 2009, along with 250 people in my company--all of us on the same day) and the cuts are continuing across the industry more than a year later.

We all know the heyday of magazines as they existed at the end of the twentieth century is never coming back. The real question is what the mag industry will look like once the economy begins to (supposedly) truly stabilize in the third quarter of next year.

I don't think the outlook, however, is particularly rosy.

Sunday in Central Park

It was a long, strange week, so I figured there would be no better way to wrap up the week than with an afternoon in Central Park with the pup and a good book. With the weather in the mid-70s, the warmest day forecast for the whole week ahead (hello fall!), I decided we definitely couldn't pass it up.

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POST SCRIPT I'm loving Julia Glass's third book, I See You Everywhere. Julia shapes characters so fully that I feel like I'm actually spending time with them, and I want to know more about their lives and what will happen to them next. Her first two books, Three Junes and The Whole World Over, are highly recommended as well.