Suspended production of the Spectator during midterm week has effaced Bwog’s sense of purpose. We’ve found an unworthy substitute in ripping off NY Times headlines. Enjoy!

New Gatehouse Theatre for the Harlem Stage opens in former water pump thing at 135th Street and Convent (fairly close to us). There’s still rushing water inside, just one of the reasons it was a hell of a restoration job:

“The building, vacant since 1984, was dilapidated, its heavy iron doors corroded by rust — ‘touch them and they would crumble,’ Ms. Cruz said…There was an element of mystery at the outset: the architects didn’t know what they would find when they started digging in 2004. “We discovered mercury down there…There is a minefield of stuff below us that we can’t touch.'”

Barack Obama, C’83, has a new book out; the Times gives it reserved praise. Apparently it’s a little less colorful than his last book, though. The last review went like this…

“it was equally candid about his youthful struggles: pot, booze and ‘maybe a little blow,’ he wrote, could ‘push questions of who I was out of my mind,’ flatten ‘out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.'”

…while the most recent book’s review like this…

“Obama strives in these pages to ground his policy thinking in simple common sense — ‘growing the size of our armed forces to maintain reasonable rotation schedules.'”

Some of the better anecdotes from the Obama review after the jump…

“[Obama] recounts a trip he took through Illinois with an aide, who scolded him for asking for Dijon mustard at a T.G.I. Friday’s, worried the senator would come across as an elitist; the confused waitress, he adds, simply said: ‘We got Dijon if you want it.’ ”

“He recalls a meet-and-greet encounter at the White House with George W. Bush, who warmly shook his hand, then ‘turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.'”