Rise If You Must

My brother Tim argues that this would be better if it always compared you to a writer of lower stature than you.
You write like: Charlotte Tribune intern Emily PerleYou write like: YMCA of New York communications director Stephanie Harley

At the bar, Irishmen (but not Irishwomen) have their own etiquette about paying for drinks. When a man buys the first drink, he leaves the change, a stack of bills, on the bar, and when a friend comes by, he asks, “What will you have?” The bartender takes the money from the bar, returns the change, and not a word is said about the bill. At the end of the night, without any words being spoken about the crass subject of money, each person has bought his friends a round of drinks.

That’s from the 1994 NYT article about Tom & Jerry’s.

I didn’t know this was a specifically Irish ethnic thing. I just thought this was how people behaved in bars. Although, come to think of it, I learned this from my father, who probably picked it up from his father, whose own father came from Ireland.

IT was a rainy Tuesday night and Rex Sorgatz, a rail-thin man with spiky red hair and Sol Moscot glasses, walked into a birthday party held at Tom & Jerry’s, a bar in NoHo that has become a go-to place for New York’s Twitter class. A circle of friends who occupy the digital elite closed in, all shouting “Rex!”

Dennis Crowley, a founder of Foursquare, elbowed his way in and whispered something in his ear about Internet Week, which had just wrapped up. John Carney, who was fired by the widely read financial blog Business Insider before landing at CNBC.com, stopped by to chat. And Rachel Sklar, an editor of Mediaite, a blog that chronicles the gossipy media world, brought over some beers.

Well, yes, that happened. And it proves—contra Sklar’s assertion—that Rex is the Norm of T&J. 

“Digital elite.” No wonder the government wants a button that will let it shut down the internet.

At least no one made Rex pose in front of a laptop. Progress!