Before: apocalyptic. After: all better!Photo: Nadia LaChance

When the street right outside the New York Magazine office split open like a pair of cheap trousers yesterday and brown nasty water started gushing out, our first thought was: end times. Better get the inflatable dinghy out of storage and head for the meet-up site. Shit, where did we leave our gold? Later, when we saw hundreds of municipal employees pull up in a fleet of trucks and assorted vehicles, our thoughts changed to: bureaucratic clusterfuck. More precious tax dollars down the tubes. But this morning, when we saw the work crews applying the final layers of asphalt, the wound all but healed, we marveled: Downturnaround, baby! New York City is not heading back to the seventies without a fight!

Photo: Getty Images

Just because the parade is over, and the novelty of wearing your very handsome special shamrock tie that you can only wear once a year has worn off, please don't lose the magic of Saint Patrick's Day. It lasts until midnight, people! There are still concerts to attend, there are plenty of Irish brews yet to sample, and there are plenty of Jameson specials around town. So don't stop eating those Irish potatoes (seriously, they don't go bad for at least two months), keep on that face paint, and for God's sake, don't stop drinking. You think Saint Patrick got all those snakes out of Ireland by walking in a straight line?

All of the most important people in New York will be spared.Photo-illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Getty Images, Patrick McMullan

Global warming "will alter Atlantic Ocean circulation in a way that will move more water to New York by 2100," says a study by Florida State University released today. Normally we'd blow this off by saying, "Whatever, Florida State, you're just jealous," but with all of the other apocalyptic stuff going on lately we figure we should probably take this thing seriously. And by that we mean: Daily Intel is building an ark.

We have never seen a straight ankle touch ever before in our lives.Photo: Getty Images

We've been seeing this picture floating around the Internet all week, and the other day, while on a plane, we saw it in In Touch. The celebrity weekly did everything in its power not to call Ed Westwick gay, but they came close. "Ed's girlfriend and co-star Jessica Szohr was noticeably absent," they observe. "But fans shouldn't be worried about his 'bromance breakup' with Chace [Crawford], says an insider. 'That will never be over — they're both too needy!'"

Let's be clear: We don't think Ed Westwick is gay. We've met him in person and he oozes dudeness, and plus, one of our girlfriends totally hooked up with him. (As did, we occasionally suspect, Intel commenter Sarcastic Meow.) But there is something so bizarre about this picture! So we polled all of our friends who are both gay and European to see whether they think Ed is just acting out his naturally British impulses with this mystery man, or acting out impulses of another kind.

Poor.Photo: Getty Images

We've heard it time and time again now: Over the past ten or so years, we, the grubby populace, were living a lifestyle that was way beyond our means. Once we got a little too comfortable with the plastic, we purchased too many televisions and Swarovski-encrusted pairs of jeans. Spurred on by the devils of reality television, we leveraged ourselves hugely in order to make home improvements, in hopes of selling our house and making even more cash with which we could buy even more denim and electronics, and now look what we've done.

But really, what did anyone expect, once they gave us the plastic? Of course we were going to make stupid decisions! We didn't know any better! We're the grubby populace, for fuck's sake!

We expected more of investment bankers. After all, they were genuinely rich, and also, supposedly, smart and good with money. You'd think, with all of the millions they were raking in during those years, they'd have started a little rainy-day fund for themselves. A little "what if the good times don't last forever" kitty. A savings account, at least.

But no.