I never wrote in my Place Beyond The Pines review that people who live in Schenedtady are flat-out “unattractive,” as the Times Union‘s Kristi Barlette wrote this morning. I said costars Eva Mendes and Rose Byrne are “too hot to live in Schenectady” — a key difference..

Boiled down, I said what any cab driver or club owner in any city will tell you — i.e., pick-of-the-litter types of either gender rarely choose to live in towns like Schenectady.

“Beauty almost always migrates to the big cities where power and the security lie, and in my experience the women who reside in blue-collar hell holes like Schenectady are far less attractive as a rule,” I wrote. Not unattractive per se, but not double grade-A either. “There’s a certain genetic look to the men and women of Upper New York State,” I wrote, “and they aren’t the kind of people who pose for magazine covers or star in reality shows.” And this is pretty much true — face it, rurals.