It wasn't nails that held Jesus to the cross...

For the love of God, would someone please stop Hilly Kristal: "They’d love a good place in Las Vegas," he said, adding that "it has the same tourist base as New York."

The Katrina Helicopter-Shooting Meme, or, Fuck the Media [Via]

This article is slightly less appalling if you read it in the voice of your crazy auntie

I'm certain that there's some witty summation to be made of this article but I'm trying to figure out just *how*, ah, creative I am

Grey Will Fade's 5 Excellent But Overlooked Indie Albums Of 2005

This is sure to sway the jury: "David needed a knife to carve that pentagram, and David didn't know how to use a knife."

Shut up, you fucking baby

Monkeys have accents too

Ninjas v. Hipsters

So You Want To Be Entertained? Please Go Away - The "Best Of" 2005

“Best of” lists are one of those year-end traditions that nobody really cares about yet everybody expects, kinda like office parties and that ribbon candy so beloved of 85-year-old women. To my mind, such lists are just about as worthless as tits on a boar, to borrow my father’s phrase. Still, I feel a certain obligation to weigh in.

Crimson Sweet: TONITE!

Hey, take advantage of this disturbingly warm weather and go to Cakeshop tonight. One of my favorite NYC bands, Crimson Sweet, is playing and if you attend I promise you will not be disappointed, except by the absence of actual cake, I reckon.

Survey team finds rare Hatinh Langurs

Very handy: State-by-State GOP Scandal Scorecard

On the subject of this, Reeves would like to go on record as saying "actual prostitutes are more worthy of our respect; death to the perky and stupid, and to their corporate pimps."

"The Dominators" makes so much more sense, what with the leather vests and all

May lead to degenerate gambling

Obligatory holiday Flickr photoset

Wow, did a week go by that fast? Nothing like the dread of coming back to your office to realize you forgot to leave a vacation message on your voicemail and the little red light is blinking on your phone.

Also: Nothing like the realization that ten years ago you never would've expected that you'd even have an office or a phone with a blinking red light. Very demoralizing.

Speaking of demoralizing, we watched Crash this weekend on a pay-per-view whim. It was missing the crucial ensemble musical number. And it should have been called Look How Far We've Come Since "Grand Canyon"! Blech.

"Rats, even V.D., is more socially acceptable than bedbugs."

Pilot program introduces disease-free tattooing in Canadian prisons

RIP George Best

Looking through Gary Gilmore's eyes

Ed note: I can't really explain how this conversation began.

Me: [Long hypothetical lustmord scenario]

Him: How do you come up with this stuff?

Me: I'm the moderator of a serial-killer-themed penthouse forum-style newsgroup: alt.blood.vaginas.stabby.stabby.stabby.

Him: Stop.

Me: Perhaps you'd like to join? Got a great one the other day: "Dear Penthouse Forum: I never thought it would happen to me, but I found this retarded boy in the restroom of the KMart all by himself and I managed to lure him into the woods! Naturally, I was worried about getting bloodstains on my clownsuit, so...."

Him: Stop.

Me: It's hard work, being the moderator. Y'know, I just had to ban some people from the newsgroup. I think they were making stuff up. I mean, two Swedish stewardesses? I could see that. But the meat grinder I find hard to believe.

Him: Please stop.

Can one be both Chassid and online?

"It wasn't clear what kind of cake she bought."

Punk rock died when the first kid said...

So apparently there's a new documentary coming out called Punk's [note punctuation] Not Dead.

Here's a fun little game: Go to the cast page, and then imagine the bands pitted against each other in a deathmatch scenario. My favorite combo so far is Sham 69 v. Simple Plan.

Brilliant, but canceled

Dept. of Truer Words: "Everyone smells the same when they die."

Vic does a interview-style webzine called YukonMag--go read

Holy cow! Sugar remedies stress

Giblets

Saturday night was the closing party for TEN63. There was nothing funereal about it. Not to say that there weren't some tears, but the beauty of alcohol is that it does, in the short term, numb the pain. (I think.) [Better photos here, thanks Chris.]

RIP Link Wray

Erotic Aerobics

N's Midwestern cousins are here this week and I am so taking them to this

All Your Google Base Are Belong to Us! [Via]

A New Wrinkle in Forensic Art [Via]

Oh Gary.

I'm ready for my extreme close-up, Mr. DeMille

Tonight is your last chance to see the Without Papers Productions documentary entitled The Exhibitionists Are, the subject of which is a women's arts collective in NYC and its members. It is also, in all likelihood, your last chance to see my big face writ even larger on the big screen (I've heard rumors that the theater actually had to nail a tarpaulin up just to accomodate the scenes I'm in). It's playing at 8 pm at the Village East Cinemas as part of the New York Independent Film and Video Festival. Congratulations, Santino and Luigi! Considering how much they argued during the making of the documentary, it's a wonder this wasn't released posthumously.

Go read Maud's shit-fire-and-save-matches Caitin Flanagan post

Bodies--carelessly overlooked by the National Guard--are now being found as people return to the Ninth Ward [Via]

It's not a freakin' war on hip hop, it's called comeuppance for craven, greedy business practices, and if being a talentless hack was illegal, there wouldn't be enough room in Rikers to hold all the defense witnesses

It's all the streets you crossed not so long ago is painstakingly researched blog devoted to NYC rock and roll landmarks. Amazing.

SCOTUS to prisoners with disabilities: Fuck you. [Sent to me by Maud, who is clearly intent on giving me a stroke]

More syndicated mediocrity for Yahoo!

This is what happens when you learn management buzzwords before you learn English

Stacy Horn

In 1990, Stacy Horn founded Echo, a NYC-based online community filled with people who log in everyday to talk. Her most recent book is called The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad, in which she tracks four unsolved killings and the process of the investigations surrounding them. She is also a commentator for the NPR show All Things Considered, and is working on a new book about the paranormal.

Tim Hall's essay, "The Rise of Faketion," takes aim at a number of my favorite targets--including JT LeRoy and the ULA.

Archaeologists Uncover Evidence of Female Brewers in Ancient Peru

Youngian Analysis, or Crosby Stills & Nash Marked For Death

Dana has asked that I write about my favorite. Favorite what she’s left up to me, just so long as it is indeed a favorite. Oy. As soon as choose one, I feel as if I’ve essentially negated everything else, ad infinitum, in perpetuity throughout the universe and all the multifarious alphabets therein. I’ve had all sortsa favorites over the years – favorite songs, artists, albums. I gotta choose one?

OK, here goes: “Like A Hurricane”, by Neil Young. I’ve been able to return to it again and again for almost thirty years now and it still seems as fresh as the first time I heard it. That’s as good a definition of a favorite as anything else I can think of, so let’s go with that.

Given the Pettibon piece and the embedded Henry Rollins report, a reader notes, "If Dez Cadena has a
recipe for stuffing, I expect to read it in the Times Magazine next week."

Hm, can I lay odds on which piece Amsden likely wrote?

Kudos, Vidiot, for uncovering some big-time plagiarism.

Kerwin Kaye posts a truly excellent takedown of that godawful Lifetime movie based on the questionable Landesman article, "The Girls Next Door" [Via, natch]

Sorry JT, you can't write an article for us because you don't fucking exist

Authors: You all look the same to me

N an I attended the Housing Works "annual gin mingle" party thing last night. I am still a little lobotomized from it, even though there was no gin to be had by the time we got there. Provided that there was gin to be had in the first place.

splorp's available domain name of the week--very entertaining

Everyone should use their goddamned indoor voices in cafes.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Stan, Guatemala could become another Niger [Dontate to the WFP here]

Ho.

Last night N and I had dinner with my endearingly batty Texan friend, clearly the person I'm going to become in 30 years [insert requistite punk rock disclaimer here], and I was unable to attend Phil Campbell's book party OR the special History of Violence screening with Cronenberg and my future second husband, Viggo Mortensen (I'm really looking forward to the "bruises all over my body and scabs on my back" part, as you can well imagine). Incidentally, if you haven't seen HOV, you should try to catch it because it's Cronenberg's most sophisticated movie ever and he's one of the few directors who can make both sunny days, blue skies, and William Hurt seem really, really sinister.* /critical posturing

Elevator Face!

I despise overpriced fauxhipster baby clothes as much as the Observer, though I will admit to having purchased a Che onesie before (but not for a child I actually *liked*, mind you)

"Jews are here, Jews are there, Jews are almost everywhere": Never mind the intent, how about the fucking quality?

God shed his grace on thee

The Great Leader just sent me this wonderful screengrab. What gives, Texas? I guess the Revolting Cocks had it wrong.

Neat profile of Janis Carter, primate researcher and advocate

Or shut your mouth and pretend you enjoy it: Clash City Rockers, live, at the truly great Bedazzled!

So evangelists are okay with marrying dogs, but gay marriage would cheapen the meaning of the sacred covenant.

Ooooh, I smell UN Humanitarian Award!

"Mm, it's a darn shame about that rape victim...anyhoo, which L&O will the story be on?"

We are all New Yorkers today

Saturday night, I found myself at a midtown karaoke bar for a birthday party. A birthday party whose goofy exuberance was deftly, and swiftly, quashed by a drunken Irishman.

He and his three compatriots were sitting adjacent to our party, and at first I thought they were Scandinavian, because they're usually the ones in unintentionally gay garb. They were all drunk, but only one of them was truly making an ass of himself, singing along at the top of his lungs, stealing the mic from the people who'd paid the lordly sum of one dollar a song, and generally being unpleasant. It got to the point that my friend L stopped, midsong, and shouted "NO!" at him, the way one yells at a cat for scratching the couch.

A gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds lived alongside humans for over a million years, which might give us a clue to the existence of James Gandolfini

If there's one thing that can lift me out of general malaise...

...it's the baffling, cryptobigot wording of this Gawker post:

Muslim-by-way-of-Portland blogger Laila Lalami celebrates the publication of her first novel, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, with a reading at the Barnes and Noble on Astor Place tonight. If you’re gonna be a Muslim blogger in this country, you might as well be one in Portland.

But, yes, as reported by Gawker, Laila Lalami will be reading at the B&N Astor Place tonight, which happens to be located in New York City, the perfect city to live in if you're gonna be a Jewish blogger in this country.

Salon's Broadsheet: Astoundingly sucktastic

By fucking george, Amanda, you've truly outdone yourself: [The lemon] is also apolitical, employed by Republicans and Democrats, Sunnis and Shiites, Tamils and Sinhalese alike.

On preferring the Minutemen's cover to the Steely Dan original, and other critical navelgazing

I know what EVERYONE is getting for Xmas this year: Cheap-ass Anolon! [Via]

This is like "Signifyin' Rapper," only less elegant

Escape from death row, get caught drunk, talking on payphone

Great post about the Beat Farmers, including word of a possible documentary

This thread is quickly becoming one of QueensWest's greatest hits

Is Broken Windows Policing Broken?

Our very own (well, not "ours" per se, but I like to pretend) vidiot has photos on display in the NYC Photobloggers gallery show

Congratulations all around: My local G train station is one of the city's 10 worst!

Twins!

Mykel Board

Mykel Board has written dozens of freelance articles and 17 novels under pseudonyms, but he's probably best-known for his column in Maximum Rock'n'Roll, "You're Wrong." (At least that's how I was introduced to him.) Never one to shy away from controversy, he's been accused of....well, of a lot of things. You'll see. In this interview, he talks about his new book, Even a Daughter Is Better Than Nothing, race, sex, music, and drinking.

I'm dying, mommy

"Here, have some of this."

"Chai liqueur? No."

"Try it."

"You try it. What are you supposed to drink it with?"

"I dunno. You could probably put it in your chai, I guess."

At this point, the author makes a terrible, terrible mistake.

Epilogue:
I want to find the inventor of chai liqueur, stab him in the eyes, and send him back to hell.

Beef panties!

Chimps really don't care

Monkeys with Pumpkins!

Pretty women have more estrogen, and ugly women have more beards

Ooer missus: "It seems to be in this club that you have to play badly to be rewarded," sez Keane

Behold the nauseating adorableness that is Finnegan the Squirrel

Mice found to woo mates with song

Excellent rundown of Sony's DRM malware

Don't try to force Germans to drink, and other statistical etiquette improbabilities [Via]

This year's World Beard and Moustache Championships

SHOCKER: The ULA is a ass [Via]

Men's fall fashion report, or, Hitler wore khakis

"A team of neurologists working around the clock for the remainder of the decade wouldn't be able to explain to you why we bought the self-titled Broken Social Scene album..."

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Adolf Hitler!"

Halloween stands tall in my list of least favorite holidays, right after Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, but winning out over Valentine's Day and the Fourth of July. (Being irreligious, I have no opinion of that Springtime Christian Groundhog Day, which for me means eating everyone else's cast-off black jellybeans and Peeps the Monday after. And I kind of like Flag Day, because in fourth grade my class performed a play I wrote about Betsy Ross, the Revolutionary War comfort woman, and I got to wear a wig.) The problem with hating Halloween is that everyone assumes that I'm merely fun-impaired, that I shouldn't let past negative experiences dog me, and that if I loosened up and really, really tried, I'd have a good time. Not unlike anal. I've been cajoled into participation in both. Both times? Like John Lydon: Dissapointed!

Listen folks: It's not you, it's me.

You goddamn right it's a chick-lit beatdown, motherfuckers