Which one of them is Jeremy?

Is it just me, or does this photo remind you of this?

(Bonus question: Is it just me or is Xeni more blog-hot than real-hot?)(And am I a year-and-a-half behind the curve on that observation? What is this Boing Boing you speak of, sir?)

Vincent Gallo: Like God and syphillis, he is everywhere

Celebrity sightings in NYC, a place where fully 34% of the population is famous, are kind of too commonplace to get excited about, unless they're in some curious or salacious context (eg, Anderson Cooper at the Phoenix* or Ben Affleck taking a shit at Enid's** or Grady Sizemore in a jockstrap jumping up and down on my bed.***)(Oh, and Grady, I'm also planning on doling out some punishment after last night's game. Jesus).

Still, if I had to pick, Vincent Gallo is probably my favorite "celebrity" sighting. This is not merely because I think he's a terrific douchebag. It's because I truly believe that he has some metaphysical ability to be in five places at once. It's something like the Caine-Hackman Theory. Either that, or he's so desperate to be relevant that he's hitting the pavement every day, pressing the flesh and kissing babies. Whatever. I've seen him pretty much everywhere in this town, and sometimes at the same time that someone's seeing him elsewhere.

I don't understand, and I never will

Now that she's retired, Aunt Linda no longer forwards emails with the same frequency.

This gif accompanied a charming parable about why women cry. [Click to enlarge.] It began

A little boy asked his mother, "Why are you crying?"

"Because I'm a woman," she told him.

"I don't understand," he said.

His Mom just hugged him and said, "And you never will."

The most recent missive is better.

Sport: Equips a young man for society

Via the Daily Show, I just heard about this lovely, lovely gaffe great armflapping Christ, was this really a joke? she knew beforehand that he was going to do it? (I need to pay better attention) on the Nancy Grace Show from April 6, during a discussion of the Duke Lacrosse team rape investigation. After the jump, the transcript:

At The Strand

[Insert Andrea Dworkin joke here]

Menorah Man, Founder of the Jewish Hero Corps, not to be confused with the JDL

So Norma sends word of an LIC Purim celebration at--naturally!--the local burrito joint. There will be some stellar entertainment. I'm uncertain who's really behind this little party, because as far as I know, there are approximately four Jewish people in the neighborhood and we know all of them. For those of you who are inclined to attend, Norma had some costume ideas, but listen, you guys, I'm wary of any Purim party being thrown by a shadowy organization at a locale within stone's throw of a Conrail depot.

SEGWAY!

Appropriately enough, my friends Jennifer Traig, author of Devil in the Details and Judaikitsch, among others*, and Peter, who you will recognize as the second half of the Shut-In Detectives and also from his other works under various pen names**, have started a blog. They're both much better observers of pop culture than I am, which is why I suggest you go read their Oscar recap right now. My own (inner) recap is more along the lines of what Bookslut's Michael Schaub had to say, which none of you really want to hear.

Anyhow, welcome to the blogosphere! Welcome to the 20th century, kids!

*And not including the works written under her pen name, Roscoe "Fuckknob" Bearman.
**Ibid.

Nothing to see here, move along!

God, considering Trevor Butterworth's name and lasting power, he should be a porn star, not writing articles about blogs for the Financial Times. It took me two colossal bowel movements to finish reading this particular treatise. Thank heavens for wheatgrass juice.

But there's still time for him. Look at Max Hardcore!

The Smug Superiority Show with Dana and Bill

Occasionally my friend Bill and I will have long email conversations about a vaguely topical news tidbit or something related to his home state of Missouri.

Talk about a cornucopia, that.

I often remark that we could get a show on Brooklyn Public Access on which we sit in front of a purple satin curtain and smoke and drink beer and insult hapless people whose misfortune has been documented in the newspapers. Some of these people will be heads of state, don't get me wrong.

Pink and wet, they make the best kind of pet

Two things you quickly learn at the gym: 1) No one actually wipes the goddamned machines off after they use them and 2) If you're a man, the act of entering the locker room is tacit consent for every guy in the place to fuck one or more of your orifices.

Come back to the five and dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean

I hope that the pink-blog contingent will take Marilyn Stasio's lengthy essay on several chick-lit detective novels in this week's NYTBR as the first step to their emancipation from the ghetto. I can almost hear them singing, in unison, We Shall Overcome.

Life During Wartime

As you know, I've expressed my love for the QueensWest bulletin boards in the past, because I embrace wholeheartedly any excuse to get indignant over stuff that isn't my business.

This Ain't No Picnic

I have 4,000 words to write by the end of this week, on the subject of two cities I've never visited (because I am a Typical American). Why not go over to the excitingly re-worked Krucoff.com and ratchet up his bandwidth use! You'll thank me later.

Here's a thought

Could David Morrell be John Twelve Hawks?

Write what you know.

Those jackanapes over at Gawker snuck in and made an (un-noted) correction, but here's a screengrab of an error that was made this morning. Kids, remember: Michael Chabon != Jonathan Cheban.

Edited to add: Rough day at the office, eh? Does an "entrepaneur" run some sorta upstart Open-Your-Third-Eye Institute?

Confession: I always used to get Huey Newton and Huey Long confused in history class.

Drink Harry, drink 'til you can't drink no more

Something tells me that this insipid Modern Love article, a weekly column that's clearly the province of freelance writers who can't get published in Allure, will do more for the dismissed nanny's career than Helaine Olen's.

Lipstick traces

When Frank hipped me to the whole Rainbow Party tempest in a teapot, I was all like, "Nuh-uh." And he was all like, "Yah-huh." (Actually, he was more like ::shrug:: but whatever.) Anyhow, the Times, ever with its finger on the three-week-old pulse, examines the controversy, and ultimately surmises that the Rainbow Party is the 21st-century equivalent of the girl in high school with the hotdog in her cooter.

"This 'phenomenon' has all the classic hallmarks of a moral panic," said Dr. Deborah Tolman, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University. "One day we have never heard of rainbow parties and then suddenly they are everywhere, feeding on adults' fears that morally bankrupt sexuality among younger teens is rampant, despite any actual evidence, as well as evidence to the contrary."

Need vs. Want

This sign was posted in my neighborhood.

It's quite simple, actually: O + (N x S) + Cpm / T + He

Apparently today, June 24, is the happiest day of the year. Well, in the UK, anyhow. The formula doesn't take into account the Henman defeat at Wimbledon yesterday though.

I don't know if I feel especially happy today. Mostly I feel constipated after my dinner at Artisanal last night. My report: Although there is some conjecture about whether Restaurant Week is worth it, I feel pretty confident that we got our money's worth last night, at least with the prix fixe menu (the two bottles of wine--a Malbec and a Rioja--made it slightly less economical).

I hope that I'm able to flush the twelve pounds of cheese and hanger steak out of my system before Newley arrives in town--see, southern men believe that women poop magnolia blossoms and I don't want to ruin that for him. He's just in time for the Mermaid Parade and the sticky, hot weather. (Which oughtta make folding his 6'4 frame onto our leather couch in our unairconditioned living room A REAL FREAKING BLAST.)

Sigh. I feel like the cheese is holding teh funny hostage.

American idiot

Through the wonders of technology, everyone in my office is able to share their iTunes musical selections via some .Mac network or something. It's a fascinating window into people's psyches. More important, it allows me to silently judge them using the only way I know how.

The web design department, predictably, have Radiohead and Mars Volta and Arcade Fire. Editorial has a lot of Holly Near. But who would've guessed that the Jehovah's Witness in Operations Management would be a huge Tupac fan?

Another coworker is really into powerlifting and Tom Clancy. This is a screengrab of his iTunes, in its entirety. I hope he doesn't start some kind of east coast-west coast beef with the Jehovah's Witness.

Marry me.

The Spoonbender on Neighborhoodies:

There's probably a good reason to exclaim to passers-by that you're a gentrifying hipster, and you and your intern friend successfully chased an Ecuadorian family of six out of your sweet two bedroom apartment with your daddy-subsidized rent checks. There's no doubt that a two-word phrase is much more pithy than telling everyone within shouting distance that you're an irritating whore who claims that Geek Love is her favorite book, which is true only so far as it's the only book she's read since A Tale of Two Cities in eighth grade.

Real estate is the porn of your thirties

I can't tell if there's actually some nesting action going on inside of me or if it's just that I've run out of bookmarked free twink thumbnail sites, but I find myself browsing upstate New York real estate listings. It's just too damned funny, the idea of having a cesspool, a dug well, and a sump pump again. I did that the first 18 years of my life for free--why would I voluntarily enslave myself to an FDIC-insured institution for 30 years for the privelege?

On the plus side, though, I found this guy. He and his dogs speak German, French & Swahili, for your convenience. As a friend put it, "This guy's got a crawlspace under his house, and it is all full up."

I've also found a number of unintentionally hilarious listings, such as this one (Use CAUTION viewing structure--a mere $125K).

Then there's this house, which, when I saw the listing last night, I thought I hallucinated (This WON'T last!!!, LITERALLY. A wonderful home for the right person!, like, say, Ed Gein. A steal at 84K).

Is there some way to freebase Xanax? I'm just curious.

Frighten the horses

There's a nice profile in this week's Times magazine of Scott & Scott, who are probably the only gay-romance-writing-duo (well, with the possible exception of certain contributors to Boyd McDonald's Straight to Hell, and also S&S don't talk so much about tearooms and glory holes).

I'm thrilled that Warner's picked up their latest book, Hot Sauce, and less thrilled that Warner's eschewed the fabulous Michael Breyette's artwork for what appears to be the gay male equivalent of a pink cover with a pair of high-heeled sandals and a martini glass. Still, if you want to sell it in Dubuque, this is probably the preferred medium.

The funny thing about the Times piece is that it never addresses what I'd guess would be a sizeable portion of S&S's readership: lesbians and female slash fiction writers.

Free-spending monkeys

There's an interesting article in the Times magazine this weekend about biologists and economists teaching Capuchin monkeys to spend money. (This, of course, will be the first step in their fiendishly clever plot to take over the world.)

If you go to the Freakonomics site, you can watch movies of monkey free-trade in action.

Speaking of monkeys trapped in cages, today I'm having my annual performance review. [Gah! Postponed until tomorrow. Shite and onions.] I've already assembled some bank boxes in the advent that I get shitcanned. I know I joke about this every year, but I'm confident that this is the year. Light your candles, say your novenas.

Lipstick on your dipstick.

Frank has filled me in (heh heh) on a new YA book called The Rainbow Party.

It's about teens experimenting with this newfangled thing called "oral sex." Apparently, Ruditis' editor came up with the idea for the book. It's meant to teach teens that oral sex is, in fact, sex, redolent with all the same consequences as actual intercourse. It should also please the "cum-covered Lolita" crowd that seems to find me (and fellow bloggers) via Google.

(Welcome, cum-covered Lolita fans!)

That Michelle Malkin harpy has issued a fatwa on Ruditis, sending her flying monkeys to pan the book on every online book retailer's site. Way to go!

Anyhow, I know I would've wanted to read this book when I was a kid. (Though the excerpt posted on Amazon is pretty lame. Is this what passes for YA these days? Whither Anastasia Krupnik?) I feel as though it would have pretty neutral effect on kids. I remember reading Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask when I was 12--didn't fuck me up none! Plus, that fall, I was able to edify all the girls at my lunch table about how gay men put it in other men's butts. Whoo-hoo!

Are there really a lot of young teens experimenting with oral sex? Or is it just a media meme, like shark attacks and kids dying in hot cars? And, more important, there's all this talk of juvenile blowjobs, but none of reciprocation on the boys' side.

QUID FUCKING PRO QUO, Clarice.

Bite bite bite!

This week's Shouts and Murmurs cracks me up:
Talking Chimp Gives His First Press Conference:

Yes—you, Ms. Female-Human-Copulation-Candidate, right here on the left. Your question?

Mm-hmm? That’s an excellent question. But, before I answer, may I ask you something? When was the last time you copulated?

I can tell by the way you cover your bared teeth with your hand while your cheeks fill with color that my question intrigues you. I like that. Your copulation partner must be gigantic and have a virtually bottomless supply of orange wedges to have snared a mate like you. But I tell you this: one hour with me and my long stick, and you’d be—

Dude(k)!

Seeing as the Great Leader is absent, I'll have to carry this torch:
Liverpool!!!!

Here to dispel the myth that women only excel at hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing

11-y-o girl pitches perfect Little League game:

The shy 11-year-old pitched a perfect game Saturday for her Dodgers team. In two games on the mound, she’s struck out 32 of 33 batters in the Oakfield-Alabama Little League program.

This blows my mind.

An astounding number of folks--110!--won second place in the March 30 Powerball drawing. Where'd they get the winning numbers from? A fortune inside a cookie manufactured by LIC's own Wanton Wonton Food.

It's a heartwarming story, in some ways, but it speaks disturbing volumes about us, doesn't it: We are a culture of people who are willing to throw away our money on a one-in-three-million chance of winning something (and that's just the second-place odds) and our scientific method of selecting the best possible numbers is TRUSTING A FUCKING FORTUNE COOKIE.

It ain't where you from, it's where you at

These are (grainy, low-res cameraphone) photos of the hallway outside my old office. One of the myriad indignities of this particular office was that it had only two electrical outlets. (The others included the fact that it was constantly 82 degrees, it had no windows, it was directly across from the men's room, and the former occupant was a chainsmoking junkie who left behind a yellow residue on the hand-me-down desk plus a lot of spoons and cotton balls.) Anyhow, I endured--nay, PROSPERED--by employing a number of power strips.

The new occupant of this office is, I think, miffed to have been re-stationed. And rather than use my multiple-power-strip method, Occupant has chosen to go the ghetto fabulous route, illustrated above, of plugging an extension cord into the wall by the men's room, ferreting it up THROUGH the mouldering ceiling tiles, and then snaking it into the office.

Score another point for Office Morale!

Eat your heart out, Kottke.

It's almost like the late-90s bubble never burst: Congrats to Brittney, who is now getting PAID TO BLOG. Whoo-hoo! (She says she's going to be in the newsroom, behind the anchors. Does this mean she'll take requests and hold up handwritten shoutouts to us, her fanbase? One can only hope.)

Keep your money in your shoe

I got some harebrained idea to compose a Big, Meaningful Post on Art yesterday and I kinda lost steam halfway. In the meantime, go read other, better stuff like That's Just the Booze Talking, who's advising a friend on how to land a man:

And don’t talk about a dead parent on a first date. You may well recall how we once got c*ck blocked from beyond the grave by this girl’s dead mother. Seriously, one minute we’re about to make our first foray into her Shameful Baby Area, the next minute it’s as if a pair of spectral hands were slapping away at our tumescence like a Thalidomide baby trying to play Gnip Gnop. Turns out the day we got together for drinks was the 3rd anniversary of her moms going peace out like Hoon. If nothing else, this brought into question the girl’s ability to use a calendar.

You don't say

I rode up in the elevator today with a man who bragged to a coworker that this weekend he'd attended a private concert...by Huey Lewis and the News!

Things are so darned exciting around here.

Did you know that's how the FBI captured Capone?

What happens when you rag on a washed up former pro-wrestler for being a racist bigot?

His Director of Communications calls your father a candy ass and threatens you via email:

Your ego has gotten the better of you, Richard.  I see by reading a bit of your site that you've been threatened before.  However, you're in the big leagues now.  This is serious business.  Warrior fought a five-year legal battle with Titan Sports to secure ownership of his character - and he prevailed.  You're little more than a fly to be swatted to Warrior and myself.  And Richard, when we swat a fly - we swat the hell out of it.

Ya hear that? Swat! Swat the hell out of it!

[Via Grubby Kid.]

That's hott!

When he's not busy writing, oh, hundreds of songs, Tony also writes very funny things, like this here.

The only dancing elephants I ever get to see are pink

The Great Leader has sent me a charming little video of last night's danse des elephants, which I missed, due to laziness.

ASBO-fucking-lutely.

The little fascist in me* was delighted to hear about this thing in the UK known as ASBO, which stands for Anti-Social Behaviour Order. Apparently you can get smacked with a penalty for being a prick. If, for example, you are a gas huffing nuisance or you can't control your straying pigs, you can be jailed for up to five years. I think that this is a capital idea and would like to be in charge of imposing ASBOs in my building. First off, the next-door neighbors would receive no fewer than five ASBOs. Then I will address the person or persons who keep leaving a yellow carpet in the foyer of the building. Listen, either you want it or you don't. But stop abandoning it in the public area. It is offensive. And whoever is discarding empty Swedish Fish bags and Colt 45 cans in the hallway, I'm looking in your direction. Finally, to the upstairs neighbor, the one who listens to the same Dave Matthews Band album every night: Sod the fucking ASBO, I am going to stab you in the neck with a screwdriver.

*Do you have a little fascist in you? Do you want some?

Reason # 317 I need a cameraphone

A couple weeks ago on AskMetafilter someone posed the question: Hey, how come no one's tried to deface the NYC2012 ad campaign posters? I thought it odd, because it's rare to see a subway ad that's NOT been scrawled on.*

Anyhow, it turns out that these posters have, in fact, been graffitoed rather cleverly.

Sadly, I don't have photos of the two most recent examples of subway-ad graffiti that impressed me, because I don't have a cameraphone and I never carry my camera because I'm an idiot. But humor me as I attempt to describe them. The first I saw in the Greenpoint Ave. G station: It's for the highly esteemed Interboro Institute and, as part of their inspirational new campaign, this one features an African American man leaping into the air accompanied by copy in which he pledges not to let 2005 pass him by. After the printed copy, someone appended No more tap-dancing for The Man.**

The second ad appeared in my local Jackson Ave 7 stop, and it's for the new Bolla Chianti. Superimposed on a picturesque Tuscan landscape are the words "Meet the new Italian in town." Underneath, someone scrawled, Soon he'll be shtupping your wife.

*Which reminds me of an essay I read in the Times many years ago by a guy whose visage appeared in subway ads. He noted one must summon a particular type of fortitude when passing a poster on which someone has drawn a penis hanging out of your ear.

**Hey, speaking of Greenpoint, my cousin the plant manager got quoted in the NY Times today. Good on him! The last time anyone in my family appeared in the paper was during that rather unfortunate double-homicide back in the 70s. Distant cousin.

I smell Pulitzer!

Jesus, ya THINK?

You had yellow hair, did you see me?

From the article in the Times today by party animal Jennifer 8 Lee about Craigslist Missed Connections:

Five months later, it has become a ritual for the couple to wake up on Saturday mornings and read Missed Connections together. "Because we think it's hilarious," Mr. Baker said.

All RIIIIGHT!

Happy Birthday to the Great Leader!

My heart is an open book

...and I haven't used it in years, so I'm going to donate it to Book Thing, an exceptionally forthright and noble organization that takes the books you don't want and gives them to the people who do. It was The Old Hag who informed me of this...oh, last week...and I sort of forgot to mention it until now. Whoopsie.

But don't mistake my week-long bender forgetfulness for a lack of enthusiasm. Book Thing is a Good Thing, and deserves your support.

I call this, What the Fuck, Aunt Linda?

Hey, you know what would be funny?

You are too much sometimes, Cheryl.

The Bag-Person's Dave Barry Speaks Out

If you haven't already, you should go read AJ Jacobs' essay in this weekend's Times book review defending himself against the rather cruel review that Joe Queenan wrote of his book, The Know-It-All:

I explained the flaws of the review to my wife about 842 times. She pleaded with me to talk about something else, anything else -- the history of wicker furniture, for instance. I preferred to repeat the same points: Queenan believed that I actually thought I was going to become the smartest person in the world, whereas I kind of thought the ridiculously hyperbolic subtitle might have been a tip-off. He bashed Entertainment Weekly, while he was, not so long ago, writing regularly for the highbrow Proustian journal TV Guide.

How to sneak a motorcycle into an apartment building in NY

For every question, there is a solution.

Hunting Tigers out in Indiah

Everyone should pay a visit to Jungle Larry's Safari! Not too far from the dearly departed Tom Gaskins' Cyprus Knee Museum. [Thanks Tizzie!]

On level three, you get to swim and buckle

I'm working on it, ok? In the meantime, hop on over to F Train to read Paul Ford's Three Favorite Computer Games of 2004.

Okay, this is a weird RPG. It takes some getting used to. If you are into platformers where you get to blow up space stations this is not for you. But there is something really special and unique about this game. Basically you are the musician Will Oldham, also known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and someone has stolen your beard, which makes you very, very sad. You have to go on tour and play concerts and talk to different NPCs about getting different parts of your beard back.

Um.

Um.

I think, I muse over why I didn't just come out and tell you within a few days I was in love with you-completely. Basically, that is what the letter I wrote you stated. You read it. I remember your apartment on Cornelia Street as if it were yesterday, the bathtub in the kitchen, your bed without a headbaord, your Scientology.

Garbage in, garbage out

Tizzie just pointed me to this article in her home-ish town newspaper about how Fat-Free Pringles will save the world, or something like that:

In a study published this month by the American Physiological Society and another study accepted for publication in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, the UC and Western Australia scientists assert that Olestra, the ingredient that makes it possible for Procter & Gamble to produce Fat Free Pringles, can be used to remove a class of 12 toxins, including dioxin, from the body.

How amazing that the much-maligned Olestra--the very substance that catapulted the phrase "anal leakage" onto the nightly news--has sort of, maybe, redeemed itself. Or not, given the "treatment worse than cure" potential.

Eat something sweet and the feeling will pass

I'm just delighted to hear that Fran Lebowitz, my hero and savior, has published a new book, subtitled "An Unreliable Memoir." Only bummer is there's mysteriously little coverage of this book in the US, and the reviews I *can* find seem to confuse the plot of the story with Lebowitz's life. (Unless someone can confirm that she recently got married and had children? Yeah, I didn't think so.)

(Via Maud.)

UPDATE: It turns out, you see, that (as was pointed out in the comments) this is not the Fran Lebowitz, but rather a former literary agent of the same name (check it out, she's listed at Predators and Editors.) Anyhow, I just thought I'd point that out. But the book does exist, however marginally.

But it kind of raises an interesting question, perhaps one for Maud's own Secret Literary Agent: Even if it's legal to use the same name as a well-known author, is it ethical? Being a literary agent herself, Ms. Fran Lebowitz The Other should've realized the confusion that could arise.

Addendum: I forgot to mention this on Monday, but before I was absolutely certain that this book was not written by The One True Fran, I decided to give the William Morris Agency a ringy-ding to ask them if she'd recently published anything longer than a Vanity Fair piece, and was greeted with terse replies in 2 different departments. (They were both men, incidentally, on the other side of the phone, which is something I'm unaccustomed to dealing with when it comes to anything remotely resembling a creative field.) Finally, one of them said to me, "She's not a client." "Really?" I responded. "Because she's featured on your website." "I can't help you." Click.

Has Fran been dumped by WMA? She hasn't published anything in, like, 25 years...what made them decide to shitcan her now?

Things I Like About My Neighborhood

Happy New Year. I'm relieved to begin 2005, aren't you?

Sometimes I hate LIC. Not in a big way, mind you. It's the Wild Wild West feeling the place sometimes has, stemming from its position as the Land That Parking Regulations Forgot. We have no parking rules, which means we have no street sweeping, which means that we have piles of garbage that collect in the gutters. This is not such a big deal, really.

What is a big deal is the abandoned car down the block that has been there since I moved to the neighborhood. It's slowly disintegrating, becoming part of the landscape, like some apocalyptic Andy Goldsworthy sculpture. Bad things happen to it from time to time: a smashed window here, a flat tire there. There are days I'm very tempted to jump up and down on the hood and cave in the windshield with a baseball bat. I loathe whoever abandoned this car, with its Vermont plates and its array of stupid New Englander bumperstickers commemorating visits to places this car will never see again.

But something happened recently that made me happy once again. Because, you see, I've discovered that someone else hates this car as much as I do, and has commemorated it with some lovely graffiti. I present to you: Pimp My Ride. (Photo taken by Adam.)

There's a Stranger in the Manger

Nativity Display Can Stay. And so can the Zoroaster poster, written on the back of a tag sale sign. Sadly, the Festivus message must go.

I found this story entertaining, not simply because every single year another creche scandal arises, but because Zoroastrianism is PRETTY GOT-DAMNED FUNNY.

There's a hideous creche that goes up annually in my hometown on the lawn of the town hall. It must be at least 30 years old, because I remember it as a child. Anyhow.

Even as a young socialist/nihilist/rabblerouser, it never fucking occurred to me that this creche was a violation of that...ah... church/state separation stuff. Too busy reading up on the Shining Path and writing AFRICA UNITE on my All-Stars, I guess. (Give the anarchist a cigarette.)

After I left my hometown, people from New York City started moving there in droves. This sudden influx of New Yorkers meant the inevitable import of non-Christians, which really freaked a lot of people right the fuck out. Remember that episode of Little House on the Prairie when Laura met the Jewish blacksmith and discovered that he didn't REALLY have horns under his hat?

Hasn't happened yet back home. Most of what they know about Jews they learned from that episode of Geraldo with the flying chairs.

So the first thing the City Folk did after settling in with their overpowered SUVs and duck boots and Bag Balm was write letters to the editor of the local paper (formerly the province of the truly crazy and Town Supervisor candidates) decrying what they felt was a tacit endorsement of Christianity. Of course they were right. Absolutely they were right. Really, I mean, it's silly that we didn't do something about it sooner.

The problem is that the New City Folks coming in like gangbusters and the fact that they were The Jews on top of that made some ordinarily blasé -to-the-point-of-being-comatose locals circle their wagons in a most apoplectic fashion. All over a rode hard and put away wet plastic nativity scene manufactured (some sources say) only about 14 years after the birth of Christ himself. More than anything, it was an embarassing statement on the the tightwaddish ambivalence of the Christian community.

I don't even think that whoever's in charge of putting the nativity scene up every year did so out of good Christian Soldier duty. I think they did it because it's just what we've always done. Unfortunately, the hue and cry--the call to tolerance of other world views--didn't raise awareness of other cultures whatsoever: it only served to cement the locals' "MY JESUS! MINES!" chest-thumping sensibility, which up until that point had been fair-to-middling.

Of course, they couldn't hate The Jews forever. I mean, we have a bagel store now.

BAGELS!

Never put me in your box if the shit eats tapes

I loved Stavros' paean to cassettes and youth so much that I'm ganking his topic and repurposing it as my own. (Be grateful he wasn't writing about the genius of Nora Ephron 'cos I'm suggestible and uninspired today.)

I still have the first mix tape anyone ever made for me. It's a clear blue-and-green 90-minute Maxell, labeled PLAY LOUD! and loaded with music I'd never heard previously--the Mekons, the Minutemen, the Soft Boys, Nick Cave--but which became a staple of my teenage years. My first real pen pal made this tape for me. I was 14, and his letters were written longhand in blue-black ink with a Pilot fountain pen. They were funny and cryptic and, to my mind, brilliant. I keenly awaited his weekly dispatches. I even went out and bought a Pilot fountain pen with blue-black ink cartridges and went around quoting John Giorno to my nonplussed friends-- this was precisely what my penpal did to have me in his thrall, and I was his acolyte.

Because, of course, I wasn't just enamored of his genius; I had fallen into profound puppy love. This is why I remember every detail of this mix tape: I listened to it for hours and hours on end, scouring it for meaning, for proof that maybe he liked me too. (How I could possibly find hints of romance in a Einsturzende Neubauten song is anyone's guess, but that's a whole 'nother story.)

Fortunately it only took me a decade to realize the love was totally unrequited. In those 10 years, each of us had moved 27 times but we still managed to correspond via snail mail (even after the advent of the intarweb), still sending each other mix tapes now and then. I still have all of them, except for the last one, which was eaten by my crappy car stereo. I nearly cried, even though I didn't really like Avail, which was the song playing at the time. It turns out the music industry had nothing to worry about--the only thing home taping was hurting was my fragile, delusional heart.

Pull Down Your Bloomers and Slide on the Ice

Oh gosh. The Scared of Santa photo gallery had *me* in tears. (Via mefi.)

Treyfalicious

My coworker brought in some gelt on Friday. Now, I love all things chocolate and foil-wrapped. But this gelt is weird: it's done in imitation of the Kennedy Half-Dollar.

Complete with the phrase "IN GOD WE TRUST."

Take off your skin and dance around in your bones

Cartoon Character Skeletal Systems. [Thx, Stv]

We've always expected great things of her

Big (belated) congrats to the Old Hag for winning Caketrain's 2004 Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her collection, "Check-In," will be released in a perfect-bound limited edition in 2005. Everyone should buy one now so that she can buy a nice new domain name for when her current one goes tits up at the end of the month. Bastards.

The Monster Needs to Feed Again

How much will you love Rosita? Not as fucking much as I do.

[Via HereIType, who seems to be under the impression that I'm planning on joining her at law school one of these days. Sweetie, I {still} can't even figure out how to use OSX...tort reform will have to wait.]

Let's hear it for Caitlin Flanagan, journalistic comfort woman

Last week's issue of the New Yorker* contained a lovely little excoriation of parent-to-be consumerism written by none other than my favorite harridan and yours, Caitlin Flanagan. Of course it's not online, so I can't point you toward her 2,500 choicest words of opprobrium, but some other babied folks have inneresting stuff to say about it. Skarlet says:

The de rigeur item in my neighborhood these days is a pram from the Silver Cross line. (Also mentioned in the article, by the way). Silver cross actually has two lines, the "lifestyle line" and the "heritage line." These things cost thousands of dollars and the new mommies nearly go nuts at the coffeeshop trying to keep an eye on their spawn and their pricey stroller at the same time. These strollers cost more than my car is worth. It's completely insane. Here's the thing: the babies really, really don't seem to care.

It's stunning really. Do folks really purchase strollers that cost 2 grand? Wait. No, I don't want to know. If you're interested in reading the article, you can have my copy as soon as I choose a little present to myself: I can't decide between the Basque beret or the wrinkle-free travel sundress that also doubles as a sleep sack.

*Yes, I've only just read it. For me, the Onion headline "Stack Of Unread New Yorkers Celebrates One-Year Anniversary" hit rather close to home.

Raise Boys and Girls the Same Way

Hmm, could Jenny Holzer be the culprit?

We've really impressed 'em this time

Damn.

Tizzie, Alias Reeves

Just to confuse y'all, this is Tizzie posting as Reeves because, well, because I can, dammit.

And while all of you are worrying about getting rid of Bush, us Kentucky Democrats are trying to elect a pig as the mayor of Rabbit Hash, and get rid of one of the nastiest men I've ever had the horror of meeting, Jim Bunning.

Bunning's race has gotten some national attention because some generous souls thought his "erratic behavior", (like calling his 40-year-old Italian bachelor opponent a 'limpwrist' and saying he looked like one of Saddam's sons) was a sign that he has Alzheimers.

Alzheimers, my ass. His "behavior" is the result of the fact that he's a mean old bastard.

So keep your fingers crossed on this one, if you've got any fingers to spare.

Neat-o

Could these be my ancestors? Scientists Find Prehistoric Dwarf Skeleton:

This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.

Thank heavens!

Fishfucker is back. (And girls, send him your boudoir photos.)

Hair Like Shelley Winters

Kevin over at Languor Management writes of his apocalypse fantasy in Trapped Underground! or The Human Repopulation Project:

I assess the situation with the wise clarity of Gene Hackman’s Rev. Scott: My first thought is “will the race survive?” I scan the car looking at the motley assortment of men and women and try to imagine them organized into couples for the sole purpose of repopulating the earth. I’m afraid it’s going to be a hard sell. The car is full of drunk and exhausted hipsters and junkies, very few of which, beyond their stylish clothing, offer much attraction. Whatever glow they might have possessed while at their respective bars, restaurants, and parties, has long since dimmed. But as this is a crowd that was out on the town, several pre-existing couples and recent hook-ups are already among us, so I am reasonably assured that sex will occur, birth-control supplies will eventually be exhausted, and — provided we find some sort of food source to sustain us — we will be able to restock the earth with more unattractive people should it prove impossible to escape the Tunnel.

::cough::

*Probably my favorite NY movie, though not favorite Walter Hill movie.

Love is NOT. JEALOUS.

Dong Resin debuts today as editor of Screenhead, brought to you by the Gawker media empire. The concept is thus: Like Fark, only...ah...at a different URL.

I kid, I kid. Yay for Dong! Now that he's making the big bucks he can buy me that ring he's been promising.

Editing with one hand, posting half-hearted insults with the other

Is the Washington Post's Richard Leiby retarded? Is he Joyce Wadler in drag? Do we need to create a gossip columnist's Repurposement Camp? It can't be too late for them to learn a trade:

So, in a TriBeCa bar on Friday night, we find Steve Martin and Salman Rushdie engaged in deep, animated conversation with veteran Washington investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and his psychiatrist wife, Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Martin is not wearing a white suit and doesn't have a fake arrow jutting from his head, but let's imagine that anyway.

Also, Leiby refers to Anna Deavere Smith as an "actress," which is a little like calling Vaclav Havel a failed musician. The woman has a five-page CV, and I know this because I've been smacked down in my attempts to shorten it more than once.

(Via the lovely and decidedly NOT Velma-like Maud Newton, whose mention in the Times Book Review this weekend was accompanied by a not-nearly-diminuitive-enough cartoon representation.)

Attention All Employees

All employee suggestions will be duly noted at Winkyshock.

Here's a tip

If you're trying to sell me on your book, don't describe it as "a novella in verse." That there's justification for this trapdoor I'm having installed.

We all have creamy skin and blue eyes, Klam

I found it hard to read Matthew Klam's article about political bloggers with any semblance of subjectivity, I'm afraid. I would like to know how my father would've responded. I felt as though the piece treated its subject matter with the same freakish, aren't-you-just-darling-you-little-retard tone as one would use in an article about the polyamorous, the animal husbandry enthusiasts, or the Civil War reenactors. I didn't like the article; I felt it meandered, and I resented the way it spoke of Ana Marie Cox, who is--regardless if you like Wonkette or not--a really lovely person, and I didn't like to see her characterized as a pallid Holly Golightly wannabe.

If you're interested in a more subjective look at the article, go check out The Situation Room.

The one funny image that stuck with me was the characterization of Josh Marshall as being perpetually dressed in wrinked clothing. This made me think of Leonard Neeble, the narrator in Daniel Pinkwater's Alan Mendolsohn, The Boy From Mars, who describes in aching detail how, as a misfit at Bat Masterson Jr. High, his clothes--purchased from the boys' "portly" section of the department store--seem to automatically wrinkle up on him the minute he gets to school.

[Incidentally there's an excellent searchable glossary of all Pinkwater terms here. Pinkwater saved my adolescence.]

Coming to a Mall Near You

The things I miss not working in midtown: "I could never do my work in an environment like this," she said, stepping outside for a break and lighting up a Capri 125. "Too much noise, too much energy flying around."

Look out, Dale Carnegie

You might have seen me. I'm alway wearing Venezuela t-shirts and/or Flight sunglasses with earphones listening to rock and playing my imaginary guitar.

Waaah.

The only good thing can come from The Minor Fall, The Major Lift going into retirement is that the rest of us will all seem just a tad more wry and intelligent.

RIP

Goodbye, Skeeter Davis. (Incidentally, Bus Fare to Kentucky is a worthwhile read...check it.)

Whoo-hoo!

Blogfucker is back, people! (Is it February already?)

I'm sure that, on the lower frequencies*, she speaks for us

The Antigeist offers the definition of chivalry, which begins, as all great stories do, like this:

...I felt a bit of familiar pressure, you know, down there, I decided to release it --discreetly-- and enjoy some relief. I rolled down the window, raised one cheek, and let her rip. And promptly shit my pants.

After the show is the afterparty

Last night I tried to take my out-of-town guest to Freeman's. I figured it wouldn't be crowded on a Tuesday night. Wrong! The maitre d', who looked a bit like Jesus if he'd roadied for Lynyrd Skynyrd, told us he could seat us tomorrow. A ha ha ha ha ha.

So instead we went to El Sombrero. It's been renovated to look like a suburban Greek diner. Grain-alcohol margaritas don't taste nearly as good in a faux-finished setting.

How Fantabulosa

The Bible translated into Polari

In Life

It's one of those beautiful fall days. Sky's blue, it's still warm. Someone walking down Broadway commented to me, "Remember last time we had a September day like this?"

What the hell kinda thing is that to say to a stranger? It's funny how, elsewhere, New Yorkers have this reputation for keeping to themselves and avoiding even eye contact but the reality is that we are a city of poor-impulse-control blabbermouths. Sometimes, riding on the subway makes me feel like Clarice Starling dodging Migs' carepackages.

My dream is to produce something called a Baedeker

Big props to Grant on his first book: Hatchet Jobs and Hardball, which contains "more than six hundred slang terms straight from the smoke-filled rooms of American political speech." I suppose this means he'll be getting too popular to sing karaoke anymore.

Man, Why Did I Ever Leave Greenpoint?

Max points out this great little flyer just steps away from the Greenpoint G:

Ibiza Party Foam

friday 8/27
10 pm
18 to party
21 to drink

dj shark * dj qta * dj gady

The hottest night of the summer.
Take a bath in the biggest bathtub full of foam.

Girls in top bikini free entry + drink
Guys in swimming cups free entry

Through the transom

This is encouraging. It was just emailed to me:

You may be interested in knowing that at 12:30 p.m. today, as part of its 75th anniversary celebration and in coordination with Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers , Delta Airlines Flight 9995, a Boeing 767-200, will depart John F. Kennedy International Airport for a short flight over the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. The aircraft will be at an altitude of 4,000 feet.

The aircraft, which will be painted gray over white (Delta‚s colors in the 1940s), will be allowed to fly over the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island after its departure from JFK. The aircraft will then fly over the Hudson River to the George Washington Bridge, where it will make a right turn toward LaGuardia Airport. The Boeing 767 will fly over LaGuardia Airport and return to Kennedy Airport.

Paris' boobies: OK. "Dong": not OK

Big ups to dong for getting a mention in both the