Cholera

So, the internets version of this article lacks the breathtakingly tacky headline of the print version that I read over a girl's shoulder on the train this morning--Now in Brooklyn: The Nineteenth Century-- Earnest Vibe, Handcrafted Food, and Plenty of Facial Hair. It proves my theory that the New York Times, though still the Paper of Record in matters of business and politics and science and theater and so on, is blind and miserable in matters of trend. Being written up by these folks is the yuppie kiss of death. I like Brooklyn and beards and Olde New York and good restaurants, but now that the Times has invoked the "Now" and the "Vibe"--I'm feeling queasy and uncertain.

Addendum

In the midst of our Massachsetts cum Financial District Christmas Adventure, my dear P.M.C. suggested an adendum to this Timberlake post of last week. I had already spent several days reading and re-reading it uncomfortably, knowing that I had made the hypothetical anti-Timberlake argument much more effectively than my chosen pro-Timberlake argument. The whole felt over-long and wishy-washy. Well, (and I can't take any responsibility for this bit of brilliance) I revisited the track "Señorita" from Justified, the 2003 first solo record from which I drew "Cry Me a River" for the earlier post. "Señorita" was not the first single, though I misremembered it as such. It was the very first track of an album that I unwrapped and began to play in the record store parking lot and many subsequent parking lots thereafter (in Memphis, at seventeen, parking lots are muy importante). The song is loose and confident, a gilded example of the perfect pairing of Pharrell and Timberlake, at dual zeniths when it was recorded. In it, Timberlake initiates a male and female call and response by singng both male and female parts, making a clever, secure sort of joke with/about his famous falsetto. Listen and mull the politics—it's all the reason we need for his success. Justin has humor on his side, a sparkling comic actor in a terribly self-serious landscape of pop music (imagine what might happen if you dared to laugh at Prince).