See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
Dec 4, 2008
I'm OK? You're OK?
It's funny and on-point, but this is meant to get through to people who aren't necessarily gay/fag-hag stoners who love Jack Black and NPH . . . right???
Dec 3, 2008
habitual linesteppers who habitually linestep
Enquirer—back in 2006, you published beautiful photographs of Whitney's crack-den, rife with self-help books and Newport 100's and tabloids and beer cans fashioned into pipes, and for that, I am forever grateful. However, I do not endorse your dragging The Mr. and Mrs. Kelly Ripas through the fictioned muck. Some things are sacred.
Child at the Dump
Our beloved (silent) partner in blog, Petrova, hails from Staten (Drama) Island. Long ago, when we were first friends and roommates, I would beg her to regale me with tales of the Motherland, tales of car bombings and rotating marble observatories and men at the medi-spa. Perhaps the most poignant, were her descriptions of the dump at Fresh Kills (what a name for a neighborhood!) and the peculiar psychosis of the borough assigned the unsavory task of receiving and processing our fair city's waste. The story arc was fascinating--young families escape the turmoil and otherness (diversity) of Brooklyn/Queens/the Bronx in search of suburban sameness, something a bit more in step with the rest of the country, yonder over the Verrazano; instead, they build a colony of Guido strangeness, a true New York stepchild to which all dust and rot is exiled, a bitter grave for the remains of the Twin Towers. The dump (and all of the failings and seeming punishments it signified) became fodder for nueroses among Staten's settlers. Sometimes, fed-up and a tinge manic, Petrova would throw our detritus out of the window and into the quad, anything to get the garbage out of sight and mind.When I first played "There But for the Grace of God (Go I)," the socially conscious, narrative disco song produced by August Darnell (of the incomparable Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band), she was thrilled. It is esentially the story of the Island presented in its favored medium, the club anthem, top full of the dynamic intermingling of tragedy and synthesizer. Fresh Kills may be in the midst of a spectacular transformation, a return to Staten's state of nature, a haven for Unami Indians and Transcendentalism, but within the six minutes of a song, we can still recall the kamp and struggle of the last quarter century:
Song for You
You know that asshole who you hate wholly, but who also, sometimes, makes you cry hysterically with wishing he were still flailing around in bed next to you?
Dec 2, 2008
Don't Play with My Heart
Despite the recent release of his much anticipated record, Chinese Democracy, Axl Rose is MIA. With his record label and his bandmates having seen neither hide nor hair of him in the last two months, something smells a little rotten. But perhaps we confuse rotten with oh-so-sweet, as Hollywood Rag reports that Mr. Rose may be otherwise occupied with a slew of clandestine meetings taking place in order to set into motion a reunion of the original G n' R lineup.
Let's Get Over Ourselves Already, OK Jezebel?
The ladies over at Jezebel are having a shitfit about Maureen Dowd's profile of Tina Fey in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Intern Margaret laments:"So much of the lengthy profile is devoted to marveling at the weight loss and makeover that transformed the 'very mousy' Fey into everyone's favorite 'brainy glamour-puss' that we almost wish Fey would revert to her 'quite round' physique and dig out the thrift-store sweaters that she used to sport."
Staffers and commenters continue to whine about how Fey couldn't make it on her humor and intelligence alone, and, in order to be in front of the camera, "had" to drop a few, grow out her early-nineties smart-girl hair, and get some better clothes. I'm going to be controversial here for a second: I'm getting a sense of, "No! Pretty girls can't be smart and funny TOO! That's reserved for us festively plump plain janes! Waahhhhhh!!" coming from the Jezzie section.
Edwardian Windbags
This here vintage review (from the Atlantic in 1903) of Alcott's seminal volumes, Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, is the most despicable swill I've ever read. Let me know if you can even figure out what the pompous baboon is saying; I haven't the foggiest (outside of a notion that it's overwritten and misinformed as hell).
Rolf's French-Bavarian Brasserie
A bit more from my Tuesday Gawker browse:
"The Waverly Inn was crawling with Condé Nast insiders earlier tonight, some of whom had been waiting as long as 20 years for the appetizer: The hot, delicious rumor that Si Newhouse was meeting in Paris with Carine Roitfeld to work out the final details of the French Vogue editor's move to New York, where she is expected to take over flagship Vogue from Anna Wintour immediately after New Year's. It did not go unnoticed when Condé Nast overlord Newhouse departed early for his annual three-week December vacation in Vienna; it turns out he needed time for his meeting with uptight Wintour's chic Parisian counterpart."
I'm pretty non-plussed about the whole tiresome/vile speculation about "good ole' pater" Si replacing a powerful woman with another younger and (gasp!) Gaulish powerful woman. It makes these accomplished persons sound like bitchy pawns, not to mention, thinly veiled caricatures from a certain piece of chick-lit disaster turned criminally watchable cinema. But also--Si Newhouse spends three weeks of the year in Vienna?!!
Ho-mez Did It Again
Srsly, this Richard Lawson character over at the Gawker is our very own T.V.-addled, aughtsy Wodehouse. This is the second time I've posted a link to his weekly Gossip Girl recap, a series of essays so fine that they hardly require a fondness for the show itself. Enjoi.
Verses
Good! (fragment Ch. 14)
Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1927
Over those
whom sleep eternal claimed
that lean,
harsh winter
spread
a pall.
What are words!
Words
are lame!
On the Volga shores
I refuse
to dwell.
Of a string of days
I choose
to speak,
akin
to a thousand others,
bleak,
pushed on
by the years,
oarsmen eager,
not over-fat
nor
over-meagre.
If ever
something of worth
I wrote
it was all
the fault
of a pair
of eyes-
bottomless skies,
my beloved's eyes.
Huge they are,
round,
dark brown,
with a speck
of hazel,
coal-hot,
blazing.
The phone's gone
stark-raving mad,
an axe's
blunt edge
striking the ear:
wham!
Round the huge brown eyes -
pads:
hunger's
to blame.
Doctor's orders:
for the eyes
to be able
to eye
the world,
heat the place,
put greens
on the table.
By their curly green tails -
behold!-
I'm holding
two carrots
crunchy.
They're not
for my stew:
I'm taking them to
my sweetheart,
for her
to munch.
Boxes of sweets
and flowers
freely
I handed out,
but
I recall
that those carrots
plus firewood
(half a billet)
were
the most precious
gift
of all.
Thrust under my arm
are
damp pieces of wood:
knobby sticks,
eyebrow-thick.
Face puffy,
eyes-splits:
it's
malnutrition.
Greens and care -
eyes clear.
Bigger than saucers,
they eye
the Revolution.
Easier for me
than for most
(it's no boast!)
Because I'm
Mayakovsky.
I sit and chew
a fresh
piece of horse flesh.
The door whines.
My kid sister.
"Hullo!"
"Hullo!"
"Volodya, listen,
it's New Year's tomorrow.
Got some salt
I could borrow?"
"A pinch,
Wet too.
Here,
let's divide it in two."
Wading through snow,
fighting fear,
with an
"Oh, dear,
how'll I keep on my feet!"
Olga stumbles along
the icy,
three-mile long
Presnya Street.
Home
to salt her potatoes
she hastens.
Frost
walks
beside her,
grows fierce,
inches
closer,
tickles
and pinches.
"Gimme it!
Isn't that salt
you're hiding?"
Home at last,
and didn't lose it.
But how use it?
To her fingers
it's frozen fast.
Behind the wall
shuffling feet.
"Here, wife,
we gotta eat.
Trade my coat
for millet,
will ye?"
Look through the pane-
it's snowing again.
The snow falls,
covering all.
Soft its step,
yes,
and light.
Moscow's
a cliff,
bare
and white.
Snow lies
in banks
and drifts.
Of forests
the skeleton clings
to the cliff.
Daybreak.
Into the sky's thick shawl
the sun,
a louse,
crawls.
December's late dawn,
worn out,
shivery,
hangs
over Moscow
like typhus fever.
Storm clouds vagrant
to fat lands migrate.
Wrapped in haze,
its chest sticking out,
America lies.
What is it doing? -
Lapping up
coffee
and cocoa
by the cup.
Into your face,
thick as the snout
of a good-sized pig,
than a round tray rounder,
from this hungering land of ours
I shout:
My love
for my land
is boundless!
You can forget
when
and where
you stuffed
your craw
and your belly,
but
the land
you hungered with
you can never
as long as you live and breathe
forget!
Bless This Day
On this day, 27 years ago, the world became a little bit brighter. Happy birthday Britney Jean, I hope it's a good one. One love.
Dec 1, 2008
Founding Fathers
Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau—now, I don't wear her clothes, but I've always had a soft spot for Palm Beach (I like its seedy, crack-rocked underbelly and its embroidered velvet slippers) and I love her distinctly American breed of dotty gentry eccentricity.
Monsoon Season
Here's a tragic little ditty from the Weekly Telegraph, outlining the demise of the surprisingly non-recession-proof local pub. As our dear friend Marsh Gibson quipped, "What's next?! Lloyd's?"
Nov 30, 2008
Founding Fathers
Shelly Sprague: Breakout star of "Celebrity Rehab", replacement addiction inspiration, recovering junkette, all around angel.
It's coming...
I'm really excited/anxious about the A&P staff each giving their own personal review of Her Majesty's new album come Tuesday/Wednesday this week (oh yeah, Able, by the way... !!!). But for now, this little sneak peak has been blowing my discreetly gay mind. God willing, the video will be released soon...
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