Internal Office Memorandum
---
TO: Matthew Haber
FROM: Jean-Paul B. Tremblay
CC: Guy Vincent Cimbalo VIII
DATE: Timeless, by Goldie
---
OK, gentlemen, you were right. That's really the only explanation I can surmise for this shot across the bow.

Going off to help teach impoverished and undereducated children in the wilds of Ecuador this winter –– whilst concurrently having left behind that online "Reader Feedback" forum –– turned out to be a dreadfully bad idea. Heinous, even. (Though my lack of internet connectivity proved to be beneficial in polishing my storytelling chops; it's quite striking how my ignorance of all things Denise Richards/Charlie Sheen and Randy "Duke" Cunningham/Mitchell Wade allowed my newfound gift for narrative confabulation to shine at those Quito-based USAID cocktail parties thrown in junction with Rafael and Lucio...I had people actually believing that I was an expert on everything from Supreme Court litmus tests to the canonical ambient compositions of Brian Eno and Harold Budd. Astounding!)

So, like I was saying, that "Reader Feedback" thing for low culture...a fucking bad, bad, bad idea.

The indignant, self-righteous anger that poured forth from said forum! As though people were entitled to free content on the web! I've always felt that unless you're an impoverished Ecuadorian, you're not entitled to any such handouts. How very wrong I have since been proven.

And now, not only have we disappointed myriad readers, we seem to have incited some form of extremely aggressive hostility. I am humbled and chastened.

Apparently, these "blog" things are hot shit, and we missed the boat on this one, lads. Or I personally dropped the ball. Or darted home without tagging up at third base. Or mixed sporting metaphors. Fuck if I know; my athletic knowledge is limited to the realm of sexual acrobatics, and that's about it. (My mother once told me a man would fuck a snake if you held its head. I have since learned this is quite true.)

Anyways, let's a get a cease-and-desist out on these guys...there's got to be some form of copyright law or anti-parodic justification we can rely on, right? Do either of you know Lawrence Lessig?

Mucho regardo,
jp

P.S.: Guy, I couldn't help but notice that somehow you managed to escape their assault...I mean, there aren't any embarrassingly amateur photos of you posted on that site. No Flickr attack whatsoever. So the idea that you were behind this, I have to admit, did cross my mind, though I am willing to give your treacherous ass the benefit of the doubt.

What classic American value! 14 episodes of the under-appreciated "Planet of the Apes" television series, finally available on DVD for a mere $43. I can put it on my shelf right next to other similar items, such as...

Ummm. OK, then. The "Similar Items" list also includes, for what it's worth, "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise And Fall Of Jack Johnson" and "What's Love Got To Do With It (Full Frame)".

(Thanks to jfajitas.)

UPDATED: Apparently this was already caught by a blogger named SanDiegoJohnny back in October of last year, which somehow makes this even worse, in that it has remained unchanged for months, now, and an entire season of holiday shoppers was exposed to such post-Katrina Kommodity Kommentary.

From "Carey, Legend, West Lead Grammy Nods", the Associated Press, December 8, 2005:

[Mariah] Carey's eight nominations tied John Legend and Kanye West. Soul crooner Legend's nominations included best new artist, while West is up for album of the year for "Late Registration" and song of the year for "Gold Digger." "I feel incredible," said Legend, a West protege whose debut "Get Lifted" was a million-seller. "You put a lot of expectations into what you want the record to be."

Other multiple nominees included 50 Cent, Gwen Stefani, U2 and Bruce Springsteen.

From the Academy's list of official nominees:

12. Dance Recording: "Galvanize," The Chemical Brothers featuring Q- Tip; "Say Hello," Deep Dish: "Wonderful Night," Fatboy Slim & Lateef; "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House," LCD Soundsystem; "I Believe in You," Kylie Minogue; "Guilt Is a Useless Emotion," New Order.

13. Electronic/Dance Album: "Push the Button," The Chemical Brothers; "Human After All," Daft Punk; "Palookaville," Fatboy Slim; "Minimum- Maximum," Kraftwerk; "LCD Soundsystem," LCD Soundsystem.

See, it's always good for the DFA-haters to get some perspective.

It's almost enough to make one think there still exists a segment of the record-buying populace who hasn't heard Murphy's debut album. Have these poor people not set foot in an Urban Outfitters this past year?

At Home in Oliver's Macedonia and Woody's London, the New York Times, November 6, 2005

Selected highlights from the Times' Hollywood scribe Sharon Waxman's interview/Q&A with actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, star of Woody Allen's upcoming tennis thriller Match Point...

First up? The 28-year-old actor touches upon this whole "crisis in the Middle East" thing and its relationship to his filming Alexander with director Oliver Stone:

RHYS-MEYERS: You had 20 young male actors, as his main friends, and then 350 soldiers who'd recently pulled out of Basra and Tikrit - they were all actual soldiers. These guys were constantly living their life to the full, because when they were finished, they were being sent back to the Middle East.

WAXMAN: Let's talk about "Match Point."

OK, so the subject of Iraq doesn't interest Waxman so much. Or, at least, an Irish actor's take on Iraq. What about an Irish actor's take on being, hmmm, an Irish actor?

WAXMAN: Are you very Irish?

RHYS-MEYERS: What's very Irish?

WAXMAN: Are you attached to being Irish?

RHYS-MEYERS: Am I in touch with my roots? Yes, I am very Irish.

And with that matter settled, young Jonathan returned to his pensive brooding, coyly maneuvering his gaze about the room, pausing ever-so-briefly to flit his eyelashes...and looking anywhere, anywhere but at this cursed interviewer who had deigned to help him promote his most recent film.

Rims sold separately
12 mpg city/16 mpg playground
Some rollover risk

You assume they're referring to Chris Martin, lead feyboy of Coldplay, not Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada.

This week we made funny with:

Chris Ware's eavesdropping, sexist cripples!

Elmore Leonard's alcoholic spinsters and blood-thirsty lawmen!

"You shot the four guys who drove their car into the roadhouse that time, all of them coming out armed and standing fairly close. One of 'em, Nestor Lott, the ex-federal agent gone bad, packed two .45's cinched to his legs. Nestor pulled on you and you shot him and turned and shot the other three." Gary paused.

Carl said: "This friend of Peyton's, Venicia Munson, was an old-maid schoolteacher who drank Peyton's wildcat whiskey and didn't care who knew it. We're sitting in her kitchen waiting for Peyton to show, she told me she was scared to death. I said, 'Well, that'll teach you to get mixed up with a bank robber.' She said: 'You're the one scares me, not Peyton. I can tell you'd rather shoot him than bring him in.' She said it was why I became a marshal, to get to carry a gun and shoot people."

And Firoozeh Dumas' racially-profiled family!

As soon as my father showed up, we started singing "Happy Birthday" in English. It would have been more natural for us to sing in Persian, but if you are part of a large Middle Eastern contingency these days, you're already scaring people. Add to that a loud song with guttural sounds and clapping, and you have passengers speed-dialing the Department of Homeland Security.

Previously: More Hilarity from the New York Times Magazine's "Funny Pages," and As Seen On The New York Times Magazine's "Funny Pages"

As Slate has been less-than-stellar about maintaining "The Breakfast Table," a once-beloved feature that, regrettably, has since been allowed to languish, we asked the site's editor Jacob Weisberg for permission to license it for our own usage, and he, of course, agreed, recognizing that low culture has always outshone his own tepidly downtrodden site in all the ways that matter, but most notably in the manner in which we've historically been very strong at using the format of two disparate-yet-complementary experts weighing in on the issues of the day. Also, he acknowledged how great we were with excessively long and unnecessarily verbose introductory sentences. He's a good editor.

And with that, we introduce our two "Breakfast Table" panelists for this leisurely Friday afternoon; first, we have one Alex Pareene, a student of dramaturgical matters and working-class struggle, and Jean-Paul Tremblay, a self-employed and self-professed expert in theatrical composition and post-Jamesonian Marxism.

Alex:

I probably shouldn't be starting our exchange yet, because it's not yet dawn and I just got back from the loudest, most raucous fucking dress rehearsal ever, but I just got a hunch on the cab ride home from the theater that Libby's going to go down today. I've traced this idea to a realization I had while watching my play's lead actor limp around onstage in crutches, whereupon I saw that if the character had been unable to afford healthcare, we'd have had to reformat the setpieces such that the entire play was comprised of a conversation on a couch. Which'd be far more David Rabe than Luigi Pirandello, and you know how much I go for an early twentieth-century motif with my body of work. Anyways, the dude's in crutches. And so is Libby, and Libby has money, and the crutches are his means of power...the money is the crutch. And the disability is his means of power. And if he's indicted today, and goes down, it'll totally be this unjust transfer of power. Why do I ingest so much ketamine when working with these dress rehearsals? I have to stop. It fucks with my mind and logistical reasoning.

From: Alex Pareene
To: Jean-Paul Tremblay
Subject: Puttin' On the Fitz
Friday, October 28, 2005, at 10:25 AM EST

Jean-Paul,

Pirandello, my friend, was an inspired reference -- seeing Scooter Libby "go down," as you put it, brought to mind nothing so much as Pirandello's Enrico IV. Scooter, of course, is Berthold the valet. I see Cheney as the doctor and Judy Miller as Donna Matilda. The "mad" king is America itself, and today we learned that she is tired of wearing her mask.

"I just got a hunch," you say. I keep coming back to those words. Hunches and crutches, those tired dramatic devices. The hunch, Richard III's power, repugnant but impossibly attractive. The Neo-liberal hegemony fuctions in almost exactly the same fashion. And the crutch -- not money, I think, but the classical liberal ideal of the social contract. It's weakness, it's bathos, the greatest enemy of neo-liberal society. I've been revising my musical revue of historical materialism ("Sing, Sang, Materialistische GeschichtsauffasSung!"), so my thoughts are a bit scattered at the moment, but I think the entire leak investigation can be read as a critique of the Annales school's perversion of Marxist historiography. I'll tell you what I mean by that as soon as I finish skimming the Wikipedia entry about them.

From: Jean-Paul Tremblay
To: Alex Pareene
Subject: uggggh
Friday, October 28, 2005, at 4:04 PM EST

Alex, boyo,

It's really late in the afternoon, and I just woke up. Sorry about that. This is where the deconstructionist punster in me says, "Guess I missed 'breakfast,' huh?" And where you, the audience, groan.

Such audience participation is really what this whole Plame investigation was all about, I feel...with contributions from a range of professions as diverse as journalists and chiefs of staff. My theatrical production, premiering tonight, is derived from this participatory spirit, wherein I hope workers laboring within the coils of both Media and Government can unite to applaud the work of my crippled lead actor. Crippled by a staggering deficit, an astoundingly piss-poor educational system, and exposure to too much reality television.

In that vein, it's good to know that the populace will be focusing on possible jail time for this Libby fellow. Which, perversely, could be a boon for all of academia...just think of what Antonio Gramsci produced while in prison. I've often thought about adapting his "Prison Notebooks" for the stage, but have consistently come up short in this regard. Whom would I cast as "Hegemony," as you so briefly touch upon above? And in terms of undertaking such an adaptation, I never understood "hermeneutics" very much, to be honest.

I feel like such a sham. When people view my play tonight, they're going to know how phony I am, and how much I've borrowed from the Italian master. "Six Characters in Search of an Author"? I feel like my rendition is more akin to "A Nobody in Search of Some Credibility."

I hope you can make it. Coming by my show, I mean. I know you'll "make it" in all the other ways that matter, kid. You've got talent. Me? I feel like I'm about to pull a Benjamin and shoot myself.

From Wednesday's Entertainment Weekly Popwatch!

Who knew cult director Darren Aronofsky was a fan of the boob tube? The Requiem for a Dream helmer has just signed on to direct an episode of ABC’s Lost, which will likely air at the beginning of May sweeps... "We will try to put together a story that will be well-suited for Darren’s talents and visual imagination."

Hurley grows increasingly crazed when he starts using amphetamines as an appetite suppressant.

Charlie's heroin habit hits an all-time low.

Those damned amputees are finally explained.

And someone's eye figures as a visual cue... But whose?

NB: The Kate-Claire "Ass to Ass" scene is too graphic to be shown here.

by JACOB LINDSTROM
SPECIAL SCHOOL PAPER CORRESPONDENT

I'll tell ya, if there's one thing a young columnist likes me dislikes more than irresponsible kids doing irresponsible things, it's irresponsible adults doing irresponsible research. How else to explain the occurrence of yet another media frenzy about kids and their newsgathering sources?

Today's Romenesko (a daily news and gossip website for working journalists, both professional ones, like Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, and amateur ones, like myself) features another infuriating posting: a link to a story in the Chicago Tribune entitled "Papers not a must read: A generation of young adults turns to the Internet as its primary news source".

Well, guess what, Mr. Mike Hughlett? (He's the author of the piece.) I'm tired of having lesser-minded twits like one student you quoted, Heather Tody, whose "favorites are CNN.com, Weather.com and Oprah Winfrey's home page" represent my tastes and reading pleasures! Or Josh Darrah, whose information-gathering consists of "sites devoted to comics that are exclusive to the Web."

Mr. Hughlett, why don't you bother digging deeper in your investigative research? For instance, you could have asked me about my reading habits. Though I'm only 16 years old, and not part of the collegiate demographic you cite in your article, I still think I count as part of the generation about which you were trying so hard to make broad, sweeping generalizations. The Generalization Generation? That's you, Mr. Hughlett!

Each and every morning as I make my way to the dining halls here at Exeter, other students may be clutching their copies of Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare, or Algebra II by Houghton-Mifflin, in preparation for homeroom discussions or pop quizzes...but I always make sure to stop in the school's library and check out the headlines on the print edition of the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Why? Because you know that when something is printed on paper, it has endurance going for it, and more importantly, legacy, unlike the online editions of newspapers' websites, or the blogs kept by some of my classmates. Yes, Google has already cached the unpleasant things that Jeremy Forrester and Alfred Liu and Jesse Quinlan said about my behavior at lunchtime last Tuesday, when I slipped on a wet spot on the floor near where the trays are stored, but that doesn't mean Google was able to cache the cellphone photos they took of this unfortunate incident after I complained to Vice Principal Hartley and they had to take their entries down.

See what I mean? If this news had been reported in the print edition of the New York Times, it would have lived on forever, searing the truth into the public's conscience for all eternity. Much like the paper's reports about Superdome rapes, Wen Ho Lee, and Ahmad Chalabi, people many years from now might have picked up hard copy portrayals of my embarrassing tumble and laughed at my misfortune...and known the truth of that shameful day.

Ultimately, how we read is important. It's a matter of the comfort and security that holding a hard copy of a broadsheet newspaper provides its readers, whether they're scanning the familiar page layout for relevant headlines, or using the massive width of the sheet of unfolded paper to shield their eyes from their classmates' scowls and laughter. I only wish the paper stock were thicker and stronger, to better withstand the writing utensils and pen caps thrown my way.

But I'm still sticking with print, Mr. Hughlett.

(REPRINTED ONLINE WITH KIND PERMISSION OF MR. CLARK TURNER, SCHOOL PAPER ADVISOR)

Yes, it's that most wonderful time of the year, when Christmas yet again comes under siege from the shadowy forces of secular evil. It is fair to say that most American children today don't even know who Christmas is. But who can we blame? Two new books dare to finger the partisan Grinches responsible for stealing Christmas. A tale of the tape.

Title
How the Republicans Stole Christmas	The War on Christmas
Wordy Subtitle
The Republican Party’s Declared Monopoly on Religion and What Democrats Can Do to Take it Back	How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse than You Thought
Ethnicity-Free Author Name
Bill Press	John Gibson
White-Bred's Qualifications
Bill Press is a political commentator for MSNBC. Prior to joining MSNBC, he was cohost of CNN’s Crossfire and The Spin Room with Tucker Carlson.	John Gibson is the host of The Big Story on Fox News Channel, which airs daily at 5:00 p.m. and is currently the sixth highest rated show in all of cable news.
Attractive?
If you go for that kind of thing.	Hell yeah.
Christmas Tree on Cover?
Yes	Yes
American Flag on Cover?
Yes	No
Ostensible Grinch
Republicans	Liberal activists and "media people"
Real Grinch
Evangelical Christian cabal	Jewish cabal
Sample Five-Star Amazon Review
I read this book in the aftermath of Katrina--ironically when Christian groups are now silent about morality. The federal, state, and local governments (packed with 'their' people) are accused of neglecting predominantly poor African American people who could not just jump into their cars and evacuate. Meanwhile, FEMA came under public scrutiny because then-director Michael Brown delayed sending in aid.	80% of our country is Christian and many of our national slogans etc. have the word God in them. How did it ever come to this, that the minority is calling the shots. NO ONE is taking away Christmas for me. Oh yeah, maybe they want us to celebrate Kwanza instead. This is an eye opening book.

Situated at the tail end of one of the most recent missives on the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington's new(ish) website with a political bent (and a penchant for really nailing, several times a week, the various inculcations of "Judith Miller Sucks" that fans of responsible journalism and transparent government have come to demand), was this incredibly depressing statement:

“The Secret Presidential IMs” will now be a regular feature on HuffPo. Check here each Tuesday for a new installment.

Tragic, this news...for this post's author, one Danielle Crittenden, is one of the most painfully untalented, uninspired writers currently occupying space online. And “The Secret Presidential IMs”, this "feature" of which she speaks? In computer parlance, we'd call this a "bug"...one which seems to recur on Arianna's site whenever anyone of her stable of writers attempts to post something that one may conceivably interpret as "funny".

"Ahhhh," you're saying to yourself right now, "the so-called humor content available on the site can't be that uninspired, that unfunny, and that insipidly unoriginal...can it?" (Because that's how you speak to yourself, isn't it? You faux-academic wonk.) And then you read these sampled lines below, and you weep with tears of great solemnity, sadly mulling over the Death of Laughter, and her playdate, Originality.

SumNobel4u2: yo prez
Kickass43: ?
SumNobel4u2: bono
SumNobel4u2: yr nu best bud
Kickass43: sonny?!
Kickass43: i thot u wer ded!!!!
SumNobel4u2: BONO
SumNobel4u2: as in rok star
SumNobel4u2: not as in “& cher”
Kickass43: o

"O," indeed. It's not as though Crittenden is cribbing from Arianna's own friend Bill Maher with her oh-so-fresh "Bono/Sonny Bono" take, right? Except, well, she is. And it's not as though the overarching framework, the "mock conversation" device, has already exhausted itself..."O," nevermind.

Time for some "hack"ing, then. Through some intrepid computer geekery, we got ahold of a recent IM conversation that was recently held between Arianna's Guffaw Gang: Danielle Crittenden and her partner in inept, unoriginal joke assembly, Bill Diamond -- or, as he's perhaps better known, the original Funnee Foto Guy. (Greg Gutfeld, the British Maxim editor, and another purported funneeman who sometimes posts on the site, is mostly exempted from this elite list because he's proven semi-capable of working the blogroom for an occasional laugh here and there, at least when he's not himself relying heavily on the Onion's template.)

frumkinsgal: i'm thinking of doing another presidential im post
BillDiamondsare4eva: ok, and then help me with a caption?
BillDiamondsare4eva: i found a funnee foto of bush in front of a statue
BillDiamondsare4eva: its funnee
frumkinsgal: haha ok
frumkinsgal: so david suggested this to me
frumkinsgal: harriet miers is pretty frumpy right and unqualified?
frumkinsgal: it would be funny to make fun of that and have her im with bush
BillDiamondsare4eva: maybe you can make it like she doesn't know how to use a computer even though she's a secretary
BillDiamondsare4eva: thatd be wickedly funny
BillDiamondsare4eva: she can keep messing up and saying "i dont know how to use this keyboard, its not an old typewriter, im so old!" haha!
frumkinsgal: haha ur great
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
frumkinsgal: hahahah
BillDiamondsare4eva: hahahahahaa
frumkinsgal: hahaahah
BillDiamondsare4eva: hahaa
frumkinsgal: hahhahahaa
BillDiamondsare4eva: hahahahaa
frumkinsgal: hahahahhahah
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
frumkinsgal: hahaahaha
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
frumkinsgal: haha
BillDiamondsare4eva: haha
BillDiamondsare4eva: i wish i could come up with better captions to my funnee fotos though
BillDiamondsare4eva: the commenters seem to hate me and think i'm not funny
frumkinsgal: me too
frumkinsgal: it took me this long to realize that long im transcripts won't be read by impatient people
frumkinsgal: particularly if theyre unfunny
frumkinsgal: you know why i'm going to make it a weekly feature?
frumkinsgal: i hate myself
frumkinsgal: did i ever tell you i wanted to kill myself after i got my husband fired
frumkinsgal: i felt so "evil"
BillDiamondsare4eva: i dont understand
BillDiamondsare4eva: i'd say thats really meta if i understood the concept
BillDiamondsare4eva: but i'm too busy looking at yahoonews photos for funnee fotos
frumkinsgal: i would kill myself if it werent for humor
frumkinsgal: humor keeps me going
frumkinsgal went idle

ANSWER, FOR PEOPLE WHO'VE NEVER BEEN TO THE L.E.S.:

Bearded men in ballcaps = National Leaguers feigning their being up to the task of winning the 2005 World Series.
Bearded man in black and white = anonymous Silverlake-type dweller who probably feigns liking Elliott Smith and Paul Auster. Also, he seems happy, unlike the soon-to-be-eliminated Houston Astros.

RELATED: Time for a shave: Astros rookie shares thoughts on Game 2 loss

You'll laugh as Chris Ware "takes out the trash"!

You'll roar when Elmore Leonard's tough guys hash over the Holocaust!

You'll roll in the aisles when Allison Silverman confronts the ugly face of anti-Semitism!

The Times Magazine Funny Pages -- Does the fun ever start?!?

Previously: As Seen on the New York Times Magazine's "Funny Pages"

Key: Nutty Charlie Manson divided by Pretty Orlando Bloom equals Folksy Devendra Banhart

low Expectations: Jean-Paul Tremblay, left; Matt Haber (A/K/A, Guy Cimbalo), right. (The editors requested a photo of the creators of low culture to accompany this article and received this one.)

Walking down the streets of New York's Greenwich Village, Jean-Paul Tremblay goes almost entirely unnoticed. Passersby young and old—and youngish and oldish, as well—walk by him, all but unaware that within their midst is a celebrity, albeit a celebrity of a wired, self-selecting, long tail-chasing, niche-y, early 21st century sort. Nobody knows that Tremblay, who is 29 but looks more like an undernourished 15 year-old street urchin in need of a haircut, a cup of soup, and a hug, is a bona fide celebrity of blogging: A blogebrity.

Then again, they may be walking by because he's merely a B-List blogebrity.

As he walks the streets, occasionally fielding cell phone calls that make him groan theatrically, he stops for a moment to ponder the new issue of TIME Magazine on the newsstand. The cover shows Secretary of Defense Donald Rumseld wearing a Yankees cap, eating a banana, and listening to iPod. "In the old days, I'd probably run right home and Photoshop that shit and make a post out of it," Tremblay says wearily.

"But now... I can't even figure out the joke. I couldn't even tell you where I'd begin."

No matter how many bananas public officials consume in photos, Tremblay cannot bring himself to post about it. Call him a "no-blognik": Lately, he feels he can't bring himself to blog, which has resulted in a pitiable lack of posts on his site as well as a declining profile among fellow writers of free, ephemeral web content.

"Blogger fatigue is very real, and it very really affects real bloggers," according to Dr. Owen Spielvogel, chair of the American Psychiatric Association's gossip- and media-focused Loud Family Institute. "Anecdotal research indicates it affects 1 in 10 real bloggers in a real way. Really."

I mention "blogger fatigue" to Tremblay as he glances at the cover of Time Out New York, which features Wayne Coyne of the band Flaming Lips also, inexplicably, eating a banana, wearing a Yankees cap, and listening to an iPod.

Tremblay sighs.

An autumnal breeze rustles the trees above us. I can almost see Tremblay's eyes misting up.

From today's New York Daily News:

William Ross, a retired U.S. Coast Guard captain now working for the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Safety Administration, was being questioned for allegedly alerting his son of a possible terror attack - three days before Mayor Bloomberg and the FBI went public with the warning, sources said yesterday.

"As some of you know my father works for Homeland Security, at a very high position and receives security briefings on a daily basis," his son, Nick Seligson-Ross, who runs a dance troupe, wrote in an Oct. 3 E-mail...

Yesterday, ASME (that's the American Society of Magazine Editors for you great unwashed) announced the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years. So how does one create a truly great cover? Well, once all the excitement died down, low culture began to search out the subtle threads that link so many of these great, iconic images. Next time, consider the following indicators of greatness before you go to press...

Nudity is Great

Pop Art is Great

Little Kids are Great

Gays are Great

Also consider: Black Backgrounds are Great, Vietnam is Great, Animals Doing Wacky Things are Great, 9/11 (2001 only) is Great

October 17, 2005 (avail. on newsstands): "How Apple Does It," Time Magazine's cover story from the October 24, 2005 issue

October 13, 2005: "The Apple Polishers: Explaining the press corps' crush on Steve Jobs and company," by Jack Shafer, the "Press Box," Slate

Because nothing says funny like emotional abuse, POW's, and Klosterman's fat mug.

Outside the Apple Store in Soho, downtown New York, Sunday, October 9, 2005

A close-up of the books featured in the window display, above.

Not one, nor two, but three copies of a book about "The White Power Movement"...?

Perhaps this reading selection explains why the black model of Apple's new iPod Nano is particularly weak, and prone to scratching and complaints?

This past weekend, Manhattan's customarily quiet and genteel neighborhood of Chelsea was overtaken by lesbian rage, as 22nd Street became the site of the LTTR Block Party, in honor of the release of the fourth issue of this largely-unknown feminist art/literature/music journal. (That's one more issue than n+1, in case you're wondering. Collect them now!)

So, what sort of clash ensues when the upper-income brackets of Chelsea's brownstone-residing queers play host to a bunch of art-world dykes? Hmm...phrased like that, the whole situation becomes confusing. Let's sort it out by pitting LTTR versus that beacon of aspirational capitalism, BusinessWeek.

BusinessWeek	LTTR
The publication's title pretty much says it all...you're getting the news of "this week in business". Concise, but boring. Kind of like your typical V.P. of Development. Not very gay in the least.	The publication's title serves a dual function; first, it's an artful abbreviation of LETTER, get it? Because the printed word is comprised of letters. Secondly, it's an acronym of sorts, wherein issue number 1 went by the longhand variant of LESBIANS TO THE RESCUE, issue number 2 spelled out LISTEN TRANSLATE TRANSLATE RECORD, and then there's some additional wordplay with the idea of LESBIANS TEND TO READ. Semi-clever, mostly creative. And, therefore, very gay.
Inserts: Each issue includes subscription invitation cards that frequently fall out on the floor of the Metro North train on which its readership rides.	Inserts: Past issues have included insert CDs with rare and exclusive tracks by artists such as Le Tigre. Apparently the group's frontwoman Kathleen Hanna has some sort of penchant for lesbianism?
Current Cover Story: When Rita Came Calling, examining how "after Katrina, Gulf Coast outfits like SBC, Coke, and Texas Instruments prepared extensively for this hurricane." Informative and matter-of-fact. And, again, boring as all fuck.	Potential Cover Story: When Rita Came Calling, examining what happens when an ex-lover comes by your studio apartment in Williamsburg while you're racing to hide your new girlfriend's undergarments. Assuming she wears undergarments. Poetic and beautiful.
Packaging: Bound like ninety percent of all other magazines. Three staples straight down the side, gloss on the front, and poker in the rear. (Sorry, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Account Executives are just so goddamned aggressive after happy hour!)	Packaging: The latest issue comes wrapped in textured paper, bound by a frilly ribbon. Very feminine, but not very durable –– and certainly not built to last in perpetuity. Where are those all-important subscription cards?

This, then, is why the breeders will always win.

From L-R, McDonald's new female Ronald McDonald, as seen in a current Japanese TV campaign, and Milla Jovovich as Leeloo in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1997)

Talk about Hamburglars! (Ba-dum.)

Today's Salon features an insightful, probing piece by Rebecca Traister on the humdrum, sorry state of being a Modern American Woman, and the trouble with dating the contemporary early-adult American male – specifically, how today's women are dissatisfied with this "new breed of man: a man of few interests and no passions; a man whose libido is reduced and whose sense of responsibility nonexistent. These men are commitment-phobic not just about love, but about life. They drink and take drugs, but even their hedonism lacks focus or joy. They exhibit no energy for anyone, any activity, profession or ideology."

Traister sagely acknowledges that writers such as Candace Bushnell et al have explored this subject to death, and, as such, she seeks a new hook: What might Ben Kunkel, the author of Random House's Indecision – this month's literary hotcake amongst the city's subway- and nightstand-reading set – have to contribute to this line of discussion? Of the author and his text's protagonist, she asks, "After I finished Kunkel's novel, I was curious about the man who had so precisely drawn a figure whose initial indifference is so painfully familiar. With Kunkel, I thought I might be able to have a safe, objective conversation about the kind of guy Dwight is as his story begins. How did we get a population of Dwights? Will they ever get better? Why do my friends and I continue to date them?"

But why limit Kunkel to a simple, one-track discussion on dating and relationships? We asked him, this literate, Harvard-trained man-about-town, to help our sullen readers with some of their sundry dilemmas. And boy, did he ever!

Welcome, then, to the first installment of our new, groundbreakingly opinionated, and most important, gentlemanly advice column.

ASK BEN KUNKEL

Dear Ben,

I recently left my wife of five years after – for lack of a better way of phrasing it – losing my passion for her. Not falling out of love, mind you...just losing that sense of passion that keeps people together. Lately, however, I have been regretting my decision, and want her back. The problem is, she has taken up reading all sorts of self-help books that seem to discourage exes from reuniting. What should I do?

It can be very difficult dealing with the repercussions of our actions, particularly when it comes to love and the causalities thereof. Do we love for the sake of loving, or do we love merely to stay afloat in this pool of the everyday, the human interactions that define our existence? Hannah Arendt hit it right on the head when she put forth that being female was akin to being imprisoned by one's mind and morality, and that, no matter what we may do to attempt to break free, we – and, it may be said, all of humanity – will forever be subjected to a greater external framework, an ethical morass the likes of which no mere mortal can transcend. Which is why she encouraged her lover, Walter Benjamin, to take his own life. Ever the slattern, she then wound up fucking Heidegger over, too.

Dear Ben,

I recently moved into an elite co-op in Chelsea, and was thrilled to become a part of what felt like a second home, this tightly-knit community of likeminded, intellectually vibrant, book-reading wage-earners. But since settling in last month, I have learned my upstairs neighbor insists on playing his music far too loudly, and usually at moments when I am trying to sleep. I have thought of leaving notes on his door, but am uncertain of what this might do to upset the otherwise tranquil balance of our collective abode. Any ideas?

Noise, and music in particular, can be a source of great asymmetric tension. Historically, one may note, Theodor Adorno espoused nothing but the severest disdain for jazz music, or rather, what he termed "jazz music", but which was, in fact, a series of sounds akin to "big band" music, henceforth confusing generations of Marxists and music critics alike. It was his literal reading of this cacophony, the simpleminded focus on aberrant rhythms and layered ideas, that confounded his aesthetic judgment, and led to a great deal of turmoil in his dealings with his onetime partner in the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer really got down with the horns, the clarinet, the vibrato...all of which conveyed an intricate melding of joy and sadness and expedient physicality. This tapestry of the old and new, incidentally, can be found in the recent works of Radiohead.

This post is dedicated to Jean-Paul Tremblay, who was found dead in his apartment beneath a stack of old Nation magazines, surrounded by anti-Bush paraphernalia. Now you're Photoshopping with Jesus, sweet prince.

From "What's in a Name, Katrinas?", an article exploring the irksome after-effects of being named "Katrina" in these troubling times of ours, appearing in Sunday's New York Times, by Allen Salkin:

Katrinas can expect three to five years of stoking bad memories before the sharpness of the pain recedes, said Katrina Cochran, a disaster relief psychologist who has worked with victims of the Oklahoma City bombings and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ms. Cochran, who has been hired by Church World Service to counsel hurricane victims, said she hopes they will forgive her name. "People will see me trying to help and offering care and compassion, and it might actually help them recover more quickly," she said.

Meet the new face of "poking fun".

The noted socially-responsible, orphan-adopting, AIDS-research financing, poverty-reducing, and Chilli-fucking R&B musician Usher on Kanye West's "outburst" last week:

"And the R+B star, who will be among performers appearing on an MTV telethon tonight (10SEP05), states, 'I wasn't mad at Kanye's statement - that's his opinion - but it's obviously not the opportunity or the time to poke fun or appoint blame.'"

Emphasis added, because, of course, you can't speak in boldface. Well, you can, but then you'd be a liar, as opposed to an idiot.

From Wired News' "Queer Blog for the Straight Web", September 1, 2005:

There are blogs for just about every hobby, interest and persuasion, but why don't any cover gay lifestyle?

[...]

I can't claim to have come up with the idea, though. David Hauslaib, 21, who operates gossip blog Jossip, did. Next week he is planning to launch Queerty (a play on Qwerty, the keyboard standard), which will feature the blogging of Bradford Shellhammer (yes, his real name: I checked his driver's license). Shellhammer, 29, spots fashion trends for JC Report, the online fashion magazine published by Flavorpill Productions, and has written for Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, The Baltimore Sun and Gay.com.

Recently I interviewed the two of them at a cafe in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where they talked about their plans for Queerty.

SCENE: A small brick-walled cafe, colorfully--yet tastefully--adorned with the most masculine of motifs, including Robert Mapplethorpe photographs and rich, transcendently phallic iron sculptures. An isolated table with three chairs stands in the center of the room, at which is seated BRADFORD, a sleek and stylized prototype of homosexuality, and DAVID, a young and cherubically aspirational "gay bloke" who is wiping his face with stock certificates.

DAVID (sighing): Must reporters always be so fucking late? I swear...it's scandalous how delicate the nature of time is to these people. And time, of course, is money. Gay money!

BRADFORD: David, relax. I am so, so off the market. And he's just a writer! Hardly big-money-man material. Truly, while a little plug-and-play here and there has never hurt anyone, I am not willing to betray Gus' confidence in my behavior after that last fiasco in July.

A trim young bespectacled gentleman, ADAM, enters from STAGE LEFT. He smiles confidently at DAVID and BRADFORD and seats himself between the two.

"The Pat O'Brien's motto is "Have fun!" and visitors to this cornerstone New Orleans establishment have been doing so since 1933. With roots that extend into the Prohibition Era, Pat O'Brien's has been serving signature drinks for more than 60 years and is best known for the Hurricane, its original invention."
-from the AOL City Guide

(courtesy Blender Magazine)

...or as Kayne Kanye put it, "It's Kanye, but some of my plaques, they still say 'Kayne.'"

Available now on Salon's elite newsfeed for premium subscribers, your questions about "why guys do those things they do", finally answered:

Killer instincts
What inspires young men and women to become suicide bombers? Religious fanaticism? Nationalism? Alienation? Or some toxic mix of all three? (by Laura Miller, July 26, 2005)

Divine secrets of the comb-over brotherhood
What makes powerful men embrace the world's lamest do? Twang those glistening strands and you'll hear a strange song about virility, status and even death. (by Melena Z. Ryzik, July 27, 2005)

Ladies, sleep soundly. Successfully unlock the secrets of either of these famous cults of masculinity, and this War on Terror™ will be over justlikethat, we're sure of it.

"How many years have I got? She's mine, too": Above: 74 year-old Rupert and three year-old Grace Murdoch, Sun Valley, Idaho (via The Age); Below: Noah and Katherine Cross in Chinatown.

Earlier: At Risk Kids

A.B.C. (Anybody But Cowell): Let the record show, Paula Abdul already has an affinity for ruffles.

O'Connor, First Woman on High Court, Resigns After 24 Years, by Richard W. Stevenson, The New York Times, July 1, 2005.

Yeah, we know it's a little late, but it's not every day you discover someone copping Abba's style.

Big ups to James R.!

So Fresh and So Clean: Via The New York Times/Victor Lopes

Are Men Ready for the 5-Step, 10-Minute Shave?, by Nick Burns, The New York Times, June 30, 2005.

Apparently Silky Smooth was on assignment covering the "last throes" of the Iraqi insurgency.

Earlier: Beard Hacker: The low culture Guide to Shaving

The recent revelation that Saddam Hussein has a taste for Jay Leno-approved nacho-cheese chip Doritos has sent shock waves through the snack food industry. I recently contacted PepsiCo's board of directors about their thoughts on the shocking, possibly treasonous, matter. (Disclosure: PepsiCo owns Frito Lays which owns Doritos which holds a majority stake in low culture heavy industries.)

From: guy v. cimbalo [guy@lowculture.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 12:13 AM
To: SPA - Board Of Directors {PEP}
Subject: Investment Concerns

Dear Sirs and Madames:

I am very concerned about recent revelations that Saddam Hussein enjoys Doritos. This man is a tyrant, while Doritos should represent peace, justice, and American snack food at its best.

PepsiCo. forms a large part of my mutual fund's investment portfolio and I have begun to feel that I should divest myself of the holdings.

I would like to know what Frito-Lay intends to do in order to quell this public relations nightmare.

Yours,

Guy Cimbalo

Their response after the jump...

Courtney Love (L) and Rocky Dennis (R)

"What's the matter, never seen anyone from the planet Vulcan before?"
1985's Mask

Welcome to the bleeding edge! It's official, then...this "podcasting" thing is bloody hot!

low culture is proud to present the first, inaugural, premiere episode of "No Jacket Required", a no-holds-barred look at contemporary arts and culture. This mp3/podcast/olde timey radio broadcast runs somewhere around eleven minutes: perfect for your commute home, downtime at work, or on constant repeat throughout your day (it's possible to enjoy "No Jacket Required" over 130 times in the course of a 24-hour period).

You've come to rely on low culture for reasonably entertaining satire and comedy -- now give "No Jacket Required" a try. Seriously, we think you'll enjoy it. Earnestly, even.

And maybe it'll explain why we've been so damned absent of late?

No Jacket Required, Ep. 1, 11:35, 10MB

Vanilla Guy: "I WANNA WAKE UP!"

Film star Tom Cruise has asked girlfriend Katie Holmes to marry him, he announced on Friday, ending weeks of speculation over whether Hollywood's hottest couple would wed.

Appearing with Holmes at a Paris news conference, the 42-year-old explained how he had chosen the Eiffel Tower in the city of romance to make his move.

"Yes I proposed to Kate last night ... because it is very beautiful and romantic here," Cruise said, clarifying later that the engagement had actually begun in the early hours of Friday. - Cruise proposes to actress Holmes at Eiffel Tower, by Joanna Partridge, Reuters, June 17, 2005.

"That's more than a dress. That's an Audrey Hepburn movie. We barely know each other. I don't think we've had a single conversation about anything except your father. We got nothing to talk about. Sometimes you just gotta say 'What the fuck.' In this life, it's not what you hope for, it's not what you deserve—it's what you take I feel the need... the need for speed.

"I've drained you to the point of death. If I leave you here, you die. Or you can be young always, my friend, as we are now, but you must tell me: will you come or no?

"Where exactly are we going... exactly?...Where the rainbow ends? Good. Because for a minute there, I thought we were talking about A FUCKING MASK!... I'm afraid you'll break my heart. I want the truth!

"Help me help you. I will not rest until I have you holding a Coke, wearing your own shoe, playing a Sega game featuring you, while singing your own song in a new commercial, starring you, broadcast during the Superbowl, in a game that you are winning, and I will not sleep until that happens... I'm gonna let ya' in on a little secret: K-Mart sucks.

"Don't be afraid. I'm going to give you the choice I never had... No one could resist me, not even you... Just forget about that mortal coil. You'll become accustomed to it, all too quickly.

"Let me ask you something: are you out of your fucking mind? I will not apologize for who I am. I love you. You... complete me... Cause you're good. We're in this together. Fates intertwined.

"You're my motherfucker! I had your ass over the grinder and it's okay enough to thank me, shithead. Jump in my nightmare, the water's warm!"

RADAR

ELLE

POP

T

AOXOMOXOA

*Is it too late to jump on the Radar blogwagon? Oh, it is? Well, fuck off! I've been busy, okay?

What did you say? Don't you dare talk back to me! One more word out of your mouth and you'll be sleeping over your sister's blog tonight.

SHOCK VERDICT CLEARS JACKO OF KIDDIE SEX - AND CROWNS DA TEAM THE KINGS OF FLOP, by David K. Li and Kate Sheehy, The New York Post, June 14, 2005.

BOYS ARE BACK, by Maxine Shen, ibid.

Lucky (Boy) Fucker: Relieved, Jackson's going home to bury himself in his Blanket.

"Denise Jack and other car owners thought they had it bad when a 75-foot retaining wall in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan collapsed on May 12, burying their parked vehicles beneath untold tons of debris. But their ordeal was actually just beginning.

"Their cars remain buried there today, and none are expected to be unearthed until the rest of the wall is stabilized and the rubble removed - up to a year from now.

"Until then, they are caught in the world of insurance limbo.
"[...]
"'These people have a bit of an uphill battle,' said Anthony Michael Sabino, a law professor at St. John's University."

- A Wall Fell on Their Cars. Then Bad Luck Set In., by Anahad O'Connor and Rachel Metz, The New York Times, June 11, 2005.

Click for larger version.

Traditionally famous for his red hair and yellow jump suit, Ronald will be seen juggling fruit and snowboarding in a TV advert to be screened on Friday.

The leaner, more health-conscious Ronald will encourage children to get up and join him playing sports.
-Ronald McDonald turns health guru, BBC, June 8, 2005.

Hackier: The George W. Bush Book Club (All Hack Edition)

"Wow, Anne Bancroft is dead."

"Oh my God, I just got a text saying Britney got married."

"Holy shit, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are filing for divorce."

"Trey from the OC is on 1st Ave!"

"The Killers show is awesome."

"Fuck, I forgot to tivo SNL."

"'I have this little game I play in my head when someone gets an appointment,' said Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's 'Hardball.' 'And I say, "Now, how did that happen?" And then someone will say, "Well, they went to school together," or "They live next door to each other," or "Their wives are friends." And you go, "Oh, yeah," and it clicks.' On the other hand, he said, 'serendipity is a big part of our lives, but it grows in direct proportion to sociability.'"
- If They Gave Nobels for Networking. . ., by Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, June 5, 2005.

Further Listening: Psychoanalyis: What Is It?, by Prince Paul
Related: Letters to a Young Blogger, by David Maria Brooks

This summer, as we eagerly await the release of yet another crop of comic book movies from the Marvel/DC Comics pipeline, Twentieth Century Fox's upcoming Fantastic Four is looking to be quite a rough-and-tumble tale. Well, at least the trailers make this out to be the case, featuring little more than a series of elaborate, action-packed falls from buildings on the part of the film's heroes and villains.

After all—and most studio executives will agree with us, here—nothing is more thrilling to today's moviegoing audience than a character's being hurled from atop a great height, right? I ask you, can an intriguing sub-plot be thrown from a skyscraper? No. A complex, well-shaded character arc? Can that cling desperately to a window ledge suspended fifty stories above street level? No, of course not.

So, here we are, with the Fantastic Four's fantastic falls:

An unidentified firefighter, on the verge of falling (from a bridge)

Mr. Fantastic, also on the verge of falling, but from a building

The Thing and Doctor Doom, actually falling, also from a building

Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, also falling, also from a building

The film's director, Tim Story: soon to throw himself from the highest building in Hollywood?

Thursday evening, 8 o'clock sharp. I used to spend this special time perched atop my loveseat, giddily staring at the television set and mentally preparing to absorb the wonders of West Coast suburban culture as filtered to me via the broadcast networks.

And then summer arrived, and they all abandoned me. Not the networks, I mean...they're still there, doling out quality product week after week. No, I've got a very specific axe to grind. I'm talking about Peter Gallagher. Mischa Barton. Josh Schwartz. Despots of the airwaves, each and every one of them. And Schwartz? He's their tyrannical leader.

My kids think I have a problem. My eldest son, fully-grown and fresh out of culinary school, has scolded me for what he deems an "unhealthy" interest in the goings-on of fictitious characters and/or executive producers and/or series creators. But my son, you see, never understood my focus, my diligence...

How I hate my son for his lack of compassion. How I miss presiding over real family bonding, such as the antics of Ryan Atwood and his nettlesome older brother, or Kirsten Cohen and her Jewish husband.

Sitting here at work, gazing out the window upon the parking lot below...I'm a sour, lonely, bitter old man. To hell with my initial idea of taking laps in the pool; I think I'll sleep in my office tonight.

Actually, I've never seen The O.C.; I'm sure it's pretty good.

The O.C. used to air on Thursdays at 8PM EST on FOX, but then summer started. It's not yet noon, and my night is already ruined.

Earlier: O.C.-centric entries, wherein we celebrated our joyous embrace of "all things Newport Beach".

WHICH set of former has-beens-that-never-were returned to the glare of the spotlight earlier this month? WHO reissued their most prominent document of fame and fortune yet, in what is either the ultimate comeback or merely another attempt to cash in on the zeitgeist of bourgeoisie socialism? WHAT makes this sort of bougie urban politicism that far removed from an overriding cultural interest in Jessica Simpson's techniques for obtaining a bikini-worthy body?

Unrelatedly, Maer Roshan's Radar project is out anew this month.

And, hey, you know what? Our tried-and-true "This looks like this, which is like that, which is like this" routine never ends! We'll be here all week.

(with thanks to Adit Nathan)

Separated at Bulge: Saddam Hussein on the cover of The Sun (via Drudge); Pat Buchanan on the cover of SPY, May 1992.

Today's New York Daily News cover story touts the boldest of exclusives: "New York's top lawmakers have been warned: Mess around with the West Side Stadium and the Olympics are lost." Meaning, of course, that unless the proposed real-estate grabbing, massively bond-and-taxpayer-funded West Side stadium is erected near Penn Station, there can be no 2012 New York Olympics. (How very sad! New Yorkers have surely been pining for a long-term re-enactment of the hassle that was last fall's 2004 Republican National Convention, right?)

Or, as the Daily News declares in their more appropriately condensed tabloid headline parlance, "NO STADIUM, NO GAMES."

Logic and deductive reasoning? It's, for the time being at least, another Daily News exclusive!

Of course, the rival Post won't take this challenge sitting down. Look for their very own upcoming series of cover-story exclusives, including, but not limited to:

NO CEASEFIRE, NO PEACE
NO NEWSWEEK, NO WAR
NO TRUMP, NO BOMBAST

And, of course,

NO POST, NO PUNS

Sigh. It's clearly time to move to Paris, huh?

The celebration of Iraqi democracy's second launch continues. In fact, it's moved into the wacky publicity stunt phase!

Last night, as part of the ongoing launch party for the most expensive, anticipated democratic regime since Tina Brown's revamp of the U.S.S.R., an insurgent lackey escalated the war of words by hurling several bullets at Dr. Ali Hameed, an official from Iraq's Oil Ministry. Dr. Hameed responded by being pronounced dead at 8 AM!

Did somebody say CATFIGHT!!!! Oh, yeah, it's on!

Iraqi Oil Ministry official gunned down [CNN]

Lindsay Lohan at some KIIS-FM event and Janis Joplin in mid-slur

Mourning Wood: Nine out ten respondents surveyed said they'd sleep with three of the above people. Can you guess which ones? (via Yahoo/Reuters)

Related: "The harrah... The harrah..."

Have you seen The Huffington Post yet? Isn't it sort of... funny? (Get it!?!)