Month: November 2004

One of the most desperate tactics a journalist can resort to is using another journalist as a source. It’s even more desperate when the journalist used as a source is from the antipodal publication to your own, a publication whose credibility your worthless paper would never endorse were you not in a bad bind and really needed to flesh-out an unformed rehash of a story. But it’s really desperate when the journalist you use as a source is funnier and more effortlessly talented than you are, and upstages you with brio.
Take today’s New York Post, which features a not-so timely piece on whether or not Oliver Stone’s Alexander is too gay. Written by the Post‘s giddy answer to Walter Monheit, Jr., “Captain” Lou Lumenick, it’s called Light in the Sandals. (Get it? That’s, like, a joke about fags.)
After a few paragraphs of quoting from the trailer and citing articles previously published in Playboy and Entertainment Weekly (in the biz, we call this sort of shoe leather-preserving reporting “a rounder”), Lumenick gets someone on the horn:

See, this is the problem with resorting to this sort of lame, lazy journalism. In one well-turned, humorous phrase, Michael Musto steals his equally alliterative interviewer Lou Lumenick’s article right out from under him. (I also like how Lumenick makes his source sound like some sort of anthropologist of gay Hollywood, endowed, as it were, with a grant from the N.E.H.)
Lumenick probably sought out Musto for his years of experience dispensing soundbites like that on VH1 and any show that will cover his steep per diem (zip, as it turns out), but if Lumenick were a real journalist, he would’ve just stolen Musto’s joke and called it his own. That’s how the pros do it.
Related: More gay Oliver Stone news from today’s Post.

Mean People Suck: Yeah, we think we’re better than this, too.

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Farmers from Veracruz, Mexico, protest the seizure of their land.

The Naked Cowboy sings songs of freedom for his comrades in Veracruz.

Truly, we are in a golden age of anthropomorphic pillows.
Surely you’ve noticed that the best and brightest minds in the fields of science, design, and, upholstery have dedicated themselves to creating wonderful, almost human pillows the likes of which mankind has never imagined?
Prepare to be dazzled: your head will literally spin at the sight of these amazing pillows. Luckily, it won’t be hard to find somewhere to rest it.
First, there was the ‘Boyfriend Arm’s Pillow‘ (U.S. $80), which is a lot like the classic husband, but requires less commitment and no costly wedding ceremony. This pillow may prove to be a major breakthrough after the draft is implemented and the male population in America and the coalition of the willing (Poland! Don’t forget Poland!) drops dramatically. Scientists are already at work on a pillow that can inseminate a woman’s eggs. Can half baby pillows be far behind?
Actually, they already exist. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon have developed an electrical pillow that allows grandparents to ‘hug‘ their grandkids long distance through a series of vibrations and squeezing motions.
This incredible pillow-based innovation permits grandkids to obviate unpleasant grandma kisses and avoid exposure to toxic grandpa odors. It also prevents too-tight grandkid hugs from shattering grandma’s brittle bones.
Unfortunately, this pillow also eliminates the silver dollars and hard candies traded as currency in the typical grandparent/grandchild hug transaction. (Hard candy pillows, anyone?)
For overgrown male children who continue to dislike hugging gross female humans with their body hair and heart beats, the latest pillow breakthrough may be of some help.
As recounted by the world wide weirdness curators at bOING bOING, the ‘Girlfriend’s Lap Pillow,’ Japanese scientists have developed perhaps the most important pillow-based innovation of the decade.

Combining the up-with-women design philosophy of A Clockwork Orange‘s Korova Milkbar with the idealized proportionality of the very best of female drawings by R. Crumb, this pillow is a must-own for men who love comfort, but hate women’s revolting upper bodies and blabby mouths. (To say nothing of their hair, which sometimes smells of fruit and can get stuck on the tiles in the shower.) This is the ultimate ‘companion’ piece for your terrifying subterranean lair where you make girl suits and stand naked before your video camera speculating on what you’d like to do with yourself if anatomy would just let you.
What’s next for pillows? The sky’s the limit, really. Might we see such innovations as a realistically rendered Diane Lane pillow? Or perhaps a fully articulated Mugatu-shaped pillow that emits a real fur and musk scents that’s also edible? I have no idea. I’ll leave it to the pillow pros.
The future looks bright. Bright and downy soft. Pull up a pillow and rest your head, won’t you?

Did Slate, everyone’s favorite (temporarily) Microsoft-funded journal of punditry and funditry, stick one of those sex patches to its crimson skin?
How else to explain how horny the site is this week? Check out these heds:
Come Again? A history of the orgasm completely misses the point., by Thomas W. Laqueur (Don’t stop…)
The Thinking Man’s Guide to Sex: What could be wrong with She Comes First?, by Dan Chiasson (Slower, slower…)
“Let’s Get It On”…Again: The remix of Marvin Gaye’s classic is better than the original., by David Ritz (Yes, yes, that’s good…)
Why Powell Had To Go: And how will Condi fare as his successor?, by Fred Kaplan (Um, less like that…)
The See-Through Times: An internal memo promises to rub out anonymice and other credibility killers., by Jack Shafer (Ah, that’s good…)
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I need a good, long shower.