best subway line to spot someone reading white teeth or the corrections – L TRAIN
Capturing the NPR zeitgeist of the L TRAIN, these discursive tomes are daily removed from vintage satchels and displayed accordingly. On a recent Brooklyn-bound excursion, a guy with a bunny-eared copy of Franzen’s Saul Bellow-styled smarminess surreptitiously scoped an asymmetrically coiffed woman equally unwrapped in Zadie Smith’s pre-Autograph Man shaggy dog. If the faux literati were pretending to read the Marquis de Sade with their morning coffee, rush hour would be much more interesting. -Brandon Stosuy
“Bunny-eared”? I think the phrase Brandon is looking for is “dog-eared,” right?
Big dilemma here, for those attuned to the details of election red tape (you know, x number of voters needed to get a measure on the ballot, y number of dollars to lobby for its passage). We’re assuming the New York Times, when it prepared this handy chart about the 2003 California recall “election”, used official data from the state’s registrar or other relevant election official.
So, then…pay close attention to the detail we’ve provided of the accompanying graphic which appeared on the Times’ website this morning: Are we really to believe that Peter Camejo, the Green Party‘s candidate for governor in both this and the last statewide election, is a Financial Investment Advisor? That is so fucked up.
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Informing us ’till death
RIP, Neil Postman, philosopher prince in the Empire of Signs.
Turn off your TV tonight and read Amusing Ourselves to Death
[Thanks, Dave]
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The curse of Predator
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The Company you keep
Actor Tom Arnold extended his congratulations by phone and told Fox News that he wished he could have attended the victory party. Actor Gary Busey spoke to the crowd and defended Schwarzenegger from the sexual assault allegations that had dogged him in the last few days of the campaign.
…from Foxnews.com
Depressingly accurate lede from The Los Angeles Times:
Californians have never known more about a new governor. We’ve seen him naked on screen. We know about the Nazi father, the celebrity journalist wife, the bodybuilding titles and the crude behavior toward women. We have seen him in theaters, fallen asleep to his voice on television and imitated his accent.
Californians have never known less about a new governor. We’ve never seen him hold office. We don’t know what programs he’ll cut, how he’ll balance the budget, how he’ll negotiate with recalcitrant legislators or how he’ll manage the state’s bureaucracy.
THE NEW GOVERNOR: So Familiar Yet So Unknown, by Joe Matthews (requires registration)
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Amusing image of the moment
Does Sharon know?
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Don’t they have CSI in Africa?
“We can only prosecute if there is sufficient evidence to justify the charge, but there is not enough evidence,” said Chris MacAdam, a lawyer for the National Prosecuting Authority.
Five Policemen Won’t Be Tried in Biko Killing, by The Associated Press
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Vanilla love
Suggested slogan: Sightly less nauseating than Vanilla Coke.
This just in from the public interest journalists at Page Six: Woody Allen is shopping his memoirs to publishers . According to suspiciously unnamed “publishing sources,” the book “will lay open the secrets of his affairs with Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow and his current wife, Soon Yi.” (Not exactly the most alluring list, but you work with what ya’ got.)
Great! Just what we need. More shitty writing wavering violently between self-aggrandizement and self-pity, intellectual name-dropping, pathetic rehashing of jokes that were funny 30 years ago, glorifying of a lost social-climbing New York lifestyle, and a naked grab for immortality. Basically, his last 10 movies only without the pretty young things for eye candy. Can’t wait!
Besides, didn’t Woody already write a book called Getting Even? Maybe this one should be called Without Morals.
50 Dollar bet: Blurb from David Remnick.