Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Your Anger

I love America and America loves me. Jesus. Today begins my season of eating-holiday hate (one more reason to be grateful I'm not Jewish, what with all their dumb fall holidays)(the other one: not having to spend most of my free time poisoning all the wells).

I know how Dennis Kucinich feels. I too saw a UFO once. And a ghost! Twice! No, I heard a ghost. And one time I stood so close to Giuliani that I could see where the line of orange pancake makeup ended and the green translucent flesh began.*

This shit freaks me out. I'm fascinated by Ron Paul and the fact that all the Libertarians I know seem to favor him, even though some of his positions aren't particularly libertarian-leaning. Mostly I like the fact that he's been officially endorsed by the White Power movement.

Know who else probably endorses Ron Paul? Lockhart Steele.

The Minutemen, Joe McCarthy's Ghost [Ed note: In an effort to be true to the holiday, I was tempted to post Frank Zappa's "Titties and Beer," but I knew that'd earn me the enmity of the only YM contributor who tolerates me.]

*Wanna see something really scary?

On Mahaloween The Future Is Now

In the future every company will have a video show, not just a blog.
—Jason Calacanis on Mahalo Daily

Purple Ninja of the Lake

Oh Good, My Blog Found Me

99 (Emeritus) is best suited to offer the proper commentary on the 2 year old news, now being reported in the New York Times, that Lockhart Steele's Curbed Network is taking a $1.5 million round of funding from Nick Denton and others. Or maybe Sac can parse it between remodeling projects. It doesn't make much sense to me but I guess this is how rich people rub each other with money.

I wondered if Lock planned to spend the loot on a new Curbed HQ next to the relocated New York magazine offices in Tribeca. When reached for comment, he said "Bingo!" but that's pretty much his auto-reply when emailing with me.

SOOO WILD!!

I will never go into the wild. I have never camped overnight anywhere. Have never kayaked. Have never white water rafted. I fear snakes and bears. Wolves. Escaped animal prisoners from far away zoos. Bank robbers thirsty for hostages. Me, the best hostage. I've never fired a weapon/ a bazooka nor a 357 magnum. I've never thrown chinese stars at elm tree targets. I am the would-be greatest held captive mark. In the wide open woods?? Yes!!! So I shall never go to the woods to find my past, to live as I once did. To live so would be to die so. So my mind and lacking the grip of my own inner animal tell me. Not into the wild. Not into the wild. The wild is for certain ones, not the uncertain ones.
Lightbulb flash and swallow the pill! I've camped for fourty days and fourty nights! I am torrential downpour! I'm the lightning, I'm the flood. I'm the bank robber! The "bank" is a bee hive...see, I'm the great bear that understands that to get the honey is to keep the peace with it's creators. Honey taker, Rain Maker, I am the wild! I am the wild!
The bottom of the valley, looking upward- I purchase a used iBook G4 and call an 800 # for an ATM card.. my wild streak is further away from the woods and the bank robbers...
I will never bite into a mastodon.

Preview for "Chop Chop" #8

Shrinking Violet: Facebook Fogey

The one thing that's really perplexed me about both school and work of late has been the Facebook phenomenon. $15 billion valuation for a social network erm, "platform?" Are you kidding me? Lately I've been considering deleting my account, just like I did with MySpace and Friendster, as the amount of "bacn" it generates is staggering.

On campus, I'd say about 50% of the shoulders I peer over in class or at the computer lab (strictly for research purposes) are hunched over the familiar blue and white interface. And a fellow veteran of the tech and startup scene made a consulting career for himself by explaining to old people that the kids don't use email anymore.

So of all the things that are making me feel old, I'd have to say the Facebook phenomenon is the one that cuts closest to home -- after all, it's kinda my job to be on top of this shit. And frankly, I just don't get it.Read more...But then again, maybe it's the fact that I'm watching Facebook in the tech trades so closely and reporting on it myself occasionally that's freaking me out. Because I doubt the kids at school are combing through the terms of service or have an inkling of just why the valuation is so high.

Why is Kara Swisher spending so much time at the Journal covering Zuckerberg? Because what Wall Street and Madison Avenue are salivating over is Facebook's power to provide the kind of marketing insight that makes big business drool.

But imagine if you could automate that kind of research? If you could know that the boss put some new-new wave, post-punk, faux-psychadelic indie band on his iLike app after checking them out at a show in Billyburg, sixteen of his Facebook friends added the same band within the week and would therefore be a good candidate for ads from the messenger bag maker of the month, well, a lot of coolhunters would be out of jobs.

And it's all because, unlike previous models that tried to segment people through information from subscription lists, credit reports and public records that are generated passively by consumers, social cliques and teen yearnings for conformity motivate the next generation to actively submit that information and more to their profiles. MySpace's problem is that teens can't spell -- Facebook solved that by tying your profile indellibly to your real name and otherwise massaging data input into more easily aggregated formats.

That's where the terms of service and privacy policy comes in. Basically, anything you submit to Facebook is theirs in near perpetuity. Videos? Photos? Text? Sensitive contact information? Thanks to pages of legalese, it's all pretty much fair game for Facebook to store, re-use and index to their heart's content.

I'm already paranoid enough of how big a role Google plays in my life, but at least Google's applications are useful. The most interesting feature on Facebook is the "news" feed from your friend network, and for that I have Twitter, which provides all the tools a new media douchebag really needs. So for now, I won't be getting serious about leveraging my Facebook presence.

Julia & Jakob: Their Week in Review

Fatblogging: Pseudo Intellectually Lazy Boy

Source: Skeptical Inquirer

38:58
13.92
503.7

Egg Hunt - "Me and You"

Midrash's Night Dream

I met Alicia Jo Rabins, the violinist of Golem, last year in Basking Ridge, NJ of all places™ and recently reconnected with her. (Much discussion of The Wire ensued, she's a Baltimore area native as well and no stranger to strangers.) Good timing as she's playing a free solo show at Rockwood Music Hall tomorrow night. Fiddler fanatics unite(!), but leave the foam fingers at home.

I'm not sure Sasha Frere-Jones would approve (btw, most excellent rebuttal by Carl Wilson on Slate) but the whitish reference points here are Appalachian, Eastern European Jewish, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sufjan Stevens, etc. Her 2003 Sugar Shack album gets a lot of autumnal play in my iPod. The following track is from a JDub Records compilation.

"Bat Yiftach"

Previously: The 70th Love Song

It was an orgy last night

Open Letter to THE HAT, editors Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar

Father, Son and East Bay Ghosts

Seems like something I should have known but didn't. Jesse Michaels, who sang for the legendary Operation Ivy, is the son of late short story writer Leonard Michaels.

Operation Ivy - "Jaded"

Shrinking Violet: Dream School

Apparently enrolling at NYU is living the dream -- though around campus, alluding to NYU's "dream school" status is generally done in a mocking tone. But what's the difference between when I went to NYU (then barely in the top 50 on U.S. News' rankings) and now?

Read on for Rent, Rudy and Residence Hall madness...Felicity, Friends and Sex and the City: More women go into secondary education in America than men, and NYU has benefitted from the boost in profile from feel-good shows that had serious female followings during the formative years of the current crop of high school graduates. J.J. Abrams plucked the Noxema Girl from commercial auditions to give a glossy, Hollywood sheen to urban university life. Chandler Bing's crew showed that you can live in New York City for nearly a decade and never have to associate with someone darker than half and half. And Sarah Jessica Parker, who used to get heckled from dorm windows when she'd walk her dog down West 10th, made New York the sexiest thing on earth to the kind of person who reads Page Six.

What cultural touchpoints did I have? The sexual frustration of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld, the AIDS-plagued of Angels in America and Rent, and Mrs. Sarah Jessica Parker's flirtation with Marlon "Mafia" Brando's indulgent self-parody in The Freshman. In other words, I just went because Columbia wouldn't accept me and Vassar's Poughkeepsie made Alphabet City look gentrified. Good times.

Rudy Fucking Giuliani: God I hate that guy. And so did any young punk in New York when he was busy cracking down on graffiti, pot smoking and artistic pursuits. Now, every big city mayor in America takes his thinly-veiled racist rhetoric and "quality of life" police state policies as political dogma, especially including Mike Bloomberg who basically ran on the "more years of Rudy, but without the sleeping around on a cancer-stricken wife or cross dressing" platform.

Basically, NYU went out of its way to alleviate parental fears for safety when I took the tour, and I'm sure do still. But they also provided cover for the NYPD to stage raids of Washington Square Park and helped the city get cameras installed. I'm sure Curbed could figure out how to do a time-lapse map of NYU's downtown Manhattan purchases (now extending to downtown Brooklyn with the takeover of Brooklyn Polytechnic), but the NYU-ization of downtown was certainly done with the help of the mayor's office.

But just to show that nervous nelly parents still aren't convinced, NYU didn't make the top ten dream schools in their estimation. Though I still think it's less concern that little Jane or Jimmy will get mugged, and more concerned that they'll come back with a wicked coke habit or, worse, a homosexual! At least they should rest easy that none of them will come home a political radical (they all go to CUNY, Cooper and the New School) -- unless "objectivist libertarian" counts as politically radical these days.

Private College Loans: The question the Princeton Review asked, officially, was "What dream college would you most like to attend (or see your child attend) if acceptance or cost weren't issues?" Which, thanks to the growth of the private educational loan industry scammers millionaires, they no longer are -- at least for a while. NYU also just happens to be one of the most expensive schools in the country, having gotten even more relatively expensive than when I went there. Yet undergrad applications have tripled in the same decade.

But NYU is the ultimate striver school. And you have to spend money, or go into enough debt to buy a first home most anywhere else, to associate with the smaller and smaller number of people who make money. And oh, how NYU chisels students with further costs for lab fees, books, incredibly expensive residence halls and even unspent dining hall chits! It was NYU, after all, that did everything in its power to get the Bush Administration to overturn the Brown decision on graduate unions -- which, in the ultimate striver sentiment, probably helped to earn them brownie points with the Ivies who had been fighting such efforts to pay students living wages for teacher assistant work for years.

Needless to say, I'll be applying to state schools when apply to grad school in a desperate effort to defer paying back the $25,000 I had to borrow for one last semester as a Violet.

The Internet Has Ruined My Writing

"Wait a minute. You come into my house, my party, to tell me about the future? That the future is tape, videotape, and not film? That it's amateurs -- not professionals?"

Is the Net Good for Whiners? The YM Staff prefers to hash things out in private over email. It's our under-mundo of blogging, complete with wacky nicknames and wonky defibrillations. As a vetting process, I rank it up there with screaming at a mirror or alphabetizing suicide notes by method. Most recently (or 2nd to most recently, technically, but that dog got a bad burn on its belly), we took on the much linked-about Writing About Writing on 10 Zen Monkeys where a bunch of dudes whimmed and sickled about how the Internet deprofessionalized their writer profession. What follows are reactions and insights from people who do not consider themselves "writers" -- but rather rejoice in the shadows of poorly disguised porn names and respect the value of teeth-gnashing jealousy. Here we go down the road you grew up on...

Dee Dee Dee Sizemore: That was the biggest snore I've ever read. If a subject is so boring that it makes even Krassner and Parfrey impossible to read, there's a fundamental problem. People who ramble on about "media studies" and "Web 2.0" are like a toothless ouroboros. I wonder why they didn't ask Adam Greenfield for his input. He writes like an lorem ipsum generator--it would've really completed the Roundtable of White Men. (Christ, couldn't they have at least included Jenny Gardener--oops, I mean Xeni Jardin?)

Agent 69: Two people praised BLDGBLOG -- written by a fool who redefines the qualifier lightweight in a way that can even impress those who toil at House & Garden -- and I stopped reading at that point. We could point out that anyone who needs to buttress their notion of writer and place in that sad pantheon is a high school yearbook editor whiner par excellence. Because that's never been said before.

DDDS: You couldn't you have come up with more than 2 architectural allusions there?

A69: I could have, but the Internet ruined my writing.

Hank N. Sack: I have to believe that Parfrey was goofing on the subject. And Shirky should grow some fucking hair on his head and stop talking. Of course, all this crap boils down to Writers losing their exclusivity in getting their shit out to the public. It's ALWAYS about the unwashed gaining access to what was once exclusive, which means the former elites have to up their game to remain Ahead of the Curve. Maybe now that the internet has ruined the written word, Real Writers will move on to mime or something. With Marcel Marceau gone, there's a big opportunity there.

A69: Add a parenthetical note about how fucking precious the Economist obit was -- referring to him as Bip, as if we would all be shamed or impressed to find out that was another name for him besides "That fucking french mime."

Super Fuzz Big Muff: I'm sorry, but the whole "writing about writing" thing is the gayest thing on the planet. That being said, I really enjoyed writing about writing about writing, since people who write about writing are laboring under the illusion that the kind of writing they consider worthwhile is even worth sticking up for. I will be contributing more extensive thoughts in due course. Stay tuned, fuckos.

DDDS: I really don't think Parfrey was being insincere. And both he and one of the other visionaries mentioned something about how the internet makes it so much easier to do research, which sent a fucking shiver down my spine. Rushkoff was the most cogent and non-abstruse. His best comment was "Authors are no longer respected in the same way, books are treated more like magazines with firm expiration dates, and writers who simply write really well don't get deals as quickly as disgraced celebrities or get-rich-quick gurus." Add to that list upper-middle-class liberal arts college grads living in Brooklyn who write bildungsromans that are really thinly-veiled autobiographies. (Oh, and also the ones who write clearly mendacious "memoirs." Pronounced ME!-moirs.) PS: Anyone who quotes Italo Calvino in my physical presence is getting slit neck to nuts. And I'd like to add that this all traces back to the translation of the Bible from Vulgate to vernacular.

Action Jack-n-Jill: I actually found this through Ed Champion's blog, and plan to attend his Sunday afternoon laptop clatches at the Outpost regularly from here on out. But not this week, as I'll be hosting a cattle call to cast for my film (a medium which, for all the "Why Johnny Can't Read" hysteria, employs an assload of writers and pays them really well).

Stoking panic amongst writers about their job prospects is simply too easy. Stoking panic amongst elitist misanthropes about the decline of Western Civilization is even easier. Some of the more reactionary respondents should take a look at Andrew Keen and how well he's selling -- by marketing his book on the very Internet that he professes to loathe in the most cynical linkbait cash-in anyone's ever seen.

Maybe instead of blaming the Internets, why not look at publisher consolidation? Or big box chain retailers and their show floor placement payola scams? Or America's "test first, ask questions later" educational philosophy? Or that the intelligence of people who do read magazines and newspapers is regularly insulted by prose dumbed down to a sixth grade level?

Or capitalism? Huh? WHAT ABOUT CAPITALISM?!?!?!?!?!

(I told myself I'd stop doing that, but every time I get started complaining, that's where I end up -- it's been like this since I was a wee tot in red diapers)

Chester The Bear-ester: MICHAEL CLAYTON is a rent.

The Vindictives: "...And The World Isn't Flat Anymore"

Bible Rewrite Project (improved)

Recap From Last Time...

Main points of my re-written Genesis 1 (The Foundations of the Bible Rewrite):

1. Heaven is the place where the grandest animals are sewn together.

2. Before animals or man existed on earth, Nate created seeds that grew animal parts from them.

3. Nate took these parts growing from the plants and trees and sewed together the first animals of the earth.

4. Nate set these animals loose to reproduce. Yes, the sewn together animals can reproduce among by themselves.

5. Nate decreed that these first animals that He made are only prototypes. They are blank canvases for man to improvise upon.


New main points from Genesis 2:

1. Nate grew the first human being from the earth. The brain came from a flower. The arms and legs came from a tree trunk. Nate took these pieces and sewed them together to make the first human being. Then he breathed into its mouth and gave it life.

2. Nate took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to explore the possibilities of creation and make new animals. That was why Nate made man.

3. Adam was free to use any animal parts in the garden, but he was forbidden by Nate to sew animal parts from the tree of knowledge to his own body.

4. To make a helper for Adam, Nate sewed all the animals we have today together from the animal parts that were scattered in the tress.

5. Adam could not find a suitable companion from the animals Nate made, so Adam made a companion from his own body with the help of Nate. The parts literally grew from Adams body after Nate put him in a deep sleep. When he awoke, Adam sewed the pieces together.

And now back to The Bible Rewrite Project...

NOTE: Original Text appears in Italics. Rewrite follows in Plain Text.

Genesis 2

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.

So the heavens and the earth were completed, and all that is in them. On the seventh day Nate ended His work which He had done. And He rested on the seventh day from all His work. Then Nate honored the seventh day and made it holy, because in it He rested from all His work which He had done.

Read more...
The Garden Of Eden

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, and before every plant of the field was in the earth, and before every herb of the field grew; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The Garden Of Eden

This is the story of the heavens and the earth when they were made, in the day Nate made the earth and the heavens. Now no bush of the field was yet on the earth. No limbs were growing from the earth. For Nate had not sent rain upon the earth. Man did not exist. But a fog came from the earth and watered the whole top of the ground. And the first green plant was born. And as it flowered, over time, out sprouted the brain of man between the petals. And from a tree trunk nearby, came two arms and two legs. Nate took these pieces, along with parts he already had, and with His hands sewed together the first human being. Then He breathed into his mouth the breath of life. Man became a living being. Nate planted a garden to the east in Eden. He put the man there whom He had made. And Nate made every tree that is pleasing to the eyes and good to grow animal parts in this garden. He made the tree of life grow in the center of the garden. This, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good, and there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon; the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. And from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon. It flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon. It flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river, the Tigris, flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

And the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

Then Nate took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to live, explore the possibilities of creation, and make new animals. Nate told the man, "You are free to use any animal parts that grow from the plants and trees in the garden to create your animals. But do not sew animal parts from the tree of knowledge of good and evil to your own body. For the day you sew these parts to your own body is the day you die.

And the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper meet for him." And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the LORD God had taken from man, made He a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Then Nate said, "It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper that is right for him." Out of the animal parts and pieces scattered in the trees, Nate sewed every animal of the field and every bird of the sky. He brought them to the man to find out what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living thing, that became its name. Adam gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field. But there was no helper found that was right for him. Nate asked Adam, “Would you not like to make your companion yourself?” Adam said he would try. He asked Nate, “Is there a way I can grow body parts from myself? From my own body?” Nate said, “Let Us see.” So Nate caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And while he was sleeping, Nate made two more legs and two more arms (among other organs) erupt from Adam’s body. Adam awoke and sewed together the very parts which were taken from his own body. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother, and will be joined to his wife. And they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both without clothes but were not ashamed.

Sun Sun Sets

At 12 years, it's one of the longest relationships I've ever had and now it's over. This is the goodbye note I get. The knots in my stomach are tighter than the moth balls in my closet. I feel like I'm walking through the 2nd half of a Guns n Roses video, wearing dirty underwear and worrying about getting into a car accident.

How did this happen so out of the blue? Maybe it was the gambling, damn did he love the ponies. It could have been the new self-serve down the block, or most likely his lease was up and the owner is turning it over to an organic pet food store. Folks, if this is the price of rising rents then I want out.* Who can I trust with the stains of my life?

Descendents - "Clean Sheets"

*Any suggestions for drop-and-fold laundromats in a 2-block radius of Stanton and Essex are welcome, please leave a comment.

New York, Jews, Blank Tiles

A little obsessed with the day job too.

92YQ: Joseph Berger of the New York Times

Caroline Glick: Israel and the Global Jihad Podcast

Scrabble Enthusiasts, Take Note

"Video Flyer" for the Chinatown Garbage Taxidermy Tour this Thursday

Here's a video about the Human I'm making...

Fatblogging: Morning Workout (Song)

Tip: Make the hay, roll around in gasoline, set yourself on fire and jump in a bucket, from an upright position.

Born Against - "Murder the Sons of Bitches"

Project Mersh, or, Please Kill Me (or, You Choose)

First things first: I've been focusing too much on myself. We should be concerning ourselves with shit like this, with a justice system that allows a retarded man to be imprisoned for over a decade, without a trial, for a murder he never committed.

Are you all giving until it hurts? I gave until it pinched a little, not unlike catching a roll of fat in a zipper. I was beginning to feel a little like Jesus on the cross, being poked at by the Jews (though in this case, it was handcuffs and bedposts, and it was only Krucoff). It's hard to kick against the pricks, people. I didn't give for the children. I gave because I want YM to move up that Top Ten chart and knock those fucking Curbed people down a few spots.
Read more...

That's enough social consciousness. I'm outraged on a daily basis, but I concentrate most of that outrage into my obsession with the Commodification of All That Was Once Good. It's my pet trope. Allow me please to channel 1998 and discuss the use of Good Music in TV commercials. In 1993, Subaru made a commercial (starring Jeremy Davies, possibly the only actor in Saving Private Ryan whose death I eagerly awaited) that compared the Impreza to punk rock, therefore appropriating a subculture's oppositional meaning by the hegemonic forces of the commodity form. (Unrelated: How do you pronounce hegemony? Anybody? Is it heh-GAH-mony? I was sick that day in Intro to Deconstructivism.) This was a sort-of genesis.

The Buzzcocks singing about failed love, shilling for Toyota. The Pogues, with a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit, stumping for Cadillac (who, as punishment, should be required to use Shane MacGowan as a fucking spokesman). Iggy selling pretty much everything under the sun with a song he wrote while trying to kick heroin. Jane's Addiction pimping beer with "Mountain Song" (oh, the irony). The Clash. The fucking Clash selling their catalog for every bourgeois car commercial that ever existed. You know, Joe Strummer is one of my idols, and unless someone unearths some Skrewdriver rarities with him on guitar, he'll stay that way, but fucking hell, man: Fender's come out with the Joe Strummer guitar, with a lovingly and thoroughly "distressed" veneer. So authentique. Like those expensive jeans, the ones favored by the douchebag who lives in your building and uses all the washing machines and then leaves for six hours, the one who wears flip flops and addresses strangers as "guy."

The type of person who doesn't even know who the fuck Mike Watt or Pat Smear are. (Also, was Nirvana not a big enough "supergroup" for his taste? Sheesh.)

Today, a show from May 6, 1995, starring a bunch of guys who mostly went on to be in supergroups but, when this recording was made, were just starting to get big. Billed as a Mike Watt show, it also featured Dave Grohl on drums, guitar, and backing vocals; Eddie Vedder on guitar and backing vocals (and lead vocal on “Habit”); Pat Smear on guitar, backing vocals (and lead vocal on ‘Secret Garden’); and William Goldsmith, of Sunny Day Real Estate, (occasionally) The Foo Fighters, and Mike Watt’s band, on drums.

(Hmph-asis mine.)

Little Richard - Royal Crown Hairdressing Commercials

If Photos Could be Long-Winded...

I would adjust the view permissions settings or tag this entry "close friends and family only" but I'm not sure they even read this site anymore. Three more in the hole, Flickr sets galore.

Romania: From Communist playground design to the Transylvania Two-Step

Pics

Video (I'm never gonna get around to editing down another with all the footage I have.)

Lisa and Randy's Wedding in DUMBO: How to Sweat and Not Lose Weight

Dens

Randy

Grellan (rehearsal + wedding)

Josh

Tully

Sarah Mc

Becca's Birthday in Central Park: Oversharing of the Season

My pics and video

Sarah Mc

Janelle

Dothemath U.

Do I need to draw you a picture??

Donate. We're in the top ten.

Bible Rewrite Project (improved)

Main points of my re-written Genesis 1 (The Foundations of the Bible Rewrite):

1. Heaven is the place where the grandest animals are sewn together.

2. Before animals or man existed on earth, Nate created seeds that grew animal parts from them.

3. Nate took these parts growing from the plants and trees and sewed together the first animals of the earth.

4. Nate set these animals loose to reproduce. Yes, the sewn together animals can reproduce among by themselves.

5. Nate decreed that these first animals that He made are only prototypes. They are blank canvases for man to improvise upon.


And now back to The Bible Rewrite Project...

NOTE: Original Text appears in Italics. Rewrite follows in Plain Text.

The Bible: Old Testament

Genesis

The Beginning

Genesis 1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

In the beginning, Nate created Nate. It was nice for awhile, but it became too quiet. So, He created the heavens and the earth. No one knows quite why or where or when or how. The earth was an empty waste and darkness was over the deep waters. Nate was all alone. There was nothing but an odd smell in the air. The Spirit of Nate was moving above the waters. Nate said, "There should be more. Let there be something called an idea," and there was an idea. Nate saw that the idea was good. He thought of every idea that ever was and ever will be. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Then Nate said, "Let there be an open space where I can ponder creation. I need a place to think. A place that smells nice that will divide waters from waters." Nate made the open space, and divided the waters under the open space from the waters above the open space. And it was so. Nate called it Heaven, the place where the grandest animals are sewn together. Again, let it be known forever that in Heaven, the grandest animals are sewn together. There was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good. And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth"; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind; and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And Nate said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place. Let the dry land appear." And it was so. Then Nate called the dry land Earth. He called the gathering of the waters Seas. And Nate saw that it was good. Then Nate said, "Let plants grow from the earth, plants that have seeds. Let animal parts grow from the earth, from within these seeds." And it was so. Plants and trees alike grew out of the earth with seedlings of animals parts inside. The parts of animals were growing on earth before animals roamed the ground or flew through the air. And Nate saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth"; and it was so. And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Then Nate said, "Let there be big lights in this open space to divide day from night. During the day, we’ll need to see. Tomorrow, I will take the animal parts that I have grown and sew together the first animals of the earth. But I must have light to see. During the night, I will create a smaller light. And it was so. Nate made those two great lights. And He saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind; and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply on the earth." And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Then Nate said, "Let the waters be full of living things. I will sew them. Let birds fly above the earth in the open space of the heavens. I will take a beak from this plant and some wings from that tree and put them together." Nate sewed together the big animals that live in the sea, and every living thing that moves through the waters by its kind, and every winged bird after its kind. He even made the maggots from hardened tree sap. "You will never know you are maggots," He said. And Nate saw that it was good. Nate wanted good to come to all, saying, "Give birth to many. Grow in number. Fill the waters in the seas. Let birds grow in number on the earth." There was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind"; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good.

Then Nate said, "Let the earth bring into being living things after their kind: Cattle and things that move upon the ground, and wild animals of the earth after their kind." And it was so. Then Nate made the wild animals of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every thing that moves upon the ground after its kind. And Nate saw that it was good.

And God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat"; and it was so. And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Then Nate said, "The animals that I have sewn together are blank canvases. In other words, they are prototypes. Let Us make man like Us and let him create his own animals with these canvases that I have given him. He shall have the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle. And over all the earth, every thing that moves on the ground, man shall use for his creation of new animals." And Nate made man in His own likeness. In the likeness of Nate He made him. He made both male and female. And Nate wanted good to come to them, saying, "Give birth to many. Grow in number. Fill the earth and rule over it. Rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Then Nate said, "See, I have given you every plant that grows animal parts that is on the earth, and every tree that gives limbed fruit. They will be parts and pieces for you to change the animals that I have given you. Sew them together as you see fit. In doing this, you honor Me. This is the holiest activity." And it was so. Nate saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

TV Party Tonight

From the package of thank you notes sent by a history class at Spingarn High School in DC that I received yesterday, it's the best part of donating -- or right below catching a whiff of Lauren Bush on the drink line at a charity benefit.

Donors Choose Campaign Update: To my grand surprise, someone donated over $1000 through the YM Challenge yesterday. C'mon folks, dig deep and often, we're gaining ground on the big shots. I can smell the butt of Racked.com now!

Doree Shafrir, doing a little drum fill on the Culture beat at the NY Observer, observes Alex Ross's observation that Wagner, pioneer of gas chamber music, has topped the charts of Amazon's new mp3 download service. The top ten is rounded out by similarly antisemitic gall bearers, like the Beach Boys. I won't give specific examples for each but let me make the case for Pink Floyd, since I was once subjected to a detailed analysis of Animals while futilely trying to fall asleep on the floor under a bunk bed in the summer of 1988 in Ocean Pines, MD. It certainly felt like death camp...

On that flatbed Jew note, Happy Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah everyone! (Your office is closed today and tomorrow, right?) Go check out The Tribe on iTunes.

The Weakerthans - "Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961)"

Shrinking Violet: Crash Diet

When I realized that I'd paid $0.75 more for the Shake Burger than the Cheeseburger because the Shake Burger comes with a leaf of lettuce and a single slice of tomato, the homesickness kicked in big time. All those trips to the Met on Henry, or the corner stores on Court while trying to avoid the monstrosity of (non-union) expiation marketing monolith Whole Foods were getting me down. When people are telling me, "the good stuff is in Red Hook," lord knows what to think. Besides "I need to get my ass to Red Hook tomorrow," of course.

You see, where I'm from, lettuce and tomatoes went scampering under the tub when I'd flick the lights on. I brushed my teeth with stinky cheese piped onto crusty bread, and rinsed with strong, fresh, bitter coffee. The dust which settled on my windowsill from the Muni buses idling below was fennel pollen. Matsutake mushrooms grew from the bathmat. And the gutters of Market Street were regularly splashed with lavender honey.

Meanwhile, New York is all, "Try our cupcakes!"

Read more...I know there is good food to be had for a price around town. And one can subsist on falafel, bagels, pizza and beer alone for years, which I've verified through careful field experiments. Multiply the unnecessary complications imposed on cupcakes by a few orders of magnitude, and you'll approximate the difficulty of obtaining actual nutrition in New York.

If I've been down on cupcakes here in the past, I admit that it's probably just my general tendency to be the crab in the bucket consistently foiling the escape attempts of the more optimistic crabs (I blame my time in Seattle, where the crab is fucking delicious). And like any of my perverse obsessions, offhand critical remarks are just an early sign that the subject fascinates me.

The most interesting thing I've done over the last two days is trade avant-garde cupcake ideas with a leading expert on the American cultural cupcake landscape. Honestly, I haven't been able to get any real work done. Concepts have included everything from a twist on tradition to a sweet-spicy or even savory cupcake, with in-depth analysis of lemon over orange cake base and whether there's a place for bacon grease and gourmet chocolate, together, in the hallowed "stunt cupcake" pantheon.

A fortune could lie in frozen, microwaveable CupQuiches® (or possibly QuickCakes® -- less frenchy), a breakfast-to-go treat that's a corn muffin with a creamy scrambled egg center, a cheesy "frosting" and your choice of bacon or sausage sprinkled on top. There'd even be a "spicy jalapeño" version (available regionally). Thomas Keller's gone frozen food, mayhaps I could get an endorsement from Anthony Bourdain for a line featuring offal goodness?

See, I'm not immune to pouring my hopes and dreams into a ruffled paper cup and baking for thirty minutes at 325. Even if people heed the divine wisdom of Ed Levine and start curing meats and molding cheeses instead of whipping batter, New York will still suffer from a lack of good, abundant greenstuffs. And the only cure for that kind of culinary constipation is to embrace that inner Babylon and start building the Hanging Gardens 2.0.

Judith Thurman: "I know it's heretical, but I really loved the 1977 blackout."

Haven't done one of these in a long time but The New Yorker's Judith Thurman goes native for the 92YQ.

How many years, apartments and what neighborhoods have you lived in NYC?
I'm a native. Born at Lenox Hill Hospital. So: Growing up: Jackson Heights; Kew Gardens Hills (not to be confused with the much tonier Kew Gardens); Forest Hills; (all in Queens); then, post college: the Bowery; West 92nd St (with a relative); West 10th Street (bathtub in kitchen); West 84th St (worst crack block in the city), Water Street, (above a bar—no one else lived there in 1969); Sullivan St; Westbeth—artists' housing, mercifully subsidized, on Bethune Street; Warren Street (in Tribeca, my first "adult" home, a loft bought in late 1979); East 10th Street (a studio on the block of divorcees); East 84th Street, in an old pushcart stable, and now, in a brownstone one block further west. My maternal grandparents immigrated to Yorkville in the late 1880s, and my mother grew up and went to school two blocks from my house.

Read more.

Donors Chat-n-Choose

Finally, blogs with real "juice" (1. actual readers 2. actual readers with Bank of King Kong checking accounts) have jumped on the Donors Choose bandwagon that I've been touting since April. Fred Wilson, a VC who can practically mint money at the drop of a blog link will do wonders for the program. Many others are signing up too and keeping track on a leaderboard that puts YM somewhere in the middle of the pack. I don't expect to move up, especially since our dollar amount is solely coming from me, but I'm hoping this will at least guilt my mom into making a donation.

Ego-driven or not, I favor the whatever it takes approach to get money to these schools and children. Charity is social and if the thought of $1000/plate dinners or gala benefits populated by society types is obnoxious to you, then I welcome you to real world motivation molded in plastic. Please seat yourself at the kids table. Of course status is a factor in helping the disadvantaged (ironic, yes, but remember the world is flat on each side of its pyramid) but unless you believe there's a possibility of global benevolent communism, by tomorrow, you have to accept the machinations of modern philanthropy. You have a better chance of getting the rich's money through passionate guilt than convincing them not to be resource-raping capitalist assholes in the first place.

So yeah, it's time, more than ever, to poke and shame your neighbor into giving! My pleading with the likes of Jake Dobkin and Nick Denton, both refused to participate or acknowledge the challenge, was unfruitful but at least Lockhart Steele's Curbed Network has seen the light and is now on board. I'm happy to show the way with a Petzl headlamp tefillin.

For an interesting discussion on "loud-mouth" philanthropy, read these three takes posted on Jewcy in May.

Joey Kurtzman: Do you find all this self-satisfaction nauseating? Of course you do. I don't like it either. We encounter arrogance and self-promotion all the time, but it's jarring to hear someone even discuss the dollar value of their charitable contributions, much less boast about it. How could it be otherwise, when we've been indoctrinated with all that insufferable Judeo-Christian twaddle about good deeds being noblest when done quietly, without public display or recognition? It's Jesus's favorite talking point. The Pharisees couldn't walk an old lady across the Cardo without sending the Lamb of God off on another tiresome rant about the hypocrisy of good deeds done for public display.

And it wasn't just Jesus. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides broke charity down into eight forms, and the more selfless your intentions, the more noble the charity.

It's all a bunch of destructive hippy-dippy bullshit. The real hero is the person who gives, and then struts and preens in public like they just fucked the prom queen.

Because yep, verily, the highest form of charity is that which is given in the spirit of smug one-upmanship. The future of the planet will be vastly better if only we can learn to properly exploit the insatiable status hunger of people like us.

Peter Singer: At the moment, many people would feel strange about giving away, say, 10 percent of their income to fight global poverty. Talking about it may make that seem a more normal thing to do, and would encourage others to do the same. It may also make people realize that it's not really a sacrifice. You probably will enjoy life just as much with a little less money – in fact you will probably enjoy it more, because you will feel good about yourself and what you are doing.

That's not to say we have to be distastefully boastful about it... but yes, if you are living comfortably while others are hungry or dying from easily preventable diseases, and you are doing nothing about it, there is something wrong with your behavior.

Mik Moore: Unless we think the rich are somehow better than the poor because of their wealth, we should stop making a big deal out of $1 million gifts by billionaires and start making a big deal out of $200 gifts by low wage workers. Ultimately, if the rich gave as much as a percentage of their wealth as do the poor, we'd be well on our way to ending poverty.

And because donating time is even more important than money, I am an enthusiastic NY Cares volunteer. To paraphrase Joey Kurtzman, this makes me an inconceivably better human being than you. There is no leaderboard to measure the totality of my philanthropic efforts for the wattage to keep it powered would suck the planet dry. I spend Saturday afternoons at the Hamilton Fish Park Computer Resource Center on the Lower East Side and Tuesday mornings at the Future Leaders Institute in Harlem teaching computer skills to grade school students. Both started up this past week and there will be blogs, oh yes, there will.

Please consider helping out on New York Cares Day, October 20. Of course, it's everyday for someone like me.

Previously:

DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge

Your Pre-Algebra: Remonstrations

Giving a Damn Like There's a New Tomorrow