Response

Take my number.
Take my number.
Take my number. (You implored.)

If I take your number, I'm going to put it on the internet.

Because I Am Classy

I can't find my keys.
I left my wallet on the couch.
I'll let you pay for my coffee.
I guess I'll come back.

I'm Not Scared

If you listened, then you've already subscribed to The New-York Ghost, but even if you didn't listen, you must check out Ed Park in Sunday's NYT. The excerpt they reprinted might be my favorite poem of the year!

The best part —

Midtown musing: If
you stand across 57th so
that you’re looking at the
front of Carnegie Hall,
you’ll notice that the
frieze says: “MVSIC
HALL.” ¶ We like the
old-school V, but we
especially like the quotation
marks. ¶ What was their
purpose? ¶ What did the
builders or the letters
hope to indicate? That
perhaps this was not a
music hall? ¶ That it
might instead be a stable,
or a stocking factory? ¶
That all is uncertainty,
and in years to come, the
structure might be
converted into a parking
garage? ¶ Or do the
quote marks suggest that
the performances to be
held inside were not what
some meddling fuddyduddy
considered
‘music’? ¶ That is not
music, that is the sound of
HOOFBEATS ON
TARPAULIN! ¶ That
was supposed to be our
impression of a
mustachioed aristocrat,
decrying some new fad in
music. ¶ Imagine him
expounding while in a
smoking-jacket. ¶ Okay. ¶
It’s not working. ¶ We
really wish we had a
picture of those
quotation marks.

Another best part —

Best thing that
happened the other day: We
were walking by a school
playground, during recess. Kids
were running around,
screaming, laughing. In one
corner, a teacher gave a
command to a group of girls:
“Robots!” Then they all started
acting like robots, arms moving
rigidly, etc. One-word review:
Hilarious. Seriously, this made
our day — our week — our year.
¶ Our life. ¶ That’s going too
far.

That's a large bit of the piece, but now you will read it and you will subscribe and you will print it out each week at work, right? Note: when The N-YG started, I had neither a real job nor a real printer, but I figured it out. You should too!

Sigh

I'm just as tired of it as you.

Faux Sugars, Real Suspicion

"Sweetener skeptics, on the other hand, say that safety studies are often funded with industry dollars..."

(L.A. Times)

Backseat Shooter: Unnecessary Parade

aka Stop in the Name of Love

'I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dmitri'

Was it asking for a low-level amount of trouble by putting Chistopher Hitchens just after Robert Hass at the National Book Awards Finalist Reading? Since this seems to be shaping up as "superficial worry about the war week" here, I mention this incident too. Hass's poem — "I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dmitri" — was amusing, and Hitchens wasn't entirely wrong in his tiny tirade. Some of the crowd hissed, which seemed stupid, but then so is making sweeping statements about what you wish and don't wish a room full of writers might join you in believing. Both men tried to rally some sentiment in an audience not otherwise interested in seeing the podium as a platform of any sort.

Another NBA note: after today's proceedings, I now really want to read Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret. This morning, the finalists in Young People's Literature had an entire auditorium of students entranced. There was actual hooting and hollering, which was certainly more inspired than the ninny hissing that happened when the adults were gathered later in the night. (Photos, of all of this, the above fake fracas too, soon.)

What Did You Do During The War?

Choire Sicha is smart. He was helpful to me during my art writing days, when he worked at Debs & Co. and I was researching Nina Katchadourian, and now I'm really glad to see his sometime series — What Did You Do During The War? — on an otherwise nonessential of late Gawker. Photos and captions, simple juxtapositions, and that's it. It's like a good poor man's Martha Rosler and it's by far the best thing I've seen on Gawker in a long time. I'd read a whole blog of it, if he posted them every day.

In The Hermitage You Would See This Bow On This Woman

"Knowing that, how could anyone want a war? Or plastic surgery?"

(Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty is very good.)

The BQE (Sans Arrests)

The BQE can be pretty, and civic pride is possible, and I'll have more photos and more to say soon. For now, just a few, of Sufjan and co. And this, which is brief, and shaky, and sort of my first video try: