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On Friday evening, John Mayer publicly apologized to a gathered “at capacity” audience for the recent kerfuffle over his Playboy interview. We would like to now take this time to finally extend a formal employment offer for Mr. Mayer.

Dear John -

We recently got wind of your apology at Madison Square Garden (”The Garden”) on Friday, February 26, 2009, sometime in the evening, during one of your performances. You explained to the audience before you, and we quote (via the New York Daily News):

“I hate to come off like an a—hole ever, and thank you guys for believing that I am not an a—hole,” he said. “It’s a clean me now, people, clean me….Never, ever, in my entire life did I ever think that it would be a good idea to be an a—hole…But you know what? There’s plenty of a—holes who think the same thing, so I have to thank you.”

The article was entitled: John Mayer attempts to rescue his shamed reputation by apologizing - again - for being an ‘a—hole’.

Let us assure you, Mr. Mayer, that your reputation for what noted, established urban sociologist Robert Sylvester Kelly once established as “Real Talk” has been violently misconstrued; the multitude of your talents has been, in a word, steamrolled. We see them differently. Particularly, as they were intended. It was once noted: “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington said that. And the next person to say the next thing to be quoted in our next recruitment letter can—and should—be you. Why?

Because that shit was funny.

But an explosive reaction ensued for various reasons, chief among them: the words weren’t entirely coming from you. There was a middleman involved. Sure, you said them. And you took responsibility for them. But you didn’t write them. And you weren’t in control of the context. Which, regardless of the words within, were notably legion. Even the writer of the interview, Rob Tannenbaum, noted:

The article is long and it’s complicated. It’s 6,870 words total. Holly Robinson Peete, an actress Mayer mentioned in the interview, called it on her blog “quite possibly one of the longest interviews ever published.” Which isn’t a fact (Playboy publishes an interview of that length every month), but it is a feeling. Articles are much shorter now. So are sentences. Who has time to read 6,870 words?

If you just thought to yourself, Not many people! you’re correct.

Enter the blog post.
Short.
Concise.
Or shorter and more concise than other things people don’t take time to read.

If you could go back and make “Split Screen Sadness” a better song, would you? Maybe. Maybe not. But you can’t. You know what’s nice about blogging? You can. Just ask Nikki Finke.

But you probably wouldn’t make that mistake. Given your record of saying things that may offend people, you’re not “batting well.” Given your record of blogging, you’re 1.000. As previously noted, your takedown of the celebrity paparazzi paraphernalia leech-economy complex was masterful. Your call-to-action against conspicuous media consumption was, in a word, inspired, plunging one of our writers into a bout of insecure paranoia. A good columnist can do this! This all goes without mentioning that everyone thinks you already work for us anyway.

Jobs in this media economy are scarce, Mr. Mayer. Your reputation and talent for producing excellent editorial web content—and demonstration of a natural ability for creative prose—can be combined for what we see as a mutually beneficial relationship: an ability for you to get your message out to a wider audience, control it, and grow creatively.

With that, the Weekend Gawker Services division of Gawker Dot Com, a Gawker Media property, would like to extend a formal offer of employment for you to join us as a guest columnist. We’ll pay you our regular columnist rate, which, upon receipt notification of this agreement, we’ll discuss further. But one thing’s certain: you can stop apologizing, and start being proactive. We’re in a troubling economy, our talents, diverse as they are, should all be put to good use. For you, for readers, for America.

Basically, stop being a pussy and write for us.

Or at the very least, get a new publicist. For fuck’s sake.

We look forward to hearing from you, and for the fruits this beautiful editorial relationship will bear. So long as they don’t involve any literal incarnations of your penis.

Regards,

Foster Kamer
Vice President of Editorial Content - Weekend Gawker
Gawker.com

FK/ym
DBNR

CC: Remy Stern

Originally posted here

President Barack Obama’s first periodic physical exam—in which the Chief White House Physician examines him at Bethesda Medical Center to serve up “a candid assessment of the President’s ability to carry out his duties”—is complete. The results?

He’s fine! President Barack Obama is, as they say, “Fit for duty.” But note the physicians recommendation, from the report:

For those who like words more than words in pictures, that says “Continue smoking cessation efforts,” as in, keep quitting smoking. For the record:

cessation |seˈsā sh ən| noun a ceasing; an end : the cessation of hostilities | a cessation of animal testing of cosmetics. a pause or interruption : a cessation of respiration requiring resuscitation.

And how many smokers do you know who are “quitting” (all of them) and who have actually quit? None. Also, it notes that the president is using what’s referred to as a “nicotine replacement therapy.” Obama is not superhuman. We know this because he doesn’t shoot lightning out of his dick. Therefore, like every other red-blooded American who’s on The Gum, The Patch, or The E-Cigarette, he’s either
(A) still smoking or
(B) addicted to The Gum, The Patch, or The E-Cigarette.

I know this because there are

1. No fewer than five smokers on the Gawker masthead, all of whom have probably told someone in the last year that they’re “trying to quit” and
2. One who chews nine boxes of The Gum a day and
3. If you’ve ever smoked, know a smoker, have tried to quit, or have quit, you just know this. There’s no such thing as “quitting” smoking. Just like there’s no such thing as being on a “diet.” You’re either healthy or you’re not. Or “kinda seeing someone.” You’re either leaving your cell phone charger at her apartment, or you’re not. Or you’re just dealing with more bullshit from people telling you to stop doing something you know isn’t good for you, that you also kinda want to stop doing, but for the moment, don’t, because you have more important shit on your mind, and you’re either gonna get around to it before you’re dying from it, or not. Bottom line. Obama’s probably still smoking. And this is a good thing. After the year he’s had, we’d have cause for concern if he wasn’t smoking. You know? Smokers know. Let the guy enjoy a nail every once in a while. It’s for our own good.

Gawker Presidential Health Assessment:

He’s fine. Fuckoff.

View original here

Every weekend, the New York Times‘ Weddings & Celebrations arise like media manna from the heavens for vicarious brides-to-be and nostalgic has-beens. And every weekend, Gawker Weddings Expert Phyllis Nefler scores them. I now pronounce you blog and Altarcations.

I’m not sure if you guys know this, cause it hasn’t been announced
(Psych! The phone’s been ringing off the hook from here inside the house)
But this weekend is the last time Foster Kamer has the keys
To the once-great website which he’s aptly driven to its knees.

So because we’re clearly operating absent any rules
And this final weekend feels like Quasimodo’s Feast of Fools
And these newlyweds are basically the contra of legit
I figured, hell, I’ll monkey with the format just a bit.

Leslie Streeter writes a weekly column in a Palm Beach rag
Where she chronicles the happenings of all the gents and hags.
Given Florida’s demographics, I suspect that we could get
A situation where the subjects die before The Death of Print.

Leslie first met Scott Zervitz, the man she’d later come to catch,
As a “very nice girl” in high school (he drove a Camaro, natch.)
Facebook brought them back together, as that thing is wont to do,
And she told her readers he’d proposed in a restaurant review.

In a story that kind of conjured up the Dirty Dancing plot,
Hali Feldman’s dad first met Ben Friehling in a vacation spot.
And the Feldman family starting dining yearly at Benji and Jakes,
A restaurant owned by Friehling near the Catskills in White Lake.

Friehling fell “immediately in love with her, without a doubt,”
And when he served their table he would always go all out.
Although Hali found him too young (at that point he was 22)
They ran into one another on a Tulum beach; sparks flew.

Later, on a sunset horseback ride on “Ms. Feldman’s family ranch,”
She was thrown off saddle, causing frantic Ben Friehling to blanch.
Paralysis was feared but thankfully did not occur
Hali was confined to bedrest for a month; Ben stood by her.

If you’re someone who gets riled by gentrification creep
You might dislike this happy pair who have “classed up” the Bowery.
Jeffrey Goldstein’s store, called Blue and Cream, is a Hamptons import
That went up right near the time that CBGB’s closed its doors.

The couple grew up near each other (Upper West Side, obvi)
And first met, the story goes, on New Years Eve down in Miami.
And now they work together selling overpriced apparel,
Their wedding, unsurprisingly, was at the Standard Hotel.

(You have to put the em-pha-sis on the first syl-lab-ble for that last one to work, but just go with it, k?)

The law school at GWU was the first date spot for this pair,
They’re like a median composite sketch of every student there.
The bride in this other couple analyzes all the ads
That run on CNN.com; does that mean this FAIL was her bad?

To the Faceoff we now go, although this week’s so mediocre
That they’re kind of the head fleas on a dead dog among these jokers.
But still, props to our two couples who by virtue of their status
Have come out on top per Altarcation’s scoring apparatus.

Cindy Hwang and Jay Chiang had quite impressive undergrads,
He went to MIT; she was cum laude at Yale. Not bad!
That’s five points right there, and two more points for their advanced degrees:
She’s a lawyer out of NYU, and he’s a PhD.

Jay’s a worker at McKinsey and his dad’s a physicist;
Cindy works in law: I wonder, are her doctor parents pissed?
That’s another five for these two, bringing them to twelve in sum,
I look forward to the power couple they will soon become.

Sarah Burley and Doug Reid get minus one for being old,
But she gets plus seven from her Harvard/Dartmouth path, all told.
And her mother is a) named “True” and b) the piano lady
At the Brookline schools, which are the very opposite of shady.

Plus two for that, and plus one for Reid’s MBA degree,
Since it wasn’t from an Ivy school he does not get plus three.
But they were married up at Harvard by an Episcopal priest,
So that nets them two more points, they’d get eleven at the least.

I like the looks of these two though, especially her pearls
And the pink cableknit sweater is a must-have for good girls.
(Note to Julia: this is how pink and preppy is best done!)
So we’ll finish them with thirteen points, which makes them number one.

Foster’s moving to the Village Voice, just a few clicks away
So I want to take a moment of your time so I can say
That we’ll miss him very dearly (unless Nick Denton is our name)
and it’s safe to say he’s going out atop his fearsome game.

[I will never—ever—watch 'Say Yes to the Dress.' Ever. But Altarcations will continue to run after I'm gone, every Sunday, right here. Nefler: You're awesome. - F.]

See the original post here

If you wrote a piece for the Huffington Post entitled Do You Really Need an Editor at a Publishing House?, you’d make a strong case, right? The answer, as evidenced by Knopf editor Carole Baron, is a resounding absolutely.

Besides the fact that no good editor in their right mind would tell someone trying to make a coherent argument for their job to write a post so explicitly arguing for their job, they wouldn’t let them title it Do You Really Need an Editor at a Publishing House? nor would they let them publish it on the Huffington Post. Where content mostly goes to die. Unless someone else picks it up for being extraordinary in some way, which Baron’s post most certainly is.

• Clunky Prose: It starts in the lede.
  

  Do you really need an editor at a publishing house?

  I am really annoyed. All this talk about digital.

  Not to nitpick, but why not? Besides the fact that the text itself is pretty misshapen on the site—a good web editor would’ve taken care of that—the first sentence is also the title of the post (redundancy), the second sentence is a wooden declarative that could simply be spiced up by making a contraction out of “I” and “am,” and the third sentence is a jagged fragment that doesn’t explain what the “talk” is nor what kind of “digital” she’s referring to. Yet most of you are cognizant individuals, and you know she’s referring to digital media, and that the “talk” of which is some idle chatter we’re probably going to learn about. Assuming readers can make it past the first three sentences.

• Clunky Pronouns:
  

  The writer said: “Why not? There is no editing anymore.” Not only is that not true, but it certainly didn’t understand the complex role of the editor in a publishing house.

  First of all, what kind of braindead company is Baron keeping? Jesus. Also, I know editors often think of writers less as people and more like book-writing-creatures who cost money, but referring to one as “it” seems mildly unnecessary. That is, of course, unless Baron was talking about the writer’s statement, which can only “understand” something in the figurative or poetic sense. Which she already lost credit for in the first sentence, regardless of which, that intention just patently isn’t the case. Finally, who refers to their own job as complex? Lady, you’re not a machinist.

• Misspellings and Title Form:
  

  Jonathon Gallassi’s: “There Is More to Publishing Than Meets the Screen” in the New York Times, January 2, 2010, expressed it logically and eloquently.

  “Jonathon Gallassi” has a name, and it isn’t spelled like that. It’s Jonathan Galassi. He’s not exactly a name you want to spell wrong, as he’s the the President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Also, New York Times should be italicized, and from a later sentence in the piece, “short changed” is one word.

• WTF?:
  

  “And I am happy to say that as many as there are who complain, there are just as many who acknowledge the good work that editors can and do for a writer.”

  As many what, exactly? People? Penguins? If they’re penguins, they don’t acknowledge what an editor “can and do for a writer” so much as they acknowledge what an editor can do for a writer.

Credit where credit’s due: we cribbed this item from a tipster…who wrote “makes the care for” instead of “makes the case for” in their original tip. And please, like we don’t have our fair share of typos on this site even with an editor. There’s probably one in this post! The difference between Baron and me, though, is that I’m not trying to make a case for an editor. My life is a case for editors. Ryan Tate put it best earlier this evening via email:

Who will edit the editors? And who will edit the people who call for editing of the editors?

Everything must eventually be published via wiki, is my point. A wiki that no one is qualified to edit.

Then again, she could just be playing with our heads, as this might be part of an elaborate “meta” campaign for her job, in which case: golden.

But that probably isn’t the case. She’s probably just an editor who needs a good editor. Or a good writer.

Here is the original post

Since this is my last weekend on the site until I return, begging for a job as James Del’s assistant, I’ve invited some friends to jam with me. Joe Coscarelli is a young writer with Things To Say. Joe?

“These English majors wanna be some super genius novelists/ They end up music journalists/ chicks ain’t that into it,” noted Craig Finn in 1990, as the lead singer of Lifter Puller. Finn went on to front The Hold Steady; music journalists went on to write listicles. I was a child. “Touch My Stuff,” indeed. (Here, I hoped to link to a YouTube video of the song, as blogs do. As it turns out, the only version of it that exists is an acoustic cover by a round boy in a small dorm room. This means something.)

No one is listening.
But this version is easier to understand.

Finn’s sentiment sounds outdated now in a post-David Foster Wallace era. Or at least an era in which nobody sincerely cares about Chuck Klosterman anymore.

Aspiring novelists are archaic. I know this because in four years of higher education, no one ever offered to show me a manuscript, but I’ve seen more blogs than bongs. The bearded, bespectacled Pavement fans Finn was singing about are unemployed or out of touch. Or dead. No one in their early twenties wants to be a music journalist—that would be absurd. These English majors want to be some super genius bloggers. They end up unpaid interns.

Aspiring to write on the internet is like aspiring to shred on Guitar Hero. The best part of both is wearing your pajamas. The worst part is the tense shoulders.

This past week, online, kids like me made a push for employment. It was sad, sloppy and sweet. It was transparent, but necessary, and tangentially related to the New Niceness we heard so much about. Hamilton Nolan wrote eloquently of the media via the internet and its “currency of ‘friends,’” and he spoke of the days when “feisty young upstarts believed they could circumvent the existing calcified media power structure via the amazing unfettered internet.”

My friends and I aren’t that feisty.

Pebbles are easier to throw at thrones than rocks because you can grab a whole handful and they fit in 140 characters. Plus, we wouldn’t want to jeopardize any job prospect, however slight. Today, it’s kissing ass. Observe:

A senior at Columbia edits a semi-popular blog; it doesn’t pay. Said senior writes a profile for The Awl; it doesn’t pay, but it gets more comments. The piece is an employment-oriented personal ad for a talented, eager and obsessive Midwesterner, but a reader calls it a “wet kiss (with tongue) to Gawker.” The subject is seeking full-time employment from The Empire, the one you’re reading, or a similar entity. Possibly the author is too? It was suggested. Everyone involved is a total sweetheart. They need to pay their rent and they don’t have a manuscript.

Elsewhere, but really in the same place, a blogger-turned-journalist blogs advice to Millenials with misguided dreams of working in media. She was vexed, you see, with a boy who graduated from an Ivy “expecting to easily find work at a magazine.” Turns out, he works for this website, too, if you can call it work, as he doesn’t receive any compensation. He is frustrated and he is frustrating: he should “forget about the ‘media internships’ and ‘high-end retail’ jobs and do something else, where he will actually make some money and gain some life experience, and that does not include starting a Tumblr.”

Get off my internets!
Do something.

Here is what we are doing: We ‘follow’ writers we like, in multiple senses, in hopes of them, for some reason, following back. We link to posts they write, often. We tend to the shaft. We disagree with them, respectfully, in hopes of a counter-argument. In hopes of being discovered. We work for free. We blog when they instant message us, asking about our internships. We compliment how cute their kids are. We ‘like’ them, we really ‘like’ them. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his followers count. Replies are encouraging; @’s are encouraging. It is all about ego and misplaced hero worship and low expectations. And it doesn’t come with a paycheck.

But it is relatively easy, and the risks are not great, assuming your parents will subsidize your rent, or the hours at your shitty day job aren’t too bad, plus the pay is pretty good. And at that internship, your boss keeps promising he’s figuring out a way to pay you soon. Maybe by the time you graduate, there will be money in the budget for a real assistant’s position, says your boss at that other internship. And in the meantime it’s the bylines and the comments and sometimes the parties. David Carr retweeted you that one time and that was pretty heartening. “It ain’t just a money thing/ It’s a question of community,” Finn sang. “The liberty, the ecstasy, the love, the drugs, the unity.” Like the internet, really.

It’s pathetic when we do this to ourselves and whether it even works remains unseen. But is this even what we really want? The ones who came before us insist it’s not, and they drink a lot. [Ed. They also do way too much blow for people their age. Truth.] But on some minuscule level that’s like an actor rejecting fame. If I would’ve known it was going to be like this…

The aspiring media kids know what I mean. To the rest of you, I want you to know that this generation isn’t doomed yet. We’re not all like this, I promise. The entitled Ivy Leaguers giving nauseating quotes to Newsweek just need something to do while their girlfriends are at med school. Plenty of my peers are doing really well on the LSAT and at investment banks, continuing in the proud tradition of fucking this country somewhere very uncomfortable. They’re just not broadcasting it, or they’re only on Facebook. They will hold down respectable jobs and make their parents proud. They will make the money and we’ll marry them. Whenever you need a break from this, stop fucking reading Gawker. Close the tab and go outside. Get off your Tumblr. Do something.

Which is all to say: tomorrow I’m going to start my novel.

Joe Coscarelli used to slave under the well-regarded penis of Dan “Slim Shady” Abrams as the Weekend Editor at Mediaite before being like “peace I’m out this bitch.” I also hired him to do stuff at BlackBook once. I never really edited him. I didn’t here. You can go ahead and re-tweet him, but neither one of us gives a shit.

He knows you might think this is meta. It isn’t.

Here is the original post

I couldn’t abandon ship without saying goodbye to Julia Allison. Her birthday party was last night! And I know, I know: you’re so over Julia Allison, Why do you keep posting about her? I’m tired of hearing about her! Etc.

Well, you bitches wouldn’t have clicked on the post if you didn’t want to read something about her, would you?

Here’s what I think of Julia Allison: she’s like fuckin’ Bloody Mary, or Tao Lin. Every time her name pops up on the site, so does she. Emails! Comments! And so on. But people who completely freak out about Julia Allison and are her creepy internet stalkerazzi? I say, everything in moderation. And I don’t view her so much as a thing or this thing or a sociological experiment or whatever. Julia Allison is a business, and the business of Julia Allison is successful, and that business of being Julia Allison is predicated upon being a walking, talking publicity agency, fighting on all fronts, where the only client is Julia Allison. And people who want to be this well-known this badly probably will be—for better or, well, otherwise—but they also inherently accept everything that comes with it. Stalkerazzi and all!

That said, I don’t really understand the out-and-out hatred of Julia Allison either. As far as breathing capitalist enterprises go, her business only comes at the cost of her own relationships and your airspace—which you can manipulate to your liking at any moment—and, well, Isn’t there someone better to rage against? Like Kim Jong-Il? At least with him, raging doesn’t necessarily help his cause. And let’s say Julia Allison does something nefarious, like lies about her media freebie disclosures, or cheats on her taxes, or stiffs a cab driver. You actually give a shit? You actually have time to give a shit? Especially if you aren’t paid to do so?

Hopefully not. I just found her fascinating. A lot of Gawker readers did too, because they kept clicking until she landed the cover of Wired and was hanging out at Davos and shit. Isn’t that a goddamn gas? This person was so hated, she ended up at Davos. Ha.

I guess I just wouldn’t be able to trust Julia Allison, because the everyday details of her personal life and relationships are—pretty much more than anyone I can think of off-hand—inextricably linked to her financial success. That must be tough. Ha.

Here’s a gallery of pictures from her birthday party.
She’s not in any of them.
Obviously if you were there or know who her boyfriend is, I’d love to talk to you.
This all makes me feel uncomfortable.
I wouldn’t advocate huffing anything, but these might be more interesting on a glue high. You know?

That’s her boyfriend on the left. If you know who it is, that’d be a fun story to go out with. She’s keeping him anonymous. Here they are at a party. Party!

Here’s Julia Allison acolyte Jordan Reid. I actually bet Jordan’s a decent type! Did you know she was almost on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? True story. Also, her husband, standing next to her, isn’t really anonymous. I think she just put the smiley face there to impersonate Julia? This entire thing is like reading hieroglyphics and I just don’t get it. Really, truly. I don’t understand much of this. If anything. Anyway, her boyfriend is this guy Kendrick Strauch who used to be in Harlem Shakes, who was a band everyone in New York had heard of, seen, or listened to, but also a band nobody could name a song by. Anyway, they broke up. Julia Allison’s Birthday Party, or Indie Rock Obscurity? Ehhhh….*Makes Scales With Hands*

We’re gonna get a little place.
Okay, yeah, we’re gonna get a little place and w’re gonna…
We gonna…gonna have a cow, and some pigs, and we’re gonna have, maybe-maybe, a chicken.

Post-op castration patients are often rehabbed with pictures of their spouses’ friends photo albums to ease them into their new roles in the world.

. Dorrian’s, A Portrait. Mixed Media., 2010. Art courtesy the artist.

If one of these women were to appear above my bed demanding alimony payments, I’d shit myself. And then consult the closest Dickens novel for advice.

When the Mighty Morphin Sephora Rangers combine powers, it’s like Voltron, except nothing cool happens. They just drunkenly tumble to the ground and scrape their knees.

Bronimal Collective. The Brosten Celtics. BroYPD: Bro York’s Finest. The Bro Team! Florence + The Brochine. Grizzly Bro. The Bro Steady. LCD Brosystem. The Bro-End Theory. Of Bros and Men. Brosserie. Brontausaurs. Keep it on the down-bro. Etc.

Read more here

Bloggers are now noting CNN’s Rick Sanchez, while covering the Chilean earthquake and oncoming tsunami in Hawaii, acted in a manner befitting “an ejaculation that should have been swallowed.” If you have video of this, shout. Update! We’ve got video.

Rick Sanchez, to a scientist: “Nine meters in English is what?”

Ha. In Portuguese, now! Also, via Dan “Slim Shady” Abrams’ Mediaite, Drew Grant grabs video. Highlights:

1:37: Rick Sanchez trying to explain to his viewers, who are apparently too stupid to understand the most basic law of “every reaction” physics: “The yang of that yin..”

1:46: Rich Sanchez screaming at this poor weather nerd: “I’m not asking you to do 27 to 27, I’m asking you if there’s a drop, will there be an increase?!?”

Also, more Rick “No Shit, Sherlock” Sanchez here:

2:20: “But what we can say is—tell me if I’m wrong—there is a tsunami there, and it was just detected, that it caused a 27-foot drop.“

Maybe if he lived life like fellow anchor Jeffrey Toobin—Toobinstyle—he wouldn’t be so anal. Or at least, anal like this. If you know what I mean. I’m talking about Jeffrey Toobin being an ass man. An ass sex man. But for now, Rick Sanchez is just an asshole.

Originally posted here

If you live in New York, you know Central Park is - despite smog-spewing cars blazing through it, kids who shit everywhere, dogs who shit everywhere, tourists who’re everywhere, and facepalm-worthy Beatles tributes at Strawberry Fields - pretty magical. But!

The magical coyotes of Central Park are being taken away from us by people who are scared they’re going to, like, bite you or something. But seeing one is, as evidenced by this New York item, so awesome:

The three people followed the coyote as it wandered west. The Nashville man began using a flash on his camera. This seemed to irritate the coyote. Suddenly, it crossed the ice warily, then jumped a fence at a low point, taking the very walkway the humans were using. It was a week in which a whale trainer was killed by an orca and Travis, the Xanax-fed, human-attacking chimp, made the news again, yet Gardner followed the coyote eagerly. Then, it walked up the stairs, toward Central Park South, the lamppost light on the slick sidewalks making its exit seem very noir. If you looked, you could find its big non-dog-like tracks in the snow.

Because people in New York—whether you’re just visiting, or live here—are exceptionally stupid and especially exceptionally crazy, particularly in Central Park, this big, beautiful, urban-rural landscape sandwiched between a bunch of senile-bound hyper-intellectual liberal Jews and a bunch of senile-bound hyper-capitalist WASPs (and Jews) and, uh, Harlem. How can you not be?

But Central Park needs to stay magical. It’s like Narnia, except we can’t keep all the assholes out. Anyway. Here are some creatures that we need to preserve in Central Park:

1. Muggers. Not that I want to get mugged or not that I think other people getting mugged is a good thing, but really, Central Park having an element of danger to it does keep out lots of people who mostly just get in your way when you’re there. Also, it would help people move faster, maybe, and if there’s anything you hate about Central Park, it’s that people are slower than they need to be in places you shouldn’t be allowed to be slow. Maybe we could subsidize muggers with taxpayer money, and get them to mug slow tourists or loud assholes or people who let their dogs shit everywhere without cleaning it up, and then they can take that money and put it towards the MTA deficit. Also, people will start taking the N/R/W, 4/5/6, and I guess kind of the F/V when they hear about the scary muggers in Central Park, which will also chip away at the MTA deficit. Of course, this doesn’t matter because the MTA is run by the biggest bunch of bureaucratic buttfaces (yes, “buttfaces,” that’s a technical designation, also see: “assfaces” or “fuckfaces” for higher-ranking members) ever, so this might not matter. But it’s worth a shot.

2. Weed smokers. Why do you think the New York branch of Marijuana Anonymous is on 57th and 8th? Smoking weed in Central Park is a time-honored tradition, recognized by pop culture in film (the first episode of Gossip Girl, Igby Goes Down, etc) and music (like, every Simon and Garfunkle song, and that one Harry Nilsson song, and not the one by Randy Newman about the dancing bear and borrowing a coat, but that one, too), now only carried out by the few daring locals who have their spots and don’t fear getting fucked in the ass with a police baton, which cops in New York are now allowed to do when they find weed smokers. The faint smell of a nearby marijuana smoker is a beautiful one, certainly better than the dogshit you just stepped on. Smoking weed in New York is already a kinda magical experience: the weed comes to you. People who don’t live in New York, you know we get our drugs delivered, right? Anyway, the point is that there really isn’t a better place to get high in New York, because when you see coyotes, apparently, they’re actually coyotes. Also, there are swings and rowboats and ducks to feed and laugh at. The rowboats are an especially great place to get high. Anyway, New York should make Central Park a “safe zone” for public weed smokers. And then the muggers could mug them and donate their weed to people who need it. Like me. Smoking weed in Central Park is also a blast of nostalgia, and who doesn’t like nostalgia? Do you see what I’m saying, man? Have you ever been called Maurice? You’d enjoy it.

3. Coyotes. As previously mentioned. Beautiful, majestic creatures who will eat New York’s Burberry-clad kickdogs and Bugaboo-shuttled babies for a light snack. Necessary for natural selection and totally awesome weed experiences. If you follow one, it may take you to a magical places, like the lines of a New York Magazine piece, or a new weed-smoking spot, or Harlem. Or eat you. It might eat you.

4. Gay pickups. Okay, so, not being a gay man and all, I don’t know what the status of these guys are, but I know they existed at one point. Basically, if you were gay, you could go to Central Park and get your fuck on and maybe catch something. Straight people aren’t cool or adventurous enough to live like this—at least none of the straight people I know, and maybe I just don’t have cool enough friends—but I know that there are probably less than there were when Tony Kushner wrote that scene into Angels in America when Ben Shenkman tries to have sex with the leather-clad pickup who lives with his mother. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, this is almost totally unselfish of me because I don’t really benefit from this but more leather-clad gay pickups in Central Park will definitely keep more conservative (read: slower walking) tourists out. So it’s not totally selfless.

5. The Casual Runner. “All runners look like spacemen, now,” notes Night Editor ninja Adrian Chen. He’s correct! Running should be a low-maintenance thing! You know how they do it in Philly? Well, lemme tell you this: they don’t need an expensive space-suit to do it, you bougie pussies. You gonna let Philly show us how it’s done?

6. Roller skaters. Not rollerbladers, mind you, but roller skaters. Have you ever seen some dudes roller skate in Central Park? Right, because they only appear on Sundays, beautiful Sundays, when the sun is out. They bring boomboxes and skate in a circle and it’s basically like something directly out of Roll Bounce except the real-life version, which is one of the things that’s exceptionally cooler in real life than it is in a movie starring (PKA Lil’) Bow Wow. Unlike many of the “entertainers” in Central Park who want to take your money without actually working for it (like mimes or those people who dress up as the Statue of Liberty and just stand there and totally creep you/me out), these people actually have incredible talent. Not only are they great roller skaters, they make you want to roller skate. In fact, they make you feel better about life. Which everything should.

Basically, we should have weed-smoking rolling skating coyotes who will mug you if you run in a spacesuit or walk too slow.

Central Park is awesome.

Original post

Housewives. They just never stop, do they? They just keep going and going and going and they will continue to do so until we are all, every one of us, dead in their acrid wake. I mean, until next week.

Last night’s episode was all about change. About the changes we make when we try for something new, like Gretchen did. About the changes we make when we return to something old, like Vicki did. About the changes we make when we are faced with great difficulty, like Lynne was. About the changes we make when we begin to reconsider the world, as Tamra did. And about the the changes we make when we pay a stranger to cut parts off parts of our face and replace them with other parts of our face, as Alexis (and her mother!) did. Change change chaaaaange, change of liiiiife. That’s a lyric from Menopause: The Musical, a beautiful piece of theater that I spent my first year out of college selling tickets for. Ohhh I heard that show so many times. I think of it now, when regarding these blonde apocalypses.

Let’s start with Tamra. Oh Tamra. She is a curt and sour, her eyes are beginning to look like darkening slot canyons, like Antelope, the flash-flood waters coming. To celebrate this fact, Tamra threw herself a funeral, otherwise known as a 42nd birthday party. Yes, she is just three short years away from the date when the Orange County Woman Control squad hauls her off and buries her in a shallow grave somewhere near Barstow. So might as well whoop it up before some government bureaucrat wearing a tie and some Sears chinos makes the sign of the cross and puts two bullets in the back of her head, desert winds rustling through his combover. Might as well live it up.

All the girls were there! Trixi and Marbella and Ruby Foo and Vandella and Garbage Marge the Garbage Barge. All of Tamra’s good friends. They took turns playing Pin the Tail On the Donkey and Marry the Millionaire and they all guzzled shots and Vicki sent her poor little assistant — named Heather or George or Martinique, no one really remembers, but it seemed sad and confused and was murmuring things, whole sentences to itself, and nobody knows for sure, but when Garbage Marge the Garbage Barge leaned in close she swears it was saying “I want to go home, I want to go home” over and over and over again — to deliver a gift and everyone was so horrified that Vicki couldn’t even come by, especially because she was just two blocks away. Cut to Vicki, naked and smeared in copy toner, a Staples’ employee’s severed head stuck on a pike made of staple removers, shrieking “Wooorrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkkk! The Vicki is worrrrrkkkinggggggg!!!” And we all shuddered and realized that she had thumbtacks stuck in her gums, either she’d placed them there as decoration or she’d been eating thumbtacks again, and we knew that this Work that Vicki speaks of, this is a very important thing. Tamra wasn’t buying it.

After the birthday party, Garbage Marge drove everyone home in her garbage barge and dropped Simon and Tamra off at a fancy restaurant for fancy people, which Simon and Tamra are. There they had a lovely romantic conversation about boobs and tits and sacks and funbags and sweater melons and over the shoulder boulder holders and goody lumps and smugglin’ Hare Krishnas and chest balls. But mostly they talked of love and breasts and Tamra licked Simon’s face, which I imagine tasted like the underside of a shoe that smokes menthol cigarettes, and oh man is their marriage over. Just over over over. So over. It’s over next week. It’s already over. Time warps and bends around this show. It’s like a black hole only less interesting. It’s a hole.

Once she and Simon had finished playing a sexy game that Simon affectionately calls Lizard Tongue, Tamra hopped aboard her bejeweled moped and puttered over to the house where Lynne will soon be not living. She knocked on the door and it creaked open, unlocked. She walked into the house. There was an eerie silence. “Hellloooo?” she called out, becoming strangely cold and frightened. “Lynne? Lynne’s hubby? Troll monsters?” She walked into the Great Room and stood, looking around. Suddenly she felt a presence. Lynne was in the room. But where? She looked all around. Then she heard a sickening shuffle coming from above her. She looked up to see Lynee skittering around the ceiling, transfixed by the light fixture. “Lynne… Lynne honey?” As soon as Lynne realized she was being watched she plummeted down toward the ground, bounced off the leather sofa and crashed through the coffee table. Lying in a bloody, shardy heap she slurred “Hiiiiiiiiii Tamra. Come on in. I was just… I was just, uh, breaking the table here.”

The ladies opened a bottle of wine and got to chatting about men. Tamra thought they were all liars and Lynne remarked at how when sometimes you think you pooped that day but you didn’t really poop that day and then at night you have Poop Dreams? Tamra stared at a fixed spot on the wall just to the left of Lynne’s eyes and said “Uh huh.” And then Lynne said “Oh yeah, Hubby would never cheat on me. He’s a germaphobe.” Tamra blinked harder, seriously confused. But I got that! That little tidbit of Lynne’s actually made sense. He wouldn’t stick it in another wicket because who knows what sort of strange disease one could get from that. I get ya Lynne. You’re one batty bitch, but I get ya. Tamra shrugged her shoulders and continued on talking, while Lynne crawled up onto the counter and managed to get stuck in the disposal, where she stayed all night, softly purring to herself, having wonderful Poop Dreams.

While she was doing that, her two daughters, Encyclopedia and Britannica, went to have a very serious conversation. As the two Merit Scholars had been studying very hard, they knew just what to say and how to say it. There’s a very important education program on television called The Hills, which teaches girls from Carlsbad to Kennebunk how to talk and what to talk about. You takkkk lakkkk thissssss and you barely open your mouth so a burble of word-ideas comes sluicing out of your glossed lips, followed soon after by gallons and gallons of feces and bile and zombie vomit. And, like, they said “like” more times than I have ever heard that word ever, and I grew up in the Valley. (I mean, I certainly watched enough things about the Valley growing up to have vicariously grown up there, right) It’s really some entirely new mode of linguistics these California reality show girls have come up with. It’s almost tonal and click-based. “Yeahhh” means a very different thing than “Yeahhhhh.” Completely different.

Anyway, while I was digging in that ancient temple dedicated to the goddess Laguna last night, I uncovered a sort of Rosetta Stone that translates Shitspeak. In Shitspeak, the girls were apparently talking about moving to LA. Because LA will be their savior. In LA nothing is hard, everything is good and pure and merciful. No one will treat you cruelly, even if you look like one of the bad guys from Labyrinth. (…) It’s a city of nice people where you don’t need a jawwb. Who wants a jawwwwb. Nobody wants a jawwwwwb. Oh it was so sad and awful and pathetic watching these girls audition for their own show. Shitspeak: Girl Talk premieres this fall on BravoTeen, which is a channel named after Andy Cohen’s brain. (But seriously, if anyone over there wants to start BravoTeen, you will have one dedicated viewer.)

We pack up, we move on. Over to Gretchen. Does anyone care about Gretchen anymore? Do you think Gretchen realizes that everyone stopped caring a little while ago? It’s sort of sad. She just keeps on showing up and saying things with those coin purse features of hers and she has no idea that nobody’s watching anymore. Hey, here’s a segment where Gretchen gets her makeup done by her best friend/makeup artist LouMitsy, and if anyone was watching they would get out their little weed dealing scales to try to figure out how many ounces of makeup Gretchen is wearing. But no one’s home. Hey, here’s a segment where she takes her own makeup line to a trade show and, shocker!, no one shows up. At that point Gretchen must have realized that no one was paying attention, right? I mean, it was manifestly in her face right then, wasn’t it? Just staring right at her, unblinking as a bird. I have nothing interesting to say about Gretchen except that Ha Ha Ha no one showed up to her stupid makeup party, because why would they? Time to try to find a job that is actually real, Gretchen. (As if. Who wants a jawwwwwwb. She’s gonna move to LA with the Doublets of Belleville and do nothing forever.)

Let’s go toot toot tooting back over to Lynne, who managed to finally get out of the disposal and stumble into her Flintsones car and callous-foot her way over to dinner with Hubby. “Hey Hamslacks, how’s fritters?” she asked him with determination. He sighed and patted her hand. “Who’s on the menu, Jackson?” she asked brightly. He sighed again and a small tear trickled down his face. “The toucan sure sounds like something I’d like to talk to, I’ll have that, Dudley” Lynne said to a freckle on her arm. Hubby put his head down on the table. “”Didja ever think about babies that wear hats? I think about that a lot.” By now Hubby was curled up under the table, weeping. Though he was secretly glad that he didn’t have to answer any questions about his terrible finances, because that would be scary and he doesn’t like scary things. Suddenly Lynne’s head popped under the table and she said “Your seltzer’s ready!” Then there was a gunshot.

Next we take a peek at Alexis, our big-titted funbag of a Jesuswoman, who was doing Christly things like taking her momma to get her face rearranged. Ha ha, no. She wasn’t taking her mom to a 1950s school bully. She was taking her to a plastic surgeon! Plastic surgery is listed in the Bible right after that strikethrough part about the body being a temple and not having too much pride and all that. Alexis and Ma Juggs had a nice serious lunchtime chat about wrinkles and aging and the long slow molasses ooze towards death that is living, and her mother frowned and looked like Alice Krige or Piper Laurie and we felt bad for her, because soon she would be disappeared, never the same again, a whole different, lesser person. Alexis smiled in an eerie, glassy way and said “One of us, now. One of us.” Alexis also remarked at how her mom’s forehead was as smooth as Andy Cohen’s “assistant” and yet she had never had any work done, and Alexis is sixty-eight and has had so many surgeries she can’t even count them. I mean, she used to be black!

So Alexis pulled a giant mallet out of her purse and whacked her mother over the head and the next thing poor Piper Laurie knew, she was strapped into a chair with the doctor from Brazil sharpening his Defacer. It was just so sad watching her, because she clearly didn’t want the surgery, but there was a camera crew there and she did want to do something with her daughter, who seemed further and further away with each passing month, so she did it. She sat there as the doctor scrawled all over her face with a marker and then the doctor’s mom came in and said “Oh honey, that’s very pretty. You know what? I’m going to put it on the refrigerator,” and then took Piper Laurie’s face and stuck it onto the fridge with a big magnet. She hung out like that for a while until Alexis ran in and yelled “Now! Do it now!!!! Begin the Defacening!!!”

After Alexis’s mom’s face was cut off, she was wheeled over to a plastic surgery recovery center (these only exist in Southern California, they’re the Newport Creameries of the West) where she would stay until the lizard DNA had fully fused with her own and her face could begin regrowing, a taut new hide. Alexis took some time off from her busy daiquiri and Christoga schedule to spend some time with her mom at the center and she yammered on about many things and shared many memories. One memory was of when they were at lunch before and her mother said “Remember how you wouldn’t walk anywhere because you didn’t want your hair to smell like air?” At that point all of our faces fell off and the Lizard King cackled and said “You are all mine nowwwwww.” Srsly, Alexis? And this is, like, a funny a story we are telling? Not a horribly depressing one about a horrible girl with ugly outsides and hideous insides who was so fucking stupid and vain that she preferred her hair to smell like a bucket of chemicals instead of “air”? Are you sure it’s not that kind of story?

Anyway, Alexis is awful and stupid and we all know that. That’s no surprise. Eventually Jim will finish digesting Quinn (”wah-lah!”) and he will probably devour Alexis, so we don’t need to worry about her too much longer. What we SHOULD worry about is his atomic poops. Talk about a Poop Nightmare. Poop. Breaking: 26-Year-Old College-Educated Man Can’t Stop Making Poop Jokes.

Our last stop on this freight train of horrors is Vicki. Oh Vicki. Vicki who was an electric pencil eraser accident some years ago and has never been the same. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: You have to wait until the gecko DNA has fully fused with your own before you take the bandages off, Vicki. Otherwise you come out looking like cold pizza. Here’s the straight honest good news: Briana doesn’t have thyroid cancer. So good for that. Good things. Sincere good things.

BUT THE BIG NEWS was this: Vicki was making Housewife water, which we folks out here in Stinktown call margaritas, and she walked out to her patio and it was verryyyy sneaky the way they didn’t show us who she was making the drink for and then…!!!! It was Jeana. Big fat bellowing Jeana, come from down the block to forage for crullers. It was so nice to see two old lizard friends hang out again. They spoke of old times and new times, fun times and sad times. Vicki was interviewed and she said “I think we’re going to always be friends.” Immediately Jeana was interviewed and she said “I hate that bitch.” So, yay! Sweet times.

Vicki spent most of her time with Jeana bitching about all the other “bitches” calling them bitches and saying that they are so bitchy, those bitchy bitches. Jeana rolled her eyes so hard they popped out of their sockets and rolled into the pool, and while Vicki had Andy Cohen’s “assistant” fish it out with the pool skimmer, she continued to harp on Alexis and Tamra and Gretchen and Garbage Marge the Garbage Barge and alla them. Will this be Vicki’s last season? I think it might be! But who knows. We will have to wait until next week to find out. Next week is the finale. We’ve one episode to go.

In the meantime, Tamra will stare hard at her husband as he sits and watches the TV, she’ll think about back when the marriage was young and the kids were babies and how she used to pray for moments of silence, for a quiet night like this one. But now all she wants to do is scream and shake the walls, yell something profane and shocking in Simon’s ear, to break dishes and windows, to set off the burglar alarm and let it go forever. Then people will know, everyone will know. There’s a fire inside her, a hot churning core. Something is happening to Tamra Barney. She just thought you should know.

And Gretchen will spit and stutter and fart and worry, because nobody likes Gretchen Rossi and she’s wondering if maybe anyone ever did. She’ll get drunk on sangria and take her stubby fingers and dial her phone and a sleeping Andy Cohen will answer and he’ll say “Gretchen? What is it?” And Gretchen will laugh sadly and sneer at the phone and slur “You’re such a fake and a liar and nobody likes you. Why doesn’t anybody like Gretchen?” And Andy will be confused and then he’ll hear the phone drop to the floor and a glass door sliding open and then a faint splash and then just the night, just the crickets, just the connection softly buzzing, the sound of distance.

Alexis will be bashing in her mother’s chest with a hammer to convince her to get a boob job and Jim will watch her from the doorway, his beautiful blood-spattered Christian bride, smashing through bone and muscle, her mother’s eyes wide with terror, Alexis weeping and screaming “You’ll look so beautiful, mother!! Just like me!! Just like me!!” and then with one final thud the room goes quiet and her mother lies frozen on the bed and Jim looks at Alexis and undoes the sash on his dressing gown and says “God you’re sexy,” and they make love on her mother’s pulverized body.

And Lynne will wander into the fifth dimension, or the fourth and a half, she can never quite tell. And in that place, up won’t be down, it’ll be sideways or hat. And everyone will speak Lynnelanguage and everyone won’t even be there, there won’t be an everyone or a no one, just one, just Lynne, just everything twisting and shifting, never staying still, and Lynne will be so happy, so warm and content until there is a loud slamming noise and she hears Hubby yelling “Jesus Christ, honey. How the hell did you get in the drier again?”

And Jeana and Vicki will just sit on the patio, drinking their juice, and they will laugh at it all. These too old broads, been around the word together, to hell and back, leathery bats flapping their wings toward the sky. “I love you,” Vicki will murmur. And Jeana will chortle and say “Oh fuck you.” And VIcki will smile and lean back in her chair and close her eyes and say “Yeah, fuck me.”

And somewhere Andy Cohen will awake with a start, not from a phone call not from an alarm not from anything but a feeling, a strange and urging thought. “I’ve done something wrong,” he will whisper in the dark apartment, New York droning along outside. “I’ve done something terribly wrong.” And his “assistant” will stir and pat his back and lazily say, halfway between dreams and the world, “No baby, it was just right.”

Just right.

Continued here

David Paterson press conference time! Watch it here. He is going to stop campaigning, but keep being governor. Update: It went by so quickly! Some quotes from the governor are attached.

Paterson is talking about all the wonderful things he has done as a legislator and accidental governor. “We have eradicated the Rockefeller drug laws,” he says, which is not quite true. But he did do more about this than any of his predecessors!

Finally, the announcement: “Today I am announcing that I am ending my campaign for Governor of the State of New York.” Because he can’t run for office and manage the state’s finances at the same time, not because of any of that other stuff.
AND:
“I have never abused my office. Not now, not ever.”
AND:
“Let me make this clear: there are 308 days left in my term and I will serve every one of them”

The governor took a few questions, but not many. He looks forward to a full investigation of the thing about abusing his office, with the state police and the phone calls. Disappointingly non-crazy!

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