TGIF...Maybe.

I enjoyed the TGIF mozzarella sticks massacre post when it came out last year, but in re-reading it now I feel like 1) is 32 sticks in 14 hours impressive? hmm. 2) letting management in on your little stunt is kinda cheating. No?

Mark Halperin Sucks

I've long hated the whole Halperin/Heilemann matrix of stupidity, including a few years ago when their "book" came out, but Gawker nails Halperin's bullshit re: style vs. substance vs. he's an idiot here:

Mark Halperin does not understand politics. The worst thing about Mark Halperin is not that he's a soulless, cynical hack who portrays Washington as a clash of personalities rather than a clash of interests. It's not that he ignores substance and finds the results or efficacy of policies to be less interesting than determining who's "winning" and who's "losing." The worst thing about Mark Halperin is that he's not even good at doing those things. The most offensive thing about the existence of Mark Halperin is that he's the worst possible version of himself. Overall: F.

If you're gonna be full of shit, at least be better at fooling us, for fuck's sake. Pathetic.

The Return of A-Rod

Grantland can't seem to go a day with a post about A-Rod, and now they've cycled to he isn't enough of a dick:

In 2004, Bill Simmons wished for a Kobe Bryant heel turn, and Bryant eventually obliged. If only A-Rod had learned the same lesson. Instead, he’s once again acting contrite, doing inadequate damage control with a handwritten apology that has little chance of changing anyone’s mind. We’ve settled into a cycle where A-Rod does something innocuous, a writer makes it sound selfish, and readers shake their heads at everyone involved. Rodriguez could spend the rest of the spring saving 8-year-olds from oncoming traffic, and people would blame him for trying to cheat death. So why resist the resentment? Why not steer into the scorn?

George Harrison

The greatest tribute was of course Prince showing up and blowing the fucking roof off of While My Guitar Gently Weeps with the greatest guitar lead of all time.

Happy Birthday George

Here's Paul totally crushing your signature solo song.

Happy Birfday

To George Harrison, the Tea Party Beatle and Godfather of Kickstarter who broke the ice with George Martin.

And this always fascinates me:

Finally, the film really never investigates the real mystery of Harrison: What was he so morose about?...Harrison... has always had a sense of the aggrieved about him. I just don't know what the source of it was. In Harrison's mini-autobiography at the front of I Me Mine, the unasked-for collection of his song lyrics, he seems mostly unhappy about … the travel indignities he suffered during the Beatles years.

Besides having the best Beatles solo record with All Things Must Pass, which includes superslices What is Life?, Apple Scruffs, Waiting on You All and the title track, my top 5 George songs with the Beatles are:

Here Comes the Sun
Something
I Want to Tell You
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Piggies

The single most UPLIFTING moment in any Beatles song might have actually come from the Dark Horse himself, ie coming out of the middle 8 of Here Comes the Sun. Kills me every time. Beat that.

Downton Potter

I don't know anything about Harry Potter, but this still cracks me up for some reason.

Well, I guess I know SOMETHING about Harry Potter:

I was just telling Buster, my stuffed lamb, how much I'd rather have a squirrel play speed-bag with my nuts than hafta read a Harry Potter novel when I was reminded of a time I almost did.  Ten years ago I was teaching 6th grade in the projects down in Far Rockaway, a real crack-den dropoff for kids. Concurrently, I was having my heart ripped out on a daily basis by a girl I was madly in love with; I could not go to bed until I had completely humiliated myself in some sort of screaming through her window in the rain/Cusack with a boom box way. It was, unfortunately, the only time I've ever showed any persistence at all; for once in my life my policy of instantly giving up would've really come in handy, as opposed to this new "Live to be completely humiliated another day!" one.

So one day I'm in class at was even more bent out of shape/lovestruck/depressed than normal. Hell, I'm surprised I even showed up, but I guess that just shows my dedication to the kids (DON'T start that "Xmastime, you're a hero!" shit - that's for history to decide, not me.) I decide to take it easy on myself I'll just read them the fucking Harry Potter book. So I start and by the end of the first page I'm even more depressed - oh good, the parents are dead, nobody likes the kid, I guess he's an asshole, and the walls I'm in are painted gray and I'm hungover and why doesn't she love me wahhhh waaaah  wwaaaaaaaaaah. So finally I say fuck it just read it quietly to yourselves, and I'm helpless to not lower my face into my hands for a few seconds, in absolute surrender to grief (grief such that it seems at the time but is of course laughable now.) Finally I slowly raise my head again, and realize most of the class has crowded around my desk.

"Mr. Wilson, are you okay?"

I was both ashamed at my open display of sadness and touched by their (rare, such that it was) concern, and was about to speak but was cut off before I could start.

"Yeah, Mr. Wilson, are you - ohmygosh Mr. Wilson, you gotta clean your fingernails!! Daaaaaaaaaaaamn!"

Sigh.

And later, I took them to see the movie, where they surprised me again:

3. Harry Potter is introduced in 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' (2001)
When this movie came out I was teaching a class in some Bed-Stuy projects, real crack-babies cum crazed, uncontrollable delinquents, and I don't mean "stealing candy from the counter." I had a class of 6th graders and I spent most of my time yelling and screaming "shut up!!!  shut up!  sit down and shut up!!!" (some of you sexier readers might recognize that as my "go to" move when I'm in "the home stretch", heh heh heh.) So one day the principal tells me we're taking the kids to see the Harry Potter movie. Since, you know, if the NYC public education system cant help a kid from the projects learn to read or write or add 2+2, maybe a mystical story of a wispy little faggy white kid from England with magical powers wearing a robe can do the truck, right? So we get to the theater, and I'm thinking there's no WAY these kids are gonna sit down and be quiet for one second - they don't do it in the classroom, and now they're gonna be quiet when the light go out? I'm expecting a massive orgy of pre-teen sex and drugs to break out before the goddam previews start. We all sit down and as the movie starts I'm on the  edge of my seat, crouched and ready to spring up and start shouting at the kids to sit down and shut the hell up. All of a sudden, after a few minutes, I realize you can hear a pin drop. I look around - every single kid is sitting in their seat, not moving a muscle, staring at the screen hanging on every word from these fucking wizard kids. I slowly slide back into my seat thinking "...what the fuck..." Finally after a few minutes I relaxed and figured shit, they're behaving. So then I start watching the movie, and I realize I had missed the first coupla minutes and had no idea who was who or what the hell was going on. So I started trying to ask the kids around me, who recoiled in horror that their attention was being taken away from the screen, and with every question I asked I got buried more and more underneath a flurry of "SSSSHHHH!!!  Mr. Wilson!! Be quiet! SHHHHHHHHH!" I was stunned, and sat there in silence, happy as a clam for the next hour and half. Until, of course, the lights came back up and all hell broke loose and I got shivved. Looking back now, maybe we shoulda just had all the lights turned off in the classrooms? Maybe these kids' batshit buttons were controlled by light?

Xmastime Movie Memory

Almost Famous.

Two days a week I get on a bus at the GW Bridge and take about a 10-minute bus ride to the building where InTouch magazine is. Just to be close to the magazine. No no, of course I work there. One stop after I get on, a large group of Mexicans get on the bus; at this point the bus is almost perfectly divided between the Mexicans, and white people like me going to InTouch or one of the sister magazines in the same building. And I've noticed that there is zero interaction between these two groups. We each sit on our respective sides of the bus not looking at each other. Where the fuck am I, I thought the other day. Selma, Alabama, ca 2009 1950? For once, instead of waiting for someone else to break through the wall between us, I decided it was up to me to broker some common geniality.

But how? I am a simple man. And I don't speak Spanish. How could I get through to EVERYbody, not only the Mexicans on the "other side"?

Then it dawned on me exactly what to do.

I leaned my head against the large bus window, and looked bleakly out at Ft. Lee as we drove through it. The bus was almost completely silent. And then from my seat, against the window, a quiet voice started slowly rising.

Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand

I didn't even look around, I kept looking out the window, knowing that someone on the other side would know when to come in.

Jesus freaks out in the street, Handing tickets out for God
Turning back she just laughs, (CUE! come in, someone else!! Now! MAGIC TIME!) The boulevard is not that bad

Hmm....nobody joined in. Total silence. I continued; maybe they were waiting for a different line?

Piano man he makes his stand, In the auditorium (someone shouts out "shut the fuck up!" But this person was from my side of the bus - hey dude, I'm not singing just for you!! I continued)
Looking on she sings the songs, The words she knows the tune she hums

At this point someone from the other side of the bus shouted something at me. But as I said, I do not speak Spanish, so I have no idea if it was "shut the fuck up!" or "when should we all come in??!" So. I continued.

But oh how it feels so real, Lying here with no one near
Only you and you can hear me, When I say softly slowly

Okay, nothing so far - but here comes the chorus! There's no WAY they'll be able to resist the chorus; by the end of it we'll all be singing together, slapping each other cinco! This is it!!!! I stood up, turned to look at everybody, and fucking belted it out at the top of my lungs

Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
You had a busy day today

I stopped singing, breathing heavily, sweat beading, and opened my eyes...and all the Mexicans were streaming by me, not even looking up at me, filing off the bus as per usual. I looked around to "my team." Zero eye contact. So I slumped back down in my chair, head against the window, looking out. And wondering what will I do tomorrow to bring these groups of people together once and for all. Sigh.

Obama's Ripping Me Off!

Post by Fortafy.

Thoughts. I Have Them.

I  just realized I've owned Buddy Holly cds for more years than he was alive. Trippy.

A Few Thoughts on This Week's Downton Abbey Because AAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

Robert, who couldn’t sleuth his way out of a paper bag, sniffs out that Marigold is Edith’s because…she looks like Gregson? Someone he hung out with for maybe 10 minutes? Wouldn’t it make more sense, or actual sense, if he was reminded of Edith? For fuck’s sake. Atrocious.

 

I see they’re running low on money again OH LET ME GUESS Matthew, dead for years now, will receive yet another inheritance.

 

Oh look, it’s Tony! Of COURSE Tony’s there! Wait, why is Tony there? He even has the wherewithal to ask every time “Am I welcome here?” and still keeps showing up. Of course. Wtf - does this actor have pics of Julian Fellowes micro-penis or something?

 

We know Violet hate Greek drama, where all the action is off-stage, and yet the only action that DOES seem to make it onstage is the fucking Bates shit and Branson "leaving" for America. Meanwhile, Atticus' proposal, the wedding announcement, Isis dying, Marigold moving into the house etc etc takes place off-camera. Can't we finally open an episode with "ah yes, shame about Bate & Anna being eaten alive by wolfpups. Tally ho!"?

OOOOOOOOOH I see from the previews that my boyfriend from Brideshead Revisited, Matthew Goode, will be appearing in the finale next week! Nom nom nom!!!!

"When's Xmastime getting here?"

State du Moi

I only recently realized what the inside of a furnace looks like. And so now I'm totally freaked out that at all times, there is a small fire inside my apartment. I mean, wtf?

The Absurd Red Carpet

Looks like some folks are starting to notice what pigs we are when it comes to women on the red carpet:

As Hadley Freeman wrote in The Guardian, "This is a strange pocket of the Western world, where it is still deemed utterly acceptable to take smart, successful women and reduce them to beauty pageant contestants."

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you call this bullshit eight years ago?"  

Sigh. Yes, faithful readers. Yes I did:

I would think sometimes women get a little fed up with the red carpet treatment; ie dress up in something sheer and sexy, showing your wonder-bra'd rack so that the world can ogle you. You're a brilliant actress/director/producer, you spent a year working on the script working 16-hour days developing a story, you've reached deep into your own soul to pull out emotions you didn't even know you had...and now your shining moment at the end of all this comes when you paint on something that shows us if you wax and you smile your face off while the cameras pop and we all sit back and judge "hot" "not hot" "fat." Do women really like this? I understand wanting to see the fashions, but the parading?

But the best part is I also notice that at some point every woman is asked to turn around, take a spin so we can see the back. What? So she turns around, basically saying "look at my ass." How do we pull this off? Brilliant. No where else can I say "It was nice meeting you, that presentation was great and we'll definitly crunch the numbers, now why don't you take a lil spin so I can check out them hind parts?" I mean, are women okay with this?

Sweet Kid.

First it was that she shot me, then she changed it to stabbing me to death. Great. #littleWatty

In America

We're fat-shaming people we're executing now?

...cornbread, buttermilk, two [Burger King] Whoppers with cheese and all the trimmings, two large orders of French fries, cherry vanilla ice cream, popcorn and lemonade. She also wants a salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots and cheese to be topped with Paul Newman buttermilk dressing.

Hey, at least she had a salad!

Holy Crap

An entire hour of Tommy Ramone talking about producing my favorite Replacements album, Tim.

"These people are really talented."

Always shocking that Bob Stinson showed up in the studio for exactly one day.

A-Whhhhaaaaat?

I read this article earlier about A-Rod and have to agree with this guy - it made you wonder if it's okay to like him:

Moehringer's story is a profile of a man who's been torturing himself over his mistakes, and there are many scenes like the ones above, which are laid on so thick that it's hard to remember just how truly minor Rodriguez's transgressions are; he didn't hurt another human being or defraud anyone. He's just one of the many pro athletes to haven taken PEDs and then lied about doing so, and yet he's out here getting banished to the woods by his therapist as if he's a broken man who needs to be reborn. A-Rod is a weird dude and a cheater, but he's far from evil.

Wait, What du Jour

The summer Bill Murray played minor-league baseball because, you know, he's Bill Murray.

Bill was completely in. This was before he’d done"Caddyshack" and "Ghostbusters" and all that. He was still sorta making his way. So he loved being with the guys, because nobody was after anything. All the players would have fun, and he loved that part of it. He would ride on the bus; he did all of it. That was his favorite time, for sure. He would relax.

Sunday Softball

I guess while the rest of us spent our time fucking shit up at The Turkey's Nest after games, this guy was practicing.

It is an old baseball tale, a fable that's periodically realized into truth. A young dreamer develops his game at a backwater outpost, one where his talent far exceeds his surroundings. He plays on torn-up grass fields or cracked asphalt, in a land where outsiders may not understand the local customs, language, and dress; he hopes that one day he'll get his shot, but he knows the odds are long. There is no walking off Long Island, after all, and when was the last time a pro scout came to Brooklyn to watch a game between the bar-sponsored softball teams of Williamsburg.

He, the legend in right field, is Bo Schultz, 29, believed to be the only player to ever rise from McCarren Park Softball to Major League Baseball. 

"I'll say, first, only, and forever," says Heller.

Softball memory lane:

Here's me in 2007 ripping into Watty, really letting him have it after we lost in the finals to Black Betty:

"YOU PLAYED EXTREMELY WELL, YOU WERE REALLY GREAT OUT THERE!!  YOU'RE A COACH'S DREAM AND YOU PLAY THE GAME WITH THE RESPECT IT DESERVES!! HOW ARE YOUR PARENTS, ARE THEY GOOD?  YEAH, THEY'RE GOOD?  GOOD!  IT WAS AN HONOR TO PUT YOUR NAME INTO THE LINEUP EVERY WEEK!!  THANK YOU AGAIN FOR INSTALLING MY WIRELESS PRINTER THE OTHER DAY, I WAS TOALLY LOST WITHOUT YOU!!  STAY RIGHT HERE, I'M GETTING YOU A BEER!! AND A SANDWICH - NO NO, A PANINI! CAUSE YOU'RE AWESOME AND YOUR STORY SHOULD BE TOLD AROUND CAMPFIRES FOR GENERATIONS TO COME!!  I ADMIRE YOUR VALUES AND HEIGHT!!"

It's Official: Joe Biden Is a Badass

Who else can stare down the leader of the world's most powerful military while pawing his wife? Whole thing HERE. Awesome.

Hysterical du Jour

6th-grade recruiting by Rivals.com:

Probably better as a DL because of stiffness in the hips when trying to change directions during Duck Duck Goose.

Dying!

He's A-Rod, and He's A-Sorry.

A-Rod issued this apology to the fans:

All i can think of when I read this is "A-rod writes in cursive? Who does that anymore?"

Thoughts. I Have Them.

I think if I died today there’d be plenty of people who’d be sad, saying how much fun they’d had with me and I’d made them laugh, but there’d be no great reveal “oh my, look at the amazing things he had done without anyone knowing!”

Du Jour du Jour

2 thumbs up to David Beckham for his homage to the greatest scene of all time in the 2014 Sports Relief special video reprise of Only Fools and Horses. Totally caught me off guard. Dying.

Only Fools and Horses clip (2014) by dm_514ca29b22fbe

OOOOOOH Yeah!

Office Chili Cook-off today!

Today in Beatles History

On this day in 1963 The Beatles recorded their debut album.

...the recording of which on February 11, 1963 was their first album session and is notable for 11 songs recorded in a mere 10 hours. "Twist and Shout", with John Lennon on lead vocals, was the last song recorded; producer George Martin knew Lennon's voice would suffer from the performance, so he left it until last, with only 15 minutes of scheduled recording time remaining.

Lennon was suffering from a cold, and was drinking milk and sucking on cough drops to soothe his throat. His coughing is audible on the album, as is the cold's effect on his voice. Even so, he produced a memorable vocal performance: a raucous, dynamic rocker. He later said his voice was not the same for a long time afterward, and that "every time [he] swallowed, it felt like sandpaper".



A second take was attempted, but Lennon had nothing left and it was abandoned. George Martin said, "I did try a second take ... but John's voice had gone."

Is Something In the Air?

Derek Jeter, Andrew Sullivan, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, and now Jon Stewart. Wtf?

Thoughts. I Have Them.

You'd be surprised how much of my day I spend thinking "wait, that wasn't Liam Neeson in Good Will Hunting?!?!"

File this under "Yet another thing I'm embarrassed to never have heard of..."

The Big Burn.

Biscuits! du Jour

This is fucking awesome:

At UNC, a school that's won two national championships in the last decade, the walk-on players develop a following of their own. Students learn their names and make up cheers for them. Bojangles' Chicken and Biscuits, a fast-food chain, runs a promotion when UNC scores more than 100 points at home: two sausage biscuits for $1. Early in the season, as Carolina beats up on an overmatched non-conference opponent, a walk-on usually scores the all-important 100th point as the student section thunders, "We want biscuits! We want biscuits!" The guys know this because they've witnessed it, because some of them have chanted, too. If they can't score the winning basket against Duke, if they can't have their jersey hoisted to the rafters, can they at least get biscuits?

And yes, remninds us all of a younger, but less sexy, Xmastime:

We went through a stretch wherein whenever we'd go to St. Benedict's in Richmond, we'd hit this restaurant called Duffy's which had biscuits that I loooooved. One such Sunday we were standing up to sing some hymn - me of course preparing to spend the next 3 minutes with my lips barely open acting as if there was sound coming out - and as we were standing up my father leaned slightly into me and out of the corner of his mouth like a ventriloquist said "SING for your biscuits, boy!" For one magical Sunday, I belted out the tunes like Aretha under a church tent made out of baked hams. Damn right I got my biscuits. And, of course, spent every Sunday for the next 7 years trying to not get stuck sitting next to Dad in church. If

Well. This Isn't Terrible.

Mick Jones caught short recently. Unbelievable.

A Conversation

Me: I'm a little worried about this 5-hour flight.
Him: Nah, the plane has wi-fi, probably tv. You'll be fine. 
Me: I'm not worried about being bored, I'm worried about being in a metal tube a coupla miles in the sky.
Him: Ah.

Fuck You, CNN

A headline like that is not only dismissive/disrespectful of Dean Smith's long, amazing career, it's fucking lazy.

HBCD

Today is Charles Dickens' 202nd birthday, which means I have to admit that besides any short stories, I've only ever read Great Expectations and a Tale of Two Cities. Both Top 5 books, but I mean wtf is wrong with me?

Do You Remember?

In case you were worrying you'd forgotten that Husker Du was the single least-sexiest great band of all time, here's a 120 Minutes clip from the week after they broke up.

Mukluks: New Haven Drew

My Return to Spartacus

A few years ago, including HERE, I raved about Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I've never been into violence on the screen, but it sucked me in right away (even if some of the violence was way too much and I had to turn away.) And all the violence was balanced by the great John Hannah's Batiatus anyway. I watched the prequel 2nd season even though they'd lost Andy Whitfield to cancer becasue, well, Gannicus was pretty awesome and a younger Battiatus was even MORE awesome.

But when the 3rd season came around, the actual sequel to the first season, I didn't feel much interest, mainly due to Whitfield being replaced and John Hannah being gone. That was almost three years ago; this morning for some reason I picked it back up on Netflix and have quickly burned through the first half of the season. Whoever Spartacus is is no Andy Whitfield but he's good enough, but the plot twists and turns every corner, along with further development of more characters so we don't need so much Spartacus anyway (like that fucking rat Asher) are making this season, in a word, delightful. Yes, the fight songs go on and on way too long and are the exact same, but what the hey. The 5th episode felt like a season finale and we're only halfway through, which means we can expect the second half to be fucking bonkers. A la VULTURE:

In decrying the way that some shows string along viewers in the name of long-term payoff, I argued that pacing is often the problem that befalls lesser shows. By sticking the events of “Libertus” smack dab in the middle of the season, DeKnight honors the story he is trying to tell by cresting it at exactly the proper time. Too many shows arbitrarily stall their stories in order to squeeze out more hours for air. But “Libertus” is the logical extension of these first four hours. Had this been the ninth or tenth episode of the season, Spartacus would have turned into one of those puppeteers that affixes life-sized dummies to each side in order to make the Romans think the rebellion had more fighters still remaining. But in planning the season-long story, this show took pains to create mini-arcs inside each episode that pushed every single person toward a crossroads by the fifth hour.

Had he [Spaartacus] moped around for an entire season only to get some balls in the final moments, we would have probably grown sick and tired of scene after scene of emo doubt. Another four episodes of Ilithyia asymptotically approaching divorce would have been frustrating. Another month of Oenomaus bitching about women might have grown intolerable. But by placing all these concerns within a half-season arc that will lead directly into a new one in the back half of Vengeance? All these elements suddenly become not only more tolerable, but also more narratively justified.

Of course, the best thing of all is the shocking return of Gannicus, which feels like Elvis joining The Beatles.

Booooooooooorn in the US Fucking A

Much has been made over the last 30 years, including on these...pages?... about Born in the USA being misunderstood. While I scoff now, I remember how easy it was to get swept up in the fist-pumpingness of the song; now even I wonder how Bruce himself could've let that happen. I do remember reading once that he had to choose between the released version and the original, stark, acoustic version and decided the former was just simply a better song. I agree, I love the song. But once we learned of the irony of that song, should we trust Bruce's other, supposedly non-ironic songs? E Street Paradox: Bruce Springsteen and sincerity:

If we’re supposed to believe that “Born in the U.S.A.” is intentionally ironic, what does that do to our understanding of the rest of Bruce’s songs? “The Promised Land,” from 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, for example, deals with very similar themes to “Born in the U.S.A.”, with a worker hard on his luck who nevertheless believes that one day things will get better, that there is a “promised land” to be had. Same story, different meanings: Can one be ironic, and the other sincere? How are we supposed to tell the difference?

But ultimately, the utter sincerity that makes him appear old-fashioned is simultaneously what makes him so postmodern. Sincerity is, by its very definition, a performance: an outward rendering of a supposed inner self. And that’s just what postmodern MTV culture thrived on: destroying the notion that there is – or ever can be – a “true self,” by performing in all kinds of ways. With his own brand of irony, then, Bruce fits right in with the Madonnas, Princes, and MJs of the decade: we can interpret him any way we want. We can make him in our own image. There might be a joke here somewhere, but, as he sings on “Dancing in the Dark,” “the laugh’s on me.”

I only know that my favorite ever Bruce moment of any show I've seen is at the first show I was ever at, when he ripped through the song with an anger that had everyone's vein on their foreheads popping:

 Now, for a few years up to this point Bruce has been playing Born in the USA in what some consider it's original form, the solo 12-string slide guitar version that was meant for Nebraska. So when between songs Bruce started talking about the war and I picked up that he was gonna play the song, I kinda thought "piss break." But he was talking about the mistake we were making, and then a fucking vein almost popped out of his forehead and he said "This is a song called Born in the USA" and Max' snare snapped and what followed was one of the angriest 5-6 minutes I've ever seen in a show before or since. Dude spit every word. And it wasn't cute, and nobody sang along, and it wasn't "anthemic." It's the song I most remember from that show, and it was bone-shattering. Like it was meant to be. Like it always was.

Still a great, kinda heart-breaking video of an America we wonder was even there in the first place.

Liberry

Article on what it's like to combine libraries when you move in with someone. I've never lived with anyone, but this struck me:

There was a period of two years in the ’90s when I moved pretty constantly between sublets here in New York. I put my books in storage so I wouldn’t have to move them every few months. When I missed them, I would go to my storage space and visit them. It felt a little like they were in jail, though it was me who’d done something wrong—I hadn’t found them a permanent home. Soon I found myself in used bookstores, buying what I called “reading copies” of favorites.

I only recently pulled my books out of storage after 2+ years in storage. Of all the things I had in storage, my books were what I missed most. Not just because I couldn't read them, but because for over two decades they'd always been (literally) around me. Always there, always comforting. I missed that like hell, and I'm glad we're back together.

Now maybe it'd be nice to share them with somebody. 

New Addition

5) I’m starting a “Dudes Whose Lives I’d Like to Have” list. So far I got Hef, Jimmy Buffet and Derek Jeter. As great as it’d be they each have their drawbacks, I suppose. Hef’s old. Buffett, you’d hafta sing ‘Margaritaville' every day. Jeter’s not 100% white. I guess it’s true, nobody’s perfect. - XMASTIME 

I'm starting to think it's time for me to add Gronk to this list.

This is Suspicious

Obviously I feel for this guy and want to help him, but my spidey senses are going off: how can a guy walk 21 miles a day and still be, and I quote, "pudgy in form"? Can I call bullshit on this, or does that make me the worst person in the world?

Thoughts. I Have Them.

Does Julian Fellowes play a game with himself wherein he makes sure to insert the word "impertinent" into every Downton Abbey episode?

Worst Commercial Ever?

Facts. I Have Them.

If Dickens finds himself sitting in an orange jumpsuit next to Isis, he's fucked.

Heaven & Hell

I don't believe in God or heaven of hell or all that jazz, but this bit re: why Heaven would actually be Hellish is pretty interesting:

6.  Ninety-eight percent of Heaven’s occupants are embryos and toddlers. Human reproduction is designed as a big funnel. Most fertilized eggs die before implanting, followed by embryos and fetuses that self-abort, followed by babies and then little kids. A serious but startling statistical analysis by researcher Greg S. Paul suggests that if we include the “unborn,” more than 98 percent of Heaven’s inhabitants, some 350 billion, would be those who died before maturing to the point that they could voluntarily “accept the gift of salvation.” The vast majority of the heavenly host would be moral automatons or robots, meaning they never had moral autonomy and never chose to be there. Christian believers, ironically, would be a 1 to 2 percent minority even if all 30,000-plus denominations of believers actually made it in.

Sounds like about 350B boring motherfuckers.