after a day of watching fully clothed politicians
With thousands of Republicans set to invade the city this summer, high-priced escorts and strippers are preparing for one grand old party.
Agencies are flying in extra call girls from around the globe to meet the expected demand during the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 gathering at Madison Square Garden ...
Clubs have started booking private parties for delegates anxious to ogle topless beauties after a day of watching fully clothed politicians boast about family values.
- JOSE MARTINEZ, "Sex pros get ready for party," new york daily news june 28, 2004
posted June 28, 2004 in politics, print, sexBooks Make You a Boring Person
It is easy to fetishize things that we imagine are on their way out. In the age of Comcast and America Online, books seem quaint, whimsical, imperiled and therefore virtuous. We assume that reading requires a formidable intellect. We forget that books were the television of previous years—by which I mean they were the source of passive entertainment as well as occasional enlightenment, of social alienation as well as private joy, of idleness as well as inspiration. Books were a mixed bag, and they still are. Books could be used or misused, and they still can be.
Writers themselves carried on about their danger. From Seneca in the first century to Montaigne in the 16th, Samuel Johnson in the 18th and William Hazlitt and Emerson in the 19th, writers have been at pains to remind their readers not to read too much. "Our minds are swamped by too much study," Montaigne wrote, "just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil." By filling yourself up with too much of other folks' thought, you can lose the capacity and incentive to think for yourself. We all know people who have read everything and have nothing to say. We all know people who use a text the way others use Muzak: to stave off the silence of their minds. These people may have a comic book in the bathroom, a newspaper on the breakfast table, a novel over lunch, a magazine in the dentist's office, a biography on the kitchen counter, a political expose in bed, a paperback on every surface of their home and a weekly in their back pocket lest they ever have an empty moment. Some will be geniuses; others will be simple text grazers: always nibbling, never digesting—ever consuming, never creating ...
Perhaps the best lesson of books is not to venerate them—or at least never to hold them in higher esteem than our own faculties, our own experience, our own peers, our own dialogues. Books are not the pure good that the festival crowds are sometimes told: you can learn anything from a book—or nothing. You can learn to be a suicide bomber, a religious fanatic or, indeed, a Bush supporter as easily as you can learn to be tolerant, peace-loving and wise. You can acquire unrealistic expectations of love as readily as, probably more readily than, realistic ones. You can learn to be a sexist or a feminist, a romantic or a cynic, a utopian or a skeptic. Most disturbing, you can train yourself to be nothing at all; you can float forever like driftwood on the current of text; you can be as passive as a person in an all-day movie theater, as antisocial as a kid holed up with a video game, and at the same time more conceited than both.
- CRISTINA NEHRING, "Books Make You a Boring Person," new york times sunday book review June 27, 2004
posted June 27, 2004 in printwindows error @ subway monitors
Political scientists now find it useful to distinguish between professionals and managers
The members of the aristocracy of mind produce ideas, and pass along knowledge. The members of the aristocracy of money produce products and manage organizations.
The economy has produced a large class of affluent knowledge workers—teachers, lawyers, architects, academics, journalists, therapists, decorators and so on—who live and vote differently than their equally well-educated but more business-oriented peers.
Political scientists now find it useful to distinguish between professionals and managers. Professionals, mostly these knowledge workers, tend to vote for Democrats ... Managers, who tend to work for corporations, brokerage houses, real estate firms and banks, tend to vote Republican.
Knowledge-class types are more likely to value leaders who possess what may be called university skills: the ability to read and digest large amounts of information and discuss their way through to a nuanced solution ... Managers are more likely to value leaders whom they see as simple, straight-talking men and women of faith. They prize leaders who are good at managing people, not just ideas. They are more likely to distrust those who seem overly intellectual or narcissistically self-reflective.
Republican administrations tend to be tightly organized and calm, in a corporate sort of way, and place a higher value on loyalty and formality. George Bush says he doesn't read the papers. That's a direct assault on the knowledge class and something no Democrat would say.
- DAVID BROOKS, "Bitter at the Top," new york times June 15, 2004
posted June 15, 2004 in politics, printexcellence is a sign of an industry under duress
Editorial excellence, Baker told M10, "is usually a sign of an industry under duress. They pick up the quality to get to the audience."
- Dana Goldstein, "When placing print ads, advertorial content trumps editorial excellence, marketing exec says," editorsweblog.org June 9, 2004
posted June 09, 2004 in printand to Manhattan
Audrey: Last night I went out to the meatpacking district with a guy friend who would undoubtedly like to be more than a friend. He spent $133 on dinner, and tipped $30. The reason I don't mind getting a lot of free dinners is that, in my opinion, in New York, if you are a not-unfortunate-looking young girl, no matter how bright you are, you'll always be a piece of ass first. Besides, I just tend to be attracted to older men, and to Manhattan.
- Anya Kamenetz, "Generation Debt - The New Economics of Being Young: SpaghettiOs, Mom's Credit Card, and Centipedes in the Basement," village voice June 8, 2004
posted June 08, 2004 in printyard beer
One of the more modest but curious trends in the billion-dollar U.S. beer market has been the sharp rise in sales of working-class lagers like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Hamm's, Piels and Old Style.
A recent New York Times Magazine story pegged the trend to young urbanites who are protesting the suburban chicness of microbrews and the marketing power of the three large U.S. breweries. That's especially the case with Pabst, which has become the Ralph Nader of canned beers—the anti-choice of young independents ...
The term "yard beer" came up as Murphy and O'Brien were refining their vision of the bar and its clientele ...
"I think they drink Pabst for a variety of reasons," Parr said. "Some drink it because it's cheap. Others say it's the beer their father or grandfather drank. And some drink it because it has an image of being noncorporate."
Then the joke is on them, in a way. These days Pabst isn't even a brewery; it's a company based in San Antonio that comprises teams of marketers, a few dozen managers and several executives. The brewery closed in the early 1990s.
- TIMOTHY FINN, "Blue-collar beers are booming," detroit free press june 8, 2004 (via the note)
posted June 08, 2004 in crap, printpainful periods and migraines
Talk soon turned to that other lodestar, celebrities. "We have a huge movie industry in India," said Payal Kohli, who edits the Cosmo edition there. "Any star we pick up from Bollywood just sells. But they're the fussiest people. To tell them we are shooting the bang-on cover when they know their profile is better—it's a nightmare." Felicetti said Italian magazines typically sell better when they put models on the cover. Cosmo Italy, she added, uses upbeat cover treatments to distinguish itself from its competitors, which tend to favor moody imagery. "In Italy, all the models look like they have painful periods and migraines."
- Jeff Bercovici, "Memo Pad: Planet Cosmo ... Fire, Dance With Me ... TV on the Radio ..." wwd June 8, 2004
posted June 08, 2004 in printstrange maintenance work
Italy's largest electric company pulled the plug on two left-wing radio stations the morning of U.S President George W. Bush's visit to Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
The outage—described as "strange maintenance work" by Enel, Italy's 60 percent state-owned utility—forced Radio Cittą Aperta and Radio Onda Rossa off the air as they were preparing to broadcast extensive coverage of street protests against the president's visit.
"The stations lost electricity for four hours, all the morning, during several 'actions' of the civil disobedience movement," Francesco Diasio told MediaChannel by email. Diasio, managing director of Amisnet, a community radio agency supporting several Italian radio stations, was working with Radio Cittą Aperta (Open City Radio) and Radio Onda Rossa (Red Wave Radio), in concert with several other radio networks in Italy, to broadcast up-to-the-minute reports on the Rome protests.
A spokesman for Enel declined to comment on the Monte Cavo outage.
- Timothy Karr, "Plug Pulled on Rome Radio Stations Covering Bush Protests," MediaChannel.org june 4, 2004
posted June 08, 2004 in politics, printworries:
- that i need coffee in the morning to do anything
- that i need pot at night to relax and think about things
only goddamn eels
...and what would you think if you were walking down the canal with tunde and kyp in the middle of a london/friedfish/sunglasses night .... when you came across the guy who fishes using glow worms for bait , and couldnt stop complaing about "only goddamn eels!" ... i can tell you this much... what you would think was exactly not what i wound up thinking... i was sure the walk would do me good.. i have been on this diet , you see, where i only eat foods that i am willing to marry the taste/smell with a memory ... which led me to bring these japanese ricecrackers [which are filled with peanuts] to the canal in the first place.... so i see the glow worm being tossed out from the dark , then splashing in the water...
- david, "completely surrounded by no trees," youngliars.blogspot.com june 8, 2004
posted June 07, 2004 in music, printA.J. will soon be whacked by his mother
The FBI dispenses with Tony's Johnny Sack problem, and Tony dispenses with Johnny Sack's Tony problem (why do these guys always hide where people can find them? Tony B's non-hideout hideout rings very true to life, doesn't it?); Christopher cleans his own self up; and A.J.—who, if there is any justice in the world, will soon be whacked by his mother—finds a career in event planning.
- Jeffrey Goldberg, "Mob Experts on The Sopranos, Week 13: Anyone Who Would Do Five Years for You?" slate june 7, 2004
posted June 07, 2004 in printsecond mention of magic wands in the ny times today
It's like somehow he's been able to preserve the work habits of a really unsuccessful writer well into his success.
- ira glass on david sedaris, reported by WARREN ST. JOHN, "Turning Sour Grapes Into a Silk Purse," new york times June 6, 2004
fiscal
But the markets should pay closer attention to a structural problem, said Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley.
"The big issue they are missing is that imbalances matter," Mr. Roach said. "We have massive trade and budget deficits in the United States and huge surpluses in Asia. I am not trained to wave a wand over these huge imbalances and say this is the way the world works now."
If Mr. Roach had his way, the leaders would focus on two things: "The United States needs to be called to task for running reckless monetary and fiscal policies and fostering an environment that has allowed consumers to live well beyond their means. And the rest of the world has to be called to task for failing to stimulate domestic demand."
- market week, "Will the G-8 Look Beneath The Surface?" new york times June 6, 2004
posted June 06, 2004 in politics, printcultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you
While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being exoticized into eternal juvenilia. There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.
- toni morrison, commencement speech at wellesley, quoted by SAM DILLON, "Threats to Rights and Financial Barriers to Poor Are Cited at Graduations," New york times June 6, 2004
Here come the trucks
There is Spec. Joseph M. Darby, whose anonymous note would first bring the Abu Ghraib abuse to light and who would tell investigators that Graner once said to him, "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' " And Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, who would tell investigators that in one incident he witnessed, "Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked the detainee unconscious," and then said, "Damn, that hurts."
And Pfc. Lynndie R. England, who would tell investigators that Graner "would lean on [detainees], push them around, mostly he would yell at them and put them in physically controlling positions," and that she is pregnant with Graner's child.
Here come the trucks.
- David Finkel and Christian Davenport, "Records Paint Dark Portrait Of Guard," washington post June 5, 2004
posted June 05, 2004 in politics, print