http://mollyknight.tumblr.com/

I saw this the other evening and was absolutely floored. It is...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:52:15 -0500

I saw this the other evening and was absolutely floored. It is an extremely poignant snapshot of MJ right before his death, and he’s shockingly coherent and capable. The piece should be shown to the jury deciding the fate of Dr. Conrad Murray. Jackson never should have died. I urge all of you to see it. I’ll probably go again.

"Initially, it was like, “What?!” But Thom Yorke did it, and we like him. It’s like: “If dad does it,..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:48:23 -0500

“Initially, it was like, “What?!” But Thom Yorke did it, and we like him. It’s like: “If dad does it, it’s OK, right?” Radiohead are like parents of good modern rock ‘n’ roll in certain ways. They paved that path.”

- Chris Taylor, of Grizzly Bear, on why the band decided to record a song for the Twilight album. (via crumbler) (via gloriahawa)

Jessica gave me the New Moon soundtrack yesterday and I really enjoy it. Also: I saw Twilight and loved it. The dialogue was as awful as the make-up job on Robert Pattinson—but it was an immensely entertaining movie and the cinematography was excellent. I had no expectations whatsoever, so I’m sure that helped..

"The musical instrument most like a typewriter is the piano, both mechanically and emotionally. I..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:45:38 -0500

“The musical instrument most like a typewriter is the piano, both mechanically and emotionally. I love (or at least like) every Tori Amos album, but this is the one I most often play when I’m working. ‘China’ seems a bit histrionic now, but that song blew my mind once. ‘Happy Phantoms’ did, too. To be honest, they still blow my mind now, if I try hard enough. I also really like the Crucify EP. Her cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is pretty dumb, but ‘Winter’ is an extremely moving song. It makes me want to pet a cat.”

- Chuck Klosterman on Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes (“12 Albums That Kick Writer’s Block”) (via hailthepagesturning)

Well. I should try this. Because I’ve been producing a whole lot of nothing lately.

I’m thinking about it.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:54:10 -0500

I’m thinking about it.

Et tu, Mike Montgomery?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:23:18 -0500

As far as I can tell the USC men’s basketball team only has six eligible scholarship players for the first half of the season because of all the drama surrounding their program. And the Stanford men’s team is STILL picked to finish behind them in the standings, while Cal is favored to win the conference. What a sad state of affairs.

H1N1

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:58:00 -0500

OK. At least five of my friends have been diagnosed with the swine flu. All of them are going to live (I think). What is going on? Why am I the only person I know not freaking out about this? Isn’t it just a nastier variation of the same bug that goes around every year? It seems like if your immune system is otherwise fine then you won’t end up in the ICU with the piggy flu. Am I wrong? Can someone who is more qualified to speak about this please post some answers? I always get sick, yet I’m powering right through this outbreak unscathed. I almost feel left out.

thedanimal: If only there were some sort of trend to be gleaned...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:48:31 -0500

thedanimal:

If only there were some sort of trend to be gleaned from this data … (From this paper (via))

How about: civil rights shouldn’t be voted on by the general public. Because the general public can’t be trusted. (See presidential election: 2000, 2004).

Code Blue

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:44:36 -0500

I went to the Apple store this morning at the Beverly Center after 24 hours of my iPhone not turning on. They said my little guy has fallen into a coma.

Literally. The geek said coma.

So now they’re shocking it back to life. And before I handed it over “Para Emergenica” flashed across the screen. I really, really hope I don’t lose all my numbers, and that my little bilingual digital appendage pulls through!

Your prayers are much-appreciated during this difficult time.

Bloc Party to enter 'terrible solo album' phase of career

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:16:24 -0500

Bloc Party to enter 'terrible solo album' phase of career:

crumbler:

The move represents a logical next step following their ‘sophomore slump’ and ‘third album that improved on the second without attracting any new fans’ phases. (via)

sportscentr: nbaplayoffs2009: Toni Braxton & Ron...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:08:05 -0500

sportscentr:

nbaplayoffs2009:

Toni Braxton & Ron Artest

Sometimes it seems like the Lakers are intentionally upping the difficulty of their title defense, just to keep things interesting. First, replacing Ariza with Artest. Then, Lamar Odom and the Kardashians. Finally, it looks like Toni Braxton, the only R&B singer that has actively broken up an NBA team, is somehow in the mix as well. She originally caused the Mavs to trade both Jim Jackson and Jason Kidd when they got into a fight over her - what’s going to happen if she’s photographed riding on Andrew Bynum’s shoulders in a few weeks?

I read on CNN this morning that Monica of “The Boy is Mine” fame is looking to make a comeback with a reality show. Perhaps she and Braxton could do a remix with Ron-Ron as the man in the middle.

crumbler: Something called Loft Life Magazine — “The Loftstyle...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:01:38 -0500

crumbler:

Something called Loft Life Magazine — “The Loftstyle Guide to Life in the City” — gets a tour of Wilco’s Chicago loft. The loft pops up a lot in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and was used more recently to record parts of Andrew Bird’s record and Wilco’s own “You and I” duet with Feist. It is very beautiful and reportedly filled with dozens of rare and spectacular instruments, such as Nels Cline’s Extended Wankmaster guitar with 16 whammy bars (perfect for soloing) and a set of bongo drums with Jay Farrar’s face painted on the skins.

(Incidentally, it’s kind of hard to see where Loft Life Magazine goes from here. “You guys know any other famous lofts?” “Um … Didn’t Friends take place in a loft?” “Yes, Alan, we’ve done four stories on it in the last year.” “Well shit.”) (via)

The simple fact that Loft Life Magazine exists is the most encouraging piece of news I’ve heard about the state of print media in months. (Don’t ruin the dream by telling me it’s online only.)

jordanreid: The wonderful people at Biscuits and Bath contacted...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:57:57 -0500

Azure

Azure

Aura

Aura

jordanreid:

The wonderful people at Biscuits and Bath contacted me to let me know about these two beautiful girls, Azure and Aura, both of whom are currently at the Upper East Side B&B location and are looking for loving homes. They were rescued from a shelter down South, where they were about to be euthanized.

Azure is an eight-week-old lab/pit mix, and is super playful and affectionate - she would do fine in a home where she’s the only dog, or would welcome some brothers and sisters. Aura is a twelve-week-old lab/terrier mix, and is incredibly affectionate with humans, but would probably do best in a home where she is the only dog (she’s a spotlight hog).

The adoption fee for the dogs is $750, and includes the following (a value of $2,028, not including the invaluable addition to your family):

-The dog (of course!)
-50% spay/neutering (Including blood work)
-Vaccinations (the puppies are already up to date)
-20% additional puppy vaccines
-Follow up vet office visits
-Microchipping
-A one year membership at Biscuits and Bath
-50% off a 6 session training class
-One complimentary grooming
-One month of unlimited day care
-A bag of puppy food
-Identification tag
-NYC Dog license registration

Biscuits & Bath also has five other dogs available at their Greenwich Village location, and is in the process of rescuing several more dogs from kill shelters in the South (pictures of all dogs available for adoption can be viewed at www.biscuitsandbath.com). This company is doing a beautiful thing, so please, if you’re looking for an addition to your family, consider adopting a rescue.

I’m not letting Pirate see this post because he would bark in my face until I went and adopted one of these pups. If you are in the market for a dog, and you like the idea of rescuing one from the front lines of euthanasia, call these people. $750 is an incredible deal for all that’s included. Hell, day care alone in NYC is $35 a day—and they’re giving you a free month. Do it. Call them. I would if I could handle two dogs on my own. (Which I can’t with all the travel).

I know you're all waiting with bated breath to see if Michael Bloomberg will be re-elected mayor of New York City for the 8th time

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:13:44 -0500

But I have no idea how I feel about the man. I’m wary of any billionaire’s ability to do what’s best for the masses, but people I tend to agree with think he’s great. And I just got an email from the freelancers union telling me to vote for him because he’s the candidate who will best protect my fiscal interests. But then I read what Alex Pareene wrote on Gawker and it’s pretty brilliant. I just wish he’d offered an alternative to MB.

One gets the sense that none of this really matters. That anyone who has scratched enough backs and kissed enough babies to find himself a candidate for major office is the kind of person who is easily bought and sold. One of the main reasons I stumped like hell for Obama was because I figured the younger he was, the less of his soul was owed to evil, blood-sucking corporations. Bloomberg isn’t young. But he is rich enough to tell everyone to piss off. Which I guess can be a good thing in politics—assuming he spends his own money on re-election campaigns.

I just don’t know. Read Pareene below and tell me what you think. I excerpted the whole thing.

"(Today) is Election Day! You will probably not vote, because there are no contested races for..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:01:00 -0500

“

(Today) is Election Day! You will probably not vote, because there are no contested races for anything important in 90% of the nation. But if you are a New Yorker, we have one message: don’t vote for Michael Bloomberg.

You know those idiots who don’t know anything about politics but think it sounds smart to say “I am a social liberal and an economic conservative?” Bloomberg is the candidate for them, if they love a liberal nanny state and a conservative religious fervor for the eternal goodness of private enterprise.

For all the talk of Bloomberg the power-player who at least gets things done without worrying about the unions and special interests, he’s been unable to win any political battle with anyone he couldn’t literally buy off. Like Sheldon Silver, who (thankfully) killed the West Side Stadium and (annoyingly) ended all that “Congestion Pricing” talk. And those unions and special interests were just bought off, which worked fine back when the boom whose end Bloomberg never saw coming was in full swing.

And about that stadium: what the fuck was that? And the Olympics thing? After bitching about Giuliani’s disgraceful subsidizing of the fucking Yankees, Bloomberg both turns around completely on that particular issue and attempts to build the fucking Jets a stadium, so that New York could get an Olympics that it did not want. And that failed, and everyone forgot about it. Meanwhile: 40,000 people in shelters! Bloomberg could personally buy every single one of those people an apartment in a vacant Williamsburg luxury condo building and still have enough left over to bribe a City Council member into supporting his fifth term.

And those luxury Williamsbug condo buildings, by the way, that stand vacant? Yes, well, that was part of this brilliant plan to utilize rezoning to spur the free market (which always allocates resources more efficiently than anything else in the history of civilization but sometimes it needs government help, like with tax breaks and stuff) to create affordable housing all over the waterfront. This did not work, as developers decided to just not bother to build all those affordable housing units they were supposed to build. More than 2,200 promised new affordable apartments in Williamsburg and Greenpoint have turned out to be 768, 20 percent of which are renovations of apartments that were already affordable. There are lots more of these stories.

His record on housing, like his record on nearly everything having to do with the outer boroughs and poverty and human beings who make less than $100,000 a year, has been a ridiculous disgrace. His entire philosophy of development solving everything turned out to be precisely, 100% wrong, and suddenly the city itself was driving the real estate boom, driving up land prices to absurd levels across the boroughs and tearing down neighborhoods only to replace them with vacant lots and half-filled cheaply built hideous high-rises once the bottom fell out of the City Hall-inflated market. But hey, we got the High Line and 311! So you can sleep in that fancy park while you call 311 asking if there is room in a shelter because you can no longer afford your home.

Eight years into the Bloomberg administration, Ground Zero is a still a hole that everyone continues fighting about.

The MTA has raised fares while cutting service (without actually cutting service, officially—it’s just that whatever line you happen to ride is suddenly experiencing a whole lot of track work every single goddamn weekend).

The Gays: still not married! And also a lot of them are getting beaten up on the streets these days for some reason?

Bloomberg is also the beneficiary of the most friendly news coverage of any big city mayor in the nation. Easily. It helps that, you know, he is a media mogul, himself, and he is good, close, personal friends with the three publishers who run the newspapers that went after each one of his predecessors for shit they’ve let slide under this mayor, because they know he’s a good, decent guy, at heart, and the only one who can Fix New York, because of his Money.

Can you imagine how the Post would’ve blown up if David Dinkins lied about taking the Subway to work every day? The Daily News response to discovering that John Lindsay flew to Bermuda every weekend?

Let’s talk about the cops, for a second: they are still operating under Giuliani levels of complete disregard for the law. They are getting drunk and running people over and shooting unarmed black people and sodomizing people in subway stations. The Civilian Complaint Review Board has become a joke, unless your case gets a lot of publicity. There’s obviously no accountability, whatsoever, and no attempt to recruit and train more cops from the communities they actually police. The NYPD remains, primarily, the home of roided-out white people from outside the city with a great deal of contempt for civil liberties. The Mayor always sounds properly upset when some of them rape someone, but he’s never done a damn thing to rein them in or change the culture.

What he has done is Keep Us Safe by never once giving a shit about Civil Liberties. The cops stop and frisk thousands more people every year, your 4th Amendment rights do not apply in the Subway system, and expensive and completely ineffective new rings of cameras are going up across Manhattan.

Bloomberg deserves to be run out of town on an inadequately funded public rail line for the 2004 GOP convention alone. Remember that ridiculous farce? No, of course not, no one does, besides the thousands of people improperly spied on, arrested, harassed, and detained by the NYPD. All of this was completely illegal. No heads rolled.

One more special bonus factoid: New York leads the world in marijuana arrests! Specifically, marijuana arrests of black people!

And he is personally a jerk. He is a thin-skinned, unpleasant, sanctimonious asshole. His company is being sued for a culture of sexual discrimination that plaintiffs say Bloomberg himself contributed to. He is a tremendous dick to reporters whenever he gets cranky. He is fucking race-baiting with Rudy Giuliani again, because why not?

He has been a shitty mayor and he does not deserve the support of anyone who claims to be a liberal. Though what all of his most destructive missteps as mayor have in common is that they do not in any way upset or inconvenience the well-off self-professed liberals who support him. Besides maybe a couple Critical Mass riders arrested in illegal sweeps. (Though he sure does like bike lanes, so it’s a wash, right?)

We cannot encourage you to vote for the Democrat in the race, because even we still aren’t sure if we’ll go for him or the much more delightful Billy Talen. Just don’t fucking vote for Michael Bloomberg.

”

- Alex Pareene, Gawker

Mmmmmmm

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:44:14 -0500

Mmmmmmm

11/2/09

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:02:00 -0500

isgossipgirlnewtonight:

YES.

Thank sweet baby Jesus for a new Gossip Girl tonight. Now that I’m FINALLY caught up on the two programs I watch in the fall—GG and Mad Men—I’ve restored a sense of normalcy in my life— where the setting, characters, and plot seem to change daily.

Things are really, really strange right now. I’m back out in Orange County after my month-long work trip, basically writing and sleeping. The changing of time zones (along with the time change) has mucked my body up something awful. A voice once stentorian is now a bit meek and muffled. (Bonus points to those of you who know where that line comes from).

Right now I’m sitting in Starbucks trying to pour out 1,200 words about someone I interviewed months ago. This is what happens when deadlines are extended. Momentary relief is traded for down-the-road pain. This kind of profile usually takes me two hours. I’ve been staring at a blank screen for a weekend. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I do, however, believe in laziness, apathy, and exhaustion. I’m experiencing all three.

The last month has been an emotional roller coaster. Be glad I didn’t take you along with me. But the ground is much firmer now. The hot chocolate is delicious and the sun is warm. Pirate still licks my face first thing in the morning, and the Yankees are primed to knock the Phillies out tonight—which pleases me. I do not like the Phillies.

But I won’t be there to see it. I’ll be watching Blair’s and Chuck’s dance of deception while Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez exchange chastened man-hugs and hoist a trophy over their perma-tanned, overpaid bobble heads. Because as soon as the Dodgers were knocked out last week I lost interest in the whole damn thing. Funny how you can invest so much emotional energy into something every day for months and months and then poof. Gone.

I guess I’ve been doing that a lot lately, and I’m frightened by how little I miss a person I thought I loved. Maybe I didn’t. Or maybe I did—but then one day a line was crossed and a switch was finally flipped. Poof. Gone.

This way of coping with loss is certainly disorienting, but at least I’m not going to spend my evening watching another team celebrate, feeling sad about what could have been. My eyes are firmly fixed on the possibilities of next season. And, for today anyway: Ed Westwick’s outstanding nostrils.

One-eighty

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:01:43 -0500

Sitting here contemplating the 4,000 word piece I’m about to write on Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp and the future of the Los Angeles Dodgers. This is a long way from the 50-word music reviews I was churning out by the dozen four years ago. Life is weird. I have more assignments than I can wrap my brain around right now, but I’m gonna make it happen. Sorry my blog has (temporarily) turned into a glorified flickr account. Mush mush mush.

And then because it was so ridiculous that any of this was...

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:40:38 -0400

And then because it was so ridiculous that any of this was happening (nay, encouraged!) in a restaurant, I fed him with a fork. I realize my chronicling this sequence probably means I needto have children, like, yesterday. But then a child would never be so good at a restaurant.

He sat patiently while I sliced the goods.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:37:34 -0400

He sat patiently while I sliced the goods.

Unsurprisingly, he went for the complimentary pup hamburger...

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:36:43 -0400

Unsurprisingly, he went for the complimentary pup hamburger patty.