convenient stereotypes for the new year

i loathe (but maybe love to hate) modern love, the most insipid addition to sunday styles, of which my college idol once said, "what is the point of that section? seems like anyone with a prada bag can get in it nowadays".

anyway, i usually try to ignore modern love but the premise of this week's column was irresistible: a divorced 46-year-old woman decides to marry her friend's brother. sounds boring and predictable, right? joke's on you - the friend and brother are chinese, and the latter lives in china. having never met the brother, the intrepid divorcee flies to china, says yes to the man's halting proposal, "do you want to marry?" and brings him back to albany, new york.

this discomfiting column appears to be an exploration of the old cliche, "all chinese people are bad drivers". and guess what, it's true! not only that, they speak poor english, albeit in an adorable and semi-exotic fashion (His voice was balm to my nerves, and the monthly rice-paper letters were always from “the brootom” of his heart) and all white people who travel to asia feel like scarlett johansson in my least favorite movie ever (describing the beijing airport: This was unlike an American crowd, where you feel harried, even accosted. There, I sailed comfortably through a sea of introverts.).

ick. i just thought of my first new year's resolution: stop reading modern love.

peanuuuut peanut butter!

while in the ATL my family and i decided to pay a visit to the carter center, since jimmy carter (i think) remains my dad's favorite president. sure, stagflation, but who remembers such things nowadays? anyway, i took a few photos:

yes please!

peanuts, teeth - really don't need anything else. amazing how it actually resembles him, kind of like that munch muppet.

i wish they'd sold these posters in the gift shop. i sure would've bought one.

the infamous cardigan.

then we proceeded to the MLK jr. museum, which was about a mile away. unfortunately, the ebenezer baptist church was closed due to renovations and all of the tours of his birth home were full. i got a photo of the church, though.

ethics or butter?

so...i have a lot of things on my mind now, one of which is how actually sad the whole jamie lynn pregnancy debacle is. was she just doomed, considering the main influences in her life? will her mysterious/premarital sex having/churchgoing/age undetermined boyfriend be charged with statutory rape? most importantly, is there any hope at all for ali lohan?

i've complained from time to time about how bored i've been of late by indie rock. perhaps this is a combination of my own laziness, which has pretty much stopped my pursuit of new music, and the fact that a lot of bands who showed promise seemed to putter out. anyway, i gave a listen to many of the songs on the pitchfork 100 list [insert c4ts' disapproval here], in an uncharacteristic show of...i guess initiative? well, not really - after all, i'm listening to music culled and compiled by a bunch of smug know-it-alls. i'm just a lemming. harvey lemming.

anyway, listening to these gave me some hope, although a fun single doth not a great album make. and c4ts, i wrote this in my comment to your post of jens lekman, but the one single pitchfork chose for this list actually made me angry. i had to stop listening. i find him to be insufferable.

oh yes, i meant to ramble on some about the korean election. i'm a bit torn about this guy. i like his hardscrabble background, the fact that he showed signs of an anti-authoritarian bent from an early age by protesting the government's desire to improve diplomatic relations with japan. not to mention, i always questioned the efficacy of this so-called "sunshine policy". sure, it yielded the lone nobel laureate in korean history (i believe), but kim jong-il be crazy, dude. he's starving his own citizens. call me cynical, but he's not going to capitulate bc you offer some niceties.

anyway, i've not yet spoken with my parents about this, but i think my dad's stance is that "well, lee's the lesser of the evils". but is he? what about this corruption charge? do the koreans really want a president rendered impotent by an indictment?

this lee guy seems very result-oriented, sometimes bending the rules to suit his needs and goals. i'm not sure if i can be fully on board with that. i understand you have to grease some palms to make things happen, but haven't we had enough corruption in korea?

btw c4ts, my friend at work today pointed out exactly why i feel uncomfortable with haircut 400 (even beyond this very perturbing rumor of an extramarital affair. lord, please tell me this man wasn't cheating on his CANCER-STRICKEN WIFE). i admire his message and i think his whole "son of a millworker" thing isn't a shtick. it's damn hard to be in the running for president when you're the son of a millworker. but you know, john edwards just seems to really enjoy his money and flaunt it: his ginormous house, his extravagant haircuts, his general opulence. his actions and his message are completely misaligned and, yeah, i know, i can't vote, but i can't trust this dude either.

thought you'd like to know...

here is a list of notable things from my firm's holiday party (which was held at the UN a few nights ago and, thankfully, not at the hard rock cafe again).

1. it featured "cuisines around the world" - "asia" (moo shoo pork or something, which was tasty, some type of noodle dish which was not. inexplicably, the sushi was in a separate room), "americas" (mini burgers, quesadillas containing what i said was chicken and what my officemate said was potato), and some others, but who am i kidding? i'm at a party with coworkers: more alcohol, pleeze.

2. people are really into the electric slide.

3. somehow they got the rights to put on a display of fireworks over the east river. i was pretty impressed. well, mostly because they coordinated the fireworks to music, including some michael bolton song i couldn't place (something about "belonging here" or "living the dream" - couldn't google it either) and...chariots of fire. very totalitarian. or maybe olympian?

4. i had a good time, but there will be no photos of me dancing by myself on my firm's intranet this time around, as there were last year. slowly i'm winning my dignity back, one fewer hip gyration at a time.

on a semi-related note, i thought that "left behind", that popular series of apocalyptic christian books, was just that, religious. well, who knew it had such a pointed political agenda? i read in an article (was it here?) that apparently, according to these books, after jesus' second coming the secretary general of the UN is the antichrist? is ban ki moon aware of this?

it's gettin' gettin' gettin' kinda hectic

in the blogosphere. c4ts, can we possibly compete with a blimp? stay tuned...

Ebony and Ivory, Kufi and Yarkmulke

I know quibbling with the New York Post editors over the reductive, bigoted ways in which they label people is futile through and through, but still, after seeing this, I have a quibble. Now I know all they wanted was for me to enjoy that warm, velvety feeling around my heart that some call the Christmas (err, holiday) spirit--I mean, actual evidence in a "major" (kidding, LOL) "newspaper" supporting the notion that maybe, just maybe, I (and my ilk) aren't a bunch of gibberish-babbling, virgin-seeking, freedom-haters--but, alas, no such feeling.

Ignoring the preliminary questions (e.g., what kind of person, upon getting the shit kicked out of him by neo-Nazis, strikes faux-prize-fighter poses like the Post is his Facebook page?; when the one attacker gets out of prison, having served time for his previous hate-crime, will the military accept his application? (rhetorical, LOL); it really took five people to write/contribute to this story??), can I just say this: this whole affair is deemed newsworthy (or as newsworthy as it is) because a "modest" and "hero[ic]" Muslim saw fit to help a couple of Jews avoid the wrath of psychopaths--that is, a Muslim behaved so far out of stereotypical character he merits "serious reportage" (3rd LOL). Now I know the Post would've run a story anyway, even if the guy weren't Bangladeshi, but the angle of the reporting is what interests me.

And yet, despite the angle, and though my heart isn't warmed--Lord Christ in heaven above--I know this is actually progress for our fat, dumb country. That said, what I still want for ChristmukkahEid (I added the Ay-rab holiday too, like it matters to anybody!; 4th LOL) is for people to stop asking where are all the moderate Muslims? How come they don't speak out? No one's given us much a forum in which to, and the New York Post is genuinely astonished that in the city of New York even one of us exists.

there goes our book deal

how are we gonna compete with this, c4ts?

bright ideas welcome.

donn-grosfeld/grosfeld-donn part 1

this marks the beginning of interweb detritus's first commissioned wedding coverage, which is going to put eva longoria and tony parker to shame. this is an awesome responsibility, and if nothing else, c4ts and i take our responsibilities very seriously.

anyway, the journey toward the union of anat tsipora grosfeld and anthony alexander donn begins on the upper east side, where anat's bridal shower was held (too bad, boyz. ladies only). the invite looked like this (sorry, don't know how to rotate):

there were a few missteps along the way. i dunno, i'd never been to a wedding shower before, so i politely asked the hostess in my RSVP whether i had to bring gifts that complied with the theme. apparently my question was too obvious because nobody responded. i was on my own.

i got off the crosstown bus in advance of the party's start time. i vaguely recalled reading that it's rude to show up early to a party and since i figured this would be a proper event (despite the fact i wore jeans--oops. i think the fact i remembered to bring a camera redeemed me somewhat), i decided to wander a little.

well, thank god i frolicked. look at this store i saw on lexington avenue.

unfortch, catherine keener wasn't there, and both sadly and kind of predictably, it had gone out of business:

onto more interesting things. the party was held at a very lovely penthouse:

FDR couldn't have had a cozier fireplace (real, working).

some of the many illuminati - bride's mom and groom's mom, from left to right:

bellport girls:

what more can you ask for - pink champagne, gifts, and cheesesticks. man, i wish i had some cheesesticks right about now.
delicious fondant cake (i think that's what it's called. anyway, it was mmm good):

anat received a breakfast in bed tray.

apparently there is some tradition where you gather all of the ribbons from the bride's gifts and make either a hat or a bouquet that will be worn/used at the wedding rehearsal. yeah, i don't get it either. white people. sasha, who made the wedding invites (about which we will blog as well at a later point), made a rather impressive headpiece, especially considering the constraints.

anat with anna banana, who is in the wedding:

anat and her mom! cute:

vows, shmows. i think we've one-upped the new york times on this one. yeah, take that, gray lady.

Separated at Birth: Ron Paul and Magneto

Magneto tried to foist his mutinous mutant-centrism onto an unprincipled and bigoted America in X-Men: The Last Stand. He had an army at his disposal and Uncle Jesse's ex-wife as his Karl Rove. He could bend things with his mind grapes.

Ron Paul's kinda the same, except instead of mutant-centrism, he's got a dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged; instead of an army, he's got fanboys with paypal accounts; and instead of Mystique, he's got, I don't know, a cabal of neo-Nazis.

I Heart Huckabees Was a Terrible Fucking Movie

So, I was reading about the Republican debate last night, and I got to thinking about this old Onion article, specifically, as it relates to Mike Huckabee. I know "What kind of a country..." is one of the most over-used beginnings to a rhetorical question in this, the Age of the Bush Doctrine, but still: What the fuck kind of country allows a hard-core nutter like Huckabee (anti-evolution, pro-guns, anti-abortion, pro-Guantanamo, anti-gay, anti-First-Amendment, anti-stem-cell-research) to assume the mantle of the nice-guy, uniter candidate on the following twin bases? He can make a decent Chuck Norris joke, and he doesn't want to stab all undocumented Mexicans in their hearts.

At this point, I can't prognosticate as to which congenital liar the corn-shuckers are going to pick out of their teeth and spit back at our fat, dumb country, but let it be said, you won't unite me into your camo-wearing, Darwinism-denying, Jenny Craig administration, asshole. And, as for you, "liberal" media, yeah, I'm sure you're right; this time around the guy you want to get a beer with isn't going to turn out to be the next guy to put roofies in our PBR.

Speaking of rednecks, this reminds me: I stopped in a gas station restroom somewhere between Austin and San Antonio last week, and as I was engaging in my business, I heard a guy say to no one in particular, "You think in Mexico, they got bathrooms that say bannoh on top and bathroom underneath it?" As I went to the sink to wash my hands, he repeated this probing query into world cultures, and, I noticed, this time to me specifically.

Now, I weighed my responses. I could've said, (1) "Que, puta? No hablo Ingles;" (2) "Dude, look at me. Do you really think I'm on your team?"; (3) or nothing at all. I went with (3), but he kept on keeping on, and even added, "What the hell is a bannoh anyway?" This part I didn't quite understand. He hates Mexicans so much he's unable to logically reason that they would have a separate word for the very facility we were standing in? Shit, that's some hate.

Anyway, I ended up telling him, "it means bathroom, and wherever you're going with this, I'm probably not going to agree with you."

Then he lost his shit and slurred, "I'm entitled to my opinion!"

To which, I naturally responded, "And I'm entitled to think you're an ignorant redneck." And then I got the hell out of there, hoping he wouldn't spray buckshot into my face. Anyway, the point is, I messed with Texas, and it felt really fucking good.

did i do thaaaat

for whatever reason, the following information hit me pretty hard:
Jaleel White is 31

i mean, the olsen twins being old enough to buy and sell a multi-million dollar townhouse is one thing, but when did urkel age?

i gotta go lie down or something.

Sad. Sadder. Saddest.

U to the N-izzo

yeah, i like jigga-man. "threat" on the black album is one of my favorite songs featuring sound effects (shooting bullets) and i think american gangster would be a worthwhile purchase. turns out i'm not the only korean who appreciates hova. ban ki moon, yes, the secretary general of the UN, issued the following statement about jay-z:

i’m proud that this award has been given to Jay-Z for his work with the United Nations and MTV on “Water for Life”.

My man Jay-Z has been a wonderful partner to the United Nations, and a champion of those in need around the world.

More than one billion people have no access to safe drinking water. Two billion lack adequate sanitation. As a result, thousands of children die every day from diseases that could be prevented.

When world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals, they pledged to change all that. They promised, by the year 2015, to cut by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.

Let us hold them to that promise.

Let us free all those without water and sanitation from this hard knock life.

Let us give them water for life.

hey, who said blacks and koreans can't get along?

Cheezburgers Made from Soy, and Other Myths

So, 'Pockets and I are spending the holiday in San Antonio, which for some reason has embraced the suicidal gray and chill of an Bay Area morning. Surely, this is the slow descent to hell Nancy Pelosi and her ascendant San Francisco "values" portended.

We left early Wednesday afternoon-- bracing for the rowdy, pre-tryptophan crowds--but SFO was a ghost town. The plane ride was memorable only because the mustachioed flight attendant passed out cheeseburgers he insisted were made of soy, despite the 42-point-font "beef" stamped on the wrapper. I love watching people wage losing battles: a whole bunch of perturbed maybe-vegetarians drew the mistake to his attention, but he insisted the label was a misprint. Even an appeal to his co-flight-attendant yielded a dismissive "you must be hallucinating," but he stuck to his guns.

We changed planes in Houston--Bush Intercontinental--where the picture above was taken, and my question to you, reader, is not what's up with the airport bookstore which, along with no fewer than 12 ideologically like-minded great works, put the following books on display in the window? See here, here, and here. (I like that the author of the first two lives in a "secure, undisclosed location," simultaneously paying homage to his bloodthirsty demigod and luxuriating in the paranoid fantasy that he might be some suicide bomber's prime target.)
No, my question is when did George H.W. Bush become motherfucking John Henry--chiseled abs, broad shoulders, Saddam-like stature and all? A man who's most memorable for vomiting on the Japanese Prime Minister and for evoking a Mr. Burns-esque sense of human decay has now been reimagined as some sort of frontier hero. Ninja, please.

holidays are coming up

i know none of us can believe how close it is to christmas, but c4ts, i think i found the right gift for you.

it's only a magnet, unfortch.

what the fuck is david brooks yapping about - part 2

in this part 2 of what appears to be an infinite-part series, i again examine the latest and greatest david brooks column in the new york times and ask the question we've all been wondering: what the fuck is david brooks yapping about?

so...one of the innumerable unfortunate fallouts of sasha frere-jones's "miscegenation" article in the new yorker is that it encouraged david brooks to put his two cents in. typical david brooks, his two cents arrived about 6 weeks too late. but he'll have you know, he's hip, he's with it.

i can't even muster up the energy to write about his column. as usual, it boggles my mind that he has this incredible forum and he wastes it on nonsensical drivel like this:

But cultural history has pivot moments, and at some point toward the end of the 1970s or the early 1980s, the era of integration gave way to the era of fragmentation. There are now dozens of niche musical genres where there used to be this thing called rock. There are many bands that can fill 5,000-seat theaters, but there are almost no new groups with the broad following or longevity of the Rolling Stones, Springsteen or U2. (emphasis supplied)

It seems that whatever story I cover, people are anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion. This is the driving fear behind the inequality and immigration debates, behind worries of polarization and behind the entire Obama candidacy.

oh hey, look at me! i'm david brooks! i'm on pbs! look how nicely my scant knowledge in music and politics dovetails!

anyway, this gawker post does a better job than i could. besides, is there a better tag than "bozos in paradise"? hehe.

random endorsement

i admit, the blatant product placement on 30 rock bugs me (e.g. snapple, verizon, stupid seinfeld bee movie), but i was pleasantly surprised by something recently and i have to tell you about it, dear reader.

as i wrote before, i hit a snag on my way home from vacation. essentially, my luggage was lost somewhere in brazil because my originating airline (TAM) neglected to transport it to my destination airline (delta). i've had airlines lose my luggage before, and the only way for me to check its status was to either (1) religiously log onto a website and enter the case number or whatever they give you or (2) call a 1-800 number and waste about 30-40 minutes of your day, at which point you end up talking to a random, unconnected individual at a call center nowhere near where your luggage probably is. with option (1), unless the news is good, you really have no relief, and with option (2), whether the news is good or bad, the person at the other end of the phone probably can't do much.

while trying to figure out whether my luggage was insured, i discovered that american express had this program called "global assist". as molly pointed out to me, the main character in the talented mr. ripley goes to the amex office a lot (y'know, cause he's an aspiring debonair international man of mystery). sure enough, the "american express clerk" receives billing in the movie.

long story short, you can outsource this entire process! a very patient and helpful woman from american express called delta on my behalf everyday, then relayed the information to me. i think i saved about 2-3 hours in the aggregate.

look at all of these other things they'll do on your behalf--for free:

• We’ll provide you with the contact of family and/or friends in the event of an emergency situation.
• If you lose something while traveling, Global Assist will help you search for the lost item. We will need to have basic information about the item and where it was lost in order to provide the fastest service.
• Global Assist provides help in arranging bail by locating bail bond agencies that take the American Express Card.

anyway, you probably won't see me blogging much about any product (aside from delicious stephen colbert's americone dream), but the next time you have your bail arranged through amex, i think you'll thank me.

go blue

i blogged a long time ago about "the hunt", one of my favorite columns in the NYtimes. the most recent one features a girl (umich grad! woot!) who's looking for a 1-bedroom apartment in which she could create a second bedroom by building a wall. sounds pretty good. then the usual folly ensues, where we discover people's hidden prejudices and sheer stupidity.

i highlight only the best quotes:

A wall divided the living room, creating a third bedroom. The guys were investment bankers, “and were making way more money” than she and the friends she was planning to live with earned, Ms. Stephens said. (Two-bedrooms in Stuyvesant Town start at $4,025.) The wall was so nicely installed it looked like “part of the original structure," she said.

It was on to Brooklyn. “Every place I looked, I looked because people had told me about it,” Ms. Stephens said. “It was all hearsay: So-and-so is living in this neighborhood; you should look there. I guess we were looking in Park Slope. We didn’t know much about Brooklyn.” But it felt far away, and nothing there seemed worth the price.

[Ed note: these girls were willing to spend nearly $2,500 for a 1-bedroom. What were they looking at?!]

Ms. Stephens had Stuyvesant Town in the back of her mind. Now that she was certain she had a roommate, they could afford a one-bedroom. With a wall, of course. Ms. Pakfar wasn’t sure what Stuyvesant Town was. “I had seen it in a cab going down the F.D.R., and I always thought it was projects,” she said.

Both are happy in their new home. “It feels very grown up and clean,” Ms. Stephens said. Some of her colleagues and former sorority sisters also live in Stuyvesant Town, so “I have neighbors I know, which is nice when you are moving away from home.”

[Note to self: don't go to Stuy-town]

Hype

So, hype's a funny thing. On Friday I went and saw Swedish sensation Jens Lekman (pictured), a crooner with a melifluous voice, ecstatic musical arrangements, and a rabid following. I've been digging his last album Night Falls Over Kortedala, a worthy follow-up to the collected here-and-there's of Oh You're So Silent Jens. But a strange thing happened at the show. Well, two strange things really. First, there was this old dude in a rumpled white button-down, sandals, and jeans, hand-clapping like Hillary Clinton at a Baptist church, while beatifically grinning and looking around the room for validation or partners--not sure which. That was kind of strange.

Secondly, I realized that, wait, Jens kind of sucks. Well, not totally. The points above still stand, but his live show exposed something incredibly off-putting about his craft and about his personality: the man has the thoughts of an awkward, daft fifteen-year-old (on haircuts: "It's like a religious experience."), and feels the need to channel them into the most saccharine of lyrics. I'm not sure why this hadn't really bothered me before. Maybe I chalked it up to ESL issues, but standing there, taking in his set--the mics turned up a bit too high, static disrupting the joys of his cute, flower-uniformed violinists--I started to feel embarrassed for him:

Tram number one is full of fun/

Tram number two is couchie coo/

Tram number three has misery/

Tram number four knocks at your door/

Tram number five, I'm still alive/

Tram number six, I think I'm fixed/

Tram number seven/

Tram number seven to heaven

I'd been swept up in the hype.

Then on Sunday I went to see extremely hyped film, Michael Clayton, prepared to be disappointed despite (in fact because of) the critical drool it's inspired, but then another strange thing happened. It was an astonishing. I've little new to say about it, other than the fact that I am thankful there are movie stars like George Clooney around, ones who risk their movie star goodwill for films that our fat, dumb country won't go see. How long can that possibly last? As the writer's strike drags on, and an increasing emphasis is put on the bottom line (especially with b.s. fears that piracy is cutting into studio profits) how many movies for adults can we really expect in the coming years?

In the near term, at least, we have an adaptation of Ian McEwan's heart-strangling masterpiece; P.T. Anderson's latest opus, a reimagining of Upton Sinclair's Oil!; The Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's grim No Country for Old Men, for them a return to Blood Simple days; and a new work by Sidney Lumet. With the exception of the first, which likely will get the Titanic schmaltz treatment, none of these films will justify the cost of making them. For Hollywood then, what's the incentive not to make Saw V?

emerging markets - part 3

argentinian humor?

these purple blossoms were everywhere.

san juan! freaky. at the museo nacional de bellas artes.

and yes, i had to check out evita's mausoleum at la recoleta cemetary.

emerging markets - part 2

puente de la mujer. apparently it's quite an engineering feat - it's supported only on one side and it connects the main part of buenos aires with a developing neighborhood.

click on this photo and you'll see why this was my favorite internet cafe.

paris hilton's legacy in buenos aires.

the same bridge at night.

emerging markets - part 1

virtually every park was teeming with stray animals. i particularly liked these enormous cats. the funniest part was that a kid came around this park with a cat in a giant clear plastic bag, apparently attempting to drop the cat off at the park. that is, until a police man saw him and shouted, "hey, what do you think you're doing with that cat?!"

um...yeah. i wish i could say this was the only time i saw a doll like this. anyway, this was at the big touristy san telmo antique market on sunday.

...and here is courtney love's antique stand, apparently.

church in san telmo

don't cry for me...sao paulo?

hello dear reader, sorry for the lack of blogginess. i was on vacation. now, i know that's not an excuse since c4ts managed to blog across america, but i was feeling lazy and low tech-y. anyway, the vacation started out gloriously--went to buenos aires, stuffed my face with just sinful amounts of beef and wine (bargain basement prices!), gallivanted across town, sat in the hooligan section at a soccer match, slept to my heart's content, and just when i thought, what a lovely vacation (i'll post photos of the fun part, but no photos of food bc i feel uncomfortable breaking out my camera in restaurants), the airline gods intervened and decided that the fun must come to an end, and in a spectacularly disastrous fashion. the formula for such fun-ending is as follows:

1) book your flight out of buenos aires on a barely functioning airline.
2) make sure you make your connection to nyc in sao paulo, at a barely functioning airport.
3) realize - after your airplane has landed at a different airport (campinas?) than its intended destination - that you are 20 minutes away from missing your flight to nyc...the ONLY flight to nyc that day.
4) finally, after landing at the correct airport, finally, neglect to pick up your luggage bc you foolishly believed, as you were told, that your bags would be waiting for you beyond customs.
5) realize this list is both long and boring and just let people know that you were delayed for 24 hours in sao paulo, finally arrived in nyc at 8am and got to work 2 hours later.
6) you are hopped up on caffeine yet borderline comatose.

and your bag is somewhere between brazil and here...

huh what? kanye's mom died?! omg, giuliani won the coveted 700 club vote? oh wait, maybe he won't be prez?

I Learned It By Watching You

So, it's only sensible that as my homeland descends into typicality, I should feel the urge to blog about it. However, I didn't opine on the state of Pakistani affairs when the chief justice was sacked initially several months ago; nor did I weigh in when Generalissimo Musharraf reneged on his promise not to stand for reelection whilst in uniform. I suppose I was a bit blog-shy because my posts about the dead Pakistani cricket coach yielded little attention from you, fickle reader.

Alas, that said, this news is a big deal, or at least the MSM is making it out to be. I remember when I was a kid it was a big deal when anything related to Pakistan made its way into the newspaper; now Pakistan's as big a story as the Duke rape scandal (though not quite as big a story as the overdose death of a soft-core pornography star). Before the blowhards and alarmists of the world come to completely dominate this story, let me wipe some of the saliva from their glee: It ain't no big deal. Sure, Musharraf's suspended civil liberties, quashed thousands of dissenting voices, made a mockery of the terror threat by exploiting it for political gain, asserted himself in the workings of a so-called independent judiciary, and willfully misinterepreted the Constitution.

But it's how we do in Pakistan; it's how we've always done, and nothing about it should be unfamiliar to those of us who've lived in America the last six years.

what happens to ross and rachel--wait, don't tell me

how come nobody told me that alec baldwin was blogging for huffpo? between this and yelling at his daughter, how does he have time for anything else?

Ride it, Donaghy--Ride it Straight to Hell

Having been inefficient and distracted all day, I decided to stick it out in the office a bit longer tonight. I was plugging along before the ground--or rather the 34 floors of building beneath me--shook, and you know, it's true: you can take the kid out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the kid; Hand to God, my first thought was maybe that was the F-train passing by.

The One Less Traveled By, At Least in Velcro Shoes

So, I've been measuring the value of my life by how bloggy it's been lately. Even when I was studying for the dread pirate Bar Exam, I had stuff to say, but this long spiral into gainfully employed machinehood hasn't quite had the same effect. At one point last week, I even typed a dramatic screed against the Oakland Public Works Agency for their preoposterous, pro-environmental policies: if your grabage doesn't fit entirely within the miniature garbage cans they've issued you, they don't take it; if your broken mop handle protrudes from the top, they take it out and leave it on the sidewalk--then challenge you to schedule an additional pick-up with them at the rate of $6 per item/bag. Can you imagine this happening in New York? One Friday night, this tyranny led me to the ignominy of having to pile trash into my car and unload it into a dumpster in an abandoned part of town. Sorry, that was screed redux.

Anyway, I haven't had a whole lot to say. Job's been okay; not much to report. I did call my boss Matt the other day, though his name's Mike. That wasn't smooth, but one of my colleagues set me at ease: "90% of the people here mispronounce your name. What's the big deal?" During my BART commute in the morning, I've been reading Revolutionary Road and trying to tell myself that the protagonist--a 29-year-old corporate commuter with vanquished hopes and dreams--is not the cause for the clanging in my soul.

Alas, in the absence of any other fascinating bits to share, I share yet another sartorial question: Can I bring back velcro? Or would doing so be a gross mismeasure of footwear irony? See above.

the way we were

as i mentioned in a previous post, i've been rather out of the music scene of late. i'm just kind of bored by it. my chief complaint is that these new bands don't seem very consistent. case in point - tapes n tapes. their first album was great. then i went to see them in concert and yeah, maybe it was the fact that i was one of the only people over 25, but it kind of blew. so badly that i had to leave in the middle. they tried songs off their new album and it was some horrifying hybrid of sublime and, hmmm, live. yeah. that sounds about right. maybe i'm just getting old and i need to revive my rick astley collection or something? hey rick, turns out i won't ever give you up.

stay with me here, but what's fred armisen all about? where did this dude come from? how did he end up creating this new site with one of the sleater kinneys? anyway, i started listening to the woods this morning and it made me wish for a giant reunion tour--sleater-kinney and pavement. i'll throw built to spill in there, too, although i'm pretty sure they're still together. i'll pretend i'm still 20 and afraid to go to alphabet city.

what's that you say, sasha frere jones?

btw, c4ts - why do magazines in asia always have white women (and blondes, at that) on the cover? shit makes me ill.