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This week at The New Yorker: My Name Is Joe Biden And I'll Be Your Server

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:39:15 -0700

This week at The New Yorker: My Name Is Joe Biden And I'll Be Your Server

Today At The Bygone Bureau: PR Tips From Jack White's Old-TImey Publicist

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:55:00 -0700

Today At The Bygone Bureau: PR Tips From Jack White's Old-TImey Publicist

Top 10 Rejected Names For The Embarcadero

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:39:00 -0700

From the archives of the San Francisco Waterfront Commission.

1) The Leavy Place

2) Solongaburg

3) El Distrito de Adiós

4) The Exiting Spot

5) The Departadillo

6) Ye Olde Latertown

7) Saloon-Abyssinia

8) Le Lieu de Skidoo

9) Scrambleville

10) Vamooserton

Why I'm a Romney bundler, by Vilos Cohaagen

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:30:00 -0700

I’ve been asked by my friend Mitt Romney to jot down a few thoughts on why I raise money for the campaign.

First of all, please understand that the time commitment required is a substantial thing for someone like me. As you may know, I’m in the midst of a decades-long rebel uprising in the Mars Colony, and something like that can really keep a fella stepping. People think it’s simple: “Why, just deny them air,” that sort of thing. But there’s way more to it than that. You have to train and oversee a ruthless cadre of brutal enforcers, you have to infiltrate the rebel forces and gather intelligence… I mean, if it were easy as just denying them air don’t you think I would have done that a long time ago? The problem with denying them air is that it’s a blunt instrument. It can’t be the only laser arrow in your space quiver. You also have to use a more granular approach. That’s where the cadre of brutal enforcers and the intel-gathering and so forth come in, and all that takes time. Plus there are just the little everyday things. Putting down a decades-long rebel uprising is a detail-heavy kind of situation, and there’s always something. I barely have an hour during the day to grab a sandwich when somebody isn’t bursting into my office (people think it’s a lair, but it’s really just an office) yammering about Kuato this and Quaid that. So for me to take the time to get my friends together and pitch them on the Romney campaign — it takes some doing, is what I’m saying. So you know I must really believe in Mitt and what he stands for.

And that’s ultimately what it comes down to. Mitt’s message of steely self-reliance resonates with someone like me. I make the air I breathe; I don’t get it for free from some giant alien reactor or something, and I don’t just say that because THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GIANT ALIEN REACTOR HIDDEN DEEP IN THE TURBIDIUM MINES. That whole notion is just flatly ridiculous. And let me tell you something, even if there were a giant alien space reactor hidden deep in the Pyramid Mine I wouldn’t know how to activate it. You don’t know how to activate it, do you? I’m just asking. What? We’re just talking here. Never mind. The point is, a guy like Mitt Romney understands that he’s never going to have the allegiance of the part of the populace that believes they’re entitled to everything — housing, food, breathable air. So it’s an honor for me to be able to get some of my friends together from time to time in support of that good man. In fact, I’m having a little get-together at the house tonight. You might want to drop by. Melina will be there. I’ll have Doc remind you.

So You're Prince Harry's New Body Man

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:01:31 -0700

Hello. By the time you read this I’ll have been escorted from the building and you’ll have been installed as the new personal secretary, or “body man,” for His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales. It’s been my pleasure to serve in this capacity for some eleven weeks, which makes me the longest-tenured of the 41 dedicated individuals who have attended the prince since he assumed his official duties in late 2005. Here are some things you’ll need to know.

1) DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW THE PRINCE OUT OF YOUR SIGHT. One might assume this prescription to be something other than literal. It is not. To give you just one example, during a stay in New York last month HRH excused himself to wash his hands. While waiting for him to emerge from the bathroom I flipped on the TV to find that TMZ had live security-cam video from an S&M club eighty-six blocks downtown, showing the prince frolicking with a large woman who called herself “Casina Royale.” I honestly don’t know how he got out of the hotel suite, let alone traveled the length of Manhattan in that brief interval. Suffice to say that his ingenuity in this area is unmatched. We believe he may have the ability to breach space and time.

2) COSTUMES ARE RIGHT OUT. You may be asking: “Even at Halloween?” Yes. Especially at Halloween.

3) DO NOT ALLOW THE PRINCE TO DETERMINE THE BEST USE OF HIS OWN TIME. Members of The Royal Family are tightly scheduled. In the case of the prince, one cannot assume that even a very, very short bloc of unsupervised time is risk-free. At a reception for the royal family of Monaco, the prince casually asked if he had a few moments before toasts were delivered. I made the mistake of saying that he did. Before one could blink I received a text to say there was footage on the Internet of the prince naked with Charlotte Casiraghi on a zip line. We found the zip line later. It was strung from a window of the room in which the reception was held. Somehow the prince had had time to rig it, test it, slip from the room and enjoy the assignation before any of us twigged. We believe, but do not know for certain, that he had the equipment hidden somewhere on his person. We also believe he may have fired the line from the window and secured it to the opposite wall by means of a crossbow or other propulsive device. However much one may admire the preparation this took, one must still in all candor admit that it was a lapse.

4) DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO THE PRINCE’S EYES. The prince inherited from his late mother a shy, beguiling, downward gaze whose effect trained psychologists have likened to that of a hypno-wheel. Once, early in my tenure, HRH asked me if he might have a moment alone with a troupe of ASU cheerleaders whose camper van had broken down while on a sightseeing tour of the Midlands. I made the mistake of meeting the prince’s eyes and found myself replying “Of course, sir” in a robotic fashion. There was a loud buzzing or sizzling in my ears, time seemed to fold in on itself, and when I regained my senses the prince, the cheerleaders, and our Range Rovers were gone. I managed to hitchhike to a nearby pub, where the television was already running footage of the prince atop a cheerleader pyramid, dressed only in a large diaper and a comically oversized safety pin. (See #2 above.)

5) DO NOT LEND THE PRINCE MONEY. My predecessor in this post was once unwise enough to honor the prince’s request that he “spot me a fiver ‘til allowance day.” A team of forensic accountants was unable to determine exactly how, but within twenty minutes the poor man was legally bankrupt.

5) Finally, ENJOY YOURSELF. The prince is a young man of sterling character, blessed with high spirits and an enormous sense of fun, and I promise you this will be the best job you will ever hold for six to eight weeks.

If you have an hour today, take a look at this fascinating,...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:16:04 -0700

If you have an hour today, take a look at this fascinating, heartbreaking 1962 presentation by architect Edmund Bacon on the ambitious master plan for the postwar redevelopment of Center City Philadelphia. (Bacon was the Robert Moses of Philadelphia, and the father of actor Kevin Bacon.)

You don’t have to have grown up in Center City, as I did, to feel the poignance here. Some of the plan’s elements (the broad-scale redevelopment of Society Hill as a residential district) were successfully put into place; others (I.M. Pei’s fourth and fifth Society Hill Towers) weren’t; some were implemented piecemeal, and some, like Penn Center, the Chestnut St. pedestrian walk and Market East, just never attained the viability the planners dreamed of. What happened? Who knows? Inertia, maybe, or maybe the money started to not get where it was supposed to go. (It’s jarring, after a parade of good-government types, to hear the voice of ’60s mayor James H.J. Tate, a party hack.) Maybe it was all just too big. One thing for sure: The brainy, resolute spirit depicted in the film feels prehistoric. It’s a heart-tugging snapshot of a time in the postwar life of American cities when resources seemed limitless, the future seemed bright, and no urban problems seemed too intractable to be solved by smart guys with good intentions. (Part 1 above; Part 2 here, at The Internet Archive.)

I Stayed Up With Jerry

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:18:00 -0700

Once upon a time, Jerry Lewis’s annual telethon for MDA was a mighty thing that bestrode Labor Day weekend like a Colossus. I wrote this for Newsweek in 1987.

The slogans of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy are “Stay Up With Jerry and Watch the Stars Come Out” and “Miss a Little and You Miss a Lot.” All right, then. This year I intend to sit through the telethon’s entire 21-1/2 hours, missing not one minute.

My plan, a kind of Vegas anthropology, is to consider the telethon solely as a show-business phenomenon. It’s not my intention to make light of the cause, which is deadly serious, or the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which is beyond reproach. It’s the show itself I’m interested in. Mix pathos and bathos, fold in the cloying clubbiness of old-time showbiz, add a few stars and a bunch of hacks and retreads, season with fatigue and you have the kind of event that could only happen in Las Vegas.

It’s 10 minutes to air. The 25,000-square-foot Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion is filling up; the last few guests, many of them in black tie, are being shown to their seats by white-uniformed midshipmen from the Merchant Marine Academy.

6 p.m.: Airtime. Jerry enters to a standing ovation. He introduces Casey Kasem and Julius LaRosa, and then Sammy Davis Jr., “who will always be here for whatever I need him to do, and tonight that’s let me love him.” Sammy: “This year, man, is gonna be the best. I love you.” We’re cooking now. Jerry brings out Ed McMahon, “the giant who has stood beside me, a marvelous force.” Ed kisses Jerry. “You ready to go?” he asks. “Let’s do it.”

6:41 p.m.: “This gentleman is durable,” Jerry says, “because he only does quality. And he only does quality because that’s the way he thinks. And he’s a super-talent. Mr. Paul Anka.” Paul, who is looking more and more like Frank Sinatra as the years go by, sings a specialty version of “My Way”: “When Jerry phoned/I swear I groaned … /I’m working the Nugget/But Jerry said/Alive or dead/So I’ll do it his way …” The “Applause” sign flashes on. Standing ovation. I feel like I’ve had a very fast, very vigorous massage.

7:15 p.m.: The first break. The national telethon will go off for 15 minutes every hour and local stations will fill the time; in Las Vegas, a new audience is brought in.

7:51 p.m.: Jerry reintroduces “my main man, Sammy Davis Jr.” Sammy, dedicating his performance to a fellow performer stricken with MS: “I know some people think, it ain’t gonna happen to the entertainers. It can’t happen to them.”

8:43 p.m.: Frank Sinatra, from Atlantic City, sings “What Now My Love” and “New York, New York.” It’s kind of sad to see. Nobody loves his old Frank Sinatra records more than I do, but tonight Sinatra is running on fumes and his mind is elsewhere — “I am about to be a brand new start of it in old New York,” he sings. The Vegas crowd loves him anyway, giving him the biggest hand of the night when he’s through.

9:30 p.m.: “Hiyo,” Ed says.

10:03 p.m.: Sammy’s back. He has changed from a tux into a short-waisted dark-gray suit. For those of you who like to keep track of this sort of thing, he is also wearing six big rings and something that looks like the astro-sign medallions the Swinging Czechoslovak Brothers used to wear on “Saturday Night Live.”

10:30 p.m.: “Hiyo,” Ed says. Two very nice young ladies have sneaked me in some milk and McDonald’s Chocolaty Chip cookies from the commissary, a strict violation of telethon rules. I stash them in my bag. The place is crawling with midshipmen.

10:45 p.m.: The Coasters, or three guys billing themselves as such. None of them, except maybe the one in the 11-foot Afro toupee, looks old enough to be a Coaster. And none seems able to stay on key. This is depressing.

11:30 p.m.: Ed: “Hiyo.” Jerry: “Our next guests have brought new dimensions to dance music as well as to rock,” Jerry says, introducing Oingo Boingo. Oingo Boingo is terrible. The audience stares back at them in frank bafflement, wondering almost audibly why they couldn’t have gotten Frank or Sammy or even the Coasters in their segment.

11:50 p.m.: Jerry: “Here’s a lady who really walks with style and who really sings with style, and we’re very glad to have her walk and sing right here—Miss Susan Anton.” “We’re gonna do for you here in this midnight hour,” Susan says dramatically, the band vamping behind her, “the blues.” Well, sure. When I think of that great Afro-American art form Susan Anton’s the first person I think of.

12:30 a.m.: Jerry’s back. He introduces Mr. T, and as the two chat Casey Kasem slips behind the cohost’s podium. Problematic. Casey Kasem, as far as I know, has no signature saying comparable to Ed’s “Hiyo.” What’s Casey Kasem going to do to get the crowd up at the start of the hour, count down the Top 40? I am beginning to understand the concept of lower back pain.

Now Mr. T climbs up into the audience. Jerry tells him to sit, because he’s going to introduce “one of the brothers—Sammy Davis Jr.” Sammy is in midnight blue this trip. Jerry: “You got something for me? Lay it on me, man.” Jerry and Sammy may be the only two people left in America who talk this way. It’s “Begin the Beguine,” then “Candy Man.” When the songs end, Sammy and Mr. T meet at center stage, “If I can’t sing like you,” Mr. T says, “at least I can come out and shake the people hand.” “You are a classy man,” Sammy tells him. “I mean that.” Mr. T exits to a huge ovation, leaving me to try to figure out just what it is he does for a living. Whatever it is, he has apparently done it here tonight.

2:19 a.m.: The crew is setting up a bunch of multicolored sawhorses. I have this terrible fear there’s a dog act coming up. Judging from the size of the sawhorses, though, which are a good three feet high, I’d say they’d have to be big dogs—Newfoundlands, say, or Labradors. Unlikely. As far as I know there are no performing Newfoundlands, even in Las Vegas.

2:24 a.m.: Worse than I thought. A bunch of clean-cut fresh-faced kids in multicolored satin warm-up jackets have started to gather around the multi-colored barricades. Unless this is a high-school drill team salute to “Les Miserables,” which I doubt, I’d say they’re some kind of professionally clean-cut fresh-faced singing and dancing troupe.

2:33 a.m.: The clean-cut fresh-faced kids are apparently something called The Young Americans, introduced by Jerry as “ambassadors of good will,” which is never a good sign, and they are lip-syncing some sort of salute to the ‘50s. “Oh yeah!” the Young Americans shout, and it’s over. “Oh yeah!” Jerry shouts. “And they’ll be back!”

2:46 a.m.: Jerry brings on Jerry Vale, describing him as “about the best at what he does,” which praise sounds fainter every time I think of it, but never mind. You know what? Jerry Vale has the most amazing hair. It’s the color of a platinum watch, and swept up high on one side like meringue. I cannot take my eyes off Jerry Vale’s hair.

4:05 a.m.: “The young people are always there. You can always count on ‘em.”—Jerry.

5:29 a.m.: I think I lost my keys.

5:41 a.m.: Jerry thanks Fuji Photo Film in a zany Japanese dialect.

6:31 a.m.: Jerry: “Many people tell you the age of the romantic crooner is dead. Not as long as this man is in demand — Mr. Don Cherry!” I perk up for a second, thinking it’s the jazz cornetist, although I can’t imagine why Jerry would introduce him as a “romantic crooner.” (Doesn’t throw me, though. The advantage of being this tired is that you can laugh at cognitive dissonance. “Two contradictory ideas?” your weary mind says. “Hey, come on in, the water’s fine!”) But no. This Don Cherry is a lounge singer who belts out “You Always Hurt the One You Love.”

8:58 a.m.: A tiny kid from “Star Search” sings “Over the Rainbow.” I wish I could find something kind to say about this kid. I wish I could find my keys. Standing O #11.

9:24 a.m.: The people coming in now make me sick. I want to punch each and every one of them. I can tell, they think they’re better than me just because they slept last night.

9:52 a.m.: Jerry introduces Bobby Berosini and his Orangutans. The orangutans grab Bobby’s butt. He tries to slap them, but they slap him first. He shoots one with a toy gun and it falls down. Bobby’s a little confused, apparently—“Something new for you here tonight,” he says.

10:31 a.m.: Jerry brings out two jugglers. My mind is an utter, peaceful blank.

11:52 a.m.: The toteboard turns over to $ 22,301,614. “Yeah!” Jerry cries. “Go, and do! With the thing!”

11:53 a.m.: Casey mentions “La Bamba” and Jerry starts babbling in mock Spanish. Casey enunciates, as if he has learned each syllable phonetically: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha, ha, ha! To get serious for a moment …” A gasp goes up from the audience as Charo and her dancers enter. I don’t believe I have ever seen anything like the outfit Charo is wearing. It is pink, with sequins and rainbow-colored ruffled sleeves. “The kick, the joy,” Jerry intones, “of listening to the one and only, the incomparable Charo.” Charo sings Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita,” and I’m too stunned by her sleeves to absorb the full import of this for a moment. When I regain my composure I realize that what I’m witnessing is a cross-cultural love thing, a true sharing, a caring and a giving, and I feel blessed. Then I black out, my head hitting the seat in front of me with a nasty whack.

12:31 p.m.: “How can you not go out cookin’,” Jerry asks rhetorically, “when you present a guest like this next young lady — Miss Lola Falana!” To some sort of big-beat pseudo-gospel thing, Lola demands that “everybody put your hands together,” and everybody does. In Vegas this phrase apparently carries the same persuasive power as a New Jersey cement contractor’s suggestion that you might like to consider buying his product. Standing O #96.

1:55 p.m.: Time has no meaning. The tote goes over last year’s total, to $34,103,874. Jerry weeps.

2:31 p.m.: Sammy Davis Fashion Update: a tux with loosened bow tie. “To be this big a cog in this machine,” he says, “this Love Happening …” Now he’s singing “What Kind of Fool Am I?” What a blockbuster. How I wish I could be here for it.

3:14 p.m.: Jerry sits alone at center stage. The toteboard reads $39,021,723. “It’s been a long day,” Jerry says quietly. “A good day. A good day for mankind. My God, what a good day for mankind.” He’s singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The big, the final Standing Ovation, and he’s gone. I study him as he walks off. Jerry Lewis looks much better than I do. As the fog swirls in around me I realize why this is: He hasn’t spent the last 22 hours watching Jerry Lewis. I’m going to bed.

If, against all odds, you want more, you can read the original draft version of this story here.

The Paul Ryan I Know

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:26:00 -0700

Paul’s gotten a bum rap in the press this last 24 hours, and I ought to know, because we’ve been friends since we were kids.

We met at the beginning of fourth grade and hit it off right away. Paul told me he’d spent that summer riding giants at Mavericks, which I thought was pretty impressive for a skinny kid who’d just turned nine, and the school year before advising NASA on the project that eventually became the Mars Curiosity rover. Eventually I came to know that my new friend had a real head for big ideas, and not only because he’d been the youngest-ever recipient of the Bader Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (for his research into nucleotide derivatives). According to a story Paul told me, soon after he’d landed in London piloting the jet chopper he’d designed himself, he turned to the director of the Society and the other members of the welcoming committee and barked: “Make a note: A giant Ferris Wheel on the South Bank of the Thames.” Needless to say, they were all confused. Years later, of course, my friend’s flash of inspiration became the London Eye.

Our school days were full of the usual hijinx — pulling pranks, teasing girls, doing an uncredited rewrite on the 1981 Oscar-winner for Best Picture, Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire. I should be clear: That was all Paul, not me. He told me he’d done it during a furious spell of all-night skull sessions, alone in his room. This was so like him. He’d managed to build a a full-sized working model of the Enigma machine the same way, although sadly, I never got to see it because Paul’s mom accidentally threw it out. He just smiled and shrugged when he told me that, and gave me that “What are you gonna do?” look. He loved his parents very much, and in fact had quietly arranged for his father to win the coveted “World’s Best Dad” award in 1980. Now, that I did see. Paul’s dad kept it on his desk.

See, it’s just this intimate knowledge of Paul’s history and character that makes me so darn certain he’s a person of strong moral fiber, and well suited to the challenges ahead. Not to brag, but I don’t know if Paul ever had a closer confidant than me, and looking back, that really means something to me, because I was an awkward boy who used to get beat up regularly and who all the other kids called “Four-eyes” and “Poindexter” and “Spaz.” Not Paul, though. Paul saw in me a lonely kid who was desperate for the friendship of a handsome, accomplished person like himself, and he became that friend. I’ll never forget what he told me one night when were 11. We were backyard camping in the revolutionary Fold-o-Matic 5000 self-sealing tent Paul told me he’d invented himself, and just before I drifted off to sleep my pal leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Remember: If I ever run for office, I want you to swear everything I ever told you is true.”

Neil Armstrong, Poet

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:24:00 -0700

Three years ago, in the now-defunct TrueSlant, I reflected on the poetic perfection of Neil Armstrong’s post-lunar career. Armstrong died today at 82. He was a badass.

Monday’s Washington Post has a fascinating look at the post-Apollo 11 life of Neil Armstrong. It’s not accurate to say that the first man on the moon has been a recluse, as he’s frequently described; but neither has he exploited his achievement for personal glory or commercial success. He became the most famous man on the planet, a hero in a company of heroes, and then he simply walked away, taking a desk job at NASA and retiring two years later. Since then he’s rarely been seen in public, and in his infrequent appearances he’s been reticent to a fault. He seems to have sensed that the music was in what he did, not what he said, and that for the rest of his life he could never say anything that would measure up to the enormity of the achievement for which he had become the unwilling public face.

Tom Wolfe argued in a New York Times op-ed a couple of days ago that the space program died at the moment Armstrong set foot on the moon — that the poetic trajectory of space exploration flattened at that moment, and NASA was never able to recover. Armstrong may have understood that better, and earlier, than anyone. On Monday he’ll will join Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins at the White House for a 40th-anniversary photo op with President Obama. After which, no doubt, he’ll return to Ohio and live out his days in the unexpected, but poetically perfect, peace and quiet that have characterized his life since the day he stepped into history.

Ask Curiosity

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:25:01 -0700

Ask Curiosity:

If you’ve reached this blog via Shouts & Murmurs at newyorker.com, where my piece “Ask Curiosity” appeared today, thanks for reading. If, on the other hand, you’re reading this blog and haven’t yet visited The New Yorker site today, you and I seriously need to have a talk about your priorities.

My Life In The Ecuadoran Embassy, by Julian Assange

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:06:54 -0700

It isn’t bad. I’ve settled into a routine: From 8 to 11 I rail against the global culture of secrecy that’s choking the democratic transit of information between and amongst free peoples. Then at 11 I get my tips frosted. This usually takes until about 2 and by that time I’m pretty famished, I don’t mind telling you. (I don’t mind telling you. That’s a democratic-transit-of-information joke. Did you get it?) So then it’s a late lunch. The Ecuadorans are nice people, but I don’t think anybody ever said they can cook, and not because they were harassed or intimidated into not doing so. What I’m saying is, they just can’t cook. The first night I was here the ambassador rustled me up a late snack and do you know what it was? They call it cuy, but it’s guinea pig. Swear to God. I was hungry, sure, but when those little bones starting cracking I seriously started to consider walking out the front gate and taking my chances at Gitmo. Anyway, that takes me until about 3, and I spend the next hour or so playing Jenga and scanning the horizon for black choppers. Then it’s cocktails. From about 5 to 7 I have a network of online sources I canvass, but the truth is all my usual contacts have gone to ground, so lately I’ve mostly just been reading YouTube comments. (Nobody believes in an unrestricted flow of ideas more than me, but some of those people are nuts.) Then it’s a quiet dinner with Bianca or Stephanie Seymour’s boys.

People always ask me: Was it worth it? Was it worth a life on the run? And I answer Of course it was and Nothing must impede the free flow of information. But if you really want to know the truth (That’s another zinger; did you catch it?) I’d give it all up to be able to walk down to the pub and order a pint and just sit and drink it in peace, and maybe sneak a look at the owner’s books and distribute his financial information to a stateless, widely-dispersed network of anonymous P2P servers. You know, like normal people do. But this is the life I’ve chosen, and I’m grateful to be in a position to make a difference. Just somebody do me a favor and smuggle me in a nice Dover Sole, because I swear to God I cannot look at one more cuy.

Meet the new Digg. Better than the old Digg.

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:11:00 -0700

Meet the new Digg. Better than the old Digg.:

I’m taking a day away from smartaleckry to express my admiration for the new version of Digg that’s recently come online.

You may remember the old Digg, which was founded by übergeek Kevin Rose and others in 2004. It was a social news site that went long on the social part, paid the price in topic drift and trolling, among other evils, and quickly developed such a low signal-to-noise ratio that it essentially became useless. Sold for a nickel to a company called Betaworks (the outfit behind the pretty good news aggregator News.me), Digg went through a reimagining and rebuilding and emerged as something sort of similar and, in some key ways, quite different: A news site, yes, still, but one that is at least partially curated and, at least in its initial iteration (oh happy day) comment-free.

It’s hard to overstate how much of a difference that makes. Coupled with a design that’s restfully clean and easy on the eyes, the lack of comments keeps the focus squarely where it ought to be: On the stories that the site’s three curators want you to see, based on ubiquity, a limited degree of user input and their own editorial instincts. This approach may be anathema to a generation of news consumers who came up believing in the wisdom of the crowd, but it produces a result which, like it or hate it, you have to admit has focus and clarity. This is more or less the argument Slate’s Farhad Manjoo made when the new Digg launched last week:

…the new Digg isn’t just a slave to the crowd. While it takes empirical measurements of popularity into account, the page is also the product of careful curation by a team of editors and designers. Much like a newspaper’s front page, Digg’s design conveys a sense of the importance of each story, a powerful signal for people who aren’t following this stuff obsessively. I love Reddit, but it’s best for people who have time to follow it closely and familiarize themselves with its in-jokes. Reddit’s motto—“The front page of the Internet”—more properly belongs to the far more accessible Digg.

And that gets to the other great thing about Digg: It’s just a front page. At any given time, there are only a few dozen stories featured on the site, and you can get through the whole thing in three or four scrolls. It has a better signal-to-noise ratio than just about any other site online. And, in another effort at reducing noise, Digg doesn’t feature comments. The site will show you one or two related tweets under some stories, but for the most part, it is unburdened by the cacophony that drowns out the rest of the Web.

New Digg hasn’t had an easy rollout. Some fans of the old site are apoplectic that their accumulated archives of content and comments are now inaccessible, believing (I guess) that they have sweat equity in them. And I suspect the new proprietors will at some point get some static from the providers whose content gets scraped when users send it to their iPhones for later consumption (a nice feature that I like a lot, but I’m not dependent on my site’s ad revenue for a living). The birth of new Digg will also, at some point, mean the end of News.me, according to Jenna Wortham in The New York Times. These caveats aside, the new Digg is clean, usable and informative. It’s quickly becoming indispensable in my daily news-consumption routine.

Cheekily slugged “Digg v1” by Betaworks, as if the old version never existed at all, new Digg may yet scour away the memory of the racketing Thunderdome old Digg had become by the time it died its lingering death. Here’s to better times, better news, and — yes! — no commenting.

From the vaults: Demi-Terrible

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 09:55:00 -0700

From the vaults: Demi-Terrible:

Gosh, was it just seven years ago we were all crazy in love with Demi and Ashton? It seems like it could have been as long ago as eight. In mid-August 2005, my alter ago, the advice columnist Mr. Irresponsible, reflected on the terrible price paid when a couple of starry-eyed young lovers get trapped in the whirling vortex of Celebrity.

Monday, August 15, 2005 At 3:54 AM

I know, I know. It’d be shooting fish in a barrel to tee off on today’s AP story slugged “Report: Are Demi, Ashton Trying For Baby?” The trouble is, sometimes the fish are so plump and delicious that you just can’t resist. And so… avanti!

According to Demi Moore via AP’s cheap, hacky retread — I mean, timely summary of a Harper’s Bazaar story, Moore, 56, and Kutcher, 11, met “not through Sean Combs, as everyone said, but through a mutual friend, Sara Foster, an actress who’s known Ashton from the day he arrived in Los Angeles.” Why, I remember it as if it were yesterday, the day everyone was saying Sean Combs introduced Demi Moore (then 63) and six-and-a-half-year-old Ashton Kutcher. All I wanted to do was walk down to the newsstand and get the papers, but there were huge clots of people on every corner talking animatedly about how Sean Combs had just introduced Demi Moore (at the time a youthful 74) and a still-in-Underoos Ashton Kutcher, and you just couldn’t get anywhere. I swear, it was like VJ Day and the World’s Fair rolled into one. Oh, by the way: “…a mutual friend, Sara Foster, an actress who’s known Ashton since the day he arrived in Los Angeles”? Am I wrong, or does this awkward, overbuilt sentence fragment bear the stamp of someone who has either learned it phonetically or is having it fed to her through a tiny earpiece by Peggy Siegal? No matter: That’s good eating! Moore continues, apropos of marriage: “I feel that we are and that we don’t need something formal, so to do so isn’t a big deal one way or another.” (Translation: The lawyers are still fine-tuning the pre-nup.) And say, how do Moore, who is amazingly vigorous for a woman nearing her centenary, and Kutcher, whose posterior fontanelle is almost completely closed, like to spend an evening? Oh, you know, just like you and me: “Sharing a bath with one another and watching Court TV,” Moore confides, and then adds the extra little fillip that helps the anecdote turn the corner from stiffly unbelievable to creepily specific: “Snuggling up naked.” Okay then!

There’s more — isn’t there always? But honestly, you have things to do today and so do I. From 11 AM to noon, for example, I’ll be rubbing my eyes raw in an attempt to expunge the image of these two nitwits curled up naked in a bathtub watching “Forensic Files,” while Moore’s half-grown children play with matches and live ammo in the next room and pine for the days when their positive male role model was Bruce Willis. Then lunch. Then I plan to spend the afternoon thinking nostalgically of a time before every dope with a steel will and a couple of lines in IMDB got to impose her every thought on the American populace, and before the American populace had nothing better to do than listen.

ROMNEY 2012 MORNING MEMO FOR FRIDAY, AUGUST 10

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 05:00:00 -0700

SENIOR STAFF ONLY
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Good morning. It’s 88 days to Election Day.

Today’s all-hands staff meeting is both cancelled and not cancelled. Rescheduled. No, wait: Just not cancelled. Yeah, that’s it. Like we’ve been saying all along: Not cancelled. Just normal.
Is that right, by the way? 88 days to Election Day? That doesn’t seem like it can possibly be right.
Some of you may already have heard the governor’s remarks from last night on possible VP picks. For those of you who haven’t, here’s the relevant passage we want to bang hard this morning:

My friends, the picking of a vice president is one of the gravest and a responsibility to make, and do. Surely those of us who are privileged to lead. So when you think about America, remember. That’s just common sense.

Andrea’s going-away party will either be at 4:00 today in the 9th floor conference room or next week or never.
If Rep. Ryan “drops by to borrow some printer paper,” please keep him away from the room where we store Sen. Portman.
If Rep. Bachmann shows up unannounced looking for a speaking slot in Tampa, please remain in your offices and be very quiet until the all-clear is sounded.

Thanks, have a great day, and remember to stay on message. The all-hands will be held at 10:00 as usual. No, 11. Wait. 10. Yeah. 10’s good. Unless it’s cancelled. Which it won’t be. See you at 11. Sorry: 10. It’s always been 10.

11 Great Sporting Events, Their Nicknames and Reasons For Cancellation

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 04:47:16 -0700

The Altercation in The Undisclosed Location (no one could find it)

The Tiff on The Skiff (uninsurable)

The Battle Near Some Cattle (Brucellosis outbreak)

The Race in The Place (lacked specificity)

The Fray Out By Larry’s Way (Larry moved)

The Duel in The Shul (scheduled for a Saturday)

The Difference of Opinion At The Minyan (see above)

The Slapfight On a Commuter Flight (interrupted by Sky Marshals)

The Punchin’ At The Luncheon (ran afoul of food service regulations)

The Snit In the Snakepit (snakes)

The Be-In On Pirates of the Caribbean (didn’t make any sense)

Open Mic Night At The Existentialists' League

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 04:50:48 -0700

As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself. I’ll be here all week! (Heidegger)

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both. It’s crazy, homes! (Kierkegaard)

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. [taps mic] Is this thing on? (Kafka)

Moral people are the most revengeful of mankind, they employ their morality as the best and most subtle weapon of vengeance. They are not satisfied with simply despising and condemning their neighbour themselves, they want the condemnation to be universal and supreme: that is, that all men should rise as one against the condemned, and that even the offender’s own conscience shall be against him. Then only are they fully satisfied and reassured. Nothing on earth but morality could lead to such wonderful results. HIT ME! (Shestov)

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. You’ve been a great audience! Tip your waitresses! (Tillich)

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things. I’ll be at The Chuckle Hut in St. Paul September 9th through the 11th! (Camus)

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life. G’NIGHT EVERYBODY!!! (Sartre)

My First Night In The New Place

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 04:56:00 -0700

It was okay, I guess. Kind of weird. It was like — you know that scene in “Manhattan” where Woody Allen moves into a new apartment and he can’t sleep because all the noises are unfamiliar? It was like that. Mars has noises. You wouldn’t think it does, but it does. The solar wind blows all night, and it’s loud. Think about the worst windstorm you ever tried to sleep through and magnify it by a billion. Mariner 9 landed in the middle of a huge freakin’ dust storm. I heard about it, sure, but it doesn’t really prepare you. And that’s another thing: The dust. It’s everywhere, and it gets into everything. You spend a night on Mars and it’s like you drove to Vegas. Believe me, you’ll be finding dust in places you do not want to find dust.

Shit. Phone. I’m going to let it go to voicemail. No, it’s JPL, it’s gotta be. I’ve only been here a day, nobody else even has the number.

What else… Oh, here’s something nobody tells you: It’s cold. Really cold. Like, icefishing for walleye cold. Try 160 below. (That’s Fahrenheit. Canada, figure it out.) I’ve got a plutonium core, so I’m good, but still, you put the wind and the dust and the cold together and it’s no weekend at the beach. Anyway, I made the best of it. The nerds at JPL were all up in my ass most of the night, but eventually I powered down and dug in.

What, again? Hang on, I’m sorry, I gotta get this.

I’m back. That was them. I know, right? You know how everybody’s got one friend who’s really needy? How are you? How was the trip? Are you okay? Well, obviously I’m okay. I mean, you’ve got telemetry, you know I’m okay. Plus — I’m sorry, I just have to get this off my suspension system: You know that jerk who can’t go somewhere and just enjoy it, he’s gotta Instagram it? That’s them. I mean, I land, I’m down, I’m good, and guess what: I’m a little tired. I just drove 300 million miles. But right away I got these clowns in my ear: Take a picture. Even if it’s low-res. Just take it. Take the picture!

Don’t get me wrong. They’re nice guys. A little intense, that’s all.

I’m sorry. I’m a little pissy. Like I say, I’ve had better nights’ sleep. I never sleep well the first night I’m away. And I gotta be honest with you: This place gives me the creeps. Here, let me show you something.

That little tiny dot? That’s the earth from Mars. Spirit took this picture in ‘04. You know what happened to Spirit? It got buried in a sand pit and it froze to death. NASA hung on the line for a while, like a guy hoping his old girlfriend will pick it up at the other end, and then they had a little ceremony in Houston to say goodbye. They meant well, but from what I hear it was like Lumberg’s birthday party in “Office Space.” And that was it. I don’t like to think about that. But there’s no getting around the fact that they only punched my ticket one way.

I’m not going to tell you guys what to do. You know, Live good lives and Be kind to each other and all that jazz? That’s up to you. All I’m saying is, you look pretty small from up here, and space looks big. Really big. Space looks like it could kick your ass without even trying. But you have your moments. You got me here. That’s got to be worth something, right? So try not to fuck it up. I mean, any more than you already have. Because there’s going to be a day — might be in a year, might be ten, nobody knows — when my treads are going to get creaky and my plutonium’s going to run down and I’m really going to want a scarf, if you know what I mean. And in that last second before you wink out of view forever I’m going to be looking at you, and the very last thing I’m going to be thinking is: Home.

Guy Fieri, Alderman

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 04:56:00 -0700

Partial minutes of San Mateo Board of Aldermen meeting, Aug. 3, 2012. Chairman Al Stepanuk presiding.

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: All right then. Is there any new business?

ALDERMAN FIERI: Mr. Chairman—

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Let me finish. Is there any new business that doesn’t involve Fiery Mega Bleu Cheez Wingz?

ALDERMAN FIERI: Withdrawn.

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Anything else.

ALDERMAN FIERI: Mr. Chairman, I rise this awesome evening in support of a request for zoning variance put forward by Mr. Stan Pelton of Pelton’s Hardware, an important business in this community for many years. Now, while it is technically true that Mr. Pelton is—

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Alderman. Question.

ALDERMAN FIERI: Mr. Chairman?

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: You were going to say that Mr. Pelton is one of your good close bros from Sigma Nu, weren’t you.

ALDERMAN FIERI: Mr. Ch—

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Alderman.

ALDERMAN FIERI: Yes. Yes I was.

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Alderman Fieri, we can’t do this every week. How many good close bros do you have, anyway?

ALDERMAN FIERI: Hundreds.

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Let the record indicate that Mr. Fieri just mugged to the community-access camera and made a Shaka sign with his hand. Anything else?

ALDERMAN FIERI: A moment, Mr. Chairman, if I may. (Shuffling papers) Motion to require city personnel to wear Oakley shades on back of head…

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Denied.

ALDERMAN FIERI: …”Hair Gel Tuesdays” in the public schools…

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Denied.

ALDERMAN FIERI: …subsidized Jet-Skis for seniors…

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: Denied. Again.

ALDERMAN FIERI: Point of order. What if we spelled “Skiz” with a “Z,” which I believe would represent a substantial increment in awesomeness at no additional cost to the taxpayer?

ALDERMAN STEPANUK: And adjourned.

ALDERMAN FIERI: (ex post facto) BOO-YA! Wait. “Adjourned” is which, now?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Zombies

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 04:44:00 -0700

I didn’t sleep well last night. I tend to sleep poorly in general, but some nights are worse than others and this was one of them. When we got up my wife asked me why.

“Stress dreams,” I told her.

“Aww,” she said. “About what?”

“Two words,” I said. “Zombie apocalypse.”

You’d have no way of knowing this unless you know us personally, but my wife is the kindest and most empathetic of people. But if she’d been drinking coffee at this moment she would have executed a perfect spit take. She snorted once, hard, and did that thing where you put one hand over your mouth and make placating gestures in the air with the other. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…”

“I know,” I said. And I did know: “Zombie apocalypse” is funny. It’s got the “K” sound and the “Z” sound, which is almost as good. It has a mock-portentous ring. And it’s a funny phrase to hear first thing in the morning. But the thing is, I was genuinely rattled, because what I’d had was a pure nightmare. Both things were true: It was funny and I was terrified, walking around in that just-wakened state where the dream is still fresh and vivid and gripping.

Her reaction got me thinking about how zombies have been neutered in popular culture. “Shaun Of The Dead,” “Dawn Of The Dead,” “Day Of The Dead,” “Night Of The Living Dead.” “Left 4 Dead,” “Dead Island,” “Dead Rising.” An incomplete list of zombie games at Wikipedia is 124 entries long. I counted: 124 entries long. But there are zombies and there are zombies, and the zombies of today’s popular culture are Andover freshmen compared to the ur-zombies of voodoo lore. Those boys were nothing to screw around with. Mo Costandi, a neuroscientist who blogs for The Guardian, described the protocol for zombification in Haitian Vodun back in 2006. The emphases are mine.

In Haiti, zombification is a punishment for severe crimes. Coupe poudre is the powder used by a bokur [sorcerer] to induce zombification. The active ingredient of coupe poudre is tetradotoxin (TTX), produced in the liver and ovaries of some species of puffer fish (e.g. Fugu rubripes). TTX is a neurotoxin 500 times more potent than cyanide. It acts by blocking the sodium ion channels which enable nerve and heart cells to produce electrical impulses. In miniscule doses TTX causes a near-death state in which metabolic functions are depressed, so that breathing and pulse rate are undetectable. Total paralysis follows, although the brain and senses remain intact. The victim is thought to be dead and is buried alive… A few days after being buried, the ‘zombie’ is disinterred and given another powder containing atropine and scopolamine. These are toxic and hallucinogenic compounds from the plants Datura metel andDatura stramonium (both known as the ‘zombie cucumber’). This powder, when administered, puts the victim into a permanent state of delirium and disorientation in which they experience delusions and hallucinations. He or she can then be made to do menial work for those against which the crime was committed.

That’s what I’m talking about. These were zombies when being a zombie meant something. The apparitions who had kept me sleeping fitfully all night, waking, dreaming, waking again, were an amalgam of these — what might be called the OGs of zombie lore — and the worst, most bloodthirsty zombies of classic Hollywood. Let me review for you some of what my zombies did when they clocked in for their night’s work.

1) Emerge from their own graves to walk the earth. Tell me this wouldn’t alarm you if you were driving to the store for some pretzels. It certainly got my attention in my dream, where the locale was a back-country churchyard that looked like something out of “Red Dead Redemption.” (Which, by the way, offered an add-on pack in which the bad guys were… Anyone? Correct.)

2) Drool toxic vomit. Regular vomit is bad enough. I mean, it isn’t a thing you’d want to have very much to do with, even if it were issuing from the mouth of somebody you knew. But this stuff had some set of hypertoxic qualities that I couldn’t enumerate in my dream. I knew it was bad, though, and to be avoided at all costs.

3) Feast on flesh. Q.E.D. And I mean feast on flesh, not just eat it. These are creatures who feel about flesh like you and I feel about ice cream on a hot day.

You see what I’m saying? My zombies put the “nightmare” back in “nightmarish.” So how is it possible we came to be so captivated by the dumb, shambling zombies of recent popular culture — halfwits who walk in straight lines like Redcoats, will go down if you hit them one good lick with a shovel, and overall are about as threatening as baby ducks? One of the many great gags in “Shaun Of The Dead” is that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have time to debate the relative merits of a number of old LPs before deciding exactly which old LP they want to throw to dispatch a zombie in their back garden. I mean, these zombies aren’t exactly Predator drones.

Here’s a thought, and I offer it with the caveat that I may already have thought way too much about zombiehood today: The creators of movies and video games have abstracted the horror right out the zombie. In fact, the most terrifying zombies created in recent years weren’t even called zombies. They were called Splicers. Why? We prefer our zombies toothless, metaphorically speaking, because the canonical zombie is, no matter how much we may love our horror stories, too scary. Your real, no-foolin’ zombie, the one who predates George Romero and springs from religious fanaticism, from Congo by way of Haiti, is scary in a deep-down, dark-night-of-the-soul kind of way, a way that illuminates a truth we’d just as soon look away from — that life and death are two sides of the same coin. Who wants to think about that when they go to the movies? Unluckily for me, the subconscious isn’t so squeamish. That’s why it’s uniquely unsettling to dream, as I did, about the undead, and wake to real life — because it reminds us that the margin between life and death is as thin and porous as the one between sleeping and waking.

What I’m saying is, if your spouse tells you he dreamed about zombies, try not to laugh.

I’ll return to cheap gags on Monday. In the meantime: Sleep well!

A Look Back, And A Note About Our Underwriters

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 05:40:00 -0700

Hey, remember Ask Joe Jackson? What was that all about? Man, that guy was angry. And if you read closely, he never even answered the question! An advice column from a guy who never even answers the question — whaaaaat??? And what about House Rules — I don’t know what sort of house that was, but it sure had some crazy rules! On a more serious note, I met a famous guy once and he was kind of mean to me, but it all turned out okay.

Those are great memories, aren’t they? Hello: I’m Bill Barol, the author of Extra Bonus Super Happy Funtime. Extra Bonus Super Happy Funtime has been bringing you quality entertainment for very slightly over a week now. Let me be honest with you: That kind of longevity doesn’t come cheap. It’s unlikely I would have been able to withstand the superhuman rigors required without the support of our institutional and individual underwriters:

The National Endowment For The Arts

Art Fleming

Ian Fleming

Rhonda Fleming

Rhonda Shear

“Shear Madness” (now in its 83rd side-splitting year at The Charles Playhouse!)

A group of shadowy Middle Eastern businessmen known only to me as “The Zero Collective”

Los Pollos Hermanos

The National Film Board of Canada

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Well, this guy’s got it made. I mean, what — Chicks? Drugs? Money? The envy and respect of his peers? Hell yeah, man… he’s a blogger!” But you’d be surprised. The $16 million annual budget of this weblog is only barely completely covered by the generous parties listed. That’s right: Underwriting covers just 110% of operating expenses. And that doesn’t include the yacht slip, or what financial professionals call “some folding green to walk around on.” What I’m saying is, and at this point I’d like you to imagine me speaking in a loud urgent voice, it is HIGHLY POSSIBLE THAT I’LL HAVE TO SHUT THIS WHOLE THING DOWN WITHOUT SOME EXTRA HELP.

Now, I know what you’re thinking again: “But what can I do? I’m just one person!” Exactly. But as the great anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. That’s a great thought, isn’t it? I’ve always liked it, and apparently so has Aaron Sorkin, who stole it uncredited from Mead for “The West Wing,” which is where I heard it. Margaret Mead, by the way? Huge fan of this weblog.* She’d want you to do what I’m about to suggest: Go here now and buy my book. It’s a great read, it’s available in paperback and a wide variety of ebook formats, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve done a good thing. Plus I get to keep the yacht slip. Because let’s be serious, a yacht without a slip is absurd, and of absolutely no use to me. Or you, for that matter. Because this is mostly, and by “mostly” I mean “a tiny little bit,” about you. Thank you.

*Not literally true. Mead died in 1978.