BONUS POINTS if you know what classic musical the above headline is semi-cribbed/paraphrased from. Hint: if you went to my high school, I played a member of “the chorus” in 11th grade. Yes, I was a semi half-assed drama nerd. Sometime I’ll tell you about starring in my best friend Steven’s postmodernist student play “A Grand View of the 20th Century” in which deceased historical figures came together in a kind of purgatory to discuss the meaning of life. JFK, Bette Davis, Isadora Duncan, MLK, Gertrude Stein. You know. Postmodernism. As interpreted by a gay 17-year-old classical music composer with a deep knowledge of 1940s literature and 1980s homosexual British period films. Let’s just say I knew who Hugh Grant was before anybody in the States gave a fuck. Thanks Steven. (He went on to music-direct a Philharmonic of a major American borough. Mine!)
So the point of this post is that I am twittering. I am not sure why; Sasha apparently has some good arguments as to why it is useful or at all interesting but he has not posed them to me yet. (Says Will, upon hearing that Joe Trippi has a twitter account: “pundits love it because it makes them seem connected, accessible and in touch with technology without actually having to be any of those things.”) But apparently I like it nevertheless because I am twittering the HAYELL out of my life. Don’t worry I won’t use it to tell you where I’m eating brunch (ok I totally did that today though). Mostly I’m trying to be useful about it and speed-blog when I wanna share a link. If you think this sounds interesting to you (it does), you should be-twitter me. And we can twitter our faces off. Together. As one. Fuck privacy!
P.S. While you’re there you should be-twitter Jeff Chang, as he is at the DNC and twittering very interestingly. Out of all the people covering onsite, he is probably the one I trust most not to lameify or wackithroat his twitter reports. Recent Jeff Chang DNC Twitter post: “Lotsa stuff on sale. Obama shirts next to hi hater/bye hater shirts” See?

Vanity Fair reprints a piece by Dorothy Parker printed in the May 1919 issue of the magazine, and it’s prophetic, witty (duh) and maybe a slight bit painful in how little things have changed in nigh a hundred years.
Anyone who works in magazines and/or has ever been familiar with the day-to-day of Conde Nast will feel a slight burning sensation in their eyes while reading such I-coulda-wrote-it lines as:
They [Art Department] are forever discovering Great Geniuses;
They never fail to find exceptional talents
In any feminine artist under twenty-five.
and
Then there is the Editorial Department;
The Literary Lights.
They tell you what good training editorial work is.
But they don’t mean to stay in it–
Some day they will be Free Lances
And write the Great Thoughts that Surge within them.
and
Then there is the Fashion Department;
First Aids to Baron de Meyer.
If any garment costs less than $485
They think you ought to give it to the Belgians.
and
There is the Boss;
The Great White Chief.
He has some bizarre ideas
About his employees’ getting to work
At nine o’clock in the morning,–
As if they were a lot of milkmen.
He has never been known to see you
When you arrive at 8:45,
But try to come in at a quarter past ten
And he will always go up in the elevator with you.
HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME. P.S. I bet $30 this shit gets circulated widely from the VF site; magazine employees love to do nothing more than talk about magazine culture. Don’t tell me if it’s already on Gawker, I don’t read that spittle.

Here is Jon’s review of the Marc Anthony / Alejandro Fernandez show we went to the other night: An utterly mature and comfortable performer, he was expressive not only with his voice, holding muscular notes for improbably long spells, but also with every inch of his body; time and again overhead screens flashed images of his hands, which seemed to be engaged in their own complex conversation. See, even Jon has a crush on Marc! Glad he touched on the demographic stuff… during Alejandro Fernandez’s set, when he was playing with mariachis, the whole Garden froke out, and I thought, empirically, it meant perhaps Mexicans are going to outmode Boricuas in NY… but no, Marc got way way more reaction, and my non-scientific sociological assumption was blasted. Blasted!
“Guadalajara,” which he played, and reminded me of my grandma, and made me cry and also scream wildly in some really raw display of nationalism (I was upset I did not think to bring along my flag and rep):

Reluctantly, I must direct you to a David Brooks column. Wherein he elucidated (before the decision) the reason Biden was the right choice. It helped assuage the pain of Obama’s decision not to choose Michael Phelps as his running mate. However, as Maureen informed me today, Phelps is presently mired in scandal anyway, having been seen canoodling in the Olympic Village with Australian swimmer and fellow gold medallist Stephanie Rice, ex-girlfriend of Eamon Sullivan, another Australian swimmer who, incidentally, LOST all his races to Michael Phelps. It is with consternation that I admit Biden was indeed the better choice, lest Phelps’ quasi-Edwardsian transgressions lead to scandal and the, god forbid, election of War McSame.
Speaking of, watch this ad; Obama’s killing it. I LOVE the reserved sarcasm of the narrator.

Also, what is McCain smoking that he thinks the “fundamentals of our economy are strong”? Oh maybe he’s talking about the need for unprecedented government backing of major financial institutions to keep our economy from smacking into the proverbial iceberg? Oh probably he “misheard” “housing crisis” as “housewarming party.” And showed up to Lil’ Bush’s with a bottle of Pinot, unannounced. Maybe we should schedule a sit-down between McCain and Dr. Doom, just for the perspective. In the meantime can McCain lay off the peyote at least until the RNC? Oh wait.. no we want him to stay ON the peyote, so his continuing ridiculous comments help Obama’s chances that much more. McCain: HOLLER AT THE DIVINE CACTUS! The DEA got you covered.

Okay. I used to think he was mad grody. And wondered why J.Lo chose him. I assumed it was because he offered stability and support and probably gave her the princess treatment she reportedly requires. But that was before I saw him live. As I did tonight at Madison Square Garden. (El Cantante notwithstanding.) Marc Anthony is, as Jon paraphrasing Ben noted, a BOSS. I think I love him? Watch this (it’s at MSG but from last year):

Thursday and Friday, Pete and I kicked it with our friends who either presently attend college or have recently graduated. Us being slightly (slightly) older than college-age grad and have either not-attended (myself) or dropped out (Pete) it afforded us the vibe of collegiate extracurricular experience, without the soul-stiultifying loans and/or intellectual edicts. To wit: Friday, we went over to Hanly’s (NYU, ’08) friends’ apartment, to participate in the Fleetwood Mac Power Hour: They play an hour of Fleetwood Mac songs on the TiVO, and every time a new song comes on, you take a shot of beer. We arrived late (we had to finish the Olympics-themed radio show, polish our Beijing banter, and eat dinner) so we only got to hear “Edge of Seventeen” (Stevie counts) and some other Fleetwood song that I didn’t know. When the Power Hour ended, Hanly’s homie who lived there demonstrated how uploading his iPod onto the Tivo resulted in some accidental chopped and screwed effect on certain songs, an effect which only began after he played a defected, desert-slow version of Rihanna’s “S.O.S.” So basically we sat there and listened to a slew of familiar songs as though they were broadcasted from the gates of hell, i.e. the “Whisper Song” sounded like the devil trying to pick you up via dubstep.
That was excellent. Thursday, however, was epic. We journeyed for the first time to Maud’s (Sarah Lawrence, ’09) upper west side apartment, a fully furnished mini-mansion she co-rents with her mother– who subletted from the children of a since-deceased piano teacher who bought the place in, judging from the decor, 1917.
Apartment is really an understatement. It is a house of four floors. The top floor was inaccessible to us because an anonymous elderly woman lives there. It is unclear whether she ever leaves. The third floor houses Maud’s cavernous room, a bathroom, a grand piano, an unoccupied single bed draped with the sort of peach coloured tasseled top-blanket I remember from my grandmother’s own 1917 (1921?) house, and a terrerium on the mantle, housing foliage but utterly absent of amphibians.
The second floor approxmates the same, minus another grand piano, plus a Chinese screen. On the first floor, the staircase drapes out like a wedding veil, cast in red carpet and mirrors all around, and opens to a foyer, another bathroom, two more creepily situated single beds with blankets, a medium sized television, a kitchen, another bathroom and, alas, a third grand piano. It is, note for note, piece by piece, the Haunted Mansion you imagined when you were six, an old gargantuan New York abode with clear yet undisernible history that will reveal its own shadows as you turn every corner.
And yet, after Pete and I got over the architecture (but not before Pete, emerging from the third floor bathroom, squeaked “Don’t leave me!”), we convened upon the dining table for Maud’s home-cooked Jamaican dinner. K and her boyfriend and his friends, two maje stoners from PDX, were fully posted up, eating beans and rice and bragging about the allegedly lax weed regulations of the Pacific Northwest. (I, having been a fan of the “JailBlazers,” don’t buy it.) T, standing against the stove in an Indiana Jones hat, looked on, perhaps disapprovingly. When the not-so-witty mini Oregon Seth Rogans were through with their hydroponic dissertatons, T regaled us with stories of his sugar daddy, an extremely wealthy entrepreneurial fellow he’d met at the old-school diner over on 86th street and who, after taking up a (pre-determinedly) non-sexual May-December friendship, offered to take T to an exorbitantly high priced Bobby McFerrin concert at Carnegie Hall. Black tie. They went. Ever since, T has been enjoying his new status as boy-genius sun-god: openings at MOMA, dinner at Waverly, conversations about contemporary South American novelists that T, ever the mal/well educated prodigy, soon en route to Buenos Aires, could actually understand. Did these unlikely friends speak in Spanish? T did not say. But he did emphasize that their relationship was purely platonic, based on friendship and conversation and intellect. We all celebrated in spite of it, or for it, in spite of or for their non-existant love.
Sensing footsteps, Maud, Pete, T and I, scraped-clean plates at our collective bows, waited for the cat-sitter, a twice-our-age employee of a prominent New York magazine, to come down the stairs. M. offered him a beer; much ado was made internally (among us, via eye contact) whether he would select the Bud Tall Boy (of which there were many) or the slightly fancier Sierra Nevada (of which there was one). He picked Sierra Nevada, of course, and vaulted into his thoughts on Kate Bush’s metaadolescent yearnings. We liked, we said, her voice, the videos, the persona. He did not read our magazine. Nor we, his. It was a conscious decision on our part; his, not so much.. He was wrong. Kate Bush feature TK.
We stomped on the porch of the haunted house and our breath blew out, some of us smoky, up toward the crescent moon. These days, these days, they are excellent.

This I have actually seen, a work beyond words. For if anyone put together the buildings of the Greeks and display of their labours, they would seem lesser in both effort and expense to this labyrinth – even though both the temple in Ephesus and the one in Samos are remarkable. Even the pyramids are beyond words, and each was equal to many and mighty works of the Greeks. Yet the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids.
In it there are twelve courts with roofs, each with facing gateways, six oriented to the north and six oriented to the south. It contains two sets of chambers, one below ground and the other aligned on top, three thousand in number – fifteen hundred in each set. I saw the upper series of chambers myself, passing through, and speak from my own observation, whereas I learned of the underground series by report. For the Egyptian authorities were utterly unwilling to show them saying they contained the burials both of the kings who had caused this labyrinth to be build, and of the secret crocodiles.
-Herodotus, writing on the lost Labyrinth of Hawara

Is it good or does it suck to be known as “the world’s foremost male breast-stroker”? I’m caught in the semantics.
Tonight I dined with ye olde friende Josh Kun, professor of many courses, man of many columns, author of one of my favorite pieces of political reportage (which you really must read) and co-proprietor of a label promoting obscure and found Jewish music, sometimes influenced by Mexican cross-cultural convo. He was visiting from Los Angeles. We discussed the narco murders, the chaos wrought by NAFTA which has resulted in economical collapse and, long story short, many senseless kidnappings and killings of people who are just going bout their business. Tragedies. More after I learn more. He also taught me about iTUNES U (after I told him sometimes I dream about going to college, just for the experience). iTUNES U IS MY DREAM. Why did I not know about this sooner? It is the best possible use of the internet. You can download lectures for free and listen to them! I’m downloading “Intro to Photoshop” right now. Not really, I’m downloading “Today’s Cuba, the Invisible Legacies of Revolution.” THEN I’m downloading “Intro to Photoshop.” I’ll let you know how it is. THANKS JOSH!

As you may know, I am a proponent of anything remotely related to the Mayan apocalypse, having come from a lineage of curanderas and having grown up in the ’80s, when I knew that nuclear detonation was the surefire way I was going to croak from the time I was four. But the news that Girl Talk is planning to go out on the Mayan Apocalypse does not intrigue… it simply further confirms my hunch that Girl Talk is the McBLT of people who learned how to use Serrato. That dude’s music is shite, he basically splices together everything my second cousin played at her wedding at the Knights of Columbus in 1993, and has figured out a way to sell himself to people who don’t know any better. Some day we are going to find out he is an elaborate street seeding ploy dreamed up by Wieden and Kennedy to market Dexys Midnight Runners’ back catalogue. He is the Hamburglar. Robble robble. Puke.

I have finally finished watching all episodes of the Taiwanese drama Rolling Love (Go! Fried Rice). Subtitled, silly; my Mandarin is terrible. (Taiwanese shows are serialized like telanovelas, which is smart and allows neat little stories that aren’t drawn out long enough to use their viewership.) As you may recall, I was watching it because I have a Washington Monument-sized crush on the star, Jiro Wang, who is essentially the Justin Timberlake of Taiwan, insofar that he is the leader and clear force behind the boyband Fahrenheit, and he is also an unexpectedly talented actor, whose smile is lopsided and adorable but whose demeanor is pure masculine. JIRO WANG, PURRRRRR ROWR. Here he s playing Mi Qi Lin in “Rolling Love”; he is the man-dude in the white chef outfit.
I digress. “Rolling Love” is about Mi Qi Lin, maker of the most excellent fried rice in the land and owner of a fried rice diner in a provincial beachside town; the lovely singer Guan Xiao Shu, who is blind after a freak car accident in which her potential boyf Leng Lie was driving, and will never forgive himself. Leng Lie, by the way, is the most famous and revered gourmet chef in Taiwan. Obviously, a love triangle was inevitable wherein Mi Qi Lin and his bumbling earnestness attempts to win over Xiao Shu, while Leng Lie wants to take care of her for the rest of eternity, possibly from guilt. Marriage proposals, a kidnapping, a near-death experience, a brain tumor, a tabloid scandal, a temporary regaining of sight, and a few deaths ensue. The show is so awesome and addictive! And ridiculous! The dude who plays Leng Li is totally hot, too, but he doesn’t have the charisma of Jiro Wang. He is also a singer in real life, as is the lady who plays Xiao Shu. Apparently it is easier to multitask your career in smaller countries. I am sorry I keep talking about these dudes, but whatever, I am a girl and there are only like two weeks left in summer. I have to make it count before I start hibernating for the winter. (There’s only enough room in my underground chambers for me and the nuts I collected at harvest. [No blowjo.])
If you wanna watch it, it’s all here, with English subtitles. I’m so sad it’s over, but DramaWiki says Jiro is filming another show, “Superstar Express,” with the following synopsis:
Mars is a superstar whose popularity went downhill after a series of negative publicity. His finances went into red alert and he had to find a place to live. He ended up renting a place from Mo Mo, his agoraphobic homebody landlord. He befriended her and her childhood friend Jia Sen, a swimming captain with the intelligence of an 8-year-old.
Um, do you see what American television is missing?!? They get agoraphobic landlords and mentally disabled swim teams and we get fucking “Lipstick Jungle”? THIS SHIT AINT RIGHT.
Jiro with rad font tats:

Jiro wearing nerd glasses and a plastic sauna jacket (he was retaining water):

Jiro dressed like M.I.A. and posing with a water buffalo

Jiro Wang: everybody’s friend