All Of The End Of The World
Thanks to everyone who participated in our end of the world exercise. Perhaps you missed one of two during the hectic holiday week. Good news: they're all here! Print and save for later… or for the actual end of the world. You'll have plenty of time for reading then.
Possible Resolutions For The Apocalypse Year
If I knew the world was coming to an end, I would fuck with impunity. I would crunch birth control pills between my teeth like they were pink Pez all day long. With the specter of annihilation on horizon, all would be carnage and I would need to start regularly shaving my legs.
I have a picture of every man I ever slept with. I’d pin each photo up on my living room wall, use a marker to rank each one based on looks, IQ and technique. I’d invite my friends over to drink and comment on the exhibition. I’d tell them all the secrets I was supposed to keep. [...]
F/M/K: Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase
Natashy, this is tough like Jehu. Tough like the rind off a New York Strip from Tad’s Steaks. Tough like a horde of Hell’s Angels with filthy, stew-ingredient-ridden Santa beards.
I have been wrestling, Michael Shannon-style, with this trio of icons — but specifically with the sticky wicket of Chevy vs. Steve. I’ll explain it all in a bit for those of you rolling your eyes/flipping your hairs back and forth. But let’s just say the 92nd Street Y debacle helped me seal my deal.
Oh, obviously you marry Bill Murray. That is a no-brainer. Yes, he was probably an absent husbo in the way he is an agentless, [...]
My Favorite Harry Potter Smut Summaries
Post-war Harry is surprised with a card delivered by a mystery man that reveals that not only is Draco Malfoy alive, he is rentable by the hour.
Sirius felt a twist of fear in his guts. "Do you want to stop?" he asked. "Just be friends again?" Could he go back to being "just friends" with Remus after knowing the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body pressed against him?
For the rest of the Ministry, the interdepartmental challenge was merely a failed attempt to restore trust between workers. But for Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger, it was the catalyst for an unexpected [...]
'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows': Two Nerds Geek Out
Natasha Vargas-Cooper: We need to talk about Harry Potter.
Dan Kois: EXPECTO CHATONUM!
Natasha: Clearly, we as Americans agree that HP7 is a FINE FILM. But as wizard nerds, like as a lady who, um, would really like to have been cast as Tonks, I have to say I was a little bummed out.
Dan: Pull out your shimmering strands of memory, drop them into your Pensieve, and explain to me why.
Natasha: Firstly, THE DARK LORD DOES NOT SIT AT A CONFERENCE TABLE!
Dan: Right, so this scene in the book is nothing but the purest malarkey.
F/M/K: Hugh Laurie, Rahm Emanuel, Anthony Bourdain
Natasha: Jewlz, this is a potent list of Silvery Fox Men you've thrown down.
I think I speak for all women and the 110th Congress when I ask: does it count as fisting if the dude only has four fingers? Even outside the parameters of this salt-n-pepper trifecta, Rahm ranks in single digits of my FUCK BUCKET LIST of all time. On looks alone he’s a hot piece of bone: hooded eyes, sharp cheek bones, and hands-on-hips Israeli paratrooper posture. It all just makes a girl like me (i.e. one who digs men of The Tribe) tingly. Though, my unyielding sexual attraction to Rahm mainly stems from his persona: [...]
Ladies Rank 'Sopranos' Actors
"Now the man’s lap who I would bounce on forever, until my hips shattered from the 7.9 Richter scale fuckquake we would have is Imperioli. GOOD GAWD! Have you seen him go from guido to East Village gypsy with his wiley mustache, Serpico leather jacket, and slender hips? He’s like a Voltron of fuck parts. And with Christofahh I feel like he’s crazy without being socio, like Tony. Imperioli, with the chest hair and the gonzo schonz, just drives me wild. Michael and I would have great theater people sex. All performative and smelly…. ARE YOU READING THIS MICHAEL IMPERIOLI, I WILL MAKE YOU SEE STARS THROUGH MY MIDDLE PARTS!!" [...]
At Sharron Angle's Victory Party, Which Ended in Defeat
By the time Sharon Angle conceded to returning Senator Harry Reid, well past midnight, her victory party at the Venetian's ballroom had thinned out to a couple hundred diehards: bleary staffers, despondent volunteers, long-time (Republican) party contributors. Noticeably absent were the tea partiers. At the beginning of the night and throughout the campaign, they were easy to spot: they are a dustier sort of Republican, outfitted in jeans, zany political shirts and always gripping signs with slogans like “Trust God Not Government.” After the Las Vegas Sun called the race in favor of Reid at 9:43 p.m., nearly all had disappeared. Except one.
Michelle Obama Comes and Goes
After John McCain closed out the Sharron Angle rally on Friday, her campaign coordinators played a bit of amateur propaganda. Pictures of foreclosed houses, stock photos of agonized couples looking at stacks of unpaid bills, a chart of unemployment rates, all flashing by quickly to a soaring soundtrack. At the crescendo of all this pictorial despair appeared the image of First Lady Michelle Obama. In it she is reclining on a beige chaise lounge in a sleeveless violet dress, one hand cupped along the side of her neck, revealing her diamond wedding ring that matches her teardrop diamond earrings, and above her is the big word Vogue, the issue [...]
Waiting for Michelle Obama at the "Largest Phonebank" In History
An hour into today's rally for Democratic candidates, and two-thirds of the gymnasium at Canyon Springs High School is full. Representatives Dina Titus and Shelley Berkley have each gotten up and announced that we are in attendance at not just a Michelle Obama appearance but also we are at the "largest phonebank in the history of the world!!!" They also suggested we take out our "cellulars to call someone so we can be the largest phonebank ever!!!"
Sharron Angle's Mormon Ally: Harry Reid "Trampled" on the LDS Church
Posted inside all the phonebank cubbies at Sharron Angle's Las Vegas headquarters, there’s a sheet that instructs her volunteers how to deal with anyone who has questions regarding Sharron Angle's relationship to the Mormon Church. This is because Angle's pastor has denounced the LDS Church—of which her opponent, Harry Reid, is a member—as a "cult." So concerned people are to be given the number of a "well known leader" and "Friend." I called to speak with this former bishop of the LDS church.
John McCain Tries to Embrace Tea Party, Throws Gays (or Bastards!) Under Bus
Live from Vegas: McCain Tries to Embrace Tea Party, Throws Gays Under Bus — #url#
At Sharron Angle HQ, Working the Phones: "Do You Trust Harry Reid?"
I spent yesterday at Sharron Angle for Senate Campaign Headquarters, in a strip mall in northern Las Vegas. The phonebank volunteers were targeting likely Angle supporters in rural parts of the state to take advantage of early voting, which ended last night. Most of my fellow volunteers (I was, I believe, the only fake volunteer) were over fifty—with the exception of Summer and Jordan, two bubbly seventeen-year-olds who both had family in the military—and white and not originally from Nevada. By coincidence, the three women in my adjoining cubby were from all from Pennsylvania, having moved to Nevada after their children were grown. The ladies, with their various shades of [...]
Footnotes of Mad Men: Full of Demands, Empty of Offerings
Don's right-about one thing, at least: teenagers are sentimental. The cynicism with which adults rebel comes from the nihilism of doing what you know is bad for you because you're old enough to understand that these things usually go unpunished. The kind of joyless self-indulgence that adults traffic in doesn't exist for teenagers. For the young, it's unfathomable that act of self-indulgence can bring anything but joy. In the twilight of childhood, you're not sure what's like to be an adult but you know what it feels like to not be a child. Every brush with adult behavior-anything from smoking, to sneaking out, to driving, to fucking-is wrapped in a [...]
Let's talk about the finale of Mad Men!
There will be plenty of excitement this evening at 10 PM Eastern when a pissy Peyton Manning scowls on the sidelines in our nation's capital AMC airs the finale to Season 4 of "Mad Men." While the redoubtable Natasha Vargas-Cooper will of course be brining you your weekly installment of Footnotes tomorrow, the way our shared cultural heritage works these days is that everyone watches something and immediately jumps on the Internet to talk about it. (Sometimes they even do so during the event.) So we may as well set up a water cooler (your choice if beverage may vary) right here in anticipation. See you later on this [...]
Footnotes of Mad Men: Calling All Trumpeter Swans
Who knew that the advertising industry housed so many men of integrity? The ad above is by Bill Bernbach, a founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach and the Great Father of modern advertising. It was Bernbach who popularized the technique of counter-intuitive advertising. "Now I'm not talking about tricking people," Bernbach said. "If you get attention by a trick, how can people like you for it? For instance, you are not right if, in your ad, you stand a man on his head just to get attention. But you are right to have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets."
Flicked Off: "The Social Network"
Natasha Vargas-Cooper: I ain't going to lie to you. I went in wanting to hate. I was queasy thinking about what Fincher/Sorkin had to say about the Digital Generation and I was resistant to suffering through Jesse's flat-affect-acting.
Sasha Frere-Jones: I enjoyed the narrative locomotive, but the movie might as well have been about a struggle over the Enzongium contract in Quadrant K9. I would have liked that more, actually. This is first and foremost a movie about Sorkinese, a language that finds a comfy home in litigation. "The West Wing" was Walking and Talkingâ„¢-The Social Network is Sitting and Talking and Occasionally Dartingâ„¢.
Footnotes of Mad Men: Charismatic Domination, or, When Daddy Is A Disaster
Don! Since the beginning of "Mad Men," all have been agog about Don Draper's magnetism. What is it? Why do women wilt and men follow? How does his staff endure his endless floggings? (Ahem.) And how does he turn the most banal products into objects of desire? Granddaddy sociologist Max Weber provides an answer: Don is a charismatic. Charismatics draw their power from the mystic and divine. For the early Christians, a charismatic was a human vessel through which a god revealed its power. Charismatics are theatrical, eloquent, and fervent. We first saw a glimpse of Don's supernatural power when he coolly walked around a conference table of skeptical clients [...]
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