Real America: March Tuition Madness @1:40 PM
NCAA basketball "March Madness" is on—beginning today, a host of institutions of higher education compete for bragging rights and an incremental boost in income from licensed-merchandise sales. But Awl readers know that the real champion school is the one that can charge the most tuition a year and still attract a robust student body to rock the all-important school rankings. Using the figures provided by college information resource Peterson's, I ran the NCAA tournament bracket by tuition. (In the case of state university system schools, the lower, in-state tuition is used.) It was a barnburner. READ MORE 34
Real America: It's the End Times at the Red River… Again @3:30 PM
It is expected to be in the high 30s and low 40s this weekend in eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. The annual Red River "hundred year flood" is on. And in its latest attempt to attract Anderson Cooper, the region is pulling out all the stops. Moorhead and Clay County have already declared states of emergency. Fargo's Cass County jail is prepping to move its prisoners north to Grand Forks where they stand less of a chance of being drowned. An upside of the rising waters? Real estate sales are booming. At least ten homeowners have sold their doomed riverside domiciles to the city of Fargo, which already purchased 24. And what could be more fun than watching all the action (live!) on the Grand Forks Herald 2010 Flood Cam. READ MORE 14
The 14 Most Remarkable Apple Product Placements @3:00 PM
Last week, I looked at the grotesque dominance of Apple product placement in TV and film. Now let's take a look at the most noteworthy Apple product placements of all time. READ MORE 29
Why Apple Deserves an Oscar Too @4:30 PM
Avatar is in contention for an Oscar because it dominated its field, both technologically and financially. But another cinematic player was even more dominant last year: Apple. In the 44 films in 2009 that topped the box office for at least one weekend, an Apple logo or device could be seen in at least 18 of them. (That's almost 41%.) In some, Apple products even eclipsed their human scene partners. This high appearance rate does not include the heap of mass-market films from 2009 that did not own a weekend but also featured Apple product placement. READ MORE 43
Guest Op Ed: How to Shovel Fucking Snow @3:52 PM
There has been a lot of talk of snow on this blog of late. And while I know most New Yorkers don't shovel a flake of snow, many in D.C. and other locales own are underwater on condos, houses and town-homes. Also, maybe some newly underemployed i-banker is now the super of your building and needs to know how to shovel fucking snow. Anyway, knowing how to shovel snow is a useful skill. I have shoveled literal shit-tons of snow in my life so here's how.
Real America: The Linemen @4:20 PM
Maybe you have heard of football and the game's championship "Super Bowl" this Sunday? And maybe you see football as the most American of games. But baseball is America's game. Not football. And yet, so many identify football with America. This is so wrong. Football is American only in a few disparate, sometimes contradictory, ways—even while football may be the least American team sport. Now, football cheerleaders, they are American. I dare you to identify something more American than football cheerleaders. But football itself is practically European. It is a sport controlled by money-sharing, redistribution-of-wealth agreements and a strong labor union. No team is allowed to get too wildly rich. Everyone needs to work together to accomplish a goal. It's downright socialist. The only way in which football is American is that coaches, like executives, always get new jobs after failing miserably and that Keith Olbermann ruins everything. READ MORE 57
Real America, with Abe Sauer: If You Don't Support Health Care Reform, You Don't Support the Troops @4:37 PM
This is a check for $20. You may click on it to see it larger. The check itself, that is, not its amount—it will still be worth just $20. What this $20 check represents to health care reform, however, is incalculable. Although maybe not for long.
This is a payment from the North Dakota Department of Human Services to a physician licensed and practicing in the state. It is payment for medical consultations for ten patients that, by the physician's estimate, accounted for about 25 hours of work time. (Those payment and time estimates do not account for the additional surgical procedures that several of the patients required.) READ MORE 45
Real America, with Abe Sauer: Obama's First Year in Pictures–Horrible, Horrible Pictures @2:30 PM
Exactly one year ago today, Barack Hussein Obama stood in Washington, D.C and recited the oath of office. Ten minutes later, men and women across America immediately started ordering CD-ROM copies of Learn Adobe® Photoshop® with Video Professor. What follows is another installment of The Awl's ongoing coverage of noteworthy Barack Obama Photoshop. This edition: the worst, most inexplicable Obama political art from the last 12 months. The gallery is quite Not Safe For Work, Reasonable Political Discourse. READ MORE 20
Real America, with Abe Sauer: They Even Put Ads on Birds Now @5:44 PM
It is news to nobody that we are a world undergoing “ad creep,” an invasive omnipresence of advertising. Now, ads are more than just "on" our lives but make up "how" we live. With apologies to the Tracy Awards and Kraft’s "Cheddar Explosion" program for the demolition of Texas Stadium, the ultimate in ad creep may be a small, cheap booze campaign going on right now in South Dakota. READ MORE 28
The End of the 00s: What I Know Now, by Abe Sauer @12:00 PM
The Awl asked everyone (so I'm not special) to look back on the last decade and submit something, anything, of substance. I thought long and hard about this project and decided that, despite many impactful first-hand experiences such as 9/11, I should write about how over the last decade I matured to understand how little I understood in the decade before, how that mirrored how little I knew in the decade before that, and if the next decade will turn out to be the same and what that means about how much I think I know now. But then I got off the toilet and decided what I really think about when I look back on this last decade is something a little different…. READ MORE 30
A Thanks from Our Poster Boy Zack @1:21 PM
For those that bought our 2010 Benefit Calendar, a few things! It looks like they're shipping, so, 1) Here is an explanatory one-pager that you can print yourself, in case you're giving these as gifts and you want it explained what the heck is going on here: It is a PDF file. 2) When the money comes through, which should be just after New Year's, we are going to send Zack a nice chunk of change. Yay! Good job! And 3) Now a few words from Zack! (And also a picture of him on a fake fur rug in a Santa hat, in honor of the season.) READ MORE 25
Real America, with Abe Sauer and Zack P.: The Awl 2010 Benefit Calendar @2:22 PM
We met Zack P. back in August, when he was the sole protester at the Grand Forks, North Dakota Tea Parties. So, what has Zack been up to? I recently received an email answering just that question. "Abe: Am working on a protest of Focus on the Family and their hate-filled B.S. and I can tell by some of the comments on The Awl that people tend to think of North Dakota as a bunch of rednecks… just don't want my hometown to seem like Laramie. Interested?" I was. But when I arrived at the church, Zack was nowhere to be found. Just two police cruisers. READ MORE 139
Real America, with Abe Sauer: Oscar Season is for Patriots @2:50 PM
Like Christmas, and puberty, the Oscar movie season gets earlier every year. This year, one ambitious writer even declared "The Oscar Season Begins In August With Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds.'" But by any measure, we are now well into the time of year when Oscar-hopeful films get dumped into theaters to be ignored by almost everyone. This season's crop? The Road, Brothers, Broken Embraces, Precious, A Single Man, Crazy Heart, The White Ribbon, Invictus, Nine, The Lovely Bones, It's Complicated, An Education, Avatar and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. (Up in the Air is disqualified for basically being the 40-Year-Old Virgin with moodier lighting.) But what about Oscar season for the crowd who thinks all those liberal Hollywood movies are for socialist pansies? For them, there is Photoshop. READ MORE 83
Real America, with Abe Sauer: Red Skin Cheer @4:36 PM
In 1930, the University of North Dakota changed the name of its sports teams from The Flickertails to The Sioux (and then later, the "Fighting Sioux"), presumably because a flickertail is a type of ground rodent and the Sioux were considered to be a tribe of Indian "warriors." Also, their teams' archrivals are the "Bison," and what better mascot to wipe out a bison than an Indian? (Given that irony is not favored in athletic departments, i.e., "The Fur Traders" was not considered.) Three years later, and two thousand miles away, a professional football team changed its name to The Redskins. READ MORE 60
Real America, with Abe Sauer: Knock, Knock. Who's There? Your Stalker. @3:30 PM
The Dolce & Gabbana maybe-gang-rape ad of two years ago looked rather harmless at the time. It was just one of those nonsensical things fashion types do to look arty or whatever—bleeding edge "LOOK AT ME!" and all that. But through the prism of the last month's gang rapeof a 15-year-old girl outside her high school's homecoming dance, it looks a little, well, harder to look at. Events like that certainly make Whoopi Goldberg's Roman "I don't believe it was rape-rape" Polanski statement look even more absurd. All this, and the LAPD recently celebrated having reduced, by 64%, its backlog of unprocessed DNA evidence from thousands of rape and sexual assault cases. Only 2,500 left! Rape as a focus for media "debate," or as something for marketers to exploit, is out. Domestic abuse and sexual harassment, however, are in. READ MORE 32
Real America with Abe Sauer: A Visit to New York City's JC Penney @4:23 PM
In August, Cintra Wilson wrote a Critical Shopper column for the New York Times. The subject was JC Penney's Manhattan store. There was a stir. While recently in New York, I dropped by the JC Penney in question with a copy of her column to do a big, fat fact-check. READ MORE 60
Fight Breast Cancer, Drink Wine… Get Breast Cancer @2:50 PM
Because I have not yet offended every female Awl reader, I would like to point out that it is breast cancer awareness month. [Ed Note: *Hides under desk.*] A consumer holiday created by businesses that discovered placing a pink ribbon on any piece of shit product is a huge sales driver. Yes: "Brands will continue to benefit from identifying and contributing to a positive social purpose that makes sense for their business, with 64 percent of people globally saying they would recommend a brand that supports a good cause (up from 52 percent in 2008)," says the Edelman 2009 Goodpurpose Survey. READ MORE 49
Your Halloween Costume: A Bigot @4:18 PM
The offensive costume is a Halloween staple. Because some people, you just can't reach teach. Combine a need for attention with alcohol and some markers and duct tape and sometimes you get something great. Sometimes you get something else. But we do expect businesses to know better. Read on for this year's most bigoted, misogynistic, racist costumes. All available from legitimate retailers. Including Amazon.com. READ MORE 91
Real America, with Abe Sauer: Fat, Fetuses and Felonies @4:35 PM
Above is a CPAP sales and info booth in a major Midwest mall. CPAP machines treat sleep apnea, a brutal disorder on the rise thanks, in part, to American obesity. We are now so fat that dropping by the midway's CPAP booth is as mundane as hitting the Sunglass Hut and Orange Julius. We're fat. Not news. But all that blubber is a lifestyle choice. The consequence of living well. No regrets. So you may get sleep apnea; other than killing yourself early (which some argue is economically beneficial) or making flights to Houston even more uncomfortable, where's the harm? Well, for starters, a mountain of recent data shows being obese during pregnancy is as dangerous as being a pregnant alcoholic. And a one-two punch of IVF and the "fetal personhood" movement could easily make criminals of the pregnant fat. READ MORE 129
Come On People, Your Halloween Costume isn't Going to Make Itself @4:30 PM
Is there a better holiday than Halloween? Of course not. It has no tedious religious requirements. It has no family get-together component. It has no bummer moral underpinning (I'm looking at you, Memorial Day). It can be enjoyed at all age levels, being just as fun to do in your 40s with your daughter as it was in your freewheeling 20s. And, as holidays go, it runs neck and neck with New Year for getting you laid. It's also the only holiday that favors—celebrates!— a creative smartass. Indeed, I may be a humorless grump who too often sees the bad in everything, especially human nature. But for at least one day a year I am a fucking delight. And that day is Halloween. READ MORE 106
Real America, with Abe Sauer: The Last Game of Baseball in the Metrodome @3:15 PM
At 5 p.m. (EDT) the Twins will play the Tigers in an extra season game (163!) for the American League Central title. While the Twins' inspired play helped them get here, the game is mostly the result of the Tigers' complete—complete!—meltdown. It's the second straight year the Twins season has ended with such a playoff game. It's the 108th year the Tigers season has ended with them still being from Detroit. But even more woeful is that, should the Twins lose, it's the last baseball game ever at the Metrodome. READ MORE 36
Why Don't You–And Obama–Believe That Torture Is Torture? Because the Culture Industry Said So. @2:37 PM
Back in January, a Washington Post/ABC News Poll asked the following question: "Obama has said that under his administration the United States will not use torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism, no matter what the circumstance. Do you support this position not to use torture, or do you think there are cases in which the United States should consider torture against terrorism suspects?"
A majority of respondents, 58%, supported the stance, and agreed that torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances. 40% did not agree. So while this poll was heralded as a demonstration that America does not support torture, a full two out of every five Americans supports torture. But not just any torture. READ MORE 32
Very Recent History: The French Dip @4:00 PM
In March 2003 France stated that it would not support a U.N. resolution to invade Iraq. And with that, a nation constipated with 9/11 rage found the perfect place onto which to crap. Heretofore dopey, jocular anti-France sentiment was exchanged for vitriolic, publicly expressed hatred. And yet, six years later, a hamburger demonstrates why the very fervent wrath the right has produced is nothing to worry about. READ MORE 43
