Skating in Central Park with Pippa Middleton, Iranian Space Monkey & Bibi Netanyahu. Pippa makes a play-hat of Monkey as Bibi pirouettes.
— Dana Vachon (@danavachon) February 5, 2013
Dana Vachon is one of our favorite writers, but also publishes rarely. So when he drops a short story on Twitter late at night, it's our duty to carefully collect his leavings.
"Rebecca Black borrows from one of hip-hop's more powerful narrative-engines, the presupposition that everyone is against you:
Weren't you the one who said that I would be nothing? Well I'm about to prove you wrong. I'm not the only one who believes in something. Which works, if you grew up as a musical prodigy in the Marcy Projects. But Ms. Black didn't — she is the daughter of Orange County veterinarians whose spayedings and neuterings paid for the "Friday" video — and so she has a problem. The grand cause separating her from the nihilism of the day is in fact merely her own dank puddle of that [...]
"'You will surely make noise when I take you deep,' texted Representative Anthony Weiner, the great BlackBerry lover, to his virtual inamorata, Lisa Weiss, the famous dissident, aviatrix and Vegas blackjack dealer. 'Yes I will,' she texted back. 'I will be sore for days.' This past year took the world deep, and the world made noise, but unlike Ms. Weiss, it had, in its soreness, no luxury of bed rest." —Awl pal Dana Vachon's review of the past year is pretty much required reading and almost balances out that other thing in the Observer today, that thing we're not talking about.
Should you still be in the market for some thoughts on the legacy of Osama bin Ladan, Awl pal Dana Vachon offers a few here.
Cameron drifted into the wrong lane, then came to the wrong border post—and just like that the Connecticut-plated BMW was under suspicion as a drug runner. We were asked to await a drive-through X-raying, then wedged between a body-rotted pickup truck and a minivan whose rear panel was being sniffed by a rangy German shepherd.
“These guys,” said Cameron, drawing our detainers into his messaging, “are making their decision based on not how we look. On the facts. And the fact is we could very well be struggling”—this slip was the only fracture in an immaculate façade of control and confidence, and he swallowed it like a spit [...]
Rebecca Black wakes somewhat too perfectly in the early scenes of her viral video, "Friday." Her eyes open exactly as the clock beside her bed flashes seven. She wears full make-up. Rare for a teen, she isn’t tired, longs not for any receding dreams.
Her cultural debt is less to Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles than Evie Vicki the robot girl from Small Wonder, we realize, as in a voice controlled by Auto-Tune she enumerates the banalities of an anti-existence: “Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs, gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal… gotta get down to the bus stop.”
She offers the camera a hostage's smile, forced, [...]
