The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:40:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 LOL Headlines: "Uproar over proposed bills delays answer to Internet piracy" http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/lol-headlines-uproar-over-proposed-bills-delays-answer-to-internet-piracy http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/lol-headlines-uproar-over-proposed-bills-delays-answer-to-internet-piracy#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:40:59 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/lol-headlines-uproar-over-proposed-bills-delays-answer-to-internet-piracy Losingest front-page newspaper headline of the day, from the LA Times: "Legislation uproar delays solution to Internet piracy." Yup. Congratulations, everyone, you have DELAYED SOLVING INTERNET PIRACY with your SOPA/PIPA protests. SHAME ON YOU.

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Losingest front-page newspaper headline of the day, from the LA Times: "Legislation uproar delays solution to Internet piracy." Yup. Congratulations, everyone, you have DELAYED SOLVING INTERNET PIRACY with your SOPA/PIPA protests. SHAME ON YOU.

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First We Fire All the Doctors (With Unwashed Hands) http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/first-we-fire-all-the-doctors-with-unwashed-hands http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/first-we-fire-all-the-doctors-with-unwashed-hands#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:50:48 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/first-we-fire-all-the-doctors-with-unwashed-hands "Changing the message from 'Wash Your Hands to Protect Yourself' to 'Wash Your Hands to Protect Your Patients,' the study found, could motivate some doctors and nurses to wash their hands more frequently."
I guess. Or, you know, they could just start putting doctors who don't wash their hands on a month's unpaid leave. OR! They could forcibly graft a nice hospital-acquired staph infection onto their faces maybe. I don't know: if doctors aren't getting the practice of washing hands between patients, should they even be doctors? Sorry, I know all workplace best practices are hard! But this question of "motivation" seems absurd.

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"Changing the message from 'Wash Your Hands to Protect Yourself' to 'Wash Your Hands to Protect Your Patients,' the study found, could motivate some doctors and nurses to wash their hands more frequently."
I guess. Or, you know, they could just start putting doctors who don't wash their hands on a month's unpaid leave. OR! They could forcibly graft a nice hospital-acquired staph infection onto their faces maybe. I don't know: if doctors aren't getting the practice of washing hands between patients, should they even be doctors? Sorry, I know all workplace best practices are hard! But this question of "motivation" seems absurd.

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Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Is So Totally Antisemitic! http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/pink-floyds-roger-waters-is-so-totally-antisemitic http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/pink-floyds-roger-waters-is-so-totally-antisemitic#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:30:13 +0000 Dave Bry http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/pink-floyds-roger-waters-is-so-totally-antisemitic Here's part of the stage show that's gotten former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in trouble with the Anti-Defamation League. "Of course Waters has every right to express his political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through his music and stagecraft," said ADL head Abe Foxman in a statement. "However, the images he has chosen, when put together in the same sequence, cross a line into anti-Semitism." (To wit: "An animated scene has projected images of planes dropping bombs in the shape of Jewish stars of David, followed by dollar signs.") Foxman, of course, just has tons of credibility after his anti-Park 51 stance. But maybe he's got a point! What Foxman failed to mention is that the lyrics to the song "Goodbye Blue Sky" are deeply offensive as well, if you really listen to what he's saying.

Here's a transcription:

Did Jew, did Jew see the frightened ones?
Did Jew, did Jew hear the falling bombs?
Did Jew ever wonder why we had to ruin the shtetl,
When the promise of a brave new world,
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?

Did Jew, did Jew see the whitefish come?
Did Jew, did Jew schmeer the bagel, son?
The flames are all long gone,
But the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky.
Good buy, Jewish guy.
Good buy.
Good buy.

I mean, what is he really trying to say there?

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Here's part of the stage show that's gotten former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in trouble with the Anti-Defamation League. "Of course Waters has every right to express his political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through his music and stagecraft," said ADL head Abe Foxman in a statement. "However, the images he has chosen, when put together in the same sequence, cross a line into anti-Semitism." (To wit: "An animated scene has projected images of planes dropping bombs in the shape of Jewish stars of David, followed by dollar signs.") Foxman, of course, just has tons of credibility after his anti-Park 51 stance. But maybe he's got a point! What Foxman failed to mention is that the lyrics to the song "Goodbye Blue Sky" are deeply offensive as well, if you really listen to what he's saying.

Here's a transcription:

Did Jew, did Jew see the frightened ones?
Did Jew, did Jew hear the falling bombs?
Did Jew ever wonder why we had to ruin the shtetl,
When the promise of a brave new world,
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?

Did Jew, did Jew see the whitefish come?
Did Jew, did Jew schmeer the bagel, son?
The flames are all long gone,
But the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky.
Good buy, Jewish guy.
Good buy.
Good buy.

I mean, what is he really trying to say there?

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The Rich Rehab Differently, Like by Hugging Horses http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/rich-people-things-with-chris-lehmann-the-rich-rehab-differently-like-by-hugging-horses http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/rich-people-things-with-chris-lehmann-the-rich-rehab-differently-like-by-hugging-horses#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:25:20 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/rich-people-things-with-chris-lehmann-the-rich-rehab-differently-like-by-hugging-horses HORSE HUGGERSCelebrities flock to Sundance, Utah, of course, to flaunt their Q ratings and take the measure of the great entertainment imperium in the heady mountain air. But the rich and famous are also notoriously inclined to get a little too heady when left to their own devices-and Sundance also has the perfect setup for that dilemma, reports Fortune writer Claudia Wallis: the Cirque Lodge, "the rehab center du jour for those who can afford to go anywhere"-where rates top out at $1,595 a day for a minimum 30-day stay.

Operations director Gary Fisher is of course coyly discreet about the identity of its A-List clientele but tells Wallis that "in eight years, we've had probably 30 or 40 clients that you'd know immediately." Confirmed celeb inmates-immured either for traditional substance-abuse issues or for that obliging, elastic condition of "exhaustion"-include Melanie Griffith, Kirsten Dunst, Eva Mendes, Mary-Kate Olsen and (inevitably) Lindsay Lohan. (Famous dudes apparently are much less inclined to own up to any alcoholic or chemical weaknesses, perhaps because of the forbidding proximity of arch-wholesome guy Robert Redford, and his Rocky Mountain Estate, which sits "just up the mountain.")

Wallis reports that the Lodge-the brainchild of Richard Losee, a devout Mormon jewelry and beauty salon mogul who had envisioned the facility as an ultra-high-end luxury spa until a family member's battle with addiction prompted him to shift course-traffics in fairly standard twelve-step therapy, motivational lectures and reading, and meditation exercises. Mainly, it's the lavish appointments of the place that set it apart.

The Cirque Studio, for example, which houses inmates at the bargain rate of $995 a day, sits in a canyon on the other side of Mount Timpanogos; it was formerly the TV studio for the Donnie and Marie Show in its squeaky-clean 70s heyday. The Studio sprawls across 110,000 square feet, with 17,000-Donnie and Marie's former soundstage-set aside for the central room, which features "what Fisher believes to be the largest ropes-and-challenges course in the country, with plenty of room left over for an archery range and a lecture and movie area."

A pottery studio with ten wheels is close by, as is a bookbinding facility for inmates who want their rehab journals preserved for the ages. There's an indoor equine facility where horse whisperers like Dave Beck, who captains the "experiential therapy" team at Cirque, dispense costly spiritual counsel on the hoof: "You have to be morally correct," he tells Wallis after she has spent after "90 mentally exhausting minutes" with a quarter horse named Rio. With "pithy, Zen-like sagacity," he continues: "If you are angry, frustrated, it all flows through the horse. If you are patient, kind and willing to set boundaries, it flows through to the horse. It's through this building process that you work through your own stuff."

The four-legged therapy channels are housed, of course, in British-imported custom stalls-"the same stalls the Queen of England has," Beck notes in something shy of a Zen-like flourish.

And while horses may be agreeable enough ways of testing an addict's frayed patience, they're not all that efficient as mountain transport. For that, Wallis writes, there's the Cirque helicopter, "a remarkably quiet, European-built seven seater used to take residents on tours of the craggy mountains and canyons." When they're airlifted to Wallsberg Ridge (altitude 8,750 feet), for instance, they're encouraged to leave inscribed keepsake stones; "This rock's name is denial," one such self-narrating offering declares. "I'm leaving it right here."

There's nothing inherently wrong, of course, with addiction sufferers using any means at their disposal to confront their conditions; also, as Wallis reports, about half the Lodge's clients are being treated for other conditions, such as bipolar disorder and depression. Nevertheless, there's something more than a little dispiriting about a treatment facility so lovingly fashioned to reinforce the very message that set many overloaded celebrity egos on the path to addiction in the first place: that they are a breed apart, destined to float through the trials of ordinary life, be they career setbacks, family demands, sickness, or dependencies of spirit or substance, bathed in a quiescent halo of privilege and sycophantic attention, and lavishly staffed by a never-ending stream of valets, concierges and room service personnel. Hence, even as Wallis concedes that "research on alcoholism-by far the most-studied addiction-has not generally found an advantage for residential treatment over less costly outpatient programs," she also uncritically endorses the view of another experiential therapy hand at the Lodge: "Peak experiences"-like horse-whispering and rope-dangling-"wake people up. They start to come out of the haze and numbness and reconnect." Of course it would take a very special experience to galvanize a very special, high-performing ego-and a multimillion-dollar infrastructure to ensure it all comes off without a hitch.

"Do you need a helicopter to stay clean and sober?" Beck asks in yet another pithy show of faux introspection. "The answer is no. But you can also use it to get to a serene place where you can pray and leave a message where others have gone and feel part of that fellowship."

Of course, you can also get a more immediate-and arguably more durable-version of that communion by delivering your testimony as a recovering addict before a clatch of strangers sipping crappy coffee out of Styrofoam cups in a church basement. If recovery is about anything, after all, it's about humility-hence the central role of the Serenity Prayer and the all-important "higher power" step in most AA programs; they are both continual reminders that the substance-impaired self is not really a special thing at all, but just another small link in a latticework of frail, dependent creatures whose understanding falls far short of anything like a legible cosmic design.

But that's the sort of reflection that's none too likely to put you in the path of any horses bivouacked in a royal stall, or a get you a docented tour through the rope-challenge course on the Donnie and Marie soundstage. And it's definitely not the sort of message tailor-made for your ideal Fortune reader.

Even though there's "no research on the benefits of helicopter-hiking or equine therapy," Wallis counsels in classic sing-songy, what-the-hell fashion at the end of her piece, "it makes a kind of intuitive sense that if you get no kick from cocaine or champagne, you've got to find it somewhere else. Standing at the rooftop of the Rockies isn't a bad place to start." Or, if one were to roughly translate that sentiment into quasi-spiritual AA speak: there but for the grace of God goes anyone but you.

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HORSE HUGGERSCelebrities flock to Sundance, Utah, of course, to flaunt their Q ratings and take the measure of the great entertainment imperium in the heady mountain air. But the rich and famous are also notoriously inclined to get a little too heady when left to their own devices-and Sundance also has the perfect setup for that dilemma, reports Fortune writer Claudia Wallis: the Cirque Lodge, "the rehab center du jour for those who can afford to go anywhere"-where rates top out at $1,595 a day for a minimum 30-day stay.

Operations director Gary Fisher is of course coyly discreet about the identity of its A-List clientele but tells Wallis that "in eight years, we've had probably 30 or 40 clients that you'd know immediately." Confirmed celeb inmates-immured either for traditional substance-abuse issues or for that obliging, elastic condition of "exhaustion"-include Melanie Griffith, Kirsten Dunst, Eva Mendes, Mary-Kate Olsen and (inevitably) Lindsay Lohan. (Famous dudes apparently are much less inclined to own up to any alcoholic or chemical weaknesses, perhaps because of the forbidding proximity of arch-wholesome guy Robert Redford, and his Rocky Mountain Estate, which sits "just up the mountain.")

Wallis reports that the Lodge-the brainchild of Richard Losee, a devout Mormon jewelry and beauty salon mogul who had envisioned the facility as an ultra-high-end luxury spa until a family member's battle with addiction prompted him to shift course-traffics in fairly standard twelve-step therapy, motivational lectures and reading, and meditation exercises. Mainly, it's the lavish appointments of the place that set it apart.

The Cirque Studio, for example, which houses inmates at the bargain rate of $995 a day, sits in a canyon on the other side of Mount Timpanogos; it was formerly the TV studio for the Donnie and Marie Show in its squeaky-clean 70s heyday. The Studio sprawls across 110,000 square feet, with 17,000-Donnie and Marie's former soundstage-set aside for the central room, which features "what Fisher believes to be the largest ropes-and-challenges course in the country, with plenty of room left over for an archery range and a lecture and movie area."

A pottery studio with ten wheels is close by, as is a bookbinding facility for inmates who want their rehab journals preserved for the ages. There's an indoor equine facility where horse whisperers like Dave Beck, who captains the "experiential therapy" team at Cirque, dispense costly spiritual counsel on the hoof: "You have to be morally correct," he tells Wallis after she has spent after "90 mentally exhausting minutes" with a quarter horse named Rio. With "pithy, Zen-like sagacity," he continues: "If you are angry, frustrated, it all flows through the horse. If you are patient, kind and willing to set boundaries, it flows through to the horse. It's through this building process that you work through your own stuff."

The four-legged therapy channels are housed, of course, in British-imported custom stalls-"the same stalls the Queen of England has," Beck notes in something shy of a Zen-like flourish.

And while horses may be agreeable enough ways of testing an addict's frayed patience, they're not all that efficient as mountain transport. For that, Wallis writes, there's the Cirque helicopter, "a remarkably quiet, European-built seven seater used to take residents on tours of the craggy mountains and canyons." When they're airlifted to Wallsberg Ridge (altitude 8,750 feet), for instance, they're encouraged to leave inscribed keepsake stones; "This rock's name is denial," one such self-narrating offering declares. "I'm leaving it right here."

There's nothing inherently wrong, of course, with addiction sufferers using any means at their disposal to confront their conditions; also, as Wallis reports, about half the Lodge's clients are being treated for other conditions, such as bipolar disorder and depression. Nevertheless, there's something more than a little dispiriting about a treatment facility so lovingly fashioned to reinforce the very message that set many overloaded celebrity egos on the path to addiction in the first place: that they are a breed apart, destined to float through the trials of ordinary life, be they career setbacks, family demands, sickness, or dependencies of spirit or substance, bathed in a quiescent halo of privilege and sycophantic attention, and lavishly staffed by a never-ending stream of valets, concierges and room service personnel. Hence, even as Wallis concedes that "research on alcoholism-by far the most-studied addiction-has not generally found an advantage for residential treatment over less costly outpatient programs," she also uncritically endorses the view of another experiential therapy hand at the Lodge: "Peak experiences"-like horse-whispering and rope-dangling-"wake people up. They start to come out of the haze and numbness and reconnect." Of course it would take a very special experience to galvanize a very special, high-performing ego-and a multimillion-dollar infrastructure to ensure it all comes off without a hitch.

"Do you need a helicopter to stay clean and sober?" Beck asks in yet another pithy show of faux introspection. "The answer is no. But you can also use it to get to a serene place where you can pray and leave a message where others have gone and feel part of that fellowship."

Of course, you can also get a more immediate-and arguably more durable-version of that communion by delivering your testimony as a recovering addict before a clatch of strangers sipping crappy coffee out of Styrofoam cups in a church basement. If recovery is about anything, after all, it's about humility-hence the central role of the Serenity Prayer and the all-important "higher power" step in most AA programs; they are both continual reminders that the substance-impaired self is not really a special thing at all, but just another small link in a latticework of frail, dependent creatures whose understanding falls far short of anything like a legible cosmic design.

But that's the sort of reflection that's none too likely to put you in the path of any horses bivouacked in a royal stall, or a get you a docented tour through the rope-challenge course on the Donnie and Marie soundstage. And it's definitely not the sort of message tailor-made for your ideal Fortune reader.

Even though there's "no research on the benefits of helicopter-hiking or equine therapy," Wallis counsels in classic sing-songy, what-the-hell fashion at the end of her piece, "it makes a kind of intuitive sense that if you get no kick from cocaine or champagne, you've got to find it somewhere else. Standing at the rooftop of the Rockies isn't a bad place to start." Or, if one were to roughly translate that sentiment into quasi-spiritual AA speak: there but for the grace of God goes anyone but you.

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'Thousand Jokes' Finally Has Its Day of Cannibalistic Infamy http://www.theawl.com/2009/09/thousand-jokes-finally-has-its-day-of-cannibalistic-infamy http://www.theawl.com/2009/09/thousand-jokes-finally-has-its-day-of-cannibalistic-infamy#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:45:27 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/09/thousand-jokes-finally-has-its-day-of-cannibalistic-infamy THOUSAND OAKS IS HELLIt was bound to happen that me and Heather Locklear's proud semi-hometown of Thousand Oaks would end up in the news for an act of politically-motivated cannibalism. (Heather went to Newbury Park High School. That means she is a slut! I went to Thousand Oaks middle school, which was an idyllic place of breezeways and white people-the kind of middle school where the librarian got upset because I was reading The Color Purple, inappropriately adult material. You know, no matter that it won the Pulitzer that year! Idiots.) Thousand Oaks was actually created by a corporation, by the way! The Janss family, real estate developers, made the massive town out of a charming, bunny-infested chaparral valley, and gave the streets names like "Avenida de Los Arboles," which-really, white people? There's something odd about a town that hates Mexicans yet gives the streets "classy" Spanish names, no? Also, they were big on cul-de-sacs. So now, yes, a "65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks."

What happened was, an opponent of health care reform punched someone in favor of health care reform. The person who likes health care, and socialism, retaliated by biting off the attacker's finger. Which I am sort of in favor of! This is America, bro! If you come and punch me, I will bite your finger off. I mean, right? This is why we can carry guns in Arizona and stuff.

This was totally a long time coming. Here's a fun fact! The corner where this health care demonstration was taking place was a fairly busy thoroughfare at the corner of the immense, hideous, life-sucking mall, surrounded by immense landscapes of parking lot. That mall had a really awesome arcade, at which I seem to recall briefly playing, poorly, Gorf. Heh.

Here is a first-person account:

The man in the orange shirt hit the pro-reform guy (I'm going to call him PR Guy just to keep the players straight). Hard. ( tweeted in real time) He punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and into that thruway. As you can see from the photo, cars drive straight through that without stopping. The pro-reform guy could have been run over. He got up, tried to get back up on the curb, but Orange Shirt guy was in his face. Finger in his face, PR Guy standing, steps up to the curb, and there's a scuffle. Orange shirt seemed to have PR Guy in a hold, but again, I was across the street, so won't state that as absolute fact. Next thing I see is PR Guy's hat being tossed into the street, both yelling at one another, then Orange shirt walks away, PR Guy picks up hat and crosses to our side.

When he gets to our side, he tells a story in one sentence: "He punched me hard, straight in the face, so I bit his finger off."

Anyway, someone is in the hospital now, and isn't that Alanic.

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THOUSAND OAKS IS HELLIt was bound to happen that me and Heather Locklear's proud semi-hometown of Thousand Oaks would end up in the news for an act of politically-motivated cannibalism. (Heather went to Newbury Park High School. That means she is a slut! I went to Thousand Oaks middle school, which was an idyllic place of breezeways and white people-the kind of middle school where the librarian got upset because I was reading The Color Purple, inappropriately adult material. You know, no matter that it won the Pulitzer that year! Idiots.) Thousand Oaks was actually created by a corporation, by the way! The Janss family, real estate developers, made the massive town out of a charming, bunny-infested chaparral valley, and gave the streets names like "Avenida de Los Arboles," which-really, white people? There's something odd about a town that hates Mexicans yet gives the streets "classy" Spanish names, no? Also, they were big on cul-de-sacs. So now, yes, a "65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks."

What happened was, an opponent of health care reform punched someone in favor of health care reform. The person who likes health care, and socialism, retaliated by biting off the attacker's finger. Which I am sort of in favor of! This is America, bro! If you come and punch me, I will bite your finger off. I mean, right? This is why we can carry guns in Arizona and stuff.

This was totally a long time coming. Here's a fun fact! The corner where this health care demonstration was taking place was a fairly busy thoroughfare at the corner of the immense, hideous, life-sucking mall, surrounded by immense landscapes of parking lot. That mall had a really awesome arcade, at which I seem to recall briefly playing, poorly, Gorf. Heh.

Here is a first-person account:

The man in the orange shirt hit the pro-reform guy (I'm going to call him PR Guy just to keep the players straight). Hard. ( tweeted in real time) He punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground and into that thruway. As you can see from the photo, cars drive straight through that without stopping. The pro-reform guy could have been run over. He got up, tried to get back up on the curb, but Orange Shirt guy was in his face. Finger in his face, PR Guy standing, steps up to the curb, and there's a scuffle. Orange shirt seemed to have PR Guy in a hold, but again, I was across the street, so won't state that as absolute fact. Next thing I see is PR Guy's hat being tossed into the street, both yelling at one another, then Orange shirt walks away, PR Guy picks up hat and crosses to our side.

When he gets to our side, he tells a story in one sentence: "He punched me hard, straight in the face, so I bit his finger off."

Anyway, someone is in the hospital now, and isn't that Alanic.

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The Lazy Assistants of William Morris Endeavor http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/the-lazy-assistants-of-william-morris-endeavor http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/the-lazy-assistants-of-william-morris-endeavor#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:50:56 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/07/the-lazy-assistants-of-william-morris-endeavor Lazy Ass Lazy PeopleThere are a couple of things that William Morris Endeavor clients are hot to buy rights for! Like, someone there totally wants to write a screenplay about Allen Stanford, the alleged total financial crook, and they want to get his life rights. Or get his life rights through the recent Vanity Fair piece on him, if that's easier. And also there is interest in Devin Friedman's GQ article, "Will You Be My Black Friend?" Why do we know these useless bits of information? Because someone in the "story department" at WME will not stop emailing their j-school alumni list-serv whenever this person wants someone's email address. Oh honey, it's a recession! You should work a little harder, since, you know, people are getting laid off left and right, and because it is a "challenging, anxiety provoking and at times nerve wracking" time there? Anyway, here is Devin Friedman's email address! I found it through the Google!

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Lazy Ass Lazy PeopleThere are a couple of things that William Morris Endeavor clients are hot to buy rights for! Like, someone there totally wants to write a screenplay about Allen Stanford, the alleged total financial crook, and they want to get his life rights. Or get his life rights through the recent Vanity Fair piece on him, if that's easier. And also there is interest in Devin Friedman's GQ article, "Will You Be My Black Friend?" Why do we know these useless bits of information? Because someone in the "story department" at WME will not stop emailing their j-school alumni list-serv whenever this person wants someone's email address. Oh honey, it's a recession! You should work a little harder, since, you know, people are getting laid off left and right, and because it is a "challenging, anxiety provoking and at times nerve wracking" time there? Anyway, here is Devin Friedman's email address! I found it through the Google!

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Who's Getting Fired For Today's Manhattan Jet Panic? http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/whos-getting-fired-for-todays-manhattan-jet-panic http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/whos-getting-fired-for-todays-manhattan-jet-panic#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:35:20 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/whos-getting-fired-for-todays-manhattan-jet-panic I would estimate it's about 45 minutes until Marc Mugnos is fired. Who's Mark Mugnos? He's the director of ops for New York City's "Citywide Event Coordination and Management." And he's the one the federal government told about the low-flying planes and fighter jets over Manhattan today that caused crowds of people to (quite reasonably!) run screaming in a panic. The CECM is a new outfit, formed in 2007, that actually has nothing to do with dealing with the FAA or national security (ALLEGEDLY). They deal with, like, street fairs and parade permits. (And probably, it's his boss that's being fired now. Also? The NYPD also got an email from the FAA yesterday and thought nothing of it.) The very idea that this is the entry portal for information from the federal government probably actually means that New York City and the federal government don't really communicate at all!

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I would estimate it's about 45 minutes until Marc Mugnos is fired. Who's Mark Mugnos? He's the director of ops for New York City's "Citywide Event Coordination and Management." And he's the one the federal government told about the low-flying planes and fighter jets over Manhattan today that caused crowds of people to (quite reasonably!) run screaming in a panic. The CECM is a new outfit, formed in 2007, that actually has nothing to do with dealing with the FAA or national security (ALLEGEDLY). They deal with, like, street fairs and parade permits. (And probably, it's his boss that's being fired now. Also? The NYPD also got an email from the FAA yesterday and thought nothing of it.) The very idea that this is the entry portal for information from the federal government probably actually means that New York City and the federal government don't really communicate at all!

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The Market Sucked, But Not For Everyone Who Got Out http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/the-market-sucked-but-not-for-everyone-who-got-out http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/the-market-sucked-but-not-for-everyone-who-got-out#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:17:32 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/the-market-sucked-but-not-for-everyone-who-got-out DOWWWWWWWWWWhen that sternly-worded Goldman Sachs statement came via email last night regarding Citigroup, and how everyone should not have it anywhere near their stock portfolio, I thought: is tomorrow going to be a real hosing in the market? Yes, yes it was. Even some of our favorite finance bloggers have lost their minds: "Is this it? Was today the official end of the 6-week 25% rally that started in early March? Or is today just a particularly painful hiccup?" I don't know, you tell me, money-blogger! Also, painful for who? Painful for all the people who made 20 to 25% on short-term gains in the last two months and who sold this morning, pushing financials down? Probably not so much. The final call: Dow down 3.56%, big f'ing deal, tune in tomorrow. And also? Consider this, Wall Street haters: "If we become too cautious, the outlandish cartoon characters behind every big building or business in the world are less likely to be able to take the huge, incredible risks it takes to make it big." (Donald Trump? Is that you? No but seriously.)

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DOWWWWWWWWWWhen that sternly-worded Goldman Sachs statement came via email last night regarding Citigroup, and how everyone should not have it anywhere near their stock portfolio, I thought: is tomorrow going to be a real hosing in the market? Yes, yes it was. Even some of our favorite finance bloggers have lost their minds: "Is this it? Was today the official end of the 6-week 25% rally that started in early March? Or is today just a particularly painful hiccup?" I don't know, you tell me, money-blogger! Also, painful for who? Painful for all the people who made 20 to 25% on short-term gains in the last two months and who sold this morning, pushing financials down? Probably not so much. The final call: Dow down 3.56%, big f'ing deal, tune in tomorrow. And also? Consider this, Wall Street haters: "If we become too cautious, the outlandish cartoon characters behind every big building or business in the world are less likely to be able to take the huge, incredible risks it takes to make it big." (Donald Trump? Is that you? No but seriously.)

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