Dante Nero, who sometimes opened for him, recalled one college gig when a young woman yelled, “Say something funny!” during one of Patrice’s philosophical disquisitions. “You didn’t hear anyone else laughing?” O’Neal began. “Is it because you weren’t laughing? You the type of person who wants everyone to be miserable if you’re miserable?” Then he turned to her friends: “Why do you hang out with her?” The girl stood up to leave, demanding her boyfriend join her, but he sat there, frozen, and O’Neal zeroed in on him—as an ally. “If you stay, it’ll be over,” O’Neal said encouragingly. “Ride it out.” The audience started to weigh in. [...]

Anyone who has eaten at M. Wells, the infamous diner in Queens, knows that it is both an extremely special and troubled place. (The food is magical, I have agreed; and also, on my most recent visit, there were literally pregnant women and their extremely grumpy hipster spouses on the verge of crying and screaming while they waited endlessly for food. Obviously the solution to eating at M Wells is to bring some carrot sticks in your purse and sit back and take what comes. They are not so much in the food "service" industry as they are in the food magicking industry, and sometimes everything goes kablooey.) And [...]

Um! Enthusiasts of the work of Jay Kang (this and this) will be interested in this: "Crown's Lindsay Sagnette made a six-figure pre-empt for North American rights to a debut novel by Columbia M.F.A. Jay Kang. Sterling Lord's Jim Rutman sold The Dead Do Not Improve, which the publisher is comparing to works by Junot Díaz and Gary Shteyngart. The novel follows a frustrated young writer with an M.F.A. who becomes the focus of a "violent scheme," per the publisher, after his neighbor is murdered. Crown said the book follows the protagonist as he wanders through 'a suddenly menacing, unknowable San Francisco, fending off militant surfers, [...]

Hugo Lindgren expected to be named as New York Times Magazine editor today.

Here is the bizarre story of a time that a second-guessing, hyper-cautious newspaper blog ate itself and then pooped itself out.

What are the Christians up to these days? Rapping! Or, well, "rapping." Still. But in a weird new TV-show-referencing way. This video comes courtesy of an honest-to-goodness Mom email forward: It's a middle-aged lady, Tamara Lowe, doing her trademark "rap," which is about cramming as many pop culture proper nouns into one singsongy poem as possible. (And God, and the Bible.)

The Awl's Morning Market Report:

•The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped again this morning after yesterday's disappointing close (at 10945, down 26 points for the day) as investors expressed reservations about Nike's puzzling new Tiger Woods commercial, which features Tiger's dead father Earl in a vaguely judgmental voiceover while the embattled golfer sits silently in the passenger seat of a car driven by Toonces the Driving Cat, who swerves to avoid a reanimated Orville Redenbacher, before hitting a tree in front of Woods' home. • The Nasdaq is [...]

"When reports first surfaced in the 1990s of boat builders making submarines for cocaine smugglers in the jungles of Colombia, U.S. law enforcement regarded them as a comic curiosity. Today, with the disclosure that the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted its 30th semi-submersible in less than six years, the vessels are now seen as a troubling tactic." —Troubling indeed! These 30 drug subs are just the ones the Coasties and their allies have busted!

This time it's not a hoax: man can actually hijack Times Square screens. Congrats, Adi Isakovic!

Our hometown hiphop heroes Das Racist have been denied entry to the U.K. and deported back to Switzerland. They apologize to Londoners: "Sorry to everybody who was planning on coming to Cargo last night, it was a show and city we were all incredibly excited for and it was a shame yr govvy doesn’t like us! Because of our POLITICAL VIEWS! We’ll be back soon, maybe we’ll leave the airport next time."

"A press release points out that the tabbies are intended as 'fun and humorous,' which is helpful, because there's no way of telling that by actually watching." N.B. "not by Joel Veitch," inventor of spongemonkeys.

You know how we're obsessed with the Friskies "Adventureland" cat food ads? It turns out that there is a BEHIND-THE-SCENES video about it, starring the ad exec hottie who "concepted" it, and then covers from the "script" (!) to early digital renderings to green screen cat work. Plus an interview with the cat wrangler! They explain how they get the cat to jump through the "portal"! Every minute of this is hilarious and wonderful.

Sean McDonald, best known as "James Frey's editor" from his time with Nan Talese, has left Riverhead Books for the hallowed, chummy halls of FSG.

THE HUMMER IS DEAD.

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 [...]

Hey, how much did your content management system cost? Was it… ONE MILLION DOLLARS? Astounding, but hey, it'll be open source. So it's an incredibly expensive socialist CMS I guess.

Most popular on HuffPo! You don't say.

"What Prince has figured out is that the proportion of effort/return on pushing the internet user to actually BUY music is not worth the resources it takes to do so. When 80 – 90% of your PR effort disappears into non-revenue online areas (piracy, Spotify), the PR needs to be 8-9 times as ubiquitous as in the pre-internet era to make the same gains. He's done the sums, and has figured out that even if he only stands to make a penny profit on each CD that goes out on the cover of various European newspapers, that it's worth more to him than a hundred million people retweeting a video [...]

Richard Rushfield, the preeminent 'American Idol' scholar of our time, and author of the forthcoming Hyperion book 'American Idol: The Last Empire,' has long maintained that the television singing competition show is being destroyed by young girls. Natasha Vargas-Cooper, the preeminent scholar of tween girls of our time, and author of the forthcoming 'Mad Men Unbuttoned,' has had enough. For better or for worse, we've asked them to take their ongoing argument on the matter public.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: I knew that the results this week would be controversial because American Idol's final six competitors are what remains when the fat is cut. And the [...]

"Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I." - Bob? Yes, BOB DYLAN. This whole interview IS INSANE and wonderful. Joni Mitchell also says: "When Prince later became a star, he told me, 'You used to be shocking, but I can cut you now!'"