It came to me in a dream-no wait, it came to me in an email from a reader last night. Yesterday, Jeb Bush said, "I am not running for president." Yes, I was crushed. But no longer! Why, you ask? Well, right now, I am not pickling beets. But that doesn't mean that I won't be pickling beets later tonight, or tomorrow, or next week! Verbs! They are so useful. We hereby announce JEB BUSH PRESIDENTIAL RACE WATCH NOT AT ALL OVER, due to the deceitful power of language and its uses!

Photo taken in Brooklyn by David Salafia, from Flickr.

After long conversations with the inventor of Formspring, we've entered into a great partnership, as a way to take The Awl next level; a series of verticals, organized in question-based forums, are forthcoming later today. As a way to kick this initiative off, today The Awl will be entirely run by way of Awl publisher David Cho's Formspring. Ask him anything! (N.B. That picture is REALLY not our David Cho. That is the conductor David Cho, or something. While he is very nice too, our David Cho is a very handsome young lad!)

I am actually very excited that Tucker Carlson's website, the Daily Caller, is finally launching on Monday! (I will be calling it The Gaily Dollar, of course, but also I will be a devoted reader.) Also, the more independent web operations there are on the Internet, the better. I also think it is very brave to spend $3 million on the first year alone. If I'd spent $3 million on our first year, most of it would have been on like Kiton suits and PIZZA PARTIES FOR EVERYONE. Also to admire, this belief: "When was the last time you saw, on television, a straight explanation of what's in [...]

From… Perez Hilton (what is with news sources this week!?) we learn that Christian Lacroix may be saved! The Borletti Group, in league with Lacroix himself, have placed a serious bid for the company (which has never, ever turned a profit). It's urgent too-the French employees will be forced to go on vacation for the month of August if a buyer cannot be found! How those employees will be distinguishable from every other worker in Europe is unknown.

Ooh, Terrafugia released renderings of their allegedly flying car, the allegedly going to be mass-produced Transition-which was previously largely conceptual in nature until recently. I am going to fly the shit out of this car. Right into the ocean.

It's only the greatest television event in the entire world. Tomorrow, 25 awesome countries line up to answer the question "Who Is The Country That Most Excessively Performs Awful Synth Pop?" This is Sofia Nizharadze who is representing Georgia! This show makes "American Idol" look like GARBAGE.

Awl Chief Drawing Person Amy Jean Porter has a new t-shirt for sale, from the series North American Mammals Speak the Truth and Often Flatter You Unnecessarily. It's from this drawing and it's got a jaguar who compliments you on your handwriting! In other news, Amy is finishing a very exciting book right now but she'll return here before you know it.

We had to ask, back in September: where the heck are you, Rene Russo? Great news! Or at least: news! "Rene Russo joins cast of 'Thor': Actress set to play Frigga, mother of Norse hero." Yes. Opposite Anthony Hopkins. Directed by Kenneth Branagh. I don't know either! But we'll take it.

Oooh, Mark Lisanti, of Defamer de-fame, has actually deigned to write on the Internet again!

The video for "The Power of Pussy," the classic Bongwater song (with B-52s frontman Fred Schneider singing backup!), had a budget of "$1000 and $600 of that went to Ann [Magnuson]'s hair and make-up, with the remainder going to pizza and videotape stock." And: "Ann threw a big party to premiere the video and it was the first time I was ever in Los Angeles. There were tons of TV and movie stars there (Albert Brooks, Richard Lewis), rockstars (members of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone) Russ Meyer actress Kitten Natividad and even Simpson's creator Matt Groening, who asked me for a copy for his personal [...]

I am really, really pre-enjoying the coming chapter of the battle-saga of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times-way too much. I love that there are two rich men, Arthur Sulzberger and Rupert Murdoch, both delightful and wacky in their own ways, who have staked out both an ideology and a business practice and now they are going to get all Greco-Roman about it-and will drag their deputies into it, too. (New Times spokesbot (not doing too well so far!) Big Bob Christie v. Robert Thomson (mean as can be!).) So this is the perfect curtain raiser for the coming bloodbath. Here's Thomson's latest: "My advice [...]

Awl columnist Chris Lehmann sells book based on Awl column? Strange but true!

National Novel Writing Month screeched to a halt at midnight last night, and, pencils down, everyone! Last year, 119,301 people declared that they would write a novel in November. In total, those people wrote 1,643,343,993 words. (That's, on average, almost 14,000 words each.) They're still counting up the numbers for this year, but participation (and success) looks blockbuster. NaNoWriMo is among America's best institutions, like up there with the League of Women Voters and Crazy Ladies Who Feed Stray Cats, because it teaches thousands of people that there is nothing that is beyond them. I took part in, um, like 2002 or something, and what I learned was [...]

"Every Sunday in Washington, D.C., a group of gay men in their thirties meet to play the wildly popular fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons."