Here is a very enjoyable video of the young Brooklyn rapper Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire talking about books — it includes him reading an excerpt from his all-time favorite, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Here is a very strange video for a song called “Flight Confirmation” that the Los Angeles producer The Alchemist made with rappers Danny Brown and Schoolboy Q — it includes some material that may not be safe for you to watch at work. Here is a very good essay written by the aphorist James Guida about four recent books written by rappers — it includes the sentence, “By now the Queensbridge duo has several albums to their name, the most admired of which are Hell on Earth and The Infamous.” Which I will cite because of the glaring gramatical error it contains. Because I like to dunk N+1’s pigtails into the inkwell on my desk.

“We can see different physical properties of different bonds, and that’s really exciting.”
 — Dr. Leo Gross, an IBM scientist in Zurich, talks about why he likes Daniel Craig even more than Sean Connery. No. He’s really talking about the fact that he and his colleagues recently published “single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned.” The pictures are amazing. The 13 atoms in this one molecule called a “fullerene” arrange themselves in a hexagonal shape that looks like a turtle (so, I guess that would be Timothy Dalton. Just kidding!) Or, if you’re a religious person of the Jewish persuasion, you may see a six-pointed star. And think that it’s a message from God, or something. Or if you’re Mel Gibson, you will think that it’s because Jews control the study of molecular science and that the pictures are probably fake. Also, an optical illusion starts to happen if you stare at the atoms for too long. The orange spots in the center of their red fields start to sort of throb in brightness. At least that happens if you stare at them for too long at six o’clock in the morning. Because for some horrible reason you woke up at five today and couldn’t go back to sleep, and instead started making a mental list of songs whose titles begin with the word “Don’t,” and so got up out of bed and went into your office to start writing them down. (Because it’s so important, because it would be such a shame — devastating for the world, really — if you forget Stan Ridgway’s “Don’t Box Me In.”) And then you turned on your computer and went on the internet (always a great idea!) and saw this story on the BBC Science site. Because you’re pathetic, is what I’m saying. Anyway, these pictures are about as microscopic as it gets, I guess. Totally mind-blowing. You should look at them. The new James Bond movie, Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig, comes out in November. They just released the poster.

Someone Needs a Cliffs Notes on “Animal Farm”

“As George Orwell said in “Animal Farm,” All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. The progressive, socialistic and vast bureaucracy necessary to dole out these entitlements to those deemed worthy, and to police the regulations arising from the proliferation of laws and decrees, has bankrupted the country and the American dream. As you so wisely seem to understand, we must stop our current course and this rapid slide into a progressive, socialistic autocracy.”
 — It’s the El Paso Times letter of the day

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What with Dan Cortese turning 45 today, this is as good a time as any to recommend Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks’ I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, which will be out shortly in a revised paperback edition. I was down with a bad cold over Labor Day weekend and pretty much devoured this sucker; it looks long, but the oral history format makes everything easier to digest, and there were so many things in there that I had forgotten about; although, oddly, the name “John Norris” is never once mentioned. Anyway, you should totally get it. Also, again, Dan Cortese is 45 now. It might be time for all of us to take stock of our lives.

Among many other things, Litcrawl NYC has a wealth of events for you this weekend!

The First Video That Meant Something To Me: Phoenix’s “Funky Squaredance, Pts. 1–3”

by “David Shapiro”

Part of a series for the new Awl Music app.

The summer I turned 17, I interned at a company that represented music video and commercial directors and my assignments involved watching music videos and commercials. I think I watched a lot of videos that looked beautiful, and even a few that told great stories, but I don’t remember any of those now, I guess because there’s an abundance of music videos that look beautiful or tell great stories.

“Funky Squaredance, Pts. 1–3,” which Roman Coppola made in 2000, isn’t beautiful, and it’s not exactly a story. But it’s the best. It’s an elaborate joke about the music video form, an education on the director’s personal life, and then finally, in a way, a totally conventional music video: just a collection of things that the director thinks are sweet. I’m afraid this undersells it though.

It’s a piece of casual, free-form writing. How could any writer not think this video is the greatest? Coppola hijacked this Phoenix song and made a supremely clever, irreverent, juvenile, nominally informative process-based presentation. It seems like it could be an expression of Coppola’s interest in being something beside a music -ideo director — maybe a lyricist? A stand-up comic? A writer? I don’t know.

Anyway, Coppola’s bio on the Moonrise Kingdom website (he co-wrote the movie with Wes Anderson) calls it “stream-of-consciousness” but that term has a lame connotation right now for some reason so I think it’d be best if you didn’t consider the video in that light when you watch it. Also, the video is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art now, and Frankie is married to Flea. I could go on for a while but I’m gonna finish this introduction because I think the less time you spend reading it, the more time you might have left over to watch the video. Okay, watch it now please.

David “Shapiro” lives in New York City and has a Tumblr.

★★★★ Warmth to be semi-reckoned with. The thick hoodie, prudent on the way out for the school dropoff run, was bothersome by the end of a detour to the market on the way back. Once the day was established, though, people clinging to shorts and t-shirts mingled with the ones moving on to lightweight jackets. Apparently it felt OK if you wore a witchy-hipster black-gauze overskirt, too. Bricks downtown shared their color with the world around them. In the schoolyard, the evening air was calm around the crazed Brownian motion of picnicking children. Tiny, mysterious droplets fell from the deepening blue above. Parents paused and peered upward, seeing nothing. They glanced around. By the far edge of scene, two children with soaker waterguns were wending through the crowd. Were they responsible? But the little hydro-soldiers moved on, and the phantom drizzle kept falling.

God, remember Vintage Contemporaries? When I was a teen haunting bookstores (God, remember bookstores?) and wondering what book to get with the limited cash I had, anything with that spine went right to the top of this list. Anyway, here’s a terrific look back.

Football Pick Haikus For Week 2

Thursday, September 13

At Green Bay -5 Chicago
Home games at Lambeau
shouldn’t happen until the
tundra is frozen. PICK: BEARS

Sunday, September 16

At NY Giants -7.5 Tampa Bay
Buccaneers defense
surprisingly stout but the
Giants should play angry. PICK: GIANTS

At New England -13.5 Arizona
The Cardinals should
chose a random fan for their
starting quarterback. PICK: PATRIOTS

Minnesota -1.5 At Indianapolis
Christian Ponder sounds
like some kind of dating site
where no one gets laid. PICK: COLTS

New Orleans -2.5 At Carolina
Saints play like “Treme”:
It looks good but at the end
Nothing has happened. PICK: PANTHERS

At Buffalo -3 Kansas City
Ryan Fitzpatrick
went to Harvard, so he knows
words like “impuissant.” PICK: BILLS

At Philadelphia -2.5 Baltimore
The Dream Team barely
Defeated the Browns. Does Ray
Lewis Ever Sleep? PICK: RAVENS

Oakland -2.5 At Miami
Both of these teams could
clearly go 0–16.
Now only one will! PICK: RAIDERS

At Cincinnati -7 Cleveland
By NFL rules
one of these teams has to win
this game, so go Browns. PICK: BROWNS

Houston -7 At Jacksonville
Arian Foster
is still healthy so he’ll score
500 touchdowns. PICK: TEXANS

Dallas -3 At Seattle
Seahawks’ offense is
mainly scab-ref blown calls of
pass interference. PICK: COWBOYS

Washington -3 At St. Louis
QB RG3
DC’s best addition since
the big MLK. PICK: WASHINGTON

At Pittsburgh -5.5 NY Jets
Does anyone think
bringing in Tim Tebow scares
Troy Polamalu? PICK: JETS

At San Diego -6 Tennessee
10:30 Football
means Halftime Show is my dream
of Venice penguins. PICK: CHARGERS

At San Francisco -6.5 Detroit
Lions can come back
from big first half deficits.
so they should be Prez? PICK: LIONS

Monday, September 17

At Atlanta -3 Denver
Peyton Manning plays
great in domes but I love to
pick for him to lose. PICK: FALCONS

Haiku Picks went 9–7 for opening week.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

Good news! Manhattan vacancy rates have eased very slightly. Back in May, the vacancy rate in Manhattan was .89%, which is crazytown. Now it’s a relatively luxurious 1.19%. That means that of the 841,000 or so housing units in Manhattan, there are nearly 10,000 vacant apartment for you to choose from. (Only half of them are “essentially uninhabitable” and/or “grody”!)

The “average” Manhattan rent is now $3,461. (Average doesn’t mean “median.”) But vacancy rates are very much distributed by rental price: the higher the price, the more likely a unit is to be vacant — and the vacancy rate upping is generally, if a bit unscientifically, considered to be people balking at inappropriately elevated rents. August makes for the sixth consecutive monthly record for rent prices. ENJOY.