Awl pal Seth Colter Walls REALLY LIKES Robert Wilson’s new production of The Threepenny Opera over at BAM, calling it “at once the most satisfying and disturbing music drama I have ever seen presented on a New York stage.”

This is exactly what Amazon wants: cheap, ubiquitous devices that run their digital media stores. Because while most people focus on the purchase price, buying a Kindle is a lot like buying a game console: it’s not very useful until you spend more money feeding it with content, and Amazon takes a cut of all content sales.

From the cables to the screen to the ads it serves, the new $79 Kindle is cheap in every way, which in the end perhaps becomes a virtue: it’s on the way to becoming disposable. (Well, for the 1%, obviously.)

“It is just not a natural or everyday thing to do, to pass judgment on people, to send them to prison or not.”

This is a fascinating profile of the work of Judge Denny Chin, regarding sentencing in criminal cases in Manhattan.

by David Roth and David Raposa

David Roth: Well, how do you like that? A guy who looks like a flamboyant, bespectacled version of Grimace doing the Humpty Dance at Yankee Stadium.

David Raposa: You shouldn’t talk about David Wells like that. He’s worked really hard to beat the gout.

David Roth: You can tell by how shiny he is in the TBS studios. He looks good. He looks less like a week-old, goateed gnocchi than he used to.

David Roth: I’m still baffled by pretty much everything that has happened. When the Diamondbacks played the Mets earlier this year, they seriously looked like a Western European World Baseball Classic entry. One where all the administrators high-five because they were able to convince a governing body that Paul Lo Duca was an Arizonan and sneak him on the roster. Now they are a win away from the NLCS with the same Doofuses + Upton formula.

David Raposa: That was BG (Before Goldschmidt).

David Roth: Possible-maybe-kinda-Jewish sluggers do tend to make an impact. Not to jinx Goldschmidt, but he could be the next Mike Epstein.

David Raposa: I am all for anything that brings us closer to having Manischewitz on tap in the cathedrals of baseball. In other news, thanks to thuuuuuu Yankees loss, I am sucking wind in my attempt to become the next great baseball prognosticatorial guesser person. 0-for-2 so far.

David Roth: So what was the other one you got wrong? You didn’t have the Rays beating the Rangers, did you? Did your loyalties run thicker than your ability to notice Casey Kotchman’s everyday presence in the lineup? I am ambushing you here. Do you not have time for some Yakkin’ tonight?

David Raposa: Nah, I was just dicking around, watching an old David Caruso flick. The usual.

David Roth: Oh shit, Kiss of Death? Nicolas Cage bench-pressing Hope Davis, the whole thing?

David Raposa: How’d you know? Is that because the only movies he made were that and Jade?

David Roth: And no one would admit to watching Jade. “Oh, I decided to stay in and watch Jade. I’m a big Chazz Palminteri fan, so…”

David Raposa: “It’s for my thesis is on the principles of Nietzsche as expressed in the screenplays of Joe Eszterhas.”

David Roth: “I published a paper on inchoate homoeroticism in racquetball scenes from Eszterhas films, and I’ve presented it at the Vatican and Telluride.”

David Raposa: Oh god — forgot about Basic Instinct Racquetball.

David Roth: And Jade! I just admitted to watching Jade, so we should hurry up and finish this before I have to go to jail.

David Raposa: If we’re not grading on a curve, I’m actually wrong across the board. I picked the Rays, picked the Yankees and picked sweeps for both division series (Brewers and Phillies).

David Roth: The NLDS’es both made sense. I would’ve picked the Yankees, too. They are the only team that isn’t starting at least a couple of TFHs. (That’s SABR for “Total Flagrant Humps”)

David Raposa: Ah. I was gonna reach for the glossary.

David Roth: It’s kind of bleeding-edge. I like baseball more when The Yankees aren’t there. Not so much out of any animus against them, but because I suspect it frustrated Rudy Giuliani.

David Raposa: I wish I gave as much of a shit. I really don’t mind them so much (anymore).

David Roth: And I do love Mariano and will miss watching him more. The inning he threw in Game 5 involved the shittiest contact I’ve ever seen. It was like someone did the Folgers Swap on the Tigers bats and replaced them with Peeps.

David Raposa: Granted, it was to the ass end of the Tiger line-up.

David Roth: Yes it was. Still, their bats exploded and their pants fell down every time he threw a pitch.

David Raposa: And he is 83 years old.

David Roth: Seriously. He is five years older than Dennis Eckersley, and still effective.

David Raposa: All that said, I most definitely mind the Yankee coterie. Especially The Passionate Received-Wisdom Swallowing And Kinda Not Following Baseball Yankee Fan. The one that’ll call a guy a bum for going 0-for-April, and then give the same guy a reach-around after getting two hits in an August game against Seattle. And who probably thought Mike Francesa was right about Al Albuquerque.

David Roth: That was so great. “No way dat is a real name, get owdda he-yah. I hate these Baba Booey guys. Okay, IP Freely in Valley Stream, you’re on the air.”

David Raposa: Doris from Rego Park just turned over in her grave to light up another Lucky Strike.

David Roth: The default Yankee fan in my mind is Turtle from “Entourage.” He’s saying something about A-Rod not having the heart of a champion.

David Raposa: Turtle would never say that! He’s trying to get A-Rod to invest in his tequila company! Which is to say: yes, I did sit through the final season of “Entourage.” The reasons for said viewing are something I’d like to keep between me and my team of therapists.

David Roth: What happened to him, did he suddenly realize that he’d been living a nauseous, materialistic lie for like six seasons? “This Ari guy, you guys, he is a total dickhead. We need not to hang around with him. Also, the Kevin Dillon guy needs to be in a home or something.”

David Raposa: I’d explain it, but I still want to respect myself in the morning. Just be happy knowing that he’s rich, and (SPOILER ALERT) Vinnie Chase got laid. #victory

David Roth: Have you got a team left in the playoffs? I have more anti-teams than teams left.

David Raposa: I guess the Brewers. Have to rep for the team that has foodstuffs as mascots and a food-stuffed human as their star slugger.

David Roth: Oh no! /Raposa slides down slide in centerfield.

David Raposa: But I could roll with the D-Backs, too. If only for some Justin Upton coming-out-party action. And the Kirk Gibson fistpumps, which are almost back to being novel again.

David Roth: I’m still bitter about the D-Backs going from the Open Ass Boof Squad that got swept by the Mets to a team that’s a win away from the NLCS with the same players.

David Raposa: Did the Mets stick it to Kennedy during that sweep? Or was that the weekend where Jason Bay hit all his HRs for the season?

David Roth: I need to go back and look it up. I just remember Keith Hernandez being kind of disgusted with how bad they were.

David Roth: “They just need to… I mean, look at Ryan Roberts’ neck? What happened to that? He has like a thing on that? He needs to stop that. I’m sorry, he needs to stop whatever’s on his neck.” /45 seconds of silence. “I’m serious about his neck, Gary.”

David Raposa: Keith really took his “Seinfeld” guest-star stint to heart, didn’t he? To be fair to R&R;, he really has nowhere else to go. Unless he wanted some ice-cream cheek.

David Roth: Oh Gucci Mane. That is YOUR FACE, dude. At least when Valverde got a pork roast tattooed on his arm, you knew he was doing it because he loved pork. I like a fat closer, but he just sort of makes me mad, because he’s like a Newt Gingrich kind of fat. That is just all pizza-flavored combos and a bone-deep loathing for cardio. He’s not big-boned or whatever. He is just an anthropomorphized stuffed-crust pizza with really, really good luck and a lot of confidence. Which is great.

David Raposa: Yeah, he’s more Rich Garces than Jonathan Broxton. Except with Brian Wilson’s puckish insouciance.

David Roth: I’ll always salute a guy his size and shape who likes to thrust his pelvis in front of tens of thousands of seething, pissed-off people. I suspect Eddie Money concerts are a lot like that these days.

David Raposa: A male Macarena dancer with a 70 fastball and 30 self-control. I love this game. So who’s your team now? You’re a Phillies guy, right?

David Roth: I will say that Victorino’s lawn-dart/sniper-shot thing from yesterday did make me happy. It was the happiest I’ve been for him since he divorced Kate Gosselin.

David Raposa: Wow, how long have you been sitting on that one, professional comedian Dennis Miller?

David Roth: Long enough that it was starting to get uncomfortable, honestly.

David Roth co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix, contributes to the sports blog Can’t Stop the Bleeding and has his own little website. And he tweets!

David Raposa writes about music for Pitchfork and other places. He used to write about baseball for the blog formerly known as Yard Work. He occasionally blogs for himself, and he also tweets way too much.

Photo by Keith Allison, via Flickr.

Good news, guys: You don’t have to eat fish anymore! “A new study casts doubt on the conventional wisdom of eating fish to help prevent heart disease. Those omega-3 fatty acids so prevalent in many types of fish may not lessen the risk of developing heart disease after all, at least for men.” [Via]

John Mellencamp is 60 today, which actually seems just about right.

I actually find this video of National Guardsmen cross-teaching each other luge, skeleton and bobsled starts totally fascinating, and I mean in a sports sense even! Winter sports are so crazy-specialized, and when you’ve been bobsledding, trying a luge start is like trying to write with the wrong hand. (via)

“The interchange fees that banks now charge stores for debit transactions are economically and functionally identical to the check interchange fees prohibited by the Fed almost a century ago.”
 — Retail banking is a business almost entirely built on fees — and business is real good I mean, reallll good. Even the class action settlements don’t offset the profit.

Here is the new Beyonce video everybody is so justifiably psyched about. It’s a burst of joy! It was directed by Tom Petty’s daughter, Adria — who, you wonder, maybe learned about the fun to be had with nice clean set design and simple camera tricks from the folks who used to work with her dad.

“Kutcher’s appearance came as reports emerged that he had been rating girls as ‘hot tub worthy or not’ during a night out in Las Vegas on the weekend of his sixth wedding anniversary.” — Daily Mail

“You got that?” Diddy demanded. “You understand?” Ashton could imagine his friend standing at the edge of the pool in Alpine, watching an early-fall breeze raise waves across its surface. One hand would sit elegantly in his pocket, the other would be stroking the flat smooth edge of his white cashmere scarf.

“Yeah,” said Ashton. “I understand.” He felt uncertain but hoped he didn’t sound it.

Ashton put down his iPhone on top of the San Diego Magazine lying on the glass coffee table. He’d gone to one of the restaurants recommended in it and been served tuna tartare, in a tower. The room’s décor had the same zippy desperation — geometrically patterned carpets, a fuzzy throw at the end of the bed. He stuffed this in the closet and then stuffed the two rugs that were small enough to pick up in there too. That was better. It was still just late afternoon, but he poured himself a glass of vodka — Diddy’s people had seen to it that he had Cîroc in his room — and watched another plane land. Was that the only thing to do in this town? Drink vodka, watch plane land over the bay, drink vodka, watch plane land over the bay.

He picked up his phone again, and for perhaps the hundredth time that day felt his thumb hover forlornly over that lovely white bird in its cornflower-blue square. His urge to Tweet had started out as a dull persistent ache, but now it was like a migraine. How he longed to consult with his 7,852,190 followers to see if they knew what Diddy meant by hot-tub worthy. Of course he’d have to block Diddy from the message. And everyone Diddy followed. But how soothing it would be to stare at that familiar little rectangle, to populate it with 140 characters or less. “Does anyone have any idea what hot-tub worthy means? Please tell me asap.”

But no. The last thing his lawyer had said to him before he snapped his briefcase shut and prepared to leave: “No tweeting anything personal.”

Ashton found a piece of paper and a pen. He hadn’t had a pen in his hand since 2003. It felt kind of nice.

He wrote down Diddy’s instruction in the San Diego Magazine, below an ad for a wine-loving singles party: 1. Find hot-tub-worthy pussy. He thought about this. 2. Find out what the fuck hot-tub-worthy pussy even is. He underlined it several times. He wrote, This pen is cool.

He stepped into the street. There were gas lamps everywhere, and plaques telling you what they were. People were reading them. Mostly fat people. All the plaques said was, these are gas lamps, we had them before we had electricity. What kind of person didn’t know that? He realized that all the plaques all over the world were just things for fat people to look at so they could stop walking.

He saw a sign that read “Petco Park” and he headed in that direction, thinking about Diddy’s final words to him: “Get out of that room and get yourself some hot-tub-worthy pussy.” Very frustrating advice. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what hot girls were. He totally did. It was just that he didn’t know what Diddy was talking about sometimes, and if you didn’t do exactly what he told you he got kind of mad. Also, Diddy was really smart. Like, if your stomach hurt he could tell you what to eat to make it feel better; if it hurt in one way, he’d tell you to eat brown rice or, in another way, to drink a kombucha, or whatever, and it would usually go away. Sometimes if you had a headache he’d make some girl come in from the pool and press a certain part of your hand or foot and it would go away. And he knew what to drink and what kind of music to put on no matter what was going on. He had also taught Ashton to air-dry after taking a shower, and to envision his future while he was doing it. “All the bullshit that you don’t want on you, picture, like, evaporating away with the water,” Diddy had told him.

One day about a month before, Ashton was air-drying and suddenly he pictured Demi evaporating off of him. “Holy fuck,” he said aloud.

“What is it?” she said, poking her head out of her bathroom.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “What are you doing? Photographing your boobs and Tweeting it to everyone in the free world?”

He hadn’t meant it to sound so harsh. He opened his mouth, to say something like, “Sorry, babe,” but Demi just laughed her throaty tiger laugh and ducked back into the bathroom. “Yup,” she said, and he heard the mechanical camera sound, once, twice, then three times.

He saw some bright blonde heads in the sunshine and walked hopefully towards them. Hot-tub worthy? Hot-tub worthy? He thought about how Russell Simmons had told him to say “om namah shivaya” to himself. He figured that “hot-tub worthy” was probably not a good mantra. He dialed Russell.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s Ashton. Do you have a minute?”

“I have one minute,” Russell said.

“Diddy told me to go get hot-tub-worthy pussy and I don’t know what he means by that. I don’t want to…”

“No,” said Russell. “You definitely wanna hit the nail on the head. Diddy doesn’t like telling people shit and seeing them fuck it up. Hot-tub worthy. Well, sounds to me like you definitely want the titties to float in the water.”

Oh, Ashton thought, brightening. A plane was, unsurprisingly, landing over the bay and he took a fresh interest in it.

“I’m out, “ Russell said.

All right. Good. This was a good first step. A quick perusal of Petco Park did not reveal any titties that looked like they would float.

He called Justin Timberlake and told him the same thing he’d told Russell. “Hot-tub worthy,” Justin Timberlake repeated.

“It’s weird, right?” Ashton said. “Like I never heard that term before, and now, I feel like it’s like, the only thing I’ve ever heard. You know?”

“You’ve never heard the phrase ‘hot-tub worthy’ before?” Justin laughed cruelly.

“Dude, I’ve been married to a woman in her late 40s for the last six years. She listens to India.Arie.”

“Crab salad, thanks,” Justin said to someone else. Then he said, “Who the fuck is India.Arie?”

“Some lady,” Ashton said miserably. “Anyway, if you know so much about hot-tub worthy tell me.”

“Well, it’s kind of just a feeling…”

“I need facts, “ Ashton said. “I’m not interested in feelings about hot-tub worthy. Tell me something I can use. I have to call Wilmer before he leaves for Burn 60.”

“Not too short,” Justin Timberlake said. “One of the reasons I broke up with Britney Spears is ’cause, once I got a hot tub, she was too short. Short chicks disappear in a hot tub.”

“But they have those ledges. She can sit on a ledge.”

“Come on, dude. Everyone sits on the ledge. They still look like apples with hair.”

“Oh my God,” Ashton said. Maybe this was starting to make sense. “You went out with YOG right after her.” “Yog” was short for “Ye Olde Giant” — what they called Cameron toward the end of her time with Justin.

“The Snooki factor in action,” Justin said. “It’s real.”

He called Wilmer. “I can’t believe you called Diddy before you called me,” Wilmer complained.

“He’s, like, more wise,” Ashton said.

“If he’s so wise why didn’t he just describe to you what hot-tub worthy is.”

“Because he’s so wise you can’t ask him stuff. It’s like bothering Yoda.”

“If he’s Yoda,” Wilmer said, “who am I?”

He would have liked to say that he was Han Solo but he was more like Chewbacca. He pretended he hadn’t heard him.

“Gimme something or I’m calling Masterson,” he said.

“All right, all right,” Wilmer said. “Even when I got really sick of Lindsay, she looked good in a hot tub. I don’t know why, you know? It’s hard to put your finger on.”

“Jesus,” Aston said. He was walking slow and realized it was because he was behind a whole group of people. He tried to plow through them as he replied, “What is this shit? Timberlake says it’s like, a feeling, you can’t put your finger on it, I mean… hot-tub worthy. You’ve all heard it before but me. So how do I spot it? Do not let me bang some random hot girl and catch a lifetime of shit from Diddy, dude. You owe me that.”

A woman in front of him in glasses and a vintage dress — the sort of thing Rumer might wear and ask you a million times if you liked it, and then cry because you said yes a million times but she didn’t believe you, turned and shushed him. “Could you please keep your voice down? I’m trying to hear the tour guide.”

“Tour guide? For what?”

She rolled her eyes and said, “The Andrew Cunanan walking tour?” and ran to catch up.

“Hey,” he said to Wilmer. “Sorry.”

“What have you got so far?” Wilmer asked.

“Uh… floating boobs, tall or at least not super-short…”

“Oh right,” Wilmer said. “The Snooki factor.”

Ashton wanted to burst into tears. Six years of marriage and he didn’t even speak the language anymore. He was about to give up when Wilmer shouted, “Hair! Hair! You want a girl that puts her hair up in a hot tub. Because it looks good. Like all tendrilly and shit.”

“I don’t know.” Ashton doubted this mattered.

“Yeah, well. Don’t forget the Did is major into fashion. ‘The devil is in the details, Wilmer.’ He’s always saying that to me. Shit. Okay. Good luck.” He paused and then added, “Plus, a chick who can drink, right? You don’t want her to puke.”

A went back to his hotel and stared out the window and tried to imagine how many people in San Diego were victims of human trafficking. He decided it was probably about a million.

Epilogue

That night Ashton Kutcher trolled San Diego for a tallish woman with floaty boobs and long hair who looked like she could drink a lot even as her body was being heated and dehydrated beyond healthy levels. When he finally found Sara Leal, he thought, well, I don’t know if she meets all the requirements but I’m exhausted. All in all, he felt he’d done pretty well, and once her picture started appearing everywhere and he hadn’t heard from Diddy, he figured he could just forget the whole thing.

A few days later he was coming home from the set of “Two and A Half Men” when his phone rang. Diddy. “Hey.”

“You call that hot-tub worthy?” Diddy demanded.

“She was pretty,” Ashton said. “She gets, like, free drinks and trips to Vegas just for being pretty.”

Diddy sighed. “I’m not mad at you. But you’re in a whole new world. And I got too many businesses and sponsorships to teach you the difference between ‘pretty’ and ‘hot-tub worthy.’ Now, like I said, I’m not mad. But I’m going to need some time before we talk again, son. Peace.”

Ashton felt himself go pale. He stared out the window with sad, wide eyes and watched cars pass and palm trees swaying in the wind.

The next day his picture appeared in the tabloids. Some photographer had taken a shot the moment after Diddy had hung up on him. The consensus was that Ashton Kutcher looked very emotional, and that the alleged split must be taking its toll.

Sarah Miller is the author of Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl, which are for teens but adults can read on the beach. She lives in Nevada City, CA.

Photos by Helga Esteb, via Shutterstock.