Makes sense to me.

The composer Stephen Michael Reich turns 75 today. Here’s a bit from his Music for 18 Musicians, which you will find either terribly jarring or completely appropriate for a Monday morning depending on how you feel about his work. I personally vote for “completely appropriate,” but what’s great about music is that everyone has their own reaction.

There’s one thing everyone can agree on: the current administration holds the post-Eisenhower record for immigrant deportations. (USA! US…A?) But here’s two views on the practice of “illegal reentry”: it is either harder than ever, or more popular than ever. But — FUN FACT! — it is, according to the Times, for the Feds the most-prosecuted felony of our day!

I heard dramatic tales of hiking for weeks across the Sonoran Desert with skinny donkeys hauling bags of rehydration solution and people paying thousands of dollars to “coyotes” to sneak them over the border. Crossing had become so difficult, in fact, that you couldn’t go back and forth to see your family like you used to. Once in, you stayed, for years, not months, because you knew returning to the United States would be treacherous or impossible. Five years, six, maybe seven. You wired the money home until there was enough for a house, or whatever you needed, and only then could you return to your family. To the people I talked to, a tighter border control was mostly a matter of prolonged homesickness.

— Hecho en América, GQ, October 2011.

Migrant shelters along the Mexican border are filled not with newcomers looking for a better life, but with seasoned crossers: older men and women, often deportees, braving ever-greater risks to get back to their families in the United States — the country they consider home…. Indeed, 56 percent of apprehensions at the Mexican border in 2010 involved people who had been caught previously, up from 44 percent in 2005…. For the Obama administration, these repeat offenders have become a high priority. Prosecutions for illegal re-entry have jumped by more than two-thirds since 2008. Officials say it is now the most prosecuted federal felony.

President Obama has already deported around 1.1 million immigrants — more than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower — and officials say the numbers will not decline…. Deportation is expensive, costing the government at least $12,500 per person, and it often does not work: between October 2008 and July 22 of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $2.25 billion sending back 180,229 people who had been deported before and come back anyway. Many more have returned and stayed hidden.

— Crossing Over and Over, New York Times, October 3, 2011.

Good news, “Arrested Development” fans: Not only will there be a movie, there will be a 9 or 10 episode run leading up to it.

What did you do this weekend? Were you among the couple of thousand people protesting Bank of America in Boston? If so, YOU ARE AWESOME. (Although I have no idea why the Boston Herald referred to the 24 arrested at that protest as a “rogue’s gallery.” Isn’t that… odd?) Bank of America should have people protesting outside every branch, every day. Also apparently there were some other protests, in New York, I guess? It only made page A18 of the Sunday New York Times national edition, where it said that only 500 people were arrested, not 700, so, must not have been that big a deal. (To be fair, they’ve been covering it well online.) Meanwhile, a word to the NYPD? Arresting working reporters and photographers is a real sad tactic. Also! Would you like a sense of how this is playing overseas? REAL BIG. Now the real fun begins.

If all goes according to plan, tomorrow will be the day that the weather finally catches up with the calendar. That weird sense of unease that we’ve all felt while waiting for the season to assert itself will finally be lifted, and we will be thrown headfirst into autumn. Finally, the feeling of promise we always have at this time of year — now we’re going to get serious, this is when it’s really going to happen for us — will settle in alongside the lower temperatures, the smell of smoke, playoff baseball and warm alcoholic drinks with breakfast. The feeling will last until, oh, the end of October, when the Christmas music starts up in earnest, but for that month everything’s going to feel pretty good, so try to enjoy it while you can, because winter is coming and winter will be hard. Anyway, while I have you here, read these:

• Seven Awesome Roads For Your Next Trip

• How To Save The Postal Service

• An Evening With Jeff Mangum

• How Much More Are Movie Stars Making Today?

• Chris Christie’s Bernie Madoff Problem

• How To Write A Love Poem

Photo by _PaulS_’s, via Flickr

It all started with one of those women who won’t give out her recipes. You know the sort. I suppose if I were a tougher lady, more Joan Collins-esque, I would have told her to stop being a ridiculous Greedy Gerty over her stupid brownie recipe and then thrown my drink in her face for good measure but the reality is that I’m the type of sucker who says, and really means, things like “I totally get it, no no, I completely understand — don’t give it another thought, you’re so sweet to even apologize.”

However.

While I may be a simpering twit, I’m also a touch competitive. So as this recipe unsharer went on and on and on about how she makes the BEST brownies and they’re like CRACK and everybody who has ever had them just RAVES about how GREAT they are, I sat on my barstool working myself into a silent rage.

And when I got home, several glasses of wine-with-ice deep, I hit Google like I’ve never hit Google before looking for a base recipe I could tinker with. I resolved to make replicating these brownies my mission in life.

I thought it would take years. I was willing to make that commitment if it meant that I could snatch the BAKER OF THE BEST EVER BROWNIES crown off her head and wear it atop my locks until the end of time.

I further resolved, in what will henceforth be known as the Royal Decree of HRH Jolie of The Most Glorious Empire of The Best Ever Brownie Bakers, that once the recipe was perfected I would share it with the world so everyone can make The Best Ever Brownies for their people. I just… do you think it would maybe be okay if I keep the crown?

Well, I won. And I’m keeping my vow. So here it goes.

Turn your oven to 350 degrees.

In a 3- or 4-quart saucepan, melt a stick-and-a-half of butter with 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate. Since these are The Best Ever Brownies you should use the highest-quality chocolate (and butter!) that you can find, though I’ll whisper to you behind my hand that a batch I made using Baker’s, which is basically the Alpo of the unsweetened chocolate world, was met with oohs and aahs and a whole lot of paws surreptitiously darting toward the plate for just one more, I swear this is my last one OH MY GOD I CAN’T STOP WHAT IS IN THESE THINGS?!?

Once those two things are melted, turn the heat off and move the pot to a cold burner to let it cool down for a spell.

Now stir in the following things:

A heaping ¼ cup of cocoa powder
2 cups of sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup flour

When that’s all nicely mixed, pour the batter into a 8”x8” square pan that you’ve lined with greased foil such that the foil drapes over the edges of the pan.

That’s pretty much it, except for the secret part. The crack part. Have you guessed yet what it is?

It is salt.

But not just any salt. Maldon salt. Himalayan pink salt also works, as does Sel Gris. Kosher salt does not work; neither does table salt. You need rocks, Jenny from the block. About a teaspoon of ’em, but kind of eyeball it, giving the top of the brownie batter a pretty good coating with the stuff. Once you’ve done that, put the pan in the oven, let everything bake for 30–35 minutes before cooling for one hour at room temperature, followed by one hour in the refrigerator. Cut them into 16ths.

Have you ever wondered what your friends look and sound like when they orgasm? Because fair warning: you’ll find out, and you should know that before you trot these babies out because it’s actually a really disturbing thing to know. (The silent ones freak me out the most.)

Jolie Kerr bakes the best-ever brownies and has the crown to prove it.

Photo by various brennemans.

Pet Shop Boys Singles, 1985–2010

by Chris Randle

46. “London”
45. “Together”
44. “Numb”
43. “Beautiful People”
42. “Integral”
41. “Did You See Me Coming?”
40. “Absolutely Fabulous”
39. “Minimal”
38. “Was It Worth It?”
37. “Home and Dry”
36. “Yesterday, When I Was Mad”
35. “Miracles”
34. “Single-bilingual”
33. “I Get Along”
32. “Jealousy”
31. “I’m With Stupid”
30. “Somewhere”
29. “Before”
28. “I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Anymore”
27. “Suburbia”
26. “Love Etc.”
25. “DJ Culture”
24. “Love Comes Quickly”
23. “Liberation”
22. “New York City Boy”
21. “Heart”
20. “Flamboyant”
19. “It’s Alright”
18. “It’s a Sin”
17. “Se a Vida E”
16. “Paninaro ‘95”
15. “West End Girls”
14. “A Red Letter Day”
13. “Where the Streets Have No Name / I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”
12. “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing”
11. “So Hard”
10. “You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk”
9. “Domino Dancing”
8. “Can You Forgive Her?”
7. “Go West”
6. “Opportunities”
5. “Left to My Own Devices”
4. “Being Boring”
3. “Rent”
2. “Always On My Mind”
1. “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”

Chris Randle is a writer from Toronto and a member of the group blog Back to the World. He recently sang “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” at karaoke with a friend dressed up as Dusty Springfield.

“Nestle, one of the world’s biggest makers of pet food, said on Friday it had launched the first television commercial designed especially for dogs, using a high-frequency tone to grab their attention.”

Maroon 5 Guy And Christina Aguilera Score No. 1 Hit By Cutting Out A Small But Important Part Of Man’s Heart And Slowly Devouring It Before His Very Eyes

When I was 14, after we graduated from Markham Place School at a ceremony by the gazebo on the hill by the baseball fields, there was a party for my eighth grade class with pizza and a six-foot-long sub from Danny’s and a DJ and stuff. We were euphoric, as kids are at the end of every school year — and even more so this year, it being the end of grade school in its entirety, and us having recently returned from an overnight class trip to Washington D.C. that had seemed to engender good feelings all around. I was a dork in 8th grade, not invited to many of the birthday parties you’d overhear about on Monday, at which more popular guys would get to kiss the girls who would end up signing your yearbook, “Dear David, I don’t know you very well, but I know you’re very nice! Have a great summer!” But so much of that bad stuff seemed to float away at the graduation party — everybody had fun. Kids talked to and laughed with kids they hadn’t talked to or laughed with through eight years of going to school together. It was great.

At the end of the party, after we’d all gone crazy to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” and shouted the “Hey! Get laid! Get fucked!” ad-lib parts we were supposed to shout when the DJ played Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony,” and been moved to a level of genuine compassion and emotion that felt foreign to us as 14-year-olds when Martin Torbert, who was in a wheelchair because of the muscular dystrophy he would die from six years later, slow danced with his girlfriend to Survivor’s “The Search Is Over,” which was announced as “their song,” at the end of the party, someone had the idea that me and Ted Trainor and Matt McCabe and Dave Murgio should do a lipsync performance of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” Ted and Matt and Dave were all more popular than I was, but I was known as a music nut, and the Stones were my favorite band, so I think this is the reason I was included. Me and Dave argued for a minute over who would get to be Keith Richards, but since Dave was more popular, and since he said I would know the words better, he won and I agreed to be Mick Jagger.

I was a little nervous when the music started, looking out at the faces of my classmates who I knew didn’t know me very well, and who I feared didn’t like me very much. But everyone was smiling and obviously into it, so I got into it, too. I danced like Mick, and put my hands on my hips and threw my arms back and stuck out my lips and pouted as I mouthed the words into the imaginary microphone I held in my hand. I had his moves memorized, from watching the famous video of him singing this song onstage in the Philadelphia Eagles jersey during the Tattoo You tour from a few years before. I had practiced them plenty in the privacy of my bedroom. I strutted like a rooster and leaned back-to-back against Dave, just like Mick and Keith did, when we harmonized on the “You make a grown man cry-aye-aye” parts.

It was a resounding victory. Everyone cheered and mobbed us at the end of the song, just like we were real rock stars. As things settled down, and people went back to get a last slice of pizza or cup of soda or whatever, Liz Ryan, who was pretty, and pretty popular, but also a bit shy, came up to me and smiled and quietly said, “You were a good Mick Jagger.”

So now the guy from Maroon 5, Adam Levine — about whom I harbor feelings similar to those expressed by Richard Lawson, who wrote on Twitter, while watching him on the TV show “The Voice” back in April, “How many hookers do we think Adam Levine has murdered in his basement torture maze? At least several?” — now Adam Levine, and to a lesser extent Christina Aguilera, with their song “Moves Like Jagger,” currently the no. 1 song in this whole god-forsaken country, and has just been made even worse somehow, with the addition of two verses from the unfortunately existing Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller on a new remixed version, now all these people… they have hurt me very deeply in a way that they will never be able to truly understand.