Noting that “it’s plenty easy to get around the paywall if you know what to search for,” Donald Rumsfeld has canceled his subscription to the New York Times.

“DID ‘HAPPY FEET’ PENGUIN BECOME HAPPY MEAL?” Sure, why the hell not.

by Richard Rushfield

E and Vince climbed up over the rim of the hill, and there they stopped to gaze down upon the ruins of the city below. Thirteen years since the SAG/AFTRA split-up and the city was still burning. Vast sections of the canvas below were nothing but charred smoldering dirt. And higher up, by the shell of the old Hollywood sign, they could make out the screams of anguish, the clatter of swords, the unholy battle cries of the Test Audiences as they stampeded down toward the deserted boulevards in search of fresh hot blood. A decade after they had fled, the marauders looked more zombie than human; more creatures infected with an untested serum than zombies.

“This is very 28 Weeks Later,” Vince said.

“I wouldn’t know,” E said, and spat out his gum. “I never saw that one. I was too busy cleaning up one of your messes.”

E gazed down at the spot of blackened earth where Kitson Men had once stood. Fifteen years ago, on that now-ravaged soil, he had bought his first $700-shirt. It was lavender. Today, you couldn’t even get a pair of Ray-Bans there.

“Let’s move out,” E ordered Vince, who dutifully followed. As they picked their way down the hill, E suddenly felt the ground slip away beneath him. His foot slid over something round. He fell to the ground, and as he laid there dazed, the object stared at him. The object was no ball, but a head. And not just any head. It was the head of Jaden Smith.

“Tell me again what we’re doing here?” Vince asked, helping E to his feet. “Jaden Smith is a bigger star than I ever was, and this is what they do with him?”

E scampered to his feet and made a defiant fist pump. “Vince, I’m not going to let them cut your head off.”

“Well that’s a relief.” Vince rolled his eyes.

“But we gotta get down there. Ari is alive.”

“According to some dehydrated D-lister who was trying to save his skin!”

E sighed. They’d been over this probably forty times since they had started their journey out of their hideout in the Fucking Epic Wasteland three months ago. “I know he’s alive. I’ve always known it. We never should have left him.”

E thought back to that night, more than a decade ago. The night the roof caved in on Hollywood. The AFTRA mondo-gangs roamed the streets, wearing the skins of SAG actors and their agents draped over their shoulders like pashminas. Bloody, acne-scarred pashminas. A mondo-gang had found their hide out, in the VIP room of Hyde. It had been years since anyone had gone to Hyde; who would have thought to even look in there? But someone had sold them out.

Someone…. E had a bad feeling whenever he thought about who that someone might be. But there had been extras everywhere, swarming over every corner of the out-of-fashion hot spot.

That night, as the mob closed in on the VIP room, Johnny Drama rose to his feet. “This is my moment, bro,” he had told them. “I’m going to give these people the performance of my lifetime.”

E begged: “Don’t do it Drama. We can all get out of this.”

“No way you’re going to step on my big scene this time, E,” Drama said. Jaw jutting forward, he fist bumped them all and, with a yell of “Viking Quest,” he leaped out onto the mobs. Vince, E and Ari had run, run faster than they had ever run before, as the AFTRA’s ripped Johnny to shreds, his voice crying out long after his body was rent asunder. Just like that, the incredible odyssey of Johnny Drama had come to a pointless end.

They had almost made it out the door when, from out of nowhere, Ari got a text message.

“Guys,” he said. “I’ve got to deal with this.”

“No, Ari. No you do not!” E had cried, realizing for the first time in his life that he loved this man, the man who had made him the talent representative he was. But through the fury of his texting, Ari could no longer hear their pleas. Vince pulled E away as the door slammed shut, and Ari disappeared from their life, forever.

In all the years that passed, there had not been a single moment when E had stopped believing that Ari was still alive. And so when that freaked-out D-lister stumbled into their batcave and had told them he had seen Ari, it was a matter of minutes before E was dragging Vinny down the road, the road back to the place that had been Hollywood.

E shook his head, as if to shake away the memories, like a bad hangover from Turtle’s rockgut Tequilla. Turtle! Missing since the first day the Viacom Gunships gravilocked over the city. How long could Turtle have lasted in that mayhem without Vince’s name to open doors for him? A week? A day? A second? Poor fucking Turtle. America’s born loser. He didn’t deserve much, but he didn’t deserve the apocalypse.

E looked Vinny in the eye. “If we don’t even try, what are we going to do? Rot in the middle of the Fucking Epic Wasteland shooting straight-to-Nexflix softcore thrillers?”

“Sounds better than having my ears cut off by a rampaging test audience.”

They stared deep into each others’ eyes. A stare-down. It was on. Locked together, they were transported back to Queens Boulevard, back so many years ago when they could only dream of driving Lamborghinis. But here they were. E took a deep breath and put his arm on Vince’s shoulder, caressing it gently.

“Sloan….”

“Oh my God, you called me Sloan again!” Vince jerked his shoulder away sending E spinning backwards into the brush.

“I did not! I called you Vince. Vincent Chase.” E’s mind reeled. How had he let that slip out? Again! He looked at Vinny, but all he could see was his Gucci-wearing ex-fiancee. They were the same size, the same hair color, the same body fat ratio. Why couldn’t Vince be Sloan?! But no, he couldn’t let himself think that way. This was Vince, his oldest friend in the world. His road dog. His bro. And Sloan was, well, Sloan was not here.

“You’re totally not over her! That’s what this is all about! We’re not looking for Ari. You’re here to get back together with Sloan!”

“Come on, that’s crazy….” Eric said.

And then a man walked into their clearing. They smelled him before they saw him and the smell was not Paco Rabanne’s Eau de Toilette. Not at all. He smelled like something had died, and then had gotten up and walked down the hill where he ran into E and….

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Vincent Chase,” the man said.

“E! You said — “

E cursed. How had this happened? They had taken every possible step to disguise Vince before coming back to L.A. They had dressed him in Dockers and a teal button-down Oxford. On his feet, they had gone so far to put him in a pair of white New Balance sneakers. And in thirty seconds, this blundering jerk had seen through it all. Now Vince was in bigger trouble than he’d been since that time 18 years ago when he thought the Aquaman deal was final and put a down payment on a house only to find out the deal wasn’t actually totally final yet!

But E looked closer and saw that this man on the mountain was no man. It was the man they thought they would never live to see again.

“Billy Walsh,” said E. “It’s really you.”

“You got that right, suit.” Walsh spit. “Only this time, it’s motherfucking personal.”

Vince looked confused. “What is?”

“Just fucking roll with it, Aquaman.” It was Billy Walsh alright, on the outside. It had been 26 years since Johnny Bananas had become the biggest show in the history of show, or at least television, making him the richest man on Earth. But times had changed, and the hot breath of history had blown away the swagger and worn him down to man at his essence; something hard, unbreakable. Something like death. That hardness was there now in his ugly clothes, in his unbouncy walk, in that look in his eyes.

Walsh saw that they noticed the change and shrugged. “I know, fucking apocalypse, right?”

Vince shook his head. “But Billy, you’re the richest man in the world. Surely the berserkers couldn’t get to you!”

“Was the richest man on Earth. Then, just after the gunships showed up, I plowed all my money into developing a horror script for Channing Tatum.” He looked at the ground. “Now I’m only the sixth.”

“Holy shit,” E said. This was a world without mercy. He reached out and gave Walsh a piece of the squirrel jerky he’d been hoarding.

“Thanks, suit,” Walsh said. “That’s the first meal I’ve eaten in a week.”

They gazed off together at the ashes of what had been their city, their playground and their domain. “So Billy…” E broke the silence. “We heard something. We came back for Ari.”

The iron inside Billy Walsh flinched. “Whoa, suit, you did not just say that.”

“I did,” E said.

“If you’re planning to go down there after Ari, you’re either dumber than I thought — or crazier.”

E stared him straight down. “Or both.”

Walsh took a step back. “Holy shit. You really are. Now you know, suit, that Ari was #1 on the AFTRA hit list. Right above this pretty face here,” he said, gesturing to Vince.

“We know that. But we’re going after him anyway. Do you know where we can find him?”

Walsh shook his head. “I hear some things, but they’re not good. I don’t know if its true or not but I heard The Kahuna Suave has got Ari chained up as his personal galley slave.”

“The Kahuna Suave? Who the fuck is that? A new deodorant?”

“No, E, Kahuna Suave is not a fucking deodorant, he’s the man who could put you in the grave, dead, with one word. After the fall of the Studio Chiefs, Kahuna Suave swept up all their distribution, and for good measure, he got the AFTRA dancing to his tune too. He’s the fucking distributor and the supplier and the exhibitor all in one. Talk about your fucking alpha and omega.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit squared, suit. And if Ari is still alive, he’s in the stinking dungeon underneath his castle, living on rats. Working the phone and negotiating deals for the Kahuna until he drops where he stands. If he’s still alive, which I doubt, you’re not going to like what you find. If Ari has survived 43 years of that, he’s going to be more zombie than dude by now.”

“He’s still Ari,” E said.

“Suit, I don’t even know what that means anymore, yo.”

Despite his misgivings, Walsh was still Walsh. Within minutes he had a plan, a manuever so elaborate and desperate that anything less would seem too simple. The plan required Vince to go down into the embers and find Rachel Bilson, whom he would seduce. Bilson would then take him to lunch at her regular table on the spot where Newsroom used to be. At the last minute, E would sweep in and join them, walking in at the precise moment when the Kahuna Suave’s right hand man’s sister would come in for her lunch, as she did every day at that time. The sister, Walsh knew, was a big fan of 1920’s banjo music, so E would in the meantime have found the last remaining descendent of Rudy Vallee’s Connecticut Yankees, who was himself a big Viking Quest fan and would come in and serenade them with “Lady of Spain.” The sister would be so enamored that she would take their fake revival banjo group all home to perform. Once they got there, Walsh would ask them if he could scout the dungeon as a possible location for a bondage video he was making and there, if they were very very lucky, they would find Ari.

It was brazen plan, insane even. E estimated the chances of success at fourteen to one. But when he thought back to the close scrapes they’d had before — the time Medellin almost didn’t happen… the time Johnny Bananas almost didn’t happen… E knew they’d been through far far worse.

“Let’s do this,” E said. “Let’s go get our agent.”

An hour later, they stood on the front lawn of the Kahuna Suave’s castle, the flames of the fiery moat lapping at their bandanas. Overhead, winged jackals circled and cackled.

“Wait a second,” Vince said. “We know this house!”

Indeed they did. When they had last cruised these streets, this castle had been Hillhaven Lodge, the home of Brett Ratner, the man whose name for them had been synonymous with everything cool and fun and crazy and partyrific. This house had been like a temple to four young men with dreams in their hearts and now, now it was just a bad, bad place. For the first time, E wished to hell he’d never come on this road trip. Gods, he silently cried up to the heavens, why couldn’t you let me keep this one last illusion?

But the Gods had no answer.

The final part of Walsh’s plan worked like clockwork; they slipped into the dungeon with him. Looking around at the slaves all working their Blackberries like the troops of the damned, E saw no sign of Ari. Something about a door at the other side of the room made E suspicious, however. Something about the “DO NOT ENTER” sign made him think there was something in there that the Kahuna didn’t want them to see. At first the door refused to budge and then when he pushed slightly harder, it swung open like the gates of heaven welcoming Justin Bieber. And on the other side, bound by chains, his suit in tatters, his hairpiece askew, sat superagent Ari Gold.

With eyes dead to the world, he looked up from his conference call, ignoring the machine guns pointed at his head. Ari looked from E to Vince to Walsh, and said, “Oh, after all this time, you expect me to just lick your balls, pizza boy?”

E shook his head. Man, it felt good to be bitch-slapped by a pro once again. “Come on Ari. Let’s get out of here,” he said. Just then the door swung open. And in walked… the Kahuna Suave himself, flanked by a hundred men bearing machetes and grenades.

“Looks like we got ourselves a little house party here. Oh Vince, do you need me to give you a ride?” The Kahuna threw his head back and laughed. It was an immense laugh summoned straight from the pits of hell.

“A ride?” E asked… “No, it can’t be.” He looked at the round shoulders, the askew jaw. The Kahuna Suave… was Turtle! But a grotesque, inflated version of Turtle. Where once he had worn a baseball cap, now he wore twenty. Where once he wore a basketball jersey, now he wore an astronaut’s space suit. His eyes sparkled with menace.

Five minutes and nine plot twists later, the boys were driving down Sunset Boulevard in Turtle’s Sherman tank, trading high fives and laughing.

“Only one thing doesn’t seem right,” Vince said, his Dockers now swapped for the world’s last pair of distressed skinny jeans. “I can’t do this without Drama.”

Ari turned and hit him in the face. “If I had known anyone wanted to see that no talent putz, I would have invited him.”

Then, from the bottom of the tank, Johnny Drama leaped up. “Johnny Drama waits for no man’s call! How’s it going, baby bro?”

“Johnny,” E said. “We saw you die!”

“Funny thing about that, asshole. I am made of rubber. You are made of glue. Everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you!”

E and Vincent looked at each other and shook their heads. Then everyone laughed. “Fucking Hollywood, I know, right?” Walsh said.

Richard Rushfield shares his magical pop culture odyssey on his Tumblr.

“Very little happens in Union Square that escapes the notice of a man known as Normal Bob Smith, a longtime park fixture who chronicles its characters on the ‘Amazing Strangers’ portion of his Web site. One of his main genres of park characters is the peeper. Normal Bob, whose given name is Bob Hain, says peepers are a constant presence in the south section of the park, where they prey on women wearing skirts who sit on the sets of steps along 14th Street.”

Jon Stewart, Stop Hurting America!

Such a lather people are in, because Rick Perry was cheered at the Republican debate last week for executing 234 death row prisoners in Texas. Actually, Perry didn’t even have a chance to repond to the question, posed by Brian Williams, before the audience started applauding. The transcript goes like this:

Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you…

(APPLAUSE)
[also one person whistling]

Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?

Well, of course not, Brian. What a question. Rick Perry doesn’t “do” internal conflict! That’s the whole point. Which, it had better be faced, some people see as a weakness and others, as a comforting strength.

“No, sir, I’ve never struggled with that at all,” Perry replied evenly.

From the instant the applause began, the whole Internet blew up with howls of “creepy,” “vile” and “horrible”; Ta-Nehisi Coates would write, “Apparently people were shocked by the applause here. The only thing that shocked me was that they didn’t form a rumba line.” Quite a number of conservatives got their knickers in a twist, too, expressing “revulsion” for the “ghouls” who were vicious and cruel enough to applaud Perry’s record of executions.

But to assume that rank-and-file Republicans are cheering for executions simply because they are out for blood is irrational and wrong. They are far more likely to have cheered because, as we have long known, like a majority of Americans, they support the death penalty for violent crimes, and Perry has conclusively demonstrated that he shares their conviction. It’s not news, surely, that Republicans love the idea of Law and Order, nor that they think Democrats are “soft on crime.” Perry was, and is, merely doing the cowboy thing that every Republican presidential hopeful has done since forever. Please note: no Democratic presidential candidate can afford to be against the death penalty, either. They never, ever go on the record against it.

And don’t think that support for the death penalty (or “ultimate justice,” as Perry styled it in the debate) is limited to U.S. Republicans and/or conservatives. On a percentage basis, even more Japanese citizens favor capital punishment than we do, and only in the last ten years has support declined below half in the UK and in Western Europe generally. Worldwide, though there is a slow trend toward abolition, support is still surprisingly high.

But Jon Stewart, along with pretty much every observer on the left, rushed to interpret the applause as audible proof that Republicans are basically a slavering pack of bloodthirsty, inhuman monsters.

[spoken over pan across the debate audience, who look like a standard-issue TV audience] This is not your torch-and-pitchfork angry villager. These are people with firm opinions on which is the best brand of riding mower. The audience at this debate were the people that give out raisins on Halloween. They own The Blind Side on DVD. And yet, and yet, and yet… (lowers voice menacingly) they thirst for blood.

First of all, what? They aren’t angry villagers but they give out raisins? This demographic description is less coherent than even the red ’n’ blue hallucinations of David Brooks. I have no idea what Stewart is on about here, though I guess we can take it as read that his remarks constitute a stab in the general direction of, “these Republicans are regular, caring people, only bloodthirsty, and riding around on lawnmowers of the highest quality.”

I am especially disappointed in Jon Stewart’s failure to ask, “Can there be any even marginally rational reason why these people might be applauding for executions?” No! Instead Stewart chose the Dark Side, the quick and easy path to political yuks, saying ponderously, “Media: you’re thinking about this with the wrong part of your brain… the brain part. […] Guess what? The Reagan Library: it ain’t a readin’ library.” And then he was all yapping about the limbic system, concluding by grabbing his balls, kind of, under the desk, to indicate Perry’s visceral appeal to Republicans.

Are we really reduced to joking that the Republicans are dumb? Oh THAT’S novel. They can’t spell, are you serious, Jon Stewart? That joke is not just exhausted, its assumptions are beyond false. Or at least, let’s be clear: there are as many dumb progressives as there are Republicans, sure as shootin’. You’d think if Republicans were so dumb it would be child’s play for the brainy Democrats to bamboozle them into passing some useful legislation, but this turns out to be well-nigh impossible. Plus, it is a stone fact that one of the best novels of the last century was written by a Wall Street Journal regular. Do I find that confusing? Yes, kind of but whatever, it’s true.

Another regrettable moment in the Republican debate came with Williams’ follow-up question to Rick Perry:

WILLIAMS: What do you make of…

(APPLAUSE) [still applauding for Perry’s earlier display of mucho macho]

What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?

PERRY: I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of — of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens — and it’s a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don’t want you [long pause here] to commit those crimes against our citizens. And if you do, you will face the ultimate justice.

That is, Perry’s response included the words “they [Texas citizens] don’t want you,” meaning they don’t want you, a hypothetical murderin’ varmint, to get away with any bloody deeds in our state. But when he spoke these words he was looking right at Brian Williams and at everything he and the so-called “liberal media” stand for. He was basically saying, “I may not be able to argue things out too well with a Media Person like you, Brian Williams, but I know how I feel about right and wrong.” The right has been winning elections on this message since the time of Adlai Stevenson. All the eloquence and reasonableness in the world can sometimes yield to the power of a real gallopin’, gun-totin’, g-droppin’ Republican hombre.

Why single Jon Stewart out from the legions of commenters on the left who took the same line? Because I expect better than that from a leader of progressive opinion who has in the past come out very strongly against exactly this kind of irresponsible partisan hackery. More particularly, I expect more from a progressive leader (and Stewart is one, whether he likes it or not) who has got that kind of clout with the youngs.

Who can forget Stewart’s legendary 2004 appearance on “Crossfire” in which he went so righteously nuts over this very issue?

BEGALA: Let me get this straight. If the indictment is — if the indictment is — and I have seen you say this — that CROSSFIRE reduces everything, as I said in the intro, to left, right, black, white.

STEWART: Yes.

BEGALA: Well, it’s because, see, we’re a debate show. […]

STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that’s like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.

And here is what Jon Stewart said less than a year ago at the conclusion of the Rally to Restore Fear and/or Sanity.

[T]he image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a funhouse mirror, and not the good kind that makes you slim and taller — but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass like a pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?

Excellent question, Mr. Stewart.

I could not be less of a fan of James Taranto, but his WSJ editorial last week was spot-on, for once. “[W]hatever one thinks of the death penalty or the audience’s behavior last night, the harshness, self-righteousness and simple-mindedness of these responses belie the left’s self-image as intellectually sophisticated and tolerant of other viewpoints.”

The right in general fears and hates doubt, and sees careful consideration of all sides as pure pantywaisted weakness; the left sees the uncertainty required for careful deliberation as a mark of intellectual strength and wisdom. When Perry defended his record at the debate, I suspect the applause was really for his demonstration of absolute, doubt-free conviction, which is something the right respects and admires.

Clearly, we needn’t — we can’t — respect the views of fellow-citizens who literally want just to kill people. We can however sit at the table respectfully with those whose basic hope and expectation from government is safety and the tough-minded, trustworthy exercise of power. The left by contrast expects freedom, equality, compassion and a far greater say in things. These differences are substantial but they do not require us to demonize our ideological opponents or turn them into people who can’t be reasoned with, who are sub-human, whose views are not worth considering. Nobody on the left really believes that whatever serial killer should just be wandering around loose, just as nobody on the right really believes that it is great to go around killing innocent people.

Leonard Cohen explained all about this so beautifully in Warsaw in 1985.

I don’t know which side anybody’s on any more and I don’t really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we’re on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish you courage in your struggle. There is on both sides of this struggle men of good will. That is important to remember. On both sides of the struggle; some struggling for freedom, some struggling for safety.

There is a way to arrive at common ground, provided we can maintain just basic respect for the integrity of the other side. But we’re never going to get to that so long as opinion leaders like Stewart continue to take every cheap shot that comes their way. If progressives are the tolerant ones, by gum, then let them start toleratin’.

Perry may be a secessionist whack job, but he is right in tune with the Strong Man persona that many, many Americans want from their elected officials. If he is a couple of tacos short of a combination plate or if he isn’t, either way, that doesn’t matter a bit. He is supposed to have done so badly in school and whatnot but sometimes I think the Republicans spread those “he’s so dumb” stories around on purpose, so that people will be pleasantly surprised when their candidates turn out to be not so dumb as all that. I thought it was quite cunning, actually, the way Perry delivered his Texas Pride shtick to Brian Williams the other day.

When Adlai Stevenson, (egghead, lawyer, rich guy and then-governor of Illinois) was running for president in the nineteen-fifties, a supporter once shrieked at him, “Mr. Stevenson, every intelligent person in America is for you!” Whether or not that was so, Stevenson really was super smart and I bet would have made a terrific president, not that Eisenhower was such a bad one. But Stevenson was an “elitist” intellectual through and through. “Madam, that is not enough!” he shouted back. “We need a majority!” Haha hilarious and yeah, he totally lost.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo and Act Like A Gentleman, Think Like A Woman.

“He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shifted on the ground,” is what this sentence from a romance novel meant to say. Happily for those of us with juvenile senses of humor, it did not.

“Most women suffer with cramps and bleeding for a few days every month. Most also accept menstruation as a fact of life. Not so Japanese-British artist Sputniko!, who thinks that, in this day and age, this bloody bastion of biology shouldn’t be limited to ladies. To change that, she dreamt up a machine to share the experience with those who weren’t born with the required equipment. With the help of obstetrician Jan Brosens in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, she designed a wearable device that has a blood dispensing mechanism and uses electrodes to stimulate abdominal muscles, simulating menstrual cramps.”

The St. Mark’s Bookshop has been the beneficiary of a much-Twittered petition to its landlord this last week. Just a little over two years ago, the bookstore signed a new ten-year lease for $20,000 a month. ($240,000 a year; that’s 9,234 full-price hardback copies of The Art of Fielding, or, 36% of Chad Harbach’s advance for The Art of Fielding.) That lease expires in a bit under eight years. Now the owners say it’s onerous (so what were they thinking!?) and they have a meeting with their landlord, Cooper Union, this week. (Their last meeting was ineffectual, the owners said; since, a City Councilmember and others have gone to Cooper Union asking for a reduction.

I love this book store in particular, I love bookstores in general and I also love physical books and… listen, this is just not how leasing or New York City or business works.

I encourage you petition-signers to go to your own landlords — during the first quarter of the lease that you just signed — and ask for a rent reduction. See how that goes. Yeah. If the bookstore wants to become a non-profit bookstore, let’s file that paperwork and do this thing. (I’ll help!) But this odd public-private partnership “public good” conception of a commercial business is giving me the willies a little. (Cruel of me? Maybe! Libertarian? Ugh, possibly. I know.) It is a public good, technically! It’s a great thing! But if you’re not keeping them in business and I’m not keeping them in business… well, something’s broken, right?

It’s also disconcerting that the owners of the bookstore are unrepresented. Just like in court, in real estate the man who has himself for a client is represented by a fool, or however that dumb saying goes. Get a pro bono lawyer and a pro bono commercial broker, price your options and be prepared to break your lease if Cooper Union won’t help you. Posturing in public as “we’re almost too broke to pay our rent, won’t someone please help us” just makes it obvious to your landlord that you probably can’t even afford to move out. The bookstore, despite its radical background and all-around utopian terrificness, is a business and it owes it to itself to act like one. It also deserves proficient allies that’ll help it survive. Now let’s all stop signing Internet petitions and go buy a book.

Private Eye, one of my absolute favorite magazines in the world, is 50.

My favorite Daily Mail reporter, Daily Mail Reporter — who OWNS the “manufactured newspaper article based on an industry-sponsored-survey” beat — points to an industry-sponsored-survey showing that people really don’t like Mondays. There is even a list of “Top 10 ‘Monday Moans.’” The best one? “You always feel a bit poorly on a Monday,” which, you know, truer words, etc.