Oh my God, what are you guys doing this weekend?

• “12 CDs for the price of 1?” No thanks!

• Korean-American adoptees on their first trips to Korea.

• America’s Tea Party and Anders Breivik

• “Just because you write most of a book doesn’t mean you can finish and sell a book.” (Ruh roh!)

• Here comes August! Consider it proved: it’s the month when real scandals grip the country and we pay attention to other things.

• And this weekend is going to be toasty. There may be cooling centers! Mmm, cooling.

Photo by Nicole Cash.

Here is a photo of the most perfectly executed stage dive I have ever seen.

Longshot magazine — in which a magazine is produced over the course of a weekend — is now up and running and on its way. If you wish, you could submit! Or just watch along and enjoy the process. Also there is a radio station!

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Waterfall

The most romantic thing a human being can say
to another human being is Let me help you vomit.
No human being has ever said this to me
& I keep going to god too clean as though god
is frightened of muddy feet. If I am missing
a hairpin I don’t go at all. Please describe
your vomiting; it is like a psalm for me
a place where wilderness might be new.
Other people’s dirt makes a lovely frock.
Grant I be forgiven in the gush.

Megachurch

The altar boys want me
Swooning drunk
They say If you feel like nonsense
Get nonsenser
If you feel bananas
Make a sundae already

Oh I do
I want holiness to meet me halfway
Meet me easy
Like a tugboat on glitter water
Hotel music
Ultra gloss

So easy to fall in the water
How easy these altar boys come on
Bodies of soap
With pinwheel erections
They eat hamburgers effortlessly
Only some have hips

It is movie night
In their church in America
A crucifixion movie
No a movie about love
They offer me megaCokes
With rum

Rum will make the movie
More romantic
I cannot say
I am undrunk
How I got to be undrunk
Not here

Boredom
Is going to get crucified here
The whole church is beeping
Glitter water glitter rum
Even my nail polish
Beeping.

Steak Night

In husbandland I am made
of hamburger, eggs and potatoes

a food brew really
scraps spackled.

A kitchen swells around
full of cakes and clocks

and babydolls not like ham.
A hash has happened

the husband is absent
my marriage dress hangs

by the stove.
I put me in my mouth

to taste patty melts
stripey fats and underblood

juicy dregs for geraniums.
I could let drops

and grow victory gardens
might I cleave a piece to suck?

O the eggs are growing old
or else they’re growing lungs.

Melissa Broder is the author of two collections of poems: Meat Heart (forthcoming from Publishing Genius in 2012) and When You Say One Thing but Mean Your Mother (Ampersand 2010). Poems appear or are forthcoming in Guernica, Redivider, Barrelhouse, Opium magazine, et al. She edits La Petite Zine and curates the Polestar Poetry Series at Cake Shop.

For more poetry, visit The Poetry Section’s vast archive. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

“I believe this is a first for Yale.” White supremacist ’73 alum brags in class notes… http://is.gd/Kng5REFri Jul 29 18:24:53 via Tweetie for Mac

Ben Smith
benpolitico

“Sam Taylor sent this intriguing note: ‘Did you know one of your classmates is officially considered a hate-monger by the Southern Poverty Law Center?’” Oh Yale alumni news!

Today the Times prints a recipe for “tomato salad on a roll,” in which the final recipe instruction is this: “Cover sandwiches with a clean dish towel and wait for an hour or so before serving.” (Sure, they want the sardines and garlic to “marry” and whatever, okay, sure, I get it, it’s just: it’s hot and I’m hungry.)

Here’s my very own summer tomato sandwich recipe!

1. Get some bread, toast it lightly, just a little.

2. Put tomatoes (preferably little ones, and yellow, and cut in half) and torn basil, with some olive oil and salt and pepper, on one piece of bread. Put some mozzarella on the other piece of bread.

3. Put them both under the broiler for like 2 minutes, max. Your cheese bubbles. Take them out.

4. SLAP TOGETHER (putting cheese on top of tomatoes, obviously) AND PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH IMMEDIATELY, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

“Fif states he’s on ‘it’
But whatever ‘it’ may be
‘It’ is not the beat”
 — Ego Trip reviews eight new rap songs in haiku and it is just the thing today.

by Myles Tanzer

Food porn is one of the Internet’s veritable viral cornerstones. Pictures of wacky cupcakes, fusion fried chicken or an incredible, competitive array of deviled eggs get reblogged viciously by legions of salivating fans. In an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist and assess what’s to be the next “hot thing all the young, hip and/or upwardly mobile people are doing,” I filmed my first amateur food porn.

The food porn party creates two works of art at once: the edibles, and the documentation of that which is eaten. The dishes are chosen for their potential attractiveness. The food, after it is created, must be styled — and then it must be shot to be glowingly attractive. But unlike actual magazine-level food porn, you can’t use hairspray to make your pork look shiny, because you’re actually going to eat this. In real-life food porn, you can only fight fair.

We met at my friend Jake’s apartment — he’s a first rate photographer and a Bushwick resident. He was to be the James Cameron of my food porn Titanic dreams. (Obviously, I was cognizant that shooting the pictures in Bushwick would contribute to the success of my trendsetting.)

The food chosen to star in the pictures, naturally, had to be seasonal. After some debate — “Should we just put bacon on top of a lot of stuff and call it a day?” — the theme of “summer’s feast” was chosen for the porn at hand.

A note on bacon: it’s is to food porn what “Don’t Stop Believin’” is to karaoke: a standby that’s sure to get a rise out of even the dullest and drunkest. Even if people don’t like the song and/or food that much, it’s exciting for everyone! But it’s really a tired trick, in both cases, and should be approached with caution.

The menu was fairly easy to pick out once there was the “Summer Feast” theme to play around with. For a main course we had lobster rolls, which were paired with a pickled watermelon salad with heirloom tomatoes, creamed corn and cheddar biscuits (an homage to Red Lobster, naturally). Oh and a huge dish of Magnolia-style banana pudding for dessert, because I’m gross like that. (And pudding? This is a tricky choice, visually speaking! But a gamble well worth it.)

Riding the L train to the Dekalb stop with arms of groceries and a huge dish full of banana pudding is a harrowing experience. People really gawk at you when you’re holding something with a clear plastic wrap covering. (The worst is when the man next to you hovers his nose over your dish to catch a whiff.)

After a couple hours of cooking in the Bushwick summer heat, all of the plates were prepared and Jake got to work. He rigged up a light in the kitchen to successfully backlight the food and shot some closeups of my smutty little stars.

Food porn, like real food or real porn, is actually quite difficult labor! It’s not so much the cooking that’s tough — but there was a lot of styling: wiping plates totally clean, stacking biscuits ever so perfectly. Your perspective on cooking shifts a bit: instead of prodding that thing in the oven to find out if it’s done, you’re thinking: does this look done? Does it have just a little delightful browning?

The trend legitimacy quotient is pretty high here. There’s artistry afoot, as well as Internet sensationalism — and some choice niche travel. It could really take off anywhere from “the eastern end of Long Island,” in the trend piece vernacular, as well as “in Greenpoint” or even NoLIta. Really, anywhere that people like to perform their lives by way of Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr or Facebook. A surefire trend! Just remember that bacon themes are already over.

Myles Tanzer might do absolutely anything this weekend. Photographs by Jake Moore.

by Awl Sponsors

The Change-Up is one of the most straight-up fun movies of the summer. It doesn’t take its familiar premise all that seriously — who really cares about the science behind a fountain that causes people to switch bodies when they pee in it? — instead saving its energy for putting its characters in the most ridiculous situations possible. From softcore porn shoots to homicidal infants, the movie takes full advantage of its R rating to push things way beyond what you expect. The Change-Up opens next week.

“GPS racing is the dangerous new driving game which is placing motorists at risk, according to new figures which suggest that more than 7 million motorists are engaged in a daily race against time inspired by their GPS devices.”