A million years ago these friends told me about a saying they’d taken on, that came from a heated dinner party conversation. They were having an argument about Armenia or Iraq or something, or Palestine, who knows, and it was getting unreasonably heated due to the way these kinds of conversations go, and finally at one point a woman banged on the table and screamed, in an accent that I always do as “really fake French”: BUT WHAT ABOUT ZE KURDS??? This is an argument stopper akin to invoking Hitler. What about the Kurds? Let us not discuss provisional governments or the rights of women or whatever, when don’t you understand the Kurds are suffering?

And that is basically what happened on the entire Internet this weekend, after Amy Winehouse died, and because it was boiling hot in 85% of North America, everyone was glued to their computers and their Twitters and had to really let it fly. Some people made jokes! Some people were offended by the jokes! Some people were sad! Some people were upset that people would pay attention to Winehouse’s death when a really, really, unbelievably horrible thing had just happened in Norway. Some people were upset that other people were being self-righteous! And really, no one had any skin in the game. Everyone just got up in each others’ business. Basically, no tweet went uncriticized!

To put it another way, here are the Seven Stages of Internet Grieving, which starts with something like “Unvarnished Personal Expression,” pauses at “Ill-Conceived and/or Ill-Timed Joke” and ends with “Flipping Out on Everyone Because Everyone Else is Doing It Wrong.” What an exhausting weekend!

Outgoing Times executive editor Bill Keller’s Sunday magazine column (which this week, on the topic of how the potential prosecution of Rupert Murdoch is going to ruin things for the press in the rest of the world, is an appeal to probability inside a false dilemma inside an argument to moderation inside an appeal to consequences) will end in a month. Super-smart guy! Not a fan of the column! In any event, there’s a punchline to the news of the column’s end that you wouldn’t want to miss. Keller is off soon to the increasingly bland and Andy Rooney-ish op-ed pages.

If you would like a corrective to Keller’s column, try today’s David Carr column! It’s bold: “James Murdoch is done. He and his father both know that.” And more!

This week: Cold soup! The Mekons! When baseball goes into the stands! Cooling pictures of fireworks! And if you can handle the heat, the argument about Harvard goes on. Don’t go outside! Just… don’t move. And DON’T DIE IN THE HEAT. We have special things for you next week!

Photo by Guian Bolisay

SUMMER BAKING? ARE YOU KIDDING? IT’S ONE MILLION DEGREES. So here: get some Kozy Shack chocolate putting LOL, PUDDING and put it in the freezer in molds. BOOM. The end. God it’s hot.

days like today make me miss jell-o pudding popsFri Jul 22 16:57:59 via TweetDeck

maura johnston
maura

@maura You can make ’em DIY! Mix up a batch of instant pudding, spoon into popsicle molds, pop in freezer for a few hours… ET VOILA!Fri Jul 22 17:03:58 via web

Jolie Kerr
justsayjolie

What’s The Best Seat On The Coney Island Cyclone?

Why do people like Roller Coasters? It’s probably the same reason we like Hot Sauce and Having Affairs. Humans love to feel challenged, pushed to the brink. We seek out danger to spice our humdrum existences. We feel the need to complicate our safe American lives with adventure, but not too much adventure. We’re not exactly ever going to get on a raft on the Mississippi with our best friend Jim and head out for the territories. Real adventures only happen in James Franco movies. We’re left with the illusion of danger and intrigue. And for $8 on the good old Cyclone Roller Coaster at Coney Island, you can feel just jostled enough to feel brave without even having to bleed at all.

It was originally constructed out of T. Rex bones unearthed when workers were digging to create the boardwalk at Coney Island. Since then Vernon Keenan’s lone remaining masterpiece has weathered on: a classic hybrid roller coaster that has thrilled Coney Island goers for almost 85 years. It is not the tallest, fastest or loopiest coaster in the land. Why does it still hold our imagination? Coney Island circa 1949 was a Roller Coaster Valhalla, with up to 5 classic coasters dotting the shore. The Cyclone is the only one that remains outside of black and white photos. Even with the recent improvements the new Luna Park has introduced, the Cyclone remains the only true coaster. Their “Scream Zone” has introduced a few interesting rides, notably the Screaming Eagle, on which riders get the feeling they’re flying while all the change is shaken from their pockets, and some kind of giant racketball on a string that costs $20 to ride.

I first became fascinated with classic Roller Coasters when I was too short to ride the Great American Scream Machine at Six Flags over Georgia. The Rolling Stones’ original “Paint it Black” video features the ride. I don’t know why they can’t make all awesome amusement park rides safe for kids of all sizes. Add a couple of kiddie seats on every awesome ride, nevermind the lawsuits. Kids want to have fun. And tea cups aren’t really all that fun. And there is nothing more deflating to a young child’s psyche than being turned away from a ride. I wanted a Red Badge of Courage button! I wanted to push myself to my very limits! I haven’t been back to the Scream Machine in adulthood. Maybe it can be the last ride I ever ride. A fitting end to a life filled with bumps and disappointments and some vomit.

We had no roller coaster where I grew up. When I make my first billion, I hereby pledge to bring a classically retro roller coaster to the Salem Willows Park near my hometown in Massachusetts. And I will call it The Witches’ Broom. And it will feature much cackling. And a big neon green witch. Who will be surprisingly sexy, despite her green warts and black-and-orange knee socks. And the ride will have no height requirements. If a baby wants to ride in the front seat, strap that baby in. The short shall ride with the tall! We all need a little hot sauce in this cruel world!

I latched onto the Cyclone when I moved to Brooklyn. I wanted to know its every bend. Knowing it might legitimize me not only as a kinda-adventure-seeker, but as a New Yorker. Truly, I will never be a New Yorker. I can wear all the Mets’ caps around I want, I’ll never truly fit in here. I’m a New Englander; I got Moxie soda in my veins and a giant red hot dog straight through my heart. But get to know the Cyclone I did. It is really the only place on Earth I feel completely normal. Traveling at that speed, feeling that out of control. That’s my normal. Not being able to live on a roller coaster is probably the center of all my various alienations.

It has long been assumed that the best seat on a roller coaster is the front seat. I once suffered under this illusion. And perhaps the front seat is the best seat on some roller coasters. Worth standing around and waiting for. I think of Superman — Ride of Steel, now called Bizarro, at Six Flags New England. On that ride, the front seat is definitely the best for at least the first descent, which actually goes into a tunnel in the ground. Pretty cool. After that, it’s all downhill. Steel coasters don’t give us the same thrill as hybrid and wooden coasters. First, because the builders of wooden coasters were truly geniuses. Secondly, loops on roller coasters are overrated. You’re really only upside-down for seconds. And for three, the steel-dominated roller coasters just don’t give you the same sense of dread. Wooden coasters are haunted by the screaming of generations of riders thrilled. They seem as if they could burst apart at any moment into toothpicks. Now that would be a thrill-ride.

When I ride the Cyclone, I’m most frightened by the initial ascent. The clacking of the chain catching the cars from underneath, a slight lurch forward where you’re not sure if it’s caught correctly or not. The rear seat is great here, because you can really enjoy the feeling that the ride will fall backwards and crash. I’m still waiting for that to happen. Only one person that we know of has ever died on the Cyclone. That is a testimony not just to its design, but also to how well run and maintained it’s been over the years. Luna Park staff runs it now; it is more businessy than ever. You used to be able to stay on the coaster for two or three rides in a row by paying off the Cyclone staff. No longer. They won’t even let you wait for the front or back seat. They sometimes run an extra line you can wait on for the right to ride first or last. But sometimes they don’t. And you get the seat you get. And there’s nothing particularly wrong with the middle seats on the ride. They’ve actually, thoughtfully, begun letting women and children board the Cyclone first so that boyfriends and bigger dudes can be on the left them so they don’t squash their smaller companions with G-Force-related jolting. Luna Park’s staff is nice and professional; they lack the barely disguised malice of the hustlers that used to run the Cyclone. It’s quite a jump from Luna Park and its clean rides (that are often broken) and the narrow corridor that leads to the Wonder Wheel. There is still a sliver of the old Coney Island dance that needs to be experienced again before it is banished forever. People Trying to Rip You Off. That was what New York used to be about before the entire city became a kind of adult tourist trap with safety wheels strapped everywhere. New York now offers the illusion of safety when it once offered the illusion of perpetual danger.

The front seat of the Cyclone is coveted beyond all sense. Of course it’s fun to be in the front seat. If you’ve never ridden in the front, you ought to at least once. But I’d argue that the back seat is the best on the roller coaster. If you’re looking for the wildest ride, you can’t beat the back seat. One gets the sense that the car is actually rattling above the track. I rode it again just this week to make certain. After spending a few hours wandering around MCU Park watching Brooklyn Cyclones’ noontime tilt featuring rehabbing Mets’ superstar Jose Reyes, I was ready for a little jostling. (The most fun to be had at the ballgame was above the Cyclones’ bullpen, where (in the finest Coney Island tradition) relievers had set up quarter-toss amusements. Throw a quarter into a Dixie cup from the railing above and you might walk away with a signed Cyclones’ cap, Pitching coach Frankie Viola’s signed sneakers or a signed Jose Reyes ball. Relievers T.J. Chism and Todd Weldon would even break a dollar into four quarters for you, putting your change into a tied-up plastic medical glove and tossing it back up to you. I wasted about a buck fifty. But some of the kids I was near must have emptied their entire piggybanks. I don’t know if there were any winners.) $8 does seem stiff for a ride that used to cost me $3 or $4 bucks. I mean, $8 gets you a round-trip on the East River Ferry, which is a great ride in and of itself. So, you better get a lot for your $8.

I was gonna call my old physics teacher to confirm my hypothesis that you’re actually traveling faster in the back car than the front, but he doesn’t work at my old high school anymore. But that theory makes scientific sense to me. The slingshot effect of the front cars racing down increases the momentum and G-Forces on the back car. Enough of a jostling to make me almost lose my paperback Camus and sunflower seeds out of my cargo shorts pockets. At different points I felt like I had to press my feet down against the floor of the car just to stay alive and not be sent toppling somewhere. And I’m 5’6 ½”, 220 pounds. The bar is safely crushed against my huge gut. Yet I still felt like I could be rattled straight out of the last car. I’ve never felt imperiled in the front seat. It’s fast and it’s nice and you’re the first on that particular trip to enjoy it. But nothing feels out of control, unsafe or doom-laden. Sure, there’s a little frisson to be gotten out of the fear of sawing your raised arms off with the weird crossboards that dot the track, but everyone gets that, no matter where they’re sitting. I’d love to lose one or both arms on the Cyclone. If I ever do lose one or both arms, I will very likely tell people I lost them on the Cyclone.

The front car of the Cyclone does offer an incredible ride. I once had the front seat and somehow timed it right that as I hit the top of the first ascent fireworks began over the Coney Island boardwalk. That was truly a perfect moment. If you can make sure that happens, that would be worth your $8. Still, for my money, I’d argue the back is the best. For generations, the Cyclone was the fastest roller coaster known to man. And it seems to me the back seat rides even faster. The reputation of the Cyclone may be diminished by younger, faster, steelier coasters. But it’s here, in New York. There are better stadiums than Madison Square Garden, better buildings than the Empire State Building and better rappers than Jay-Z. But everything in New York is bigger and blustier. And everything that happens here is way more important than everything that happens that doesn’t happen here. Whatareyougonnado? Coney Island perfected the chili dog, the roller coaster and the shooting of freaks. Only ⅔ of that remains for you to enjoy today. Climb aboard the back seat and enjoy the ride. Maybe the coaster before the chili dog and not the other way around. Or you may need another chili dog.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

When this little fella says, “Let’s roll,” he REALLY MEANS IT! I mean, except for the part where he’s a tortoise, so he can’t really say anything. Man it is hot out today.

“One might ask the question what was the cast of Entourage doing at a Rapist Hotel Pool Party in the first place but the answer to that question is ‘they are the cast of Entourage.’”

by Myles Tanzer

New Yorkers with self-respect try to avoid the Murray Hill scene at all costs. It’s been universally branded as a Manhattan’s frattiest neighborhood, a place where the newly graduated roam free in backwards hats and do keg stands and attempt to avoid being Iced. But is this really the case? Are the residents up on Murray Hill really the frattiest of the fratty, or is it all just an exaggeration borne out of the casual disdain with which more established citizens view the kids today?

The New York Observer, in a 2005 survey called “Welcome to Murray Hell!,” offered a glimpse into a strange land where collegiate attitude was all around and frat fashion the style. The paper noted that:

“…the guys have their own carefully coordinated uniform: a simple business suit and chunky silver watch by day, and a classic college-T-shirt-and-khaki-shorts getup by night (though it’s worth noting that some of them have taken to wearing seersucker shorts more recently). Many of them wear baseball caps, others go for the cropped-locks-and-hair-gel look, which they accessorize with smug smiles and the occasional hand-me-down BMW.”

The Observer checked back again in 2008, and the Times took a tour early this year. There’s even a popular viral song about the ‘hood on YouTube.

But is it the frattiest neighborhood in town? We asked Curbed founder Lockhart Steele if he could think of any another area that was similar. “It’s with great remorse that I tell you that no neighborhood in New York City compares to Murray Hill. Some will say Yorkville can be considered Upper Murray Hill, but those sort of folks have spent too much time in Yorkville and not enough in Murray Hill to think that,” he said.

We staked out a Pinkberry in Murray Hill this week and found that in one hour, 20 people entered the store with college t-shirts (we counted fraternity, sorority, and university apparel as college-tees). Compare that to the East Village Pinkberry, where we only saw 9 college tees (3 of which were NYU).

For further research, we did what every local frat boy in trouble is scared to do — call up the nationals for help. Matt Glick, a New York based leadership consultant for Alpha Epsilon Pi said of his members, “Most often they end up in Murray Hill or places like Stuy Town.”

So even the frats themselves identify with Murray Hill. But Scott Sitman, a 23 year old City transplant who decided to set up shop in the East Village, sees things differently. He told us, “I went to a big university in the midwest that has large a large east coast population (i.e. Jews), so naturally I know a lot of people in Murray Hill. I think a main reason young people live there is because the quality of life is relatively high, for a price kids just out of college can pay. Plenty of people I know live in dope apartments on like the 30th floor of a brand new building. Many buildings have doormen and it’s a pretty safe neighborhood, so I feel like it’s an easier transition to city life, compared to, say a dank and grimey 5th floor walk-up on Avenue C. And I guess that’s fair enough.”

He doesn’t think that “fratty” is a fair description of Murray Hill, but he does make sure to note the fact that “college kids flock there after they graduate, many of whom are used to broing out 3 nights a week and watching a shit ton of sports…. But to each his own.”

Murray Hill’s main drag is the crowded strip of bars down Third Avenue populated by a striped, buttoned-down black out drunk crowd. There’s even Exchange Bar and Grill, where patrons buy their drinks from a “drink stock market.” It’s pretty much designed to attract that young hotshot summer associate crowd looking to impress their with their newly learned Goldman Sachs skills.

The Joshua Tree, the most widely known bro-bar in Murray Hill, says that each week it runs through about “80 cases of bottled beer [24 bottles each] and 20 kegs.” That’s over 2,000 orders of beer per week. No other bar that we reached out to would tell us how much beer they actually sold. Most of them declined to reveal their numbers out of fear that they would be giving away the profits for a private business. So it says something that The Joshua Tree has enough bravado that they would be willing to tell us about their serious coin and beer drinking capabilities — it’s a total frat move.

“Friday’s action was the third light bulb-related vote in the House this month.”

by Abe Sauer

Wisconsin. You’ve heard of it. Maybe it was a fat joke. More likely it was a cheese joke. A drunk joke? Even more likely it was about drunk fat people eating cheese. Yes, Wisconsin Dells. You’ve certainly flown over it.

Laugh all you want, Wisconsinites are now a leading force in right wing politics and, maybe more so than any other state’s residents, are responsible for our messed-up national state of affairs. Here are nine Cheeseheads who are working hard at this very moment to mess up your life.

Sen. Ron Johnson, Oshkosh, WI
A self-made Objectivist who is neither self-made nor very objective. Railing against government handouts and the bank bailout, Johnson was proven, before his election, to have taken money from both. During the campaign, he refused to debate, until at the end agreeing to an absolute minimum number. No matter, he defeated longtime Senator Russ Feingold, who, in another paradox, had far more in common with the state’s Tea Party values than Johnson. In Washington only six months, and largely powerless as a minority in the Senate, Johnson began boisterously grandstanding about the debt ceiling, threatening to obstruct attempts to lift it. Johnson represents the very worst of what the Tea Party has to offer America: millionaire businessmen who have nothing to lose as politicians because they genuinely don’t give a damn and will soon retire back to their suburban manses after mucking up the system and polarizing everyone as much as humanly possible.

Rep. Paul Ryan, Janesville, WI
The Congressional balance to Sen. Johnson, Ryan is a career politician who runs against being a career politician. After voting for every spending increase that ever came out of the George Bush administration, Ryan drew the blueprints for every other Bush lackey to reinvent him or herself as a common sense Midwestern Tea Partying aw-shucks fiscal hawk, which basically means he reinvented himself as Russ Feingold, with whom he shares a hometown. Ryan’s ever-present crap-eating golden-boy grin accompanies his every appearance as he defends his Randian budget plan that will never pass but in turn makes liberals so scared they’ll capitulate to the first “moderate” Republican cuts that come along. Respectable Republicans hate this smug scumbag too, but understand how powerful and necessary he’s become.

Scott Walker, Governor’s Mansion, Madison, WI
Creating the mold that other states can use to turn their social safety nets in Jell-O, Walker is the ultimate stooge. The son of a Baptist minister, Walker was the consummate Republican lifer until he jumped on the Tea Party fiscal conservative train in 2010, promising to cut spending at the state level even though he increased spending 35 percent during his time as Milwaukee County Executive. The result of his tenure? The Greater Milwaukee Committee recommend the state allow it to declare bankruptcy. Phooey! says Walker: a new breed of “forget my past” Republican who understands that if he does his job, he’ll be punished in the short term but eventually rewarded. He’s a new form of local G. Gordon Liddy state-level “plumber” for corporate money.

Eric O’Keefe, Spring Green, WI
O’Keefe headed the group Americans for Limited Terms, one of the first of a new breed of conservative groups that used “voter-education” campaigns to influence the anti-Clinton 1994 elections. (They helped create a 54-seat swing that favored Republicans in the House.) They also advocated for limit terms in more than 20 states. Since then, O’Keefe has slowly climbed to be a major player in the grass-roots screwing-things-up movement. Going all the way back to the early 1980s, when he was the National Director of the Libertarian Party, O’Keefe is connected to the steady flow of money from Howard Rich to the Koch brothers. O’Keefe is a small-government, pro-business board whore, his resume including, but not limited to, service at the Club for Growth, Americans for Limited Terms, Americans for Limited Government, Citizens in Charge, the Legislation Education Action Drive, the Institute for Humane Studies and the Center for Competitive Politics. Most recently, O’Keefe has helped launch the Healthcare Compact Alliance, which attempts an end-run around “Obamacare” using state sovereignty arguments. He was most recently at the Americans for Prosperity-sponsored RightOnline in Minneapolis where he co-chaired an anti-Obamacare panel with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

Currently CEO of the Tea Party-championing Sam Adams Alliance, O’Keefe helped create the now-independent Tea Party-candidate training organization American Majority. In his own bio on his personal website (which has been taken down in the last three months), O’Keefe took credit for being an architect of everything about the Tea Party that has screwed both the American political process and the Republican Party: “In 2008, Eric, working to advance limitations on the size and power of government, began advocating that Americans should adopt approaches to achieving accountability and limits on government by being involved in the primary process.”

Wherever this master of the dark arts of CIA-like information espionage can be found, so can the latest underground strategies of America’s corporate political maneuvering. Not that you will have an easy time finding O’Keefe, in part, because of….

Leslie Graves, Madison/Spring Green, WI
Graves is the executive editor of Ballotpedia and the president of the Madison-based Lucy Burns Institute, that sponsors Ballotpedia, Judgepedia and WikiFOIA. All three of these are Wikipedia-like databases of political information. For example, Ballotpedia aims to create a “thriving citizenship through the free and open sharing of information.” Do a web search on a political issue of some kind and there’s a good chance you’ll find a legitimate-ish, Wikipedia-looking answer from one of these sites. How honest is Graves? In 2010 she described the Tea Party movement as “mostly non-partisan.” At the time, Graves had taken a special interest in Tea Party candidates because, after the election, those 2010 candidates would be presented the opportunity to have “a heavy impact” on the once-a-decade redistricting process. (Originally an anti-abortion activist, Graves’ dealings have gone way beyond editing websites, such as her involvement in the petition collecting mill Renewal Voter Outreach.)

Ballotpedia and Judgepedia were originally created by O’Keefe’s Sam Adams Alliance. Coincidentally, O’Keefe has a Ballotpedia page; coincidentally, it’s less than comprehensive. And that lack of information is bizarre considering executive editor Graves has better access to the source material than anyone as she is O’Keefe’s wife. (Even though you’ll find almost no record of them together, on her Facebook page Graves “Likes” all of her hubby’s little projects like Healthcare Compact and Sam Adams Alliance. How adorable. )

Marcus Bachmann, Buffalo County, Wis
A dairy farmer and one time enrollee of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, it has long been rumored that Marcus directs his wife’s political career more than anyone knows. Not that she wouldn’t be okay with this. As Rep. Bachmann said in 2006, “The Lord says, ‘Be submissive, wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.’” Bachmann calls Marcus her closest adviser and one of Bachmann’s 435 former chiefs of staff called him “the only person she talks to as an insider.” Michele Bachmann doing something that drives you nuts? There’s a good chance she ran it by Wisconsin farmboy Marcus first.

Arthur Thompson, the John Birch Society, Grand Chute, WI
The lives of Madison Avenue ad execs aren’t the only thing from the early 1960s that are seeing a comeback. With the Tea Party movement, the John Birch Society has gone from historical footnote to major player. Your daddy’s rich, well-armed anti-civil rights organization, the John Birch Society was founded in 1958. Named after an intelligence specialist with the US Army who was killed by Chinese Communists in 1945, became the brain trust for anti-Communist “research” and paranoia about the New World Order — or what CEO Arthur Thompson calls “a Satanic conspiracy.” Ever notice how the Tea Party bangs the founding fathers Constitution drum incessantly? Well, John Birch’s mission is “Less Government, More Responsibility, and — With God’s Help — a Better World.” Sound familiar? The society’s membership doubled in the last couple years and recently, a society spokesman admits, it is training the Tea Party. In 2010, John Birch was a sponsor of the influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), publicly cementing its return to influence.

A founding member of John Birch? Fred Koch, the father of everyone’s favorite brothers, for whom the term “meddling” was invented.

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus
Reinhold Reince Priebus, a constituent of Ryan’s, was rewarded with the top GOP job after engineering the compete Republican takeover of his state, including the preposterous upset of Russ Feingold by dimwitted plastic maker Ron Johnson. Preibus is a new breed of Reagan-adoring Republican leader who was still picking his nose in 7th grade civics class when Ronald Reagan was actually president. With his youthful political smelting done during the divisive Clinton era, Priebus sees politics as a zero-sum game where anything goes as long as it results in a win. In 2004, Priebus ran and lost against incumbent state Senator Robert Wirch (D-22). Seven years later, the GOP-controlled legislature Priebus helped create hired Priebus’ law firm to redistrict Wirch out of his own seat.

State Senator Ima McRecalled
Not technically a person, but a tactic. After Iowa showed us the way, Wisconsin set records by recalling nine of its 33 state senators and in the process mainstreamed the political tactic of the permanent election cycle. It’s already spread to Michigan, where recalls are moving against both Democrats and Republicans. The next dominoes to fall? Arizona and South Carolina. And no office is too petty. That’s right: it’s a recall election for a parks district board.

So, rest of America, I speak for Wisconsin when I say: You’re welcome.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com. He is on Twitter.