I was jogging by the East River this morning, listening to David Comes to Life, the new album by the Toronto rock band called Fucked Up, marveling at how awesome it is, how the drumming is like a stampede of wild horses, and how well the band’s guitarists (there are three of them, like Molly Hatchet) hone and manipulate these giant waves of feedback and distortion, thinking that the sound reminds me more of Husker Du than anything I’ve heard since Husker Du, and that, if these guys had come out when I was in college, I would have probably wanted to tattoo some sort of sworn allegiance to them on my chest, when I noticed that the fuzz-tone wail was getting louder and louder in my headphones. Strangely louder. And then I realized that the loudness was actually coming from outside my headphones, and turned to see that a pontoon plane was landing on the river nearby. That’s always cool to see, an airplane landing on water, the splash and the glide and the waves that it makes. And it seemed to fit the music so well, the power of it, and since the plane was coming from the north, I thought, huh, wouldn’t that be cool if it was coming from Canada, maybe carrying Fucked Up down to the city to play a show. And that thought, and the image of the plane landing on the water from Canada, made me remember one of the less-great albums ever made by the greatest Canadian feedback-and-distortion rocker of them all. And that even though it was one of his less-great albums, there were still some songs on it that I liked.

Canada is totally ruling in music these days, huh? What with Arcade Fire winning the Grammys and Justin Bieber getting to make IMAX movies about his life and also record songs with gangsta rappers, and Drake being so popular for reasons that I can sort of understand (he’s certainly talented, Drake) but strongly disagree with. Why does everybody want to listen to someone whine about how hard it is to be rich and famous and drunk and high and having sex all the time through an autotune program and over music that sounds so much like Phil Collins in 1986?

Anyway, I kept on jogging, because I’m trying to get into better shape so as not to die as soon as sometimes it feels like I’m going to, and lord knows I can’t seem to stop eating too much, because of all the delicious restaurants in New York City, so I’m left with exercise in extreme heat to burn off the many calories I consume. And I kept on enjoying the Fucked Up record. It is really terrific! I like their last album a lot, The Chemistry of Common Life, which came out two years ago. I love it, in fact. But while I just got the new one two days ago, I think I might end up liking it even more. The songs are maybe more melodic? The vocals, sung by the very large and often shirtless singer with the incredible punk-rock name of “Pink Eye,” seem to be more like singing and less like shouting than they have in the past? (Or maybe I’m just bringing some pre-concieved idea of what this band’s “artistic growth” would be like to my initial listens? I’m not sure.) And there seems to be more of presence for the secondary singing of the sweet-voiced lady bass player. Which, I like that. As I get older, I notice myself liking more sweetness counterpoint with my heavy feedback-distortion-caterwaul rock music. This is not so surprising to me.

The album is a concept album, apparently. A rock opera, actually, about which I haven’t yet gleaned much from the lyrics. But Pitchfork’s Larry Fitzmaurice explained some in his review earlier this week:

“The story of David Comes to Life is fairly complicated and, at points, heavily meta. It concerns a factory worker named David Eliade who falls in love with a woman named Veronica Boisson. They conspire to build a bomb together and death, destruction, and redemption follow…”

And I jogged, thinking about how much I was liking this album, and because I’d gotten to see the cool airplane landing on the water, and thought about the possibility that it was bringing this great band to New York City, just as I was here listening to them, and because I’m as self-obessed as the next guy who thinks he’s the center of the entire universe, it occurred to me that the title of album might carry some more significance for me. My name is David! And I am jogging here in the hopes of getting healthier. Could this album be the thing through which I myself come to life this summer? I was ready. It was all making a cosmic sort of sense. I picked up my pace, and breathed deep into my lungs.

But then, soon after that, I had to stop jogging and walk the last five or six blocks back to apartment. Slowly. But the album still sounded pretty awesome.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

What to Do With Dead Birds?

Plate 36 Birds’ Heads Ladakh, India

Sew a falcon’s head to a coin.
Use twine, thread it through his nostril,
and use the coin shaped like a washer — or use a washer.

Let there be feathers but no eyes,
and sever the head from the body.
You only need to keep
the very head, no neck, no wings.

If you tether it with twine
it’s easier to hold and hang, more talismanic.

What are they for?
 — the duck and flycatchers, beaks larger than their brains,
the hooked pincer of the falcon?

You never know.

Even if you think you know,
chances are you don’t: these sockets,
these tattered leather edges
and soft caps — atonement never ends
in answering what you’ve done.

Plate 79 Crocodile Valley of the Kings, Egypt

Dear Keats, why Italy?
You’d have loved this crocodile,
smiling with his eyes closed, one plunge
from the meaty neck of a gazelle.
O happy crocodile, O John,
he looked like this for centuries
before you lived and died, blissed out,
savoring his knowledge
before savoring his meat.
He looked like this when Linda took
the photograph, in 1989.
And now, too: in Egypt, in how many photographs
(of hers, of others’) reprinted in how many books,
and here, this poem, the scent of dinner
in his nostrils as he smiles,
a happy happy happy happy croc,
a wakeful, sturdy unwarnable gazelle,
who doesn’t know,
perpetually, his doom, though he’s smiling too:
a gloater? Stone gazelle.

Sally Ball is the author of Annus Mirabilis (Barrow Street, 2005). She’s associate director of Four Way Books and an assistant professor at Arizona State University. She has new work up on Narrative.com and received a fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for 2011.

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

by Nate Hopper

Yesterday the FCC issued a report saying that, despite that Internet thing with all those “websites,” there’s less news being created at the local level. But you already knew that, right? (The report was also supposed to give recommendations for righting the trend, but it didn’t really.)

So just how bad is it? Let’s take a look at some of the numbers contained in that 470-plus-page — 1.8 inches-thick — study on shrinkage.

“It has been tempting to think that Americans are paying less for content.”
But in 2003, people spent on average $740 a year to consume media and information — on cable and Internet service bills, for print, and on their mobile packages. In 2008, that went up to $882. Most of the increase comes from paying more for TV and radio — about $130 more, on average — as well as some from rising spending on cell phones. So it’s the mobile service providers, cable companies and Internet-providing cable companies who are getting the largest portion of the money for content.

Newspaper advertising revenue in 2005: $48,435 million.
In 2010? $25,838 million.

The good news: Between 2005 and 2009, newspapers’ online traffic went from 1.6 billion page views a month to 3 billion.
Yes, people are going online more to access their news instead of whatever those flimsy, flappy things were. And what does this mean? Ads! Newspapers made $716 million more from online ads over those four years; local TV stations’ online ad revenue went up between 2008 and 2009 too, even though most ads now appear in search engine results.

The bad: But ad rates for primetime broadcast news and larger market newspapers pay about seven times as much as an online ad.
What does this mean? $716 million don’t make up for the $22.5 billion print ad revenue drop. Which means, budget cuts.

13,400 newspaper newsroom jobs were lost in the past four years.
And over 60 percent of local TV newsroom staffs were fired.

And half of some of the “hottest start-ups” make less than $50K in annual revenue.
They aren’t making bubkis. The report points out that ad rates for primetime broadcast news and larger market newspapers pay about seven times as much as an online ad. For bloggers with 100,000 pageviews on their sites, seven times less money for an ad is the difference between a hobby and a job. (But that’s not what Patch.com is complaining about.)

“The bundle is broken.”
The thing about the Internet is that instead of buying the entire paper for that one story about your friend’s kid doing something almost interesting and therefore effectively paying the newspaper for the services of that reporter as well as for all the other reporters writing about important topics, you can now go online and get that single story and not really pay anyone.

An Ohio hospital paid local stations $100,000+ to air stories that benefited them.
For a small number of TV stations, the lack of money has meant that they’ve actually let advertisers dictate content. In addition to that Ohio TV station, the report documents a Wisconsin TV station that allowed a local hospital to pick two health stories a week in return for their advertising and a Florida morning show that solicited $2,500 from guests. Yes, this is only a few stations, but as the director of the Pew Project on Excellence in Journalism Tom Rosenstiel said, “The evidence we’ve seen suggests that this is much more widespread than a few years ago.” Burn.

21% of commercial TV stations don’t even air a minute a day of local news.
Almost 12 percent aired more than nothing but less than half an hour. And it gets worse the smaller the market. Half of the nation’s TV stations don’t have a local newsroom.

But about three out of four people say they get their news from local news broadcasts.
Really, you three out of four people? Despite a third of their stories being about a scary crime?

“The fastest-growing means for accessing news and information is the mobile device.”
Almost half of the population uses a mobile handheld device (a cell phone, tablet, or e-reader) to get local news on the Internet. But although advertisers have spent much more, rates remain low and most news apps remain free or cheap.

In Baltimore, almost two of every three stories were initiated by the government — not reporters.
A Pew Research study found that because of the fast pace and over-worked reporters, some press releases from the Ministry of Truth (I kid!) were published untouched, without an acknowledgement to readers (I don’t kid).

0.
That’s the total number of ABC and FOX news bureaus in Africa in 2009. NBC had 1 (Cairo). Of course, you can watch Al Jazeera online, and some American news sources like NPR, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have upped their international coverage. But still. The total number of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and MSNBC bureaus in Latin America not counting Havana? Five (one for ABC in Mexico City and then four more for CNN); FOX: 0.

People spend almost 11.8 hours a day consuming media.
That’s up from the past. But people seem to increasingly prefer spending their time listening to Lady Gaga, shooting zombies in Black Ops, enjoying videos of women in bikinis sitting on balloons, or watching The Wire for those 11.8 hours instead of the news.

A 2009 study found that 17% of people surveyed hadn’t consumed any news the day before.
Which is a little higher than 14% in 1998. And of people between the ages of 18 to 24, one in three hadn’t consumed any news.

Nate Hopper is a summer Awl reporter.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States: “The man knows how to shake a hand! He gave great eye contact, with an enviable grip. Firm around the edges and soft in the middle, if that’s even possible. And he doesn’t appear to ‘shake’ your hand, but it does move, in a soft sway. Then it’s over.”

This is the song that just got 21-year-old Oakland rapper Kreayshawn a million-dollar deal with Sony Records? (ALLEGEDLY. I mean, the deal is real; the million dollars is maybe a rumor.) Do you like it? I really do. It reminds me of Too $hort and Gucci Mane. Is that last part just because of its title? (No, I think it’s also the wobbly weirdness.)

Is this Germany’s prettiest cow? Sure, why the hell not.

by Mike Barthel

Wienerville, USA
Categories: Fast Food, Hot Dogs

My fellow Yelpians, do not be fooled by the exterior trappings of this eatery. Yes, the vividly saturated jonquil marquee and the weathered red-brick façade are a beacon to lusty travelers, promising the sensual delights of a meat well-cured. But this covenant is dishonored by the feminine banalities littering the menu. Consider their description of the Southwestern Dog: “Howdy, partner! This all-beef dog is smothered in red-bean chili, melted provolone, jalapenos and white onion. Yee-haw!” How like a woman to keep one’s view so resolutely in the kitchen! How like a woman to express nature’s redness of tooth and claw with the limp descriptor “all-beef”! How like a woman to reduce the ravages of colonialism to a “Howdy” and a “Yee-haw!” Wienerville? I think not.

Central District Fitness
Category: Gyms

I am afraid I must report to the Yelp community that I have been forced to cancel my membership to this once-honorable establishment. Where there were rows of bare metal hulking and gleaming under caged bulbs, there are now the sentimentally curved atrocities of the elliptical machine and the treadmill; where there was the simple soundtrack of men’s guttural exertions, there is now some frightful teenage bish-bash. And, quite frankly, there is an unpleasant odor now to the place that sticks to one’s clothes long after one’s visit. All these hamster toys and work simulations serve to do is provide a woman the illusion of mastery — whether over her affairs, her home or her own body. I refuse to pay $59 a month to subsidize lies.

Barnes and Noble Union Square
Category: Bookstores

I made my way here one afternoon to look at my own books, and to eat a triple chocolate Cheesecake Factory® cheesecake slice from the coffee counter, but I found myself quite unable to make my way through the aisles here due to the presence of some woman book-maker named, I believe, Toni Morrison? (That is what my assistant, a lovely woman who makes an excellent pot of tea and cannot write her way out of a paper bag, tells me.) There were throngs of admirers, mostly women of low taste of course, and they made it entirely impossible for me to move freely. Well! I made my way roughly through the crowd to the reading area and I cried out, “My dear, how dare you get up on that podium when a writer of such greater capabilities wanders the floor, unacknowledged?” I may not have put it quite that grandly, but that was the gist of it, at least. I do not know how exactly they managed to remove me bodily from the store what with the supernatural power I am able to pull from the presence of my magnificent books, but next thing I knew I was out on the sidewalk. I will certainly not be returning to a bookstore with such a low regard for high art.

Mindy K. Singh, MD
Category: Proctologists

I would prefer not to discuss the details, but suffice to say that this country’s supposedly top-notch medical schools have been making some very, very questionable decisions in recent years as regards the gender ratio of their student bodies and the areas in which they encourage specialization. What has become of the noble arts of nursing and midwifery? Whence the doulas of tomorrow?

Frank’s Transmission Repair
Category: Auto Repair

I must confess to a certain bafflement as regards the other reviews on this page, which seem quite negative. I failed to encounter the hostile service others faced. Instead, I found the all-male staff here uniformly professional and efficient. Frank’s features no cowardly kowtows to women’s fear of the mechanical and physical, no frilly curtains on the cashier window to placate the new mother coming in to have the air filter changed on the Prius she’s wasted her husband’s salary on as a pathetic shield against her own inexorable mortality, no “relatable” women taking your information to soothe the shattered nerves of the ancient biddy there to have a noise investigated on the BMW thrice as beautiful as her ruined face. There are just men, puissant in their skills, matching outfits damp with their sweat and the industrial effluvium of their trade, doing what they do best. Perhaps $300 is a bit more than is customary for an oil change, but after all, it is impossible to pay too much to be in the presence of true greatness.

Penthouse Executive Club
Categories: Steakhouses, Adult Entertainment

Could’ve used more boobs.

Mike Barthel has a Tumblr.

Here’s a nice, in-depth review of Javier Cercas’ The Anatomy of a Moment, a book about which we apparently cannot shut up.

by John Ore

20. “The Promise,” Napoleon Dynamite

19. “Wake Up,” The Matrix

18. “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life,” Life of Brian

17. “What A Feeling,” Flashdance

16. “Queen Bitch,” The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

15. “If You Were Here,” Sixteen Candles

14. “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes,” Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

13. “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” Some Kind Of Wonderful

12. “Where Is My Mind,” Fight Club

11. “Mickey Mouse Club Theme Song,” Full Metal Jacket

10. “Dead Flowers,” The Big Lebowski

9. “Ooh La La,” Rushmore

8. “Jai Ho,” Slumdog Millionaire

7. “God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters,” Heat

6. “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever),” High Fidelity

5. “Born Slippy,” Trainspotting

4. “Adagio For Strings,” Platoon

3. “You’re So Cool,” True Romance

2. “Don’t You Forget About Me,” The Breakfast Club

1. “Just Like Honey,” Lost In Translation

John Ore hopes his movie will close with “Yakety Sax.”

To Britain: “A city council has been forced to admit it has no plans to deal with a zombie invasion. A ‘concerned citizen’ used freedom of information laws to reveal what plans Leicester City Council had to deal with a Dawn of the Dead-style attack. Amused by the request, the council had to admit no such plans existed.”