Can your cell phone give you an allergic rash on the face? Yes it can, says Science! It can also give you brain cancer, but Science wants to wait 20 years to see the great die-off before it fully settles that one.

by John Ore

To me, Thanksgiving is as red-blooded an American holiday as there is. Food, football, uncomfortable family moments, and (most American of all) overindulgence. Thanksgivings of my youth added flavors of the American immigrant, inverting the classic Pilgrim-noble savage model.

Sure, we had all of the traditional dishes, lovingly prepared and fussed over. Especially Wild Turkey! But I’m first (and a half!) generation American, so ethnic food has always been a part of family celebrations for as long as I can remember. You already know about the Puerto Rican side of me. Here’s how the Latvian side of my family also holds a central place in any holiday.

When I was young, I actually thought it was weird that I had grandparents with odd names and accents presiding over holidays like Thanksgiving. There were times when I thought that it was unfair that I didn’t have a “Grandma Shirley” or “Grandpa Ben,” settling instead for a mixed heritage that was impossible to explain to other 80-year-olds. But with the benefit of hindsight and (alleged!) maturity, I can see how damned lucky I was to grow up with all of those wonderful foreign sounds and smells in the kitchen each Fall.

For as long as I can remember, the sight of wax paper-wrapped goodies toted in bundles by my grandmother Mirdza signified one thing: the annual treat of Latvian piragi. Light, buttery dough in the shape of a crescent moon encasing bacon and onion, the rarity of their appearance — along with being guarded rabidly by my grandmother, uncle and father — imbued these savory pastries with a mythical and ceremonial aura that made the anticipation of eating them unbearable for a child. Their aroma alone dwarfed the now-pedestrian turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, and sweet potatoes: familiar as a presence yet foreign as a flavor.

So, for me, piragi are the perfect holiday food: reserved for special occasions, sort of a pain in the ass to make, jealously hoarded and lustily consumed with a speed that immediately made you question why Grandma hadn’t made 4 dozen more.

I’ve had the privilege of eating my Latvian grandmother’s piragi as a kid, but I’ve also had piragi in their native habitat as an adult: in Riga’s vast Centrāltirgus and a random bakery in Ventspils. A bag of 20 piragi got my wife and I through the harrowing drive to Cape Kolka. This recipe is legit and authentic, even though it borrows heavily from my wife’s Lithuanian grandmother’s recipe for “bacon buns.” Since Latvia and Lithuania share a ton of cultural, linguistic, and culinary traditions, it’s perfect for starting my own Baltic family holiday tradition.

Latvian Piragi

Dough
1 cup milk
2 packages active dry yeast
2 tbs sugar
1 tsp salt
3 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup + 2 tbs unsalted butter
1 egg yolk + 1 tbs milk or cream

I’ve sucked at making dough, but my wife excels at it. So I stick to the fillings.

In a small saucepan, heat milk until lukewarm (about 100 degrees). In a small bowl, combine the yeast, sugar and salt. Stir in 1/2 cup of milk until dissolved. Place the mixture in a warm, draft-free place for 5 to 8 minutes or until the mixture begins to bubble or almost doubles in volume.

Place the flour into a large mixing bowl and make a deep well in the center. Drop in the yeast mixture, egg yolks, remaining milk and 1/2 cup of butter. Using a large wooden spoon, slowly stir the flour into the wet ingredients. Beat vigorously until a firm dough is formed.

Cover the bowl loosely with a towel and place in a warm, draft-free place for 45 minutes or until the dough has doubled in bulk. Punch dough down, turn over, cover and let rise again until doubled (another 45 minutes).

In the meantime, prepare the filling.

1 lb sliced bacon
1 cup finely chopped onions
1 lb fully cooked ham steak, diced in 1/4-inch cubes (2 cups)
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp black pepper, or to taste
vegetarian filling options
rich cheese, like gruyere
mushrooms and onions

In a large skillet, saute the bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon to a paper towel and crumble. Stir the onions into the bacon drippings and cook until translucent and golden, then add the ham, stirring until it’s combined with the onion. Stir in the caraway, pepper and bacon, and remove from heat.

Remove the filling with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Reserve the drippings for something fun! I’ve also made vegetarian versions by cutting gruyere into small 1/4” cubes and combining, unmelted, with onions and mushrooms sauteed in butter or olive oil.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease 2 large cookie sheets.

Cut the dough in half and on a lightly floured surface, roll out each half into a large circle. Using a 3” round cutter, cut rounds from each circle of dough. Place about 1 tsp of the bacon mixture into the center of each round and fold the edges over. Crimp the seam with the tines of a fork for flair! Or set them seam-side down on the cookie sheets, forming crescent or half moon shaped rolls. Place them in a warm, draft-free place for 15 to 20 minutes until each crescent rises further, doubling in size.

Bake for 10 minutes, then brush each of the piragi with the egg yolk/cream mixture. Bake another 10 minutes until golden. Makes about 2 dozen.

Piragi serve as an ideal appetizer, snack, or replacement for the boring dinner roll. They may not be a meal in themselves — though Lord knows I’ve tried! — but it’s pretty easy to go through 10 of them while the Detroit Lions line up a field goal.

When reheating these — assuming you make enough to save or freeze, which you should! — do NOT throw them in the microwave. It’s sacrilege to treat piragi in this manner, and results in rubbery dough and dried-out fillings. Place them on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for a few minutes, or on the “medium” toast setting in the toaster oven.

Now go to Eagle Provisions and stock up on Aldaris beer to accompany these Baltic beauties. Then tell Grandma Shirley and Grandpa Ben you’re too stuffed to try their ambrosia salad.

John Ore is also fond of vāvere.

Have you been outdoors this afternoon? You should go! It’s pretty nice out there, and tomorrow, while still warm, promises to be less sunny. Wednesday’s weather will be gropey. Thursday will be filled with regret and recrimination no matter where you are, so you should definitely enjoy this bit of brightness while you still can. Go, we’ll wait!

“When Ice Cube says ‘your plan against the ghetto backfired,’ and it gets turned into ‘you’re playing against the ghetto black fly,’ more has happened than just a simple error in transcription; you’ve made an important song perplexing and impenetrable — while staking a claim, backed by institutional power and market presence, that your version is canonical.”
 — The struggle with Yale University Press’ Anthology of Rap goes on!

NPR is afraid to make its people’s email addresses accessible to the public. So, here you go! It’s almost always in the form of first initial and last name — like FLast@npr.org. — at NPR dot org. Easy!

There are many reasons it’s worth your time and energy and money to read James Wood’s piece in the new New Yorker about drumming and Keith Moon. Here are a few choice bits:

“How a drummer hits the snare, and how it sounds, can determine a band’s entire dynamic. Groups like Supertramp and the Eagles seem soft, in large part, because the snare is so drippy and mildly used (and not just because elves are apparently squeezing the singers’ testicles.)”

(Wood should totally be writing for Summer of Megadeth.)

“On both [“Won’t Get Fooled Again”] and “Behind Blue Eyes,” you can hear him do something that was instinctive, probably, but which is hardly ever done in normal rock drumming: breaking for a fill, Moon fails to stop at the obvious end of the musical phrase and continues with his rolling break, over the line and into the start of the next phrase. In poetry, this failure to stop at the end of the line, this challenge to metrical closure, this desire to get more in, is called enjambment. Moon is the drummer of enjambment.”

See the above video for evidence of that. And watch til the end, when Keith gets on the microphone and talks to and insults the crowd (in… where? Houston? Somewhere else?) to see evidence of this:

“It is hard not to think of Keith Moon’s life as a perpetual ‘happening’; a gaudy, precarious, self-destructing art installation, whose gallery placard reads ‘The Rock and Roll Life, Late 20th Century.’”

But I can’t believe Wood does not include Tommy — along with Live at Leeds, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia — on his list of Who albums he considers “great.” (And I was also surprised and sad that he didn’t mention Full Moon, the biography written by Keith’s friend and drum tech Dougal Butler. It’s very entertaining, and quite moving, if I remember it right. But I haven’t read it since I was thirteen.)

by Dan Kois and Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Natasha Vargas-Cooper: We need to talk about Harry Potter.

Dan Kois: EXPECTO CHATONUM!

Natasha: Clearly, we as Americans agree that HP7 is a FINE FILM. But as wizard nerds, like as a lady who, um, would really like to have been cast as Tonks, I have to say I was a little bummed out.

Dan: Pull out your shimmering strands of memory, drop them into your Pensieve, and explain to me why.

Natasha: Firstly, THE DARK LORD DOES NOT SIT AT A CONFERENCE TABLE!

Dan: Right, so this scene in the book is nothing but the purest malarkey.

Natasha: This is a BIG problem not just with the movie but with JK’s last book. Voldies was like NOT THAT MENACING. THE DARK LORD GOT SHAFTED! Where is the danger?! Where is the spOooOoOky?

Dan: “’Yaxley, Snape,’ said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. ‘You are very nearly late.’ The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette.”

Natasha: That means the dark lord showed up for the death eater meeting. He had to like, pull out a chair. Shouldn’t he have been FLOATING!? Or like?! Sitting on a throne of muggle skulls!

Dan: So I have to say that I give props to the movie for streamlining it, and making the death of Charity Burbage (a professor of whom we’ve previously heard almost nothing) legitimately moving, and then getting the hell out.

Natasha: Yes, agreed. I will say that so far MOVIE > BOOK. Did not approve of the book. I think the movie made the deathly hallows WAAAY more relevant than the book. Needed more Nagini 🙁

Dan: Maybe it’s because of the book’s various weaknesses, or maybe it’s just that the moviemakers are finally like getting it, but this was the first movie in which I thought that the film’s flights of fancy actually improved the story. Like for example: Seeing Hermione bewitch her parents to forget her, something we are stupidly only told about in the book.

Natasha: YES! And that was movinggggg.

Dan: And: Hedwig dying a hero, instead of just getting shot in her cage.

Natasha: BUT, DAN KOIS ….

Dan: And! Everyone going straight to the burrow after the Seven Harrys misadventure, instead of going to Ted Tonks’ house for no reason.

Natasha: BUT ALL OF THAT WAS IN VAIN because the filmmakers glossed over the most movie-friendly dramatic conflicts of the book and of the series: THE MINISTRY!

Natasha: While I enjoyed the site gag featuring Finch from “The Office,” Yates was far too whimsical about the whole fascist/torture squad system of the Ministry. The true horror of the Dark Lord is that faceless bureaucrats will carry out his orders! It’s an important lesson to convey to youngs and olds alike! I was sad they played that so slap-stick-ey.

Dan: Come on, Natasha. Can we just not let the children of America get ten years older and watch Brazil to see this exact point made 1,000 times better than J.K. Rowling ever could? I’d rather that the DEATHLY HALLOWS movie concentrate on what ONLY the DEATHLY HALLOWS movie can accomplish, which is giving me as much Ron-Hermione-Harry time as possible. And on that front, DEATHLY HALLOWS delivers!

Natasha: No, Dan! Either the movie is a metaphor for the Chilean dictator Pinochet’s coup in 1973 or it’s a second rate Twilight. PICK A SIDE! Though you do have a point, the Ron/Hermoine/Harry drama was good.

Dan: YES.

Natasha: Team Harry, obvs. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CONTREVERSIAL SONG CHOICE?!

Dan: I was really worried going into this movie, because the book draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags in all the scenes where they’re sitting in a tent with nothing to do except trade the Horcrux off daily.

Natasha: Yes, the 300 pages of cranky camping.

Dan: But luckily in this case the movie’s desperate condensation really paid off! I LOVED the dance! Because:

A) Great Nick Cave song

B) Remarkably well played by two actors who could easily have really screwed it up

C) Advanced the love triangle plot, which was horribly UNDERSERVED in the book.

Dan: Because for real even though I knew that Hermione was destined for Ron, I held my breath because it would not have been out of the question, in that moment, with hormones raging, for Hermione to have thrown Harry down on the floor of the tent and ravaged him.

Dan: And so that was the only point in the movie where I was like: holy shit, What will happen next?

Natasha: Let’s also take a moment to recognize Rupert Grint as most improved Potter cast member.

Dan: Yes, definitely! That creatine he’s been mainlining somehow improved his acting muscles too!

Natasha: Ron Weasley: Juice Head?

Dan: Well, in the magical world there are spells for it, like the one Hermione used to fix her buckteeth.

Dan: Just point your wand at your delts and go “ENGORGIO!”

Natasha: He also stopped doing ugly frown face in lieu of acting anxious.

Natasha: Let’s move on to a topic that is polarizing the wizarding community and movie fans alike: The House Elves.

Dan: YES.

Natasha: Kreacher and

y. THOUGHTS?

Dan: ISSUE ONE: KREACHER.

Natasha: *sits down at death eater table*

Dan: (Rowle is taking dictation.)

Natasha: “Will there be snaxx?” — Yaxley. ACCIO POWER POINT.

Dan: “Punch and pie!” — Cartman, who would obviously be a Death Eater.

Natasha: AH! these are all my slash dreams come true!

Natasha: Also, sidenote: Alan Rickman as bloated member of The Cure. Brave artistic choice.

Dan: Robert Smith is suing WB for inappropriate use of his image.

Natasha: Robert Smith is a mudblood (mud= diabetes).

Dan: In any event! Harry’s kind treatment of Kreacher — and Kreacher’s transformation from yapping horror to doting grandmother — is an important point, and a part of the book that weighs heavily on later events.

Natasha: YES.

Dan: And so losing it was a real shame, I thought. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE it really has a major effect on how we feel about Harry’s treatment of: ISSUE TWO: DOBBY.

Natasha: Oh man.

Dan: Fucking Dobby.

Natasha: Listen.

Dan: “Dobby is listening to Natasha! Dobby loves Natasha!”

Natasha: Some may regard Dobby as a latter day Jar-Jar but I LOVE ME SOME DOBBY. *WAVES S.P.E.W. CARD* So NATCH I was sobbing in the book and in the movie.

Dan: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Dobby. At least Movie Dobby, who is a fucking rubbery Toby Jones-voiced simpering piece of shit.

Dan: Book Dobby is BORDERLINE AWFUL, but has his moments, and his death is treated beautifully.

Natasha: You were unmoved by the death of the talking raisin?

Dan: Movie Dobby is AWFUL. That speech he gives Bella and Narcissa as they leave? FUCK THAT SHIT. That’s the storyteller’s worst impulses there. And watching Harry cradle that floppy piece of rubber and try to act sad was a real shit way to end Part 1.

Dan: Kids will be weeping, I know! They will be heartbroken! But the fact that we get like a five-minute death scene for Dobby and the movie skips right over Wormtail’s gruesome fate suggests that the fine folks at WB are no dummies about knowing which side their bread is buttered on.

Natasha: I DON’T DEFEND IT. Which brings us to the ultimate issue. I believe Azkaban is likely the strongest movie not just cause of the FABULOUS direction but because of the strength of the source material. HP7 was a mess. It should have been about horcruxes and hallows!

Dan: They know that kids care about the deaths that are uncomplicated and easy to mourn, and Rowling, to her credit, gave us both kinds. The movie, I fear, will skip over the really challenging ones. I am terrified of how they will handle the (SPOILER ALERT) End of Snape.

Natasha: Yates kind of screwed up on the Mad Eye Moody sitch.

Dan: Yes for real. Harry drinks his first firewhiskey! That’s a great scene!

Natasha: Yes! The other problem was they almost get eaten by NAGGIIINNNIII then they apparate into the woods and are like, “Crazy, huh? K, night.”

Dan: “Just another day at the office!” HEY WAIT. I HAVE AN IMPORTANT QUESTION.

Dan: There was only one thing in the movie that even after seeing it twice I DO NOT UNDERSTAND AT ALL.

Natasha: Why the actor playing Mundungus has not been featured more heavily?

Dan: No. Why does Bathilda Bagshot have a nursery with a big Muggle light fixture in it hidden behind a wall in her house?

Natasha: RIGHT?!

Dan: WTF was that? Is the Ye Old Potter House supposed to be next door to the Hoarder Bagshot?

Dan: We get a flashback from Voldy’s perspective of killing the parents.

Dan: But Harry’s nursery was destroyed, and anyways wouldn’t have a swinging light fixture with a light bulb in it. PLEASE EXPLAIN IN THE COMMENTS, AMERICA

Natasha: Here’s another nerd problem: Lucius, the HOOOTTEST member of the Hogwarts PTA, was actin’ a mess but no with explanation. I mean, I KNOW WHY because I write slash about him (come visit, lustyluscious.livejournal.com).

Dan: Yeah, I understand stress and concern causing you not to shave, but not if you are a FUCKING WIZARD.

Dan: See also: right here.

Dan: “Look, my wife and I have an arrangement. As long as she comes first, she doesn’t mind a little straying on the side. In fact, Severus and I had a long term arrangement. Narcissa is always, and forever, first. My dearest, the love of my life. She knows this. She also knows she lacks a cock, and occasionally I like to play with one that isn’t mine.” Sorry, what? I was otherwise occupied.

Natasha: *DYING*

*CAN’T TALK, HAVE BECOME INFERI*

Natasha: So where do you think there would have been a better place to end if not with the Death of Lou Dobz?

Dan: There was no better place to end. I mean, clearly at some point someone at WB called Steve Kloves on the phone and was like “Steve, you need to at least get them to the Lovegood house.” And Steve was like “Why?”

Dan: And the WB guy was like “BECAUSE WE CANNOT RELEASE A MOVIE CALLED HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 THAT NEVER EXPLAINS WHAT A DEATHLY FUCKING HALLOW IS.”

Dan: So knowing that, I guess Dobby’s death is as good as anything. Although if clifhanger was what they were going form they should’ve just locked them up in the basement of Malfoy Manor, had Bella Cruciatus Hermoine (instead of just carving something in her arm, WTF), and then cut to “SEE YOU IN JULY!”

Natasha: ONCE AGAIN, KOIS I am really miffed about this! This all comes back to my beef:

1. Voldy using Microsoft Outlook to plan meetings

2. The ministry being an goofy adventuRRRe

3. Luna’s dad who sells out Harry because they kidnapped his daughter

All of those things are scary! Why did they underplay? Why didn’t they make it dark like the scary wolf in The Neverending Story?

Dan: You are the only person in America complaining that this movie was not dark enough.

Natasha: Why was there no ass to ass scene set to the Kronos Quartet?

Dan: Right now parents who never read the Harry Potter books are like “I DIDN’T KNOW THERE WOULD BE TORTURE AND NAZI ICONOGRAPHY”

Natasha: Can Lars Von Trier direct the last one?

Dan: Snape’s Patronus is a talking fox who says “Chaos Reigns.”

Natasha: But without the danger and sense of evil, the movie/story/saga — well, someone needs to shake these kids up out of their sext parties!!!! I WANT NAZI WIZARDS!!!!

Dan: Sure, but luckily we have characters we love to carry us through. Rowling/Kloves/Yates/WB/everyone knows we need to have big fucking battles and whatnot to end this, that is what the kids require in their fantasy epics.

Dan: But at least we have this movie, which downplays a lot of that in favor of giving us some time with three characters we really like.

Natasha: DO THEY THOUGH? You have spawns of your loins.

Dan: Well, at least it is what The Market requires.

Dan: HERE IS THE POINT I WOULD LIKE TO FINISH WITH.

Natasha: Silence! I AM RUNNING THIS DEATH EATER MEETING. AND WE HAVE THE COFERENCE ROOM BOOKED TIL 7PM.

Dan: Point of odor, Lisa stinks!

Natasha: Ok, continue.

Dan: What is the Harry Potter movie series, in the end?

Natasha: A parable about Nazis. DUH, NEXT QUESTION.

Dan: IT IS A MACHINE THAT PRINTS HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR TIME WARNER COMMUNICATIONS.

Given that! I count my blessings that AGAINST ALL ODDS the movies have been inventive, thoughtful, well cast, beautiful to look at, and fairly faithful to the books. And — MOST IMPORTANTLY — that they have gotten better each time! What kind of universe do we live in? Since when does Hollywood take a beloved series about which nerds feel strongly and NOT FUCK IT UP?

Natasha: IS THIS HOW JJRR ABRAMS TOLKIEN FANS FEEL ALL THE TIME?!

Dan: Thank god for fucking Peter Jackson is all I have to say. The guy may be wasting away like he’s got the fucking Ring of Power, but thank God for him.

Dan: So yeah, that is what I have to say. My Howler has extinguished itself.

Natasha: I agree with you and it’s a pretty big testament to the franchise that we would even expect more.

Dan: Not to mention that every good theater actor in Britain has a summer house now.

Dan Kois recently wrote about Whit Stillman; Natasha Vargas-Cooper recently wrote about silver foxes.

Head over to Salon’s War Room for the Hack 30, a countdown of “the most predictable, banal, intellectually dishonest and all-around hacky newspaper columnists, cable news shouting heads and political opinion-mongers working today. We compiled the list by reading blogs and Op-Ed sections and watching 24-hour cable news channels for about a decade, and then listing about 200 people who rarely fail to annoy us. We cut the list down to 30 people whose continued employment most baffles us, and then we ranked them in order of shamelessness.”

The great social prophet in consumer society is the bearer of taste refinement. This is a figure who can assuage our innermost disquiet over the dizzying rounds of having, holding and re-leveraging that make up our economic lives. Sure, we might, from time to time, inspect the great storehouse of disposable junk and value-free financial instruments that sustain the fictions of our pecuniary well-being, and find a still small voice offering variations of the great existential questions “what does it all mean?” or “why bother?” But tastemakers can briskly smooth over our worry-ravaged brows; they realign the often brutal prerogatives of the market with the heaving tremors of the soul, and divine in the passing stuff of our consuming fancies the very essence of our expressive being.

That’s why, in this moment of great material derangement, Vanity Fair has done us the inestimable service of mobilizing the authority of no less than fifteen makers of taste, freely offering their charismatic tips of consumer mastery to the anxious republic.

Sure, the exhaustive inventory is modestly titled “My Stuff,” but the editors at Vanity Fair online have tipped their hands by packaging it in the site’s Culture section. For not only is stuff of all kinds — its extraction, classification, and exuberant fetishizing — one of culture’s main activities; navigating the populace through the bedlam of consumer desire is also one of the most urgent tasks of the culture hero.

For a litany of accumulated dosh, it is admirably purposeful and pared down: This is clearly no time to tarry with inessential matters. With the exception of two Asian entries — they are, after all, the model minority, so why not go ahead and make them into the modeling one in the bargain? — every taste exemplar here is white. Hardly anyone, apart from restaurateurs David Chang and Thomas Keller, can be said to hold down a real job; fashion designers and interior decorators abound, with an occasional exotic variant supplying a thrilling glimpse of how pointlessly reticulated such endeavors can become — e.g., “ambassador for Chanel” Caroline Sieber or “cult” decoupage artist John Derian.

And while every entrant’s taste panoply is subject to the closest forensic inspection, down to preferences for underwear, sheets, toothpaste and “favorite scent,” none is shown favoring anything so gauche as a book, a religious belief or a political conviction. Where more vulgar personalities may enshrine such ponderous culture legacies, these taste paragons always favor the sleek, the streamlined, and the just-in-time. Typically, they list favorite gadgets (chiefly, duh, the iPhone and iPad) and treasured movies (for the most part, a revealingly presentist and maudlin selection, from E.T. and Dead Poets’ Society to When Harry Met Sally and Clueless). In Conde Nast’s version of the Over-Soul, Culture is clearly something you either log onto, broadly sentimentalize or scrub down with.

Indeed, one’s own patient and forensic inspection of the “My Stuff” package yields a discomfiting realization: These people are children. Some, like actress/comedienne/”cupcake aficionado” Amy Sedaris, and tedious Upper East Side candy baron Dylan Lauren, have crafted aggressively marketed images as thirty- and forty-something moppets. Sedaris, the author of the newly published, not-at-all-condescending Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People, is shown in the brightly bedecked “craft room” of her New York apartment, and heard recommending “lollipops with cuff — white” underwear, a “45 RPM denim shoulder bag” and an “enamel mouse pin with shakable eyes.” For good measure, she names “bunnies” as her favorite pets.

Lauren — who by merest coincidence, also has a booklike object, Dylan’s Candy Bar: Unwrap Your Sweet Life to promote this month (on top of what already appears to be a lucrative product-placement deal for swoony Vanity Fair coverage) — is of course pictured in the cloyingly colorful environs of her candy franchise, festooned with lollipops and creepy plastic teddy bears. And in the true solipsism of childhood, most of her taste preferences are strikingly Dylan-Lauren themed; her favorite stationery is Dylan’s Candy Bar note cards; her favorite day bag is a Dylan’s Candy Bar tote; and her favorite T-shirt is a Dylan’s Candy bar T-shirt. This, plainly, is one Manhattanite who doesn’t face an identity crisis every time she leaves the house. And when she runs out of her own favorite self-branded accessories, well, there’s always the handiwork of her fashion-emperor father, Ralph: He is, of course, listed as her favorite designer, as well as the creator of her favorite brand of evening bag and bed sheets. We leave the stunted daughter’s equation of dad with night-themed pleasures to psychiatric professionals.

Sedaris and Lauren (oh, and Katy Perry — honestly, I just don’t have the energy to write that entry up) may represent the limit-case of the starchild trendsetter, but the entire roster of “My Stuff” profile subjects shares the same broad kidcult affinities. (The monotony of these elite tastes is a sermon for another occasion, but it is worth noting in passing that when ironic T-shirts, vintage furniture and thrift-style costume jewelry serve as an entire social class’s markers of quirky individuality, its members might just as well chuck the whole enabling conceit here and start donning Maoist uniforms.) They display a strikingly uniform penchant for low-cut Converse sneakers, sickeningly sweet desserts and pet-themed charities. This is to say nothing, of course, of the frictionless infant-gratification menus on their pet Apple mobile devices, which not only serve to decimate attention spans but to promulgate an infantilized relationship to digital culture at large.

Then again, why expect anything other than a long record of self-admiring impulse indulgence from the ranks of the overindulged? They are merely playing their appointed role as assessors of cultural value. As the dour German sociologist Max Weber explained, culture heroes of the sort lionized in the Vanity Fair pantheon possess the most elusive yet indispensable sort of social authority — personal charisma. As opposed to the other main bulwarks of modern social order, tradition and bureaucracy, charisma, by Weber’s lights, issues from the unstable compound of divine inspiration and individual accomplishment. The problem, of course, is that there is no way to ensure the survival of charisma over time, since it is so forcefully inheres in the persona of the culture hero. Charismatics are also, he notes, profoundly anti-economic figures, since much of their appeal is founded on principled scorn of everyday routines of work, the surface niceties of the fallen material world, and the like. And as Weber, a true connoisseur of social bummerhood, explains, the firebreathing legacies of the charismatics fall ineluctably prey to economic “routinization”: “Every charisma,” he writes, “is on the road from a turbulently emotional life, which knows no economic rationality, to a slow death by suffocation under the weight of material interests; and every hour of its existence brings it nearer to this end.”

In other words, dear Vanity Fair readers, cleave the wisdom of Dylan Lauren and decoupage impresario John Derian close to your anxious breasts; their dubiously material brands may lord over the cultural horizon now, but they are far too precious and gossamer a thing for this world. After all, as the consummate sociological professionals at Conde Nast remind us, yesterday’s stable of meticulously choreographed taste preferences are merely fodder for tomorrow’s ironically packaged crafts-for-the-poor insta-book.

Chris Lehmann rarely shops in the rarified boutiques of the Village’s East 2nd Street.

“The U.S. Energy Department’s watchdog says government agents hired to drive nuclear weapons and components in trucks sometimes got drunk on the job, including an incident last year when two agents were detained by police at a local bar during a convoy mission.”