“A COURT in Münster, north-west Germany, has banned a man from tattooing his pony with the logo of the Rolling Stones.”

by Abe Sauer

Bethenny Frankel — Unlisted
Nick Cannon — Unlisted
Freddy Adu — “call”
Kim Kardashian — “call”
Michael Ian Black — $5,882.50
Moon Frye — $5,850
Holly Madison — $4,000
Heidi Montag — $3,529.50
Lindsay Lohan — $2,985.80
Spencer Pratt — $2,941.25
Ndamukong Suh — $2,941.25
Khloe Kardashian — $2941.25
DA Chester French — $2,353.00
Tom Felton — $2,353.00
Ray J — $2,353.00
Scott Herman — $3,000
Aubrey O’Day — $1,764.75
Nick Mangold — $1,764.75
Maurice Edu — $1,764.75
Merril Hodge — $1,764.75
Kelis — $1,764.75
Papa Roach (whole band) — $1,176.50
J-Woww — $1,300.00
Marlon Wayans — $1,176.50
Audrina Patridge — $1,117.68
Kimberly Cole — $1,058.85
Spectacular Smith — $910
DeSean Jackson — $812.50
Lisa Rinna — $780
Champ Baily — $705.90
Tia Mowry — $692.15
Tony Yayo — $588.25
Lloyd Banks — $588.25
Kelly Bensimon — $588.25
Sister Hazel (whole band) — $588.25
Toy Lucca — $588.25
Eric B — $588.25
Pretty Ricky — $585.00
Nina Dobrev — $417.66
Jon Brockman — $411.78
Haylie Duff — $377.66
David Faustino — $352.95
Brandon Graham — $357.50
Diamond Baby Blue — $325.00
Chris Pirillo — $294.13
Mallika Sherawat — $264.71
Apolo Ohno — $235.36
Marlee Matlin — $217.65
Teresa Giudice — $176.48
Jay Mewes — $176.48
Malik Yoba — $158.83
Roxy Olin — $147.06
Gretchen Rossi — $117.65
Andy Milonakis — $117.65
RonMwangaguhung — $200
Nancy Lee Grahn — $114.13
Christina Kim — $88.24
Christy Bella Joiner — $88.24
Krissa Shannon — $58.83
Tony Mandarich — $58.83
Ted Murphy — $35.30
The Fat Boys (whole band) — $35.30
Scout Masterson — $32.50
Matthew Lush — $30
Michele Noonan — $21.30
Jeremy C. Shipp — $17.29
Eric Yaverbaum — $15.85
Shavar Ross — $15.22
Craig Wayans — $7.75

Abe Sauer is available.

Sofia Coppola’s latest film, Somewhere, “a story about an actor dealing with the emptiness of his life thanks to his child,” which, LOL, arrives in December, in old-fashioned Oscar season, and mostly what I’ve heard about it is really positive! I think a lot depends upon your feelings about Stephen Dorff. My feelings about the Dorff are “absolutely.” But there are other parties who are not as appreciative: “So Sofia Coppola has now, we can pray, completed her trilogy on the problems of rich people hanging around at luxury hotels with nothing to do (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere). (Versailles is not technically a hotel, but more or less, it was, so it counts).” Oh, it goes on!

Let us pause to note a very significant event that occurred on this very important date: It has been twenty years since Milli Vanilli were “stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.” Wherever did the time go?

What is the most challenging song to cover in the history pop music? Prince’s “When Doves Cry” might get my vote.

Besides being totally iconic and associated with a singular voice and attitude like, say, “Billy Jean” or “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” or “Satisfaction” are, the song totally breaks down standard structural tropes and rearranges them in a way that seems to be a reflection of its author’s most distinctive personal traits. Every little blip and tick and squealed note of “When Doves Cry” just sounds like the essence of Prince himself. Like he just sweat the song out in the midst the most personal dream he ever had. (Perhaps he ejaculated it, in that case?) [Ed. Note: DAVE! JESUS!]

So it’s always seemed crazy to me that any other artist would attempt it. And extra impressive when folks have pretty well pulled it off. The Twilight Singers and Patti Smith have done commendable jobs. (It’s Patti Smith week, here at the Awl!) Timbaland and Ginuwine hew a little too close to the original. And Ani Defranco, just, no. Kudos to Robyn for going for it — and sounding pretty good!

Awl pal Seth Colter Walls put in some serious time scouring the David Foster Wallace archives in Austin. There’s a gallery of some of Wallace’s notes and annotations here, and, for Infinite Jest fans, a collection of deleted scenes here.

by O. C. Ugwu

A friend of mine recently graduated with a degree in public relations, minor in journalism. It was a pragmatic concentration balance on its face: one of these fields represented at least a modicum of investment toward gainful employment, the other did not. In a different time, my friend, we’ll call her Fiona, may have given herself over to the romantic notion of the well-traveled journalist, marrying her wanderlust and literary inclinations to a desire to do something in the interest of the public good. But she believed in realism and clear-eyed ambition. Cautious that the budgets to buoy any latent journalistic aspirations had gone the way of the dodo, she chose PR — a field that promised both a creative environment and corporate stability.

But despite her pragmatism, Fiona, like most graduates of ’09 and the surrounding years, found entering the workforce to be an uphill battle.

Even after mining her modest network and sending out numerous applications, job prospects remained anemic. She continued her old gig as a waitress for months after earning her degree, grinning at an endless churn of needy customers when not checking online career sites like a day-trader checks the Dow. Finally, she got a call about an internship. Though it paid modestly, and was only guaranteed to last a few months, Fiona began to think of the position as her dream job.

At first, the hiring process proceeded as normal; or at least in a way that any person hazarding first steps into the real world might have perceived to be normal: A resume here, a reference check there, followed by a first round of interviews. Fiona was nervous in the way that all post-collegiate twentysomethings are nervous — in seemingly a tick of the clock, she could suddenly feel the entire weight of her future balancing awkwardly on her shoulders. But she remained confident. An internship with a mid-level PR firm. Certainly it was nothing she couldn’t handle.

Then came the “Social Media Challenge.”

“Our industry is changing,” said the prospective employers explaining the twist. “Social media has become an essential front in stakeholder interaction. We need to see how skillful and creative you are with these tools.”

At first blush, the challenge sounded to Fiona, who quietly nursed a raging Facebook addiction like everyone else she knew, like fun: Log in to a special Facebook page and get as many people to “Like” you as possible. But it wasn’t merely a game.

Fiona was told that she was one of two remaining applicants being considered by the company. The “Social Media Challenge” would not be conducted in some isolated spare office space at her potential place of business, but as a public, week-long contest between her and her competitor for anyone, including and especially her friends and family, to see. If and when she won the challenge, it would increase her chances of getting hired.

It hasn’t always been this way. Somewhere in the history of recruiter/recruitee relations, between the advent of “The Apprentice” and the decline of the global financial industry, the rules of the game took a turn for the dramatic. Beyond simple supply-and-demand, securing a job today — even those of the less-than-glamorous variety — has become something akin to a tooth-and-nail fight to the death in the Roman Colosseum: a spectacle of personal desperation for audiences either real or imagined.

Fiona isn’t alone. You don’t have to look far for stories of some un-moneyed, highly-educated kid making an ass of himself to stand a chance. A friend who graduated in marketing went flying across the country for an interview, only to have it capriciously canceled before he even touched down. The stories’ subjects are unusual, but their dramas ring familiar — like the time Robin and Shannon faced elimination for not taking their clothes off; or when the band members had to walk to Brooklyn to get Diddy his favorite cheesecake.

It used to be that this kind of do-anything, fuck-anyone standard was reserved for society’s fringe dreamers who are by definition delusional, like musicians and models and actors. But with the level of unemployment teetering at the brim, and after a decade of television executives at Bravo, MTV and the networks milking every profession and aspirational desire for human drama, it’s no wonder that even white collar employers have begun to see their sudden wealth of applicants in a new light.

Anyone who’s ever been unintentionally unemployed knows that it doesn’t take long for the thorny spores of desperation to take root and self-propagate. Anything for an edge. Anything to stand out from the tired, poor, huddled masses willing to work for free. When others have no boundaries, one fears the need to take off their clothes or face elimination. It seems that many with jobs to offer have not only come to expect this behavior, but are comfortable enough to openly encourage it.

We’re told that the recession ended over a year ago. That unemployment is a lagging indicator. What we need now is a collective call for common decency: for job seekers to come up off their knees and unlearn the terrible demands of the downturn. Because a job is a privilege, but a post-graduate internship is not a dream. The longer HR departments and midlevel executives get to play Diddy and Trump, the longer we’re all screwed.

Fiona lost the Social Media Challenge. This was doubly offensive considering the social capital she had expended transforming herself into the kind of person who brazenly self-promotes on Facebook. But her talent had not gone unnoticed, and the firm decided to hire her for the internship anyway. Three blissfully employed months passed. Then, when the internship had run its course, Fiona was told that the company could not afford to offer her a job. In her exit interview, she complained about the hiring process, which she said reflected poorly on the firm. They bought her a chocolate good-bye cake.

O.C. Ugwu has held four cutthroat positions since graduating in journalism two years ago and is bracing for his fifth. He lives in Brooklyn.

Photo by David Goehring from Flickr.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Home Invasion

From the month of data
I retrieve myself.
Night rusts. It goes
without saying
shadows are containers,
I’m saying it: there is
no safe angle of approach.
Black cat, black cat,
hours ago my friend,
accompanied by other
thoughts, derived
from an original now
retarded, a root grown
around a shovel un-
powered by imagination.
I know you, origin
beyond mine called
something unnamed.
I can see you anywhere,
particularly corners,
curtains, misplaced
door, hinge pulled apart.

The Revised Script

In earlier drafts, the sea’s
function was utilitarian.
It was placed for sentimental
reasons and to set the scene
for the meeting of two
protagonists — officially
man and woman introduced
by arrangement of a third
party at an office function,
or, if desirable, chance:
a Jane Austen novel, a seaside
bench. The lights go down
and occasionally through
ambivalent darkness
a horn is heard from
a ship at rest, quarantined
with illness, either mild
or severe. The lights, after
a prescribed intermission,
rise. I know the declarations
from the middle scenes
serve to prove one will let
the other down and now,
two-thirds through, a slight
fatigue sets in. What was
spring fades now into
autumn and what was
1986 passes into updated
hairstyles and footwear.
I understand the linear passage
of time arranges them here,
and furthermore he or she
may be holding an object
providing behavioral cues. A book
by Charlotte Brontë. A red
umbrella. It goes unnoted
in dialogue, that is to say it is
taken for granted. The lights go down.
The lights come up. Enter clouds.
Not for anything, but even
pleasure felt well enough
is a form that plays itself out
with second guessing. We can
recall being here before
on a seaside bench where ships
unload crates or cruise passengers.
It goes unnoted, but is clear
with time foreshortened that he
or she or one of us is here
to portray the other differently,
aided by stage directions
and body language — that said
person has changed, grown,
or moved on. Occasionally
a ship’s horn is heard, enters into
thought to be experienced
as another analogous instance
of morbid conditions prevailing.
The time remaining moves
forward with a new slant or is
abandoned in case of rain.
It can’t be undone, it won’t be
undone, it is done for the sake
of drawing this out. A part
was played and the wind kept
interrupting his or her face
with hair, obviously a mistake
we will call the natural elements
that no script anticipated.

Brett Fletcher Lauer is the managing director of the Poetry Society of America and the poetry editor for A Public Space. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Bomb, Boston Review, Harper’s, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and runs Ships that Pass.

You may contact the editor of The Poetry Section at poems@theawl.com.

Would you like to read more? Why there’s a vast archive of poetry here!

by “David Shapiro”

i am at the National Book Awards at the Cipriani on Wall Street and i am standing fifteen feet away from Tina Brown. Tina Brown is sitting at her table and she just finished her dinner and i am waiting with my friends Mike and Nate to interview her to ask her how many times she has presented Tom Wolfe with an award, but right now she looks like she’s having a pretty intense conversation with some old dude and if i interrupted her conversation she probably wouldn’t do my interview. a cater waiter just walked by carrying some plates with slices of pie on them and the pie had confectioner’s sugar on it, and someone bumped into the cater waiter as she walked past Tina Brown and some confectioner’s sugar spilled off the pie and onto Tina Brown’s back

Tina Brown didn’t notice because confectioner’s sugar is really light, you know, and it’s on her back, and then some other old dude came over to Tina Brown and stood behind her and talked to her for a minute, he probably congratulated her about her website The Daily Beast merging with Newsweek, and then when he was done talking to her he patted her on the back and unwittingly smudged the confectioner’s sugar and then she went back to talking to the first old dude, so now there is a palm-sized splotch of confectioner’s sugar on the back of Tina Brown’s black dress and i can’t take my eyes off it 🙂

we brainstorm questions for Tina Brown while we wait for her conversation to end. Nate says to Mike, “ask her how she has time to come to parties like this when she’s running a publication that hemorrhages five hundred grand a week!!!!” and Nate’s eyes look up but his head stays level and he holds his hands up and shakes them and he goes “OH NO! OH NO!” and me and Mike laugh and then i excuse myself and walk to the bar and get a white wine and scurry back. eventually there is a lull in Tina Brown’s conversation and Mike goes up to her to interview her and she tells him to come back after dinner and so we go back to the press area to wait out Tina Brown’s dinner

anyway, and i want to slip this in before i go on because i thought it was a good story, the way that i sneaked into this National Book Awards is that last night i emailed Choire, the editor of this website, and i said i wanted to cover the National Book Awards, and he emailed me back and was like “excellent!” and i wrote back “but like can you get me in though?” and he said he would see what he could do on such short notice. and then this morning i got an email from him that said “you’re in luck! you can go, but there’s a catch: you have to say you are…” and he gave me a name that was an incontrovertibly female name that i will say is “Patricia Simpson” for the purposes of this post, “…and that you write for…” and the publication i have to say i write for is, let’s say, a prestigious French literary journal

so i brainstormed ideas about how to get in, i thought about saying my name is Patrick Simpson and they got it wrong on the list, or that i also work for this literary journal and i am going in Patricia’s place. it is hard for a swarthy unshaven 22-year-old kid to pretend to be a “Patricia Simpson” that works for a prestigious French literary journal, and then so tonight me and Mike and Nate walk in to the National Book Awards and i am so nervous and the woman with press clipboard asks for Mike’s name and she looks through the list and says his name isn’t on the list and he says “maybe it’s under my editor’s name?” and then he gives the press list woman the name of his female editor, and then a figurative lightbulb went on over my head and i tell the press list woman that my editor is Patricia Simpson and i give her the name of the prestigious literary journal, and then Nate gave her his name and she let us inside! i was so happy, i’ve never been to an awards show like this

so anyway now i am in the press area and it is dinnertime and there are other reporters and bloggers standing around here too. the press area is centered around a buffet that is against the far wall of the restaurant/gala hall. this room is so big that you could probably play softball in it and the walls wouldn’t be that much of an impediment. in the press buffet there is some pasta with plain sauce and some, ummmm, uninspired sandwiches and salad, kind of a weak dinner compared to the filet mignons or tuna filets that the regular attendees of the awards ceremony are getting, and it makes me think that if the regular attendees get filet mignons in the dining area of the ballroom, and the press gets sandwiches on the edge of the ballroom, than the cater waiters are probably eating dog food in the back and i shouldn’t complain about the sandwiches

also right now the first half of the awards ceremony is over, i got here late so i missed almost all of it except the part where Tina Brown gave Tom Wolfe a lifetime achievement award and he thanked her for it and said something about how she started blog news, which i am positive is a complete falsehood but everyone likes him so it’s not a big deal, and now i am trying to gauge the importance of this awards ceremony among the bloggers and reporters. i ask what the equivalent of the National Book Awards is in movies, like is it like The Oscars or like The Golden Globes?, and there is some debate around the table, and then the reporter who i looked at when i was asking, so i guess he is the point man on this question, makes up his mind and declares “this is cannes and the fuckin pulitzers are the oscars” and then quickly adds “this is on deep background by the way, not for attribution” and he laughs and then says “actually i don’t give a shit”. when he said “deep background” it made me think of that movie about Watergate with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

a few minutes later, Foster Kamer, a blogger for the Village Voice, goes “okay i got my headline for tomorrow!” to Katie Baker, a blogger for Deadspin, and people around the table look at him expectantly and he says he isn’t telling and we’re like “come on man” and he says “okay fine — it’s NBA Jam!” and he smiles and we laugh. it makes me try to think of a funny title for this post. a few minutes later, Mike realizes that he forgot to remove a piece of extra stitching from his new suit and we talk about the suit for a minute and Foster leans over to Mike and smiles and says “that’s the J. Crew Ludlow right?” i think he is a little embarrassed that he knows the name and brand of the suit but also proud, maybe he is blushing but the lighting in here isn’t good, and then he looks at me and says he knows his menswear

Mike and Katie Baker talk for a while and then Mike hands Katie his Blackberry with a new contact screen open and her name in the contact info but the phone number and e-mail address fields are blank, she says “do i fill it in?” and mike says “yeah” and i say “that’s a smooth move dude” and he grins and looks at Katie and says “i’m gay!!” so she doesn’t think he’s trying to get her number romantically. despite his sexual orientation Mike is actually really gettin it with the ladies tonight, his date here is the blogger Molly Young and he told me he feels like the luckiest guy on the Lower East Side and i asked him if he thinks he’s gonna score later and he said he hopes so

then the second round of the awards ceremony starts and people take their seats. we stay around the press table and watch. a woman who looks like the platonic ideal of a school librarian wins the young adult book award, some other people win some awards that i didn’t write down, and then Patti Smith is up for an award and then she wins and Nate and Foster give each other a high five and both say “BOOM!” in unison and clap and yell “woo!!” as she goes up onstage. Patti Smith gets teary during her speech and says that when she was younger she dreamed about winning a National Book Award. this is maybe a dubious claim but hey, who knows, people have weird dreams i guess. a few minutes later, Foster tells me that the host of this awards ceremony is Andy Borowitz, the creator of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and i almost have a conniption because that’s one of my favorite shows

eventually the awards get boring and Mike says “this thing is a snooze! and you can quote me on that” and Katie laughs and Nate asks if anyone wants to go out for a cigarette and i drink a white wine

then the awards end and it’s dessert time and most of the attendees get up and start schmoozing. i mill around looking for desserts to take off peoples’ plates who are leaving or have left and wonder if i am getting too drunk to function normally. then i see Andy Borowitz standing by the bar and he is by himself. he is tall and very thin, imagine David Bowie but with a big schnoz and straight, medium-length salt and pepper hair, and wearing a crisp suit. i go over to him to interview him about The Fresh Prince, i introduce myself and tell him i want to interview him and also that i love The Fresh Prince. he says something to indicate that he is getting a kick out of talking about The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at the National Book Awards, i would interview him about something more relevant but i don’t know what he has done since that show, i should have read his wikipedia beforehand, and we talk about the show for a while and he smiles a lot and seems jovial, i smile too but i try to not look insane by grinning constantly, and then he says “you want a drink?” and i say “sure!” and we walk over to the bar and he orders a white wine and then asks what i want and i tell him i want a jack daniel’s and diet coke and he laughs and goes “is that some sort of hipster drink?” and we both laugh. he is mostly joking i think

i ask him what episode of The Fresh Prince he would recommend someone watching if they had never seen an episode before, which i guess is my official interview question for lack of a better one, and he says “the one where they got up and did the striptease — well, i’m not saying that one is the best, but that’s the one that’s most viral on youtube” and he thinks about whether that is a valid way of determining what is the best first episode to watch and then seems to decide that it is and he smiles and says “i hope that’s in my NYT obit!” he is really friendly and i try to conceal how drunk i am. he says, “are you going to the afterbeast?” because the afterparty for this awards show is hosted by The Daily Beast and i tell him i think i am. we talk about Fresh Prince for another few minutes and then i excuse myself because i suspect i seem really drunk and i don’t want to drunkenly linger

i wander around looking for Jonathan Safran-Foer or Patti Smith or Tina Brown to interview them but i can’t find them. i steal a chocolate-covered strawberry off an unattended plate and then spot Katie Baker and two other bloggers across the room, i am afraid i am nearing that stage of drunkenness where like i don’t even have to say anything for my presence to be alienating, like when you know someone you are around is so drunk that it makes you uncomfortable because really drunk people are unpleasant and unpredictable, so i try to keep my mouth shut to not alienate these people. the bloggers are very nice to me and i like listening to them, they talk about insidery-seeming internet stuff that i don’t really understand, and then we all go outside and go around a corner and the bloggers smoke cigarettes and marijuana and we chat about different websites

and then it is getting late and the bloggers go back inside and i say bye to Katie and put my headphones on and walk to the subway. now i am on the subway listening to the Nicki Minaj record that leaked today and i really like it, she raps a lot about New York, or more than she does on most of her guest features, and sometimes i think about leaving New York because it can be a psychically crushing place but right now listening to Nicki Minaj on the subway after sneaking into the National Book Awards i am happy to be here

Sent via Blackberry from T-Mobile

David “Shapiro” is 22 and lives in New York City and has a Tumblr.

Photo by Mike, taken this morning, on the street.