by Andrew Piccone

Tell me about yourself.
I used to live in Manhattan, I studied art growing up. When I received my call I spoke to the vocation director about the contemplative life. I wasn’t quite sure where God was calling me. I like children very much, at one point I was thinking of entering into an active order and working with children or orphans or doing missionary work. I prayed about it and after hearing about the contemplative life and coming here for the first time I walked in our chapel, and I knew in my heart that this was where God wanted me. A lot of the sisters and brothers in the active order will teach or do nursing or mission, but in the contemplative life our whole apostolate is prayer. We spend a lot of time in prayer. Prayer is very valuable. I’m very happy and I’ve lived this life for 29 years. We’re the only contemplative sisters in New York City. There were others but they all moved upstate, so this is the first and only contemplative monastery in the City. We have a lot of sisters come for retreat, and when they stay with us they always feel so renewed and refreshed because their ministries are so active. After spending time here in prayer it gives them the energy to continue with their ministries. Everything that we do here is in the monastery. God provides for us, this place is quite large. We have a lot of very generous benefactors though who are making our life possible here. We are very blessed.

What is it like being a sister in New York opposed to anywhere else?
We’re a great witness here, and we have people coming from all over the world to be here. I think the witness is what always strikes me. It has affected so many peoples lives that we’ve been here, if we were somewhere smaller the influence wouldn’t be as strong. I’m very happy here. I remember when I first came for visits to this area, Hunt’s Point, it was called Fort Apache, based on the film. A lot of the buildings were all burnt out, at night you could hear gun shots. I remember at the time when I was living in Manhattan with my family and I wanted to take a taxi here, the driver refused to take me. Of course, now they do because it has changed. So I took the subway, and when I got off at Hunt’s Point it was like being in the missions, it was a cultural shock. There was a lot of prostitutes, and they would come to our door and ask for food, and we would give them food, but not money. There was a priest, and we heard that his brother was with the mafia and he had renovated all of the buildings on Hunt’s Point and the whole neighborhood changed. And now a lot of artists have moved here, the building across the street used to be a bank notary, and now Congressman Serrano, I think, is living there. There is a big change happening here. When the monastery was founded in the 19th century this was all country! People would come up from Manhattan and have their summer homes up here! Now people are saying this is going to be like SoHo, like an artists community because the location is so convenient, close to Manhattan, the airport.

What are some of your other favorite places in the world?
I like France, I like Rome, I like Europe very much. I made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, in France, which is a very special place where many have received healings, many miracles. When our founder, Saint Dominic, founded the Dominican Order in the 13th century, the monastery was in France, so there is that connection there. The food too, I do like French food.

Do you cook?
We take turns cooking. We had a cook at one time but we are a much smaller community now, there are 11 of us. It’s like the United Nations, we have sisters from the Philippines, from Trinidad and Colombia and Italy. I think it’s very fun when the sisters prepare the meals. We have a vegetable garden with organic tomatoes, we don’t spray anything on them, and apples, and different types of vegetables. We get a lot of donations from other people in an abundance that we are able to share with people in the neighborhood, and soup kitchens as well.

Is your family still in Manhattan? Do you still keep in touch with friends from before you joined?
My family moved to California actually. There are a few friends whom I am still in touch with, some have moved to Europe or to the west coast, and if they’re in Manhattan visiting they’ll call me and come for a visit. But most of them are married and have children and careers.

How do you feel about the way nuns are portrayed in popular culture?
It’s interesting, I was at the doctors office recently and this lady approached and said for Halloween she was going to dress like me, she said every year she dresses like a nun. The movie Sister Act I thought was funny, wholesome, not offensive. But you have to be sensitive. If for Halloween someone dressed wearing a nun habit and smoking a cigar and drinking, I wouldn’t like that. If they do it tastefully, I don’t have a problem with it, but if they mock religion, I don’t like that. If they did that to a Buddhist I wouldn’t think that was right. I think it’s important for us to respect religions and traditions.

Should the non-religious pray?
A lot of people call us asking for prayers for family members who are sick, or going through difficulties or trials. There were a group of people in the hospital and these doctors had people pray for them, they weren’t even aware, and they all recovered and went home. There was a second group, and no one prayed for them, and they were getting worse. So scientifically, studies have shown the power of the prayer. It’s a call that God gives you and he gives you the grace to live this life. I think that the fact that a person has a thought to be casually religious, God is putting that thought in their mind. When you look at creation, there are so many miracles, it’s not by chance. I think that by having that thought God is pulling that person. He is drawing that person, inviting that person, it’s really a gift. Faith is a gift. The most important thing is that we pray for peace in our hearts, peace in the neighborhood, peace in the whole world. We pray for each person in the whole world. We pray that one day the whole human race will live in peace and harmony.

Andrew Piccone is a photographer in New York.

Fellas! You know how hard it is to figure out what to get your special lady for the holidays? It’s like, why can’t she just tell you or draw you a picture or something? You’re a man! You’re too stupid to figure it out on your own! Plus your brain is busy with other stuff, like remembering old “Three Stooges” episodes and wondering what the tits on the girl in the Hillside Honda commercials look like naked. But there’s good news! “Experts,” reports the Daily Mail, “have identified four hinting styles that women use to try to ensure their favoured choice is placed under the Christmas tree.”

Here are the four kinds of hinty lady:

• Pepper hinters: They pepper conversation with mentions of preferred gifts
• Hand pointers: Hand gestures are used to point out presents on the high street
• Chinese whisperers: They use family and friends to drop verbal hints
• Careless listers: The Christmas list is ‘accidentally’ left lying around

Do you recognize any of these characteristics? Of course not! You’re a man! You barely know what color your gal pal’s eyes are. You think the last thing she said to you was “Mwamp muh wamp wamp,” in Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice. Subtleties like these are lost on you! So let me make it as easy as possible. Here is what your girlfriend wants for the holidays: a baby. They all do.

Photo by susanad813, from Flickr.

“As the New York Times noted after this month’s midterms, just about the only Democrats left in Congress from the old Confederacy represent majority black districts that were created by the Voting Rights Act after the 1990 census. Otherwise, as the paper put it, ‘Southern white Democrats in Congress have become as rare as a Dixie blizzard.’ In effect, the region’s white voters have gone from uniformly Democratic to uniformly Republican. And it’s obvious when and why the transformation really took hold.”
 — This should not be news to anyone, but you know how stupid some people are.

by Jeff Johnson and David Roth

David: If losing a football game feels like what Todd Haley looked like while he was scolding Josh McDaniels instead of shaking his hand after last Sunday’s Chiefs game, it must really suck.

Jeff: I like the idea of an angrier Haley. That he can’t get over some indignity and it festers. But, sadly, he apologized already to Broncos coach Josh McDaniels, like a day later. It’s important because there’s maybe one good football team west of the Mississippi, and a feud like this would have put them back on the map.

David: You saw the picture, though. He hasn’t gotten over shit. He’s screaming at people in the Safeway parking lot all week. They’re like, “Who’s Josh, why are you calling me Josh?” I wonder if a mentor-mode Bill Belichick saw the photo and called him after the game to break down tape.

David: “You should’ve had your hat pulled down more… been more gruff, less angry. And I personally would’ve worn a more ramshackle outfit, but I like where your head is at.” Belichick probably sent over some game tape of himself blowing off Mangini. “Thought this could help. Pay special attention to the ‘something bad happened in the bathroom’ facial expression I chose. XO, Bill”

Jeff: “Not to toot my own horn, but you should refer to this video as your own personal Zapruder film. Or fuck off. It’s your choice.”

David: I’m going to jog on past the popped collar on Haley’s khaki windbreaker — that sex-offender look — and point out that the way in which McDaniels dresses exactly like Belichick is just the dorkiest thing in the world.

Jeff: Josh “Slumber Party” McDaniels. Always has caramel corn stuck in his teeth. Wanting to make a fucking fort down in someone’s basement. Watch Cinemax After Dark.

David: Are there Pats fans that do that?

Jeff: Watch Cinemax After Dark? How do you think little Patriots are made?

David: Oh, I’m sure. I think the team retired Shannon Tweed’s number last year. I meant, do they dress like Belichick? Studiously distressing and de-sleeving their sweatshirts so as to enjoy a more full communion with the ulcer-in-chief on Sundays?

Jeff: I just witnessed the typical fan gear. The perma-hangover look. White people who refer to beer as either a)”cerveza,” b) “cold barley gazpacho” or c) “medicine.” Belichick hacks those sleeves off for function, not fashion. “If I spend 14 minutes a season rolling up my sleeves vs. just not having sleeves…that’s fourteen less minutes I can spend in the hot tub with Jon Bon Jovi and other close, personal friends. That’s why I work so hard.”

David: That’s valuable time in the hot tub with Richie Sambora, Adrian Zmed, Gov. Chris Christie and a surprisingly toned Bob Ryan. A lot of water displaced by all that star power.

Jeff: Belichick’s sweatshirt decision is explained in the book he wrote with Jack Welch and Suzy Wetlaufer. It’s called Efficiencies.

David: I want to read the Belichick leadership manual. “The key to connecting with your employees is to berate your employees. Also, try to foster a near-psychotic sense that the entire world is out to destroy their dreams. Or at least that the Seahawks want to do that.”

Jeff: Whatever he is doing, it is working.

David: It really is. They looked good as hell on Sunday.

Jeff: The Pats versus the Steelers was like the junior version of the Eagles decimation of the Redskins.

David: Yeah, only without the weird ethically challenging exhilaration of watching Vick. He is SO GOOD right now.

Jeff: He is skinny again. Lithe. Handsome. Probably not smoking much weed either. Completely brilliant shape. He’s like Lance Armstrong without the ball cancer. He’s like Jordan in 1992, or Marlon Brando in the 1950s.

David: He’s in Jean-Claude Van Damme in Timecop shape.

David: I don’t remember him being that good in Atlanta. Although that was probably because he was passing to Alge Crumpler and arena league guys willing to work for the Cheez-Its that Dan Reeves brought to video sessions.

Jeff: I think Vick has so many more choices on offense.

David: He does. Jackson and Maclin are really great. But cutting the weed out of the diet is important. Although given the fact that a ton of teams lost QBs last week, I think JaMarcus Russell will be able to get a job somewhere without definitively proving that he’s stopped filling his sports bottle with Dimetapp. To complete the simile thing, JaMarcus Russell is in Steven Seagal in Glimmer Man shape. Like Kirby the little fat ghost from the Nintendo 64.

Jeff: Russell’s in Carroll O’Connor on “All in the Family” kind of shape. But the Eagles, it was like the “Brady Bunch” when Greg stole the playbook or whatever. Did that game ever even get played? Or am I imagining something? Did he steal it merely to somehow make Alice feel bad? Wasn’t that what every episode was about? “Alice, we put our lives at risk and burned down our own home so you would have to get a job going door-to-door selling birdseed. We realize now that was a mistake. How come my shirts aren’t starched?”

David: I am honestly never sad when the Redskins lose. Apparently before the game, DeAngelo Hall and LaRon Landry were taunting DeSean Jackson about having incurred a concussion?

Jeff: That didn’t work out well for them.

David: How is that Jackson’s fault? “Did the wittle baby get mild bwain damage?” Burn!

Jeff: …considering DeSean caught a pass running 67 mph on the first play of scrimmage for a TD.

David: Yeah, that play was great.

Jeff: DeAngelo needs to spend less time insulting and more time working on his game. He has brain damage if he didn’t remember that Vick probably has every one of his defensive tendencies memorized from their Falcons days.

David: Maybe it was just that the Eagles had much better cleats or something. Every time the Redskins had to run they looked like they were taking a surfing lesson.

Jeff: The Redskins looked like they all had ankle weights on. And torso weights. And were thinking that maybe the game was on a different night.

David: Fred Davis’s attempt to run on that one long pass play… I know he’s a big tight end and everything, but he looked like Reginald VelJohnson trying to cross country ski. And true to Redskins form most of their players are all mid-40s. They were on the sidelines talking about how excited they were when they drove to the theater to go see Empire Strikes Back. “Best moment of college for me” — London Fletcher.

Jeff: Which brings me to Jeff Garcia. I am sure his agent sent a congratulatory fax to Andy Reid. “I officially rescind my offer to return as Eagles starting QB… this week”

Next: Addressing the Dougie situation.

Jeff: What was this DOUGIE thing?

I saw James of Wizznutzz linking to it.

David: Well, I know the song. And I know it’s an elaborate dance I can’t do. But I also know now that the Wall Street Journal is running trend pieces on it that no one will do it anymore. Like Jon Kitna will do it next week and everyone on the Cowboys will be like, “Daaaaad!”

Jeff: Kitna would never disturb the sanctity of the game like that.

David: “When I Dougie, I Dougie for the Creator.”

Jeff: As much as I hate the Cowboys, I have to say, it was nice to see them destroy the Giants. If only it would happen to the Jets now.

David: I have no idea how the Jets keep doing it. Like they magically become impossible to tackle in the last 90 seconds of every game. I’ve had to game-day columns for WSJ on them the last two weeks, and both times I’ve had to pull this hasty rewrite at the end, do a find/change to turn every “disappointing loss” to “surprising win.”

Jeff: I hate that Rex Ryan thinks he is funny and jokes around, but I also would not like it if they had a serious and boring coach. That is MY problem, I guess. I have to bear that cross. I hated that the announcers were basically imploring the Browns to play for the tie.

David: Most youth coaches I had growing up were like Rex in some way. It’s like John Bohrer pointed out in that Christie piece earlier this week, Jersey is FULL of dudes like that. It’s novel to everyone else, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a pudgy dude in a mock turtleneck break out the quipping bully routine.

Jeff: I do think Vick is doing great. I am tired of all these redemption angles, though. “With each touchdown he throws, somewhere a dog comes back to life.” I am waiting for John Stossel to wake up in a fiery rage. “Wait, he plays professional football again, sometimes on my network’s sister station?”

David: Yeah, the Personal Journey thing is pretty played. I do kind of wish he was playing for Cincinnati, just to keep the Bengals’ roster-theme tighter. Someone at Slate posited that the Bengals are like Moneyball with sociopaths. The undervalued commodity they identified are habitual a-holes with strong predilections towards doing drugs in their cars and spoiling everyone’s fun at the strip club.

Jeff: “With every convict we take on, we’ve studied them. And we know that there will be turbulence, but it will most likely be a misdemeanor. We can gauge that between August and February. No more than 11 southern Ohio strippers will feel ‘rained’ on by (mostly) small denominations of United States currency. Folded initially under one large bill…”

David: How Pacman Jones has fallen.

Jeff: “Odds are the most someone will lose is a pointer finger in the melee. One civilian. We have insurance in place for that.”

David: So, the Vikings must’ve sucked like crazy. I was pretty sure they’d win that game, and they REALLY did not win that game.

Jeff: They decided to keep kicking to Hester. Favre’s greatest receiver who did not fall down was the guy who played the dad on “Frasier.”

David: Kicking to Hester is a bad idea. I think teams do it as a sort of elaborate macho taunt. But it’s dumb even by those standards.

Jeff: I am pretty sure they didn’t believe it was Hester. “Now this guy is wearing #23, and his jersey says Hester, but how can we really be sure of it unless we kick him the ball and give him 40 yards of running space.”

Jeff: The Gruden moment Monday Night was awesome. I’m sure it is on YouTube by now. (I couldn’t find it, but this is good too.)

David: Tell me about this. I was watching in a bar, so I saw everything but heard little. Nothing but the whimpering of guys in Chris Cooley jerseys as they ordered pint glasses of Jagermeister halfway through the first quarter. “No, I want it room temperature, please.”

Jeff: Gruden basically said, “Here’s where Andy Reid might punch up a double reverse.” And sure enough that was the next play called. Had he been coaching against him, Reid would have been shafted.

David: They were co-workers in Green Bay, right? The idea of them spending time together is too much for me to take. Great TV show idea, though. Gruden plays a tough cop who plays by his own rules. Reid plays a sad walrus in a union suit. Together, they are… “Headsets.”

Jeff: Yeah. Tough to tell how close they were. Neither one seems like they’d have the patience to socialize. Andy just wants to be left alone with his cheese.

David: Gruden would keep sneaking off to read the Rams playbook, in case he winds up announcing a Rams game this year.

Jeff: He prefers to read Niko Noga’s autobiography before it is published. Or written.

David: “There’s really good stuff in here about blitz packages,” he says to his wife, as the dessert course arrives on date night.

Jeff: Gruden basically has intelligence on everything.

David: Gruden knows what the weather will be like in January. “I’m not at liberty to tell you too much, but my advice is to wear boots on the 13th.”

Jeff: “I was talking to Jeff Hostetler’s parents. The real ones, not his adoptive ones. I sought out and found his birth parents and spent a month with them. Camping.” (I have no idea whether Hostetler was adopted.)

David: But Gruden does. Gruden is the guy that gave the Tea Party dudes all those congressmen’s phone numbers. “Yeah, definitely call Rep. Allen West. I was talking to him about how Cadillac Williams needs to run downhill.”

Jeff: “I was asking the real Hostetlers what Jeff was like in the womb. What were his tendencies? Would the fetus lurch left ever? And I know that Hostetler has been retired for 15 years but based on my conversations with them, this next play will be a draw play to Knowshon Moreno. We also have to factor in that Knowshon was at the Cheesecake Factory last Thursday and that his body doesn’t process dairy very well.”

David: Have you seen Jared Allen’s cookbook? It’s all venison. But it really exists. The first step in every recipe is “kill a living thing.” Then after that, I think you just crush KC Masterpiece chips on it.

Jeff: And put it in a Crock Pot with “sauce” for 12 hours. What kind of sauce? “Is there more than one? The good kind. You know, sauce!”

David: Sauce = mild Tostitos-brand salsa.

Jeff: Next week we have an awesome analog interactive treat for EVERYONE. We are also hoping to really talk to Marty Schottenheimer and not be jerks.

David: I’d be satisfied just to talk to Schottenheimer. I want to know where he gets his sunglasses. Whoever did wardrobe for Tom Skerritt in Top Gun obviously works for Marty now.

Previously: Arby’s For Everyone

David Roth co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix, contributes to the sports blog Can’t Stop the Bleeding and has his own little website. And he tweets!

Jeff Johnson tweets here. He is also responsible for doing weird things with old sportscards here and here.

“Those with the protective mucous slept like a baby. Those without were like human mosquito magnets, suffering from multiple bites.”
 — Would you sleep inside a cocoon made of your own mucous if it would keep mosquitoes away? Jesus, this is gross, but… I think… I would??!! (Worst, of all, in the future, I might have to.)

by Jeff Hart

Disappointed children shuffled away from the entrance to The Rudy, their fuming tourist parents trying to cheer them with brochure read taglines of lesser Times Square attractions. Above, the dormant Rudy hung empty midway through its second loop, the ride closed for garbage related damage to the tracks. Childlike wonder derailed by the stinking detritus of the adult world, it was an image that suited my mood, and it sent waves of inappropriately sadistic cheer through me, as if I was the one responsible for the roller-coaster’s breakdown.

If I believed Paul Fennel’s theories on divine intervention, if the Chinese trash-bombing was in fact an answer to my desperate prayers then, in a way, I was responsible. Sorry kids.

I’d returned to Times Square and its epilepsy inducing lightshow for my date with Fennel’s soul mate. Wayne Maker himself had arranged the meeting for me. In exchange, he expected me to return Paul to his rightful place in the Unfettered Souls’ sideshow of spiritual curiosities. I had no intention of honoring my end of that bargain. As it happened, I planned to welch on every deal I’d made over the last two days, with one exception.

By the end of the night, I planned to be Unfettered.

Bo Harkins, the Chief Motivationalist’s enforcer, met me at the door to the Unfettered building. He looked me over with a smirk.

“Evening, Royce,” said Bo. “Thoughtful of you to get cleaned up for this.”

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness, right Bo?”

Harkins shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Hell if I know.”

I’d stopped by the Long Island City motel that Fennel had left me a key for. I’d half-expected to find him waiting there for me, ready with one last prophetic song-and-dance to play me into the final act. The room was slept-in but empty. I took a long shower under the low water pressure of frugal motels everywhere, then napped on the lumpy mattress that was unquestionably an upgrade from my recently abandoned futon. The Magic Fingers were broken, yet I still woke with my previously nagging back pain reduced to a whisper. I’d slept through the sunset. If Fennel had come and gone while I slept, there was no sign of it.

Harkins led me through an Unfettered Souls lobby significantly changed from my first visit. The watery eyed true believers hungry to suckle at Maker’s teat had been replaced with well-to-do men hiding behind sunglasses and newspapers. These were the afterhours parishioners, hungry for services Maker didn’t advertise.

Harkins didn’t speak to me until we’d entered the elevator and begun rising to the repurposed theater’s uppermost floor.

“Mr. Maker hoped you’d bring the Fennel kid along.”

“Not until after I meet with The Virtue. Darlene. Whatever.”

Harkins patted me stiffly on the back.

“I’m looking forward to you trying to screw my boss over, Royce,” said Harkins. “You embarrassed me earlier, in the car. I won’t forget about that.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“I’m going to beat the shit right out of you.”

“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe there’s another way to impress your Maker.”

The elevator opened on a hallway of closed doors. Harkins ushered me forward.

“Your boss wants Fennel back,” I continued. “I assume it’d be bad for business if something happened to him.”

“That a threat?”

“Not from me. But there are a couple of Fennel’s old buddies, they want to see him underground. I figure they’re what spooked him into hiding.”

“Mr. Maker could protect him.”

“I figured, so that’s why I told these two goons to meet me here tonight. They’re under the impression I’ll be delivering them Fennel, whereas I’m actually delivering them to you.”

Harkins stopped us in front of a doorway. He considered what I’d just told him, working it over hard enough that I could almost hear his synapses flogging themselves to life.

“They’re nothing you can’t handle,” I added. “And you’d get to be the hero.”

“Alright Royce,” said Harkins, grinning at me and patting my shoulder far more amicably than he had in the elevator. “I’ll come to your rescue.”

He opened the door. Over the threshold, total darkness.

“Your Joining awaits.”

I tried to take a step back, but Harkins’ hand was still on my shoulder.

“I just want to talk to her.”

Harkins shoved me into the room with a laugh.

“Don’t be nervous,” replied Harkins, closing the door behind me. “She’s nothing you can’t handle.”

Outside the room, Harkins slid something into place that blocked light from entering under the door. I was locked in. Living my entire life in the city, I’d never encountered darkness so all encompassing. I didn’t care for it. I felt my way along the walls, groping for a switch.

Behind me, feet attuned to the darkness padded a confident path toward me. I tensed. In the dark, with a stranger approaching from behind, a man in my profession tends to assume the worst. I waited for the muzzle flash to light the room, for the cool sting of a knife digging toward my kidneys, for the whine of the piano wire as it looped around my neck.

Instead, The Virtue slipped her arms under my own and began a workmanlike unbuckling of my belt.

“Darlene,” I said. I found myself whispering, out of some primitive instinct to respect the darkness and the predators it contained. “Stop it.”

I turned to face her and, as I did, she grabbed one side of my shirt and used my motion to strip it off me, like a magician working a tablecloth.

“I really hope you didn’t rip off any buttons.”

“Quiet,” she whispered back. “Our Joining is to be conducted in silence.”

Her rebuke was huskily delivered, but contained all the intimacy of a tired drive-thru cashier asking her customer to pull up to the window.

So this was Paul Fennel’s soul mate, the woman whose brief burning touch had shaken Fennel enough to make him seek my services. This was the woman he was so desperate to recover, to be reunited with. She who needed to be emancipated from Wayne Maker’s depraved self-help racket to pursue her gilded romantic destiny with Fennel. Her hair smelled like menthol cigarettes.

She certainly didn’t seem trapped, or unwilling, or for that matter remarkable in any way other than in being a particularly blasé prostitute.

I tried to speak again, but Darlene pressed a kiss on me, pornographic in its abundance of bored tongue. I grabbed her by the shoulders, intending to push her away. Honest. But then something stirred in me and perhaps, for a moment, I mistook it for my soul reaching out and intertwining with that of The Virtue, creating that perfect transbody union Fennel had described in our first conversation.

It was, in fact, a hard-on.

I thought back to earlier that afternoon, when I’d been lulled into reminiscing about Claudette and that stupid potted plant that I never watered. What I’m saying is, in my defense, it’d been a long time.

What the hell, I figured.

Jeff Hart lives in Brooklyn. His other writing can be found over at Culture Blues.

Photo by Fabio, from Flickr.

Here’s state assemblyman Felix Ortiz chugging Four Loko, with a doctor on hand. (Wuss.) Sad to say, this riveting report ends too soon: “At this point we have to stop filming as Ortiz begins vomiting.” In any event, the fun and games are over: Four Loko has removed caffeine from its magical recipe. Now we have to drink coffee between sips of our malt beverages. WHEN WILL THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA AND OBAMA’S OVERZEALOUS BIG GOVERNMENT REGULATION STOP?

“Taking the Bite out of the Holidays is a charitable effort sponsored by BedBug Central that is offering free bed bug services to those in need who are suffering from bed bug infestations and do not have the means to better their situation this holiday season.” Apply here. Sure, I’m also giggling about this a little but BEDBUGS and POVERTY AREN’T FUNNY, SO.

Yes this interview with Alan Stillman really is the best thing ever. It is about the end of the era of house parties and how people began to meet each other in bars! And it is sort of important to remember that it was not long since “good girls” didn’t go to bars, and before that, you know, they were kept entirely out of bars. And so he founded T.G.I. Friday’s.

“Dozens of outraged bagels plan to boycott Mayor Bloomberg’s annual World AIDS Day Bagel Breakfast. They will picket outside the breakfast, which takes place at 8 AM, December 1, at the Brooklyn Public Library on Grand Army Plaza. The baked goods are angry that for the last three years the mayor has hosted a bagel breakfast where he professes his commitment to combating New York City’s AIDS epidemic — and a month later proposes a budget that would devastate services for low-income New Yorkers with AIDS, especially AIDS housing services.” (via)