Goldman Sachs has a new ad campaign for their Asset Management division! I’m not really sure why this is something they need to market. It’s probably less true in asset management but in Private Wealth Management, certainly, they inherit their clients, and it’s not like it’s a tough sell to sign up a few more millionaires at GS. The company makes them money! And even though their clients don’t like the firm necessarily, it’s not like they ever leave with their money. For where? Wachovia? Anyway the new campaign is pretty funny because, in this iteration, from their website, there’s a woman in cowboy boots — taking a train! (A very clean train, in a very clean station.) A woman who apparently used to sleep in something the poor people call “a bunk bed”? So yes, this is how they pimp mutual funds, to appeal to the aspirational set of the semi-average rich little people who, it appears, can also hustle in their own way into the big money tent.

I stepped outside this morning a my body momentarily gave me the signal to do all the things one does in spring: step lightly, whistle a happy tune, scan passersby for attractive pairs of breasts, etc. It’s very confusing out there today! I mean, it’s gonna be in the mid-70s! And as much as I am still wanting my two weeks of fall, I’ll take it. Soon enough it will be winter, with its lack of light. Plus, the Republicans are going to be running everything into the ground. And you’re gonna have to see a ton of costume dramas because your annoying friend wants to catch all the Oscar-nominated pictures and you stupidly agreed to accompany him. So there’s plenty of time for gloom. Let’s all pretend it’s spring today, okay? Thanks!

Gay-disliking, anti-union, immigrant-suspicious libel suit defendant and former DUI arrestee Rob Ford is now the mayor-elect of Toronto! Goodbye, wasteful government employees and bike lanes — oh yes, he really hates urban bicyclists. He’s going to change the face of the city and do it… by spending… less money, in that magical way, and he beat out the crazily fun but hostile former drug addict gay dad George Smitherman to win the day. This will actually be a great experiment! Maybe he can privatize garbage collection and cut the city’s debt by $1.58 billion over four years and also spend $4 billion on new subway lines and hire more police while saving taxpayers money! Maybe so. And, because it’s always about us here in America when it comes to Canada, this even might be a sign that the U.S. elections will be going in the same direction.

Explain the Internet to a 19th Century British Street Urchin: A flowchart

by Mark Lisanti

• Rick Fox

• David Hasselhoff

• The Raven Kid from Disney, Or Nickelodeon, Or ABC Family Or Wherever Raven Was

• Jennifer Grey

• MargCho

• The Old Quarterback Who Almost Certainly Has Texted His Penis To Someone In The Choir, Just You Wait, It’s Coming Out

• Ma Brady

• Brandy

• Bristol Palin

• The Hot One From “The Hills”

• Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino

• Was Bruce Jenner On This Season? If So, Him

Mark Lisanti is sorry that “Mad Men” is over for the season.

Paul the psychic octopus, oracle of sport, scourge of despots, and supermarket pitch-cephalopod, is in eight-legged heaven. I mean, he’s dead. No cause of death has been provided, which seems kind of — wait for it — fishy to me. (Sorry.) Paul the psychic octopus was 2.

Long Reads: The New Website Most Important to the Future of the Internet

It’s the future of the Internet — the just-launched Long Reads website! Previously conducted solely through Twitter, the Long Reads project is now live, searchable and full of wordy goodness. Here’s where you can help: the most-frequently suggested sources for Long Reads are good but a little traditional, including as they do the Times and the New Yorker and those usual suspects. And also the list of writers being added are a little expected too (and with only one woman in the top ten — Jill Lepore!). You can help! This is the one time we actually agree with the usually fascist advice that if you see something, say something. You too can use The Twitters and the hashtag #longreads to do more important things than discussing your cat’s bowel movements!

Dear Bon Jovi,

Sorry for throwing empty beer cans on your lawn.

You know how sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink, and then times when you’re alone and all you do is think? Well, sometimes when you’re 17, and a world-famous rock star who is famously from the state where you live but whose music you strongly dislike buys a fancy house on a cul-de-sac in the next town over from yours, you find out where that house is and drive over there with a bunch of your friends and sit outside in your car and drink beer and throw the empty cans over the fence into the rock star’s lawn. Like, three times.

Kind of obnoxious, I realize, to start an apology by making fun of song lyrics you wrote almost 25 years ago. Though I do think they are incredibly bad. They are some of the worst lyrics I can think of. Maybe just after the ones from Kansas’s “Carry On My Wayward Son” about masquerading as a man with a reason, and how that charade is the event of the season.

But I didn’t intend this to be a critique of your lyrics. Whatever my opinion of them, it’s no excuse for vandalism. The fact is, I think it’s wrong to throw empty beer cans, or any other trash, on another person’s lawn, under pretty much any circumstances. Even if that person surely has a well-paid grounds crew on hand to pick it up for them. Especially in that case, really, when you think about it. It’s not like the guys in your grounds crew wrote “Wanted Dead Or Alive” or “Livin’ On a Prayer” or titled their album Slippery When Wet.

Jesus, this must be the least apologetic-sounding apology you’ve ever gotten. Obviously, I’m still conflicted about your contribution to my home state’s cultural image. (You know, you titled your next album New Jersey.) A couple years from now, I’ll probably be writing you another apology just for the tone of this one. So before I fall into some kind of infinite regression, allow me to be sincere again:

While I believe very much in forgiving youthful indiscretion, including my own, I also believe in taking responsibility for one’s actions. It was my idea, to drive to your house, to park there, to throw the first can. There were often other cars parked there, too. Your real fans, I assumed. I remember a Camaro was there once, and I wondered whether its inhabitants would want to fight us or something when they saw what we were doing. I had a twinge of guilt, too, at the thought. Here they were, honestly liking you, hoping for a chance at an autograph, maybe. What must have they felt like, watching us insult you? Who made us the taste police? I wish I had thought then, as I do now: no matter how I feel about the music someone makes, that someone is an actual person. He actually lives in that house, and this is not cool.

And you’re probably a really good person. I’ve never heard anything otherwise. In fact, this past summer, when I was back in New Jersey for the weekend, I ran into an old friend of mine, Matt Cheslock, who told me you’d been doing a lot of charity work lately with his father, who is a doctor and a good person. Apparently, you’ve been helping a lot of people that don’t have health insurance to get medical treatment. This is an unmitigated good, regardless of the quality of the lyrics of any given song. Sorry again. I just can’t let the lyrics thing go. Maybe you’d even agree at this point, though, huh? I mean, it’s okay, right? Lyrics are just one element of a song. A small part, really, of your job. You’re 48, I’m almost 40. Everything is more complex than we think it is when we’re kids, right? There’s nothing wrong with reassessing our past work. I mean, we should see things as they are. As ridiculous as those lyrics are, they’re kind of perfect in their way. I mean, for a silly, pubescent, rock-star-outlaw-cowboy thing. Like Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero,” too, right? I mean, I loved that song when I was twelve. Or Bad Company’s “Shooting Star.” Or Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” — that must have been a big influence, right? Honestly, I probably would have been the biggest Bon Jovi fan going if “Wanted Dead Or Alive” had come out three years earlier than it did. In fact, I remember really liking the first song of yours that I ever heard, “Runaway,” which did come out three years earlier, in 1983, when it won that battle of the bands contest on 103.5 WAPP. I remember hearing it at the 7–11, waiting on line to play Ms. Pac-Man. That dynamite keyboard line, and then your voice comes in: “On the street where you live girls talk about their social lives…” It fit the scene just right. I still like that song! But even if you did agree with me about the problems with “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” even if you chuckled and said, “Yeah, you know, thinking back, I have to admit, those lyrics are pretty silly,” that wouldn’t change the fact that this song, this thing you thought of with your brain, is inarguably a classic. Get in a car anywhere, drive around for an hour listening to the radio, you’re bound to hear it — New Jersey and Long Island, of course, but California and South Carolina, too. Almost 25 years since it came out, your song gets played on the radio, how many times every day? Hundreds? Thousands? How many classic rock stations are there in the country? It must be very satisfying. Not to mention the money it’s made you. I don’t say this to be a dick. You deserve that money. It’s a very catchy song, eminently sing-alongable with, especially the part where Richie echoes you in the chorus, where he makes “wanted” into a four-syllable word. “Wan-teh-eh-ed!” Everybody loves to sing that part. Everybody fights over it at karaoke. You know this. You wrote that melody with your brain. Surely you know how so many people love it. You’ve been everywhere. You’re standing tall. You’ve seen a million faces and you’ve rocked them all. I’m sorry I can’t help it. Those lyrics! God, they’re awful, right?! Just totally, ridiculously overblown! You know it, too, right?! I mean, come on! You must know it. You must laugh about it, right? You and Richie and Heather or Denise or whoever he’s hanging out with at the moment. I’m sorry, I’m being a dick again. I don’t know what it’s like to be famous. But, man, “a loaded six-string on your back?!” Ha ha ha ha! Right?! But it’s okay! It doesn’t matter. No matter how awful I think those lyrics are, no matter how much they make me laugh my snotty laugh, I know them all by heart. I sing along at the top of my lungs when I’m in the car. Jokingly, sure, mostly. But also, I have to say, I’ve come to love them in a way. In a confusing and complicated way. In a way perhaps not entirely unlike the way you can feel sort of proud about some dumb thing you did when you were a drunk punk kid, even as you know, and are fully willing to admit, that it was wrong and so are, at the same time, honestly ashamed of it. Those lyrics are a part of me. They’re a part of New Jersey, the culture. A part of our state’s big stinky stupid romantic gorgeous ugly awesome cheesy swamp. And you wrote them.

What did I ever do? I threw beer cans on your lawn.

@DrSnit @kidney_boy: thinking hard about your superpower outfits, magic words, and special powers.less than a minute ago via web

Margaret E. Atwood
MargaretAtwood

Do you remember that time that Margaret Atwood designed some superhero costumes for some people on Twitter? That was a totally weird time!

A recent article in a local newspaper had some kind things to say about this site, and we’re very pleased with the reaction. It’s a testament to the hard work that the those of us at this site — David and Choire, sure, but particularly the amazing and talented contributors who have offered us their wonderful work without worrying about compensation — have put in over the last couple of years and, hopefully, an inspiration to everyone else with a large vision but a dearth of resources. Still, one small bit has caused a number (that number is three) of people to wonder why I, “the mysterious Mr. Balk,” am “never interviewed for quotation.” There are several reasons, and I am happy to use this forum to set the record straight.

• Journalistic Ethics: Perhaps that phrase should be in quotes. I have no sense of what journalistic ethics are, being neither a journalist nor particularly ethical. However, this policy did indeed have some sort of semi-noble goal at its outset. Several years ago I took a job where the majority of my work involved covering the media. My feeling then — and it remains the same now — is that if I reported on a story I should never be a part of the story, even tangentially. I want to make it clear that this is a strictly personal decision; I don’t judge anyone else who does things differently. But my own conviction is and was that the only time you should see my name was in a byline, and the only analysis or comment made should be in that bylined story. I just didn’t think there was any need to become an “expert” or someone who talks to someone else to help form a media consensus. That is probably either old fashioned or ignorant, and I’m happy to plead to both. Either way, the policy worked well, because

• It Is Absolutely Horrifying To See Your Name In Print: If you’ve ever had the experience, you’ll understand. No matter how brilliantly they write about you or how flattering the topic, there is always the immediate feeling of being kicked in the stomach. I don’t know why it is, but even if there were a headline like “EXECUTIVE ORDER GRANTS ALEX BALK LIFETIME WORTH OF BLOWJOBS,” I would still get incredibly queasy. Then I would grin like a motherfucker, but that’s another story. So anyway, I realized how much I liked not being quoted, which is a good thing since

• I Tend To Say A Lot Of Stupid Shit: This is not any kind of false humility. You have NO IDEA what kind of ignorant, nonsensical crap comes out of my mouth. I mean, look at the stuff I write; that ostensibly requires some thought. Can you imagine how ridiculously ill-informed I sound when I don’t have the filter of seeing what I’m putting out there in the first place? I am every reporter’s dream interviewee, because I will talk and talk and talk and basically write the article for them with my idiocy. And who needs that? Also

• All The Rape Jokes: Pretty self-explanatory. I’m the worst. Finally, and most importantly,

• I Have A Gigantic Ego: It is hard to believe of someone who is so chronically depressed, bent on self-destruction, and quick to dismiss the work of others while nursing staggering insecurities of his own, but it’s true: I think I am super-fucking awesome. And this is NOW, when all I do is write on my own website. Can you IMAGINE how insufferable I’d be if I saw my name attached to a quote as some sort of expert? Do you have any idea how impossible it would be to deal with me if I somehow managed to watch myself OPINING ON TV? There would not be a flatscreen big enough to hold my giant, beautiful head! I am a raving egomaniac, and the only saving grace on that score is that I know exactly how susceptible I am to flattery and my own self-promoting ways. My staying away from the press is much like Bruce Banner trying to remain calm; terrible things will happen if I don’t.

So instead I write thousands of words on the Internet about things that I’m usually only half sure about. But you know what? I do it really, really well. I mean, I’m kind of the best. So there’s no actual need to do press; I come off amazingly just by doing what I do.

And there you have it.

Your humble servant,
Alex Balk
King of Awesome