We have most definitely entered the rough patch of summer that is August. News is slow. People are more irritated, more ground down and quick to anger, but also more indolent because of the heat. The streets are filled with the dead-eyed zombies who, unable to get away somewhere nice, are stuck repeating their daily routines under an oppressive sun, shuffling their way to work and trying to ignore the persistent rivulets of sweat emanating from a variety of bodily crevasses. It is, in short, a time when almost anything goes, especially if you’re in the business of attempting to amuse, inform or entertain. That said, I’d like to think that, even if we were in the thick of a season where creativity flowed like cheap beer at a frat party, I would still share this story about a giant turtle’s attempt to cross Boston’s Storrow Drive, because it is a tale of triumph and tenacity, and some days you need to be reminded that we all have those qualities in us, even turtles. Also, I have always thought “Storrow Drive” would be a good name for a band. Anyway, enjoy!

In 1966, the Beach Boys enjoyed a top ten pop hit with “Sloop John B,” their version of a West Indies folk song that the poet Carl Sandberg included in his 1927 book, The American Songbag, and that producer Alan Lomax recorded the Cleveland Simmons Group singing in the Bahamas in 1935, and that the Kingston Trio had covered in 1958. In 2010, representatives of the Beach Boys are threatening to sue Katy Perry for the inclusion of one line from one of their own songs, 1965’s “California Girls,” in her song, “California Gurls,” which has sold three million copies this summer. (The line is, “I wish they all could be California Girls,” which was not sung by Perry, but rapped in a guest verse by Snoop Dogg.) 1965 was 45 years ago.

Here’s a cheery poll for summer’s day: If you died alone in your apartment, how long do you think it would take before someone discovered your body?

Huh. The new video for Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love The Way You Lie” (which, man is that chorus jarringly disjointed from the verse) is almost like a stay-at-home-version of the video for Cee-Lo’s “No One’s Gonna Love You More Than I Do.” And it starts out just like the video for Cee-Lo’s “What Part of Forever.” The only difference, really, is that Dominic Monaghan and Megan Fox burst into flames into flames in the Eminem and Rihanna video. Remember when MTV wouldn’t let rappers show fire in their videos? Weird.

A reader writes: “I was sitting there classifying galaxies on Galaxy Zoo and this mofo showed up. Death Galaxy?!?” Yes, among other wonderful qualities, our readers spend their spare time classifying galaxies. Look at this crazy beast! We turned to our Official Science-Explaining Person, Ann Finkbeiner, for ideas.

She writes: “That redshift shows it’s relatively close by. It doesn’t look like much, which can mean it’s a pathetic irregular galaxy or it’s just a bunch of gas that gravitationally bound itself. The red can mean it’s dusty or it’s old red stars or it’s cool or it’s going away from us. The blue can mean it’s young blue stars and it’s hot or it’s coming toward us. My personal theory is that it’s rotating really fast, the blue side coming right at us, the red going away.”

Ann also notes that the other hot new activity for helping science is… FoldIt! Where Galaxy Zoo is quite macro in scale, FoldIt deals with our tiny friends (and sometimes foes!), DNA.

“I am not really an extremist, but these are extreme times we’re living in. I basically don’t think anyone should be allowed to accumulate more than $50 million. There should just be a cap, and everything beyond that goes to the abortion fund.”
-We are for sure going to miss Awl pal Maureen “Moe” Tkacik, who is heading down to DC for a new gig with the Washington City Paper.

There’s a new Antony and the Johnsons song out. Interesting: you can download it in exchange for your email address. It has nice horns on it and is the title track to a five song EP that will arrive at the end of this month. A teaser, I suppose, for the new album Swanlights, due October 12. Also on the EP, a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which I sang with my class at my 8th grade graduation ceremony. There was some controversy about that, due to the blasphemous nature of that song, which is about making the world better. But we students prevailed. (Attica!) I look forward to hearing Antony’s version, though. I’m thinking he’ll sing it better.

The official “underemployment” rate stands at 16.5%: “That’s roughly double the figure in December 2007, when the recession began.” Some day, someone will make a connection between the country’s economic health and its inability to persuade corporations to have employees. I wonder when that will be!

Previously:
• We’re on Track to Foreclose on One Million Homes This Year
• In the Last Year, It’s Like the Entire City of Philadelphia Lost Their Jobs
• The 2009 GDP? It’s the Worst Since 1946-And 7.6 Million Jobs Disappeared in Two Years
• On Waking Up As A Statistic

by Brady Hammock

Every night millions of us interact with the rich and famous-in our dreams. But why should those celebrity encounters remain off the record? Star columnist Brady Hammock is here to bring you all the dirt about your favorite personalities and how they really act when they think they’re safe behind the scrim of your subconscious.

“SNOOTY” EMERIL A ROBE-ROBBER?

Has celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse added some unpleasant ingredients to the down-to-earth recipe that made him a star? Our spy thinks so: In a recent dream Emeril turned out to be “a lot snootier than you’d think.” Bam!

So what happened? Well, in said dream, our correspondent lived in the same luxury condo as the überchef from Cajun-land. She couldn’t find her favorite bathrobe, and was perplexed to learn from the doorman that it was in Emeril’s apartment. (“I’ve never been to Emeril’s apartment!” our source protests.)

But that’s where she went, for the robe-and some answers. “I had to wait a really long time,” she says, adding: “The apartment was kind of nothing special.”

Finally Emeril emerged, surrounded by admirers-seemingly dozens of them. Many were young hipsters, “sort of pierced, if you know what I mean.” The ex-sitcom actor didn’t even acknowledge our spy, who never got an answer about her missing robe. “He seemed sort of full of himself,” she says. “He was nothing like he comes across on TV.

“Then I woke up,” she adds.

DASH: WHITE AND/OR PART BALDWIN?

A journo pal who insisted on anonymity had a startling encounter with hip-hop mogul Damon Dash in a recent dream.

Startling, because in the dream Dash not only delivered a withering verbal assault on the journo-but he also turned out to be a white guy! “It was really inexplicable,” our trusted source reports. “I was just looking at an old issue of The Source, and there was an article about Dash’s interest in boxing memorabilia or something, and a big picture of him, and he’s black. Just like I always thought he was. Yet in the dream, he was white, with longish dark hair.

“He looked sort of like a cross between Adrien Brody and a Baldwin brother.”

The dream scene unfolded at the sparsely attended screening of a movie directed by Dash. Dash confronted and yelled at the discombobulated scribbler about a story that has not even been published.

“I think he was saying that I should have been writing an article about him,” says he. “But I don’t really remember, exactly.”

NEWSMAN WALLACE, STILL SMOKIN’

We’ve all seen the old black and white footage of hard-nosed TV journalist Mike Wallace puffing his way through an interview. But that filthy smoking habit is a thing of the past for the “60 Minutes” star.

Or is it?

Wallace was smoking “like a chimney” in a dream last week, says a knowledgeable source who insisted on anonymity. “It was weird, you definitely don’t see prominent anchorman-type guys smoking anymore,” this insider says. “That’s why I remembered it.

“Actually it’s kind of all I remember-I don’t know what the context was, I just remember there was Mike Wallace, smoking.”

Wallace, journalistic legend via his work on CBS’s award-winning news magazine, has battled depression, and written courageously of his struggles.

“He kept sort of turning into Jim Lehrer,” the source adds. “Sometimes he was Mike Wallace, and sometimes he was Jim Lehrer. When he was Mike Wallace, he was smoking. That was kind of it.”

Sounds like it’s worth a “60 Minutes”-style investigation: Where there’s smoke-there’s fire!

Have you slumbered around with a star? What popular singer surprised you in your dream by becoming your high school algebra teacher? Brady Hammock wants to share your story with the world. Tattle your tale-or as much of it as you can remember-here. Pleasant dreams!

Bubblegum, the new album, from Clinic, comes out in October. Here’s a video! I don’t think anything will ever top Walking With Thee for me, but this is very nice.