What are you doing at 10:17 p.m. on Friday night? There’s a PARTY TRAIN with your name on it! “On Friday Night, June 25, 2010, the W Train-the bastard stepchild of the BMT-Astoria Line-will make its final run from Ditmars Boulevard to Whitehall Street, a victim of the MTA’s 2010 Budget Cuts. On the final night of the W, and on its last fateful ride, come celebrate with us as we commemorate the short, complicated and often pathetic life of our beloved W.”

“That’s just my money coming back to me. I pay a lot in taxes. I’m not a parasite.”
-Missouri farmer David Jungerman, whose highway sign calling Democrats the “party of the parasites” has proved controversial, responds to accusations of hypocrisy. Since 1995, Jungerman has received over a million dollars in federal crop subsidies.

New Advertising Lessons from the Gay Media

Looking through the math on the “Annual Gay Press Report” [PDF], which samples gay publications each April, there’s some really inexplicable facts. There were 24% fewer issues of gay magazines published from 2008 to 2009. The circulation of gay magazines and newspapers both plummeted by a quarter-and the seven national gay magazines lost 40% of circulation. But even while newspapers and magazines also lost ads, a massive growth in ads in “Local A&E; Guides” (I believe we call those “bar rags”?), where the number of ads were up 65% year over year (fueled by liquor and retail), accompanied by an upturn in the costall publication’s fewer ads, found that income from advertising in gay publications was actually up 13.6% in 2009. The gay mag press advertising market is $349.6 million a year-small, but not shabby. So basically, what have we learned? Publish less frequently, lay off a bunch of staff, cut costs, go after bigger advertisers (airlines, beer companies), and sell bigger ads. Finally, one notable item: the number of ads for “Hair Growth” products declined 100% from 2008 to 2009, falling from 35 ads to zero ads. Gays: they already have all the hair they need, thanks.

So the kooky (and now somewhat less-moneyed) software millionaire John McAfee is spending his days in Belize, making an antibiotic from herbs.

“The gulf is such a great fishery because it’s fed organic matter from oil. It’s preadapted to crude oil. The image of this spill being a complete disaster is not true.”
–Recently retired Texas A&M; scientist Roger Sassen, representing what is referred as a minority view, in an otherwise fascinating piece about the mysterious deep-sea creatures that thrive off petrochemicals that seep through cracks in the ocean floor. Hmm! “Dr. Sassen was part of the Getty exploration team that drilled the first discovery wells that recovered gas and oil in the U.S. Atlantic 27 years ago.”

There is controversy about a new station on Moscow’s metro line named in tribute to Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Apparently it is not a particularly upbeat place.

The station, called Dostoyevskaya, is decorated with brooding grey and black mosaics that depict violent scenes from the 19th-century writer’s best-known novels. One mural re-enacts the moment when the main character in Crime and Punishment murders an elderly pawnbroker and her sister with an axe.

Another shows a suicide-obsessed character in The Demons holding a pistol to his temple. If that was not enough to darken the mood, shadowlike characters are shown flitting across the cavernous new station’s walls and a giant mosaic of a depressed-looking Dostoevsky stares out at passengers.

Assorted psychologists are trotted out to suggest that the dour decorations will inevitably draw suicides to the station, but the subway’s a pretty depressing place to be no matter where you are. I’m sure Russians, a race of gloomy alcoholics who love dark humor almost as much as they love beating their wives, will actually draw some kind of enjoyment from the whole thing. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, they have not yet dedicated a station to Dostoevsky’s contemporary Leo Tolstoy, but if they ever do those murals are going to pretty much paint themselves.

Conde Nast’s new web strategy: “virtual currency.” It’s basically going to turn Gourmet’s archives into an app and then mix it up with Farmville or something. I’m scared. Hold me.

The Gulf Oil Spill: it’s only 1/7th of the Superdome! But it’s more than 15 Washington Monuments! It’s only 9,200 average-size living rooms! By my new favorite metric, that I just did the math on, the amount of oil spilled would fill the gas tanks of 5,985,781 2010 Mercedes Benz E350 sedans! How should we feel about these numbers? “If 15 ½ Washington Monuments only fill the Superdome one-seventh of the way, then you could actually fit 93 more Washington Monuments in there. But shouldn’t you clean up the oil first?”

It was the goose chase that put the whole City on hold, until the goose search itself was put on hold. Silly staff at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park got all upset last week when someone spotted a Canadian goose with an arrow through its neck. They tried to capture the goose to help it but could not, because it could run away and fly like a goose without a life-threatening neck injury. Then on Saturday, the goose was found with no arrow through its neck. Now, we know, it’s a miracle! Or, more likely, the goose was wearing a rubber collar with the two unconnected pieces of a fake plastic arrow coming out on either side. That’s an old one.

When the Rapture happens you will have to read about it on your iPad, if the predictive powers of Americans surveyed in a Pew Research poll are at all accurate: “64 percent of Americans say printed newspapers will cease to exist by 2050…. A significant 41 percent of respondents expect Jesus Christ to return by 2050.”