“SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human-working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it’s my job-and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.”

by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Paul Newman and James Dean were the two leading contenders for the part of Cal Trask, the dark-spirited lead in East of Eden. The screen test for the role was a face off between Dean and Newman. The two stood shoulder to shoulder, and then they were asked to glower at the camera. Dean was haunted, wry and burning with intensity, whereas Newman was flirty, caddish; he seemed to rely too much on his good looks. Lee Strasberg once supposedly told Newman that he could have been Brando-if he wasn’t so damned pretty. It may or may not have been his looks, but there was something about Newman that prevented him from having the rapturous effect on the audience that Dean had.

Last night, with two finalists facing off on “American Idol,” it was Lee DeWyze who played the part of Paul Newman.

He was unable to summon the nerve and discipline to take the lead in his own performances. Like Newman, he seemed to be groping his way along. His face was straining, often purple and twisted from not just from being out of breath (bad sign) but also from what looked like panic. As though the music and the crowd and the moment would swallow him up.

It felt as though he imploded from the weight of his potential stardom.

* * *

I have to come to appreciate the two biggest punchlines on “American Idol”: Randy Jackson and Ryan Seacrest. For the first eight seasons of the show’s run, Jackson’s inarticulate and predictable commentary enraged me. Who thought it would be a good idea to put this boob at the great tribunal of pop culture? But Randy, though limited in his expression, has an unwavering enthusiasm for the show and clear affection for contestants. Randy is also open to having his mind changed: when Simon says something smart, as he often does, it makes an impression on Randy. He will even pump his fists and say,”Yeah! Yeah! That’s right!” I enjoy this man. I hope he continues to sip heartily from his Coca-Cola sponsored plastic cup.

Ryan Seacrest is a flawless host. He completely empties himself for the show. He has no voice, no view, is inoffensive and innocuous without being insulting. He instinctually knows when to talk and when to vamp. He is like oxygen in an airplane. Unnoticeable but necessary and devastating when removed. Perfect. I would have this no other way.

* * *

Simon Cowell is no doubt in league with the dark forces. But it would be an absolute lie if I said I’m not mourning his departure from the show. He is a brilliant critic, whose comments verge on literary because they are so precise and pitiless. He’s like one of Shakespeare’s great villains: sinister, wretched, and smarter than our hero. Like when he tells someone they belong on cruise ship instead of a television. Or the poetic flourishes his comments take on, like when he told one beauty queen contestant that all her performances were overly sentimental: he described them as “wet” and “soggy.” Most importantly: he’s demanded that performers prove their relevancy each week. He is irreplaceable.

* * *

Little DeWyze never had too much charisma. What was compelling was his story: a working class kid who sold pails of paint at a hardware store during the day and crept into open mic dives to play his guitar to indifferent audiences at night. His earnest performance of The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel showed that he could, when pushed, use vulnerability as an asset; he could be authentically tender and enthralling. His reprise of the song last night was his undoing. It was too cold and removed, not from hubris, but from fear.

And fear has no place in the Idoldome.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper will report back tomorrow.

Five Questions About Greyson “Paparazzi Kid” Chance, At Least One Of Which Will Probably Never Be Answered

5. So Ellen DeGeneres’ just-launched label eleveneleven records has signed Greyson Chance, the kid from Oklahoma who made it big on the Internet with his cover of Lady GaGa’s “Paparazzi” earlier this month. Ellen, you may recall, is a judge on American Idol. So does this mean that her label is associated with Sony Music, which has a link to the show?
4. Or is it associated with Interscope, home to Lady GaGa, which just last week was the label that had supposedly snagged the kid?

3. Is the timing of this announcement to the end of this Idol season a sign that Ellen, whose first year behind the Idol judges’ table was to put it politely “rough going,” might be leaving the show and embarking on her own musical career?

2. Or is it merely a sign that next season, the show’s 10th, she’s going to establish herself as the Alpha Female Of The Table, inevitably inspiring Kara DioGuardi to once again rip off her clothes in anger?

1. So Greyson’s whole “YouTube rise” was fake after all, wasn’t it? Can we believe in anything anymore? (OK, that’s an extra question. But it deserves to be answered, I think!)

by Halle Kiefer

This was the first episode in which I felt the darkness of real life butted up against the cartoon land of “Glee,” and, honestly, I don’t know how the show is going to hold up. Well, okay. Before I get into that eternal sadness, let’s talk about the adorable plot line of Tina the Goth vs. Principal “Actually Believes in Vampires” Figgins. After a band of Hot Fat Teen Vampires, aka Glee Spin Off Show #407, takes down a hapless nerd in the hallway, Figgins cracks down on all Goths school-wide. (I’m really hoping those vamps actually did rip open that dweeb’s throat out and gorged themselves on his blood. All I’m saying is, I buy the DVDs for the extras!) Schue intervenes in the heated argument between Figgins and Tina’s fabulous tiny top hat, reminding the principal that he once idealized Elvis so much that he started dressing like him. “But he was a Christian!” Figgins protests, “And he didn’t have the ability to transform into a bat!” Like manna from Heaven, these spin-off ideas spill unceasingly from Figgins’ mouth. Anyway, Tina thereby is forced to attend school bare-faced and be-sweatshirted with hair of a normal color. “I feel like an Asian Branch Davidian!” she laments. A Waco reference 17 years after the fact? O my! Tina must have heard about that when her mother put the radio too close to her WOMB.

After finding Christmas light boxes in a Dumpster and the local craft-store sold out of red Chantilly lace, Rachel the resourceful nut bar informs the horrified gleebians that rival team Vocal Adrenaline is doing a Lady Gaga number, the spectacle of which will almost certainly shut New Directions down at competition. O HELL NO IT WON’T! Not while Kurt still walks this earth a free man. “What’s up with this Gaga guy?,” Puck asks, and Rachel, Mercedes and Quinn sneak into the other team’s practice to find out exactly that. O, and also to force Rachel to realize that the age-appropriate woman who looks EXACTLY LIKE HER is, doy, her absentee birth mother. Meanwhile Quinn and Puck have drama about naming their baby before giving her up for adoption. “Okay, okay. Jackie Daniels,” Puck concedes after Quinn reminds him the fetus is a girl. Ah, how do I love him? Let me mount the ways…

I had never heard Babs’ “Funny Girl” [ED. NOTE: WHAT? SERIOUSLY?] before Idina Menzel’s Shelby started singing it into a conveniently placed full-length mirror at Vocal Adrenaline’s practice. Which, as a female comedian, let me just say, ugh. “Though I may be all wrong for a guy, I’m good for a laugh.” Don’t mind me; I’ll just be over here in front of this brick wall, sobbing into my jean jacket and bolo tie. Also, why has my life been so Babs-deficient up until now? I BLAME ALL OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS. Idina is fabulousness incarnate, but the set-up for all of the songs this week was such a streeeeeeeeeeetch. “NO, you 30 kids willfully dressed in Lady Gaga’s 2009 VMA acceptance monstrosity, you don’t get what theatricality is! Let me show you!” Rachel finally confronts Shelby about being her mom, and Shelby handles it well… for about 4 seconds, then she freaks out and bails on Rachel, leaving her to deal with it alone. Well-played, adult person! Way to handle a difficult situation where the other person involved is a child! Also, where was Jesse in this episode? Probably on another spring break, if I know that guy! Just kicking back on the beach, toes in the sand, taking a much needed second week away from his strict schedule of manipulating unsuspecting girls into finding their birth parents and deep conditioning his hair.

Schue doesn’t have any better excuses to explain why the kids should incorporate more drama into their performances, weakly suggesting that they all needed to be themselves/other people/Lady Gaga or something, who knows. Whatever, Schue! Isn’t there a Spanish final you should be grading? Ouch, CALIENTE! The girls and Kurt return to school the next day festooned in a variety of home-made Gaga costumes which were fierce, fierce, hella hella fierce. Rachel showed up in a fetching Beanie Babies and staples number, and I would personally like to declare martial law over this show to demand that Mercedes, Brittany and Santana be required to wear their Gaga outfits from now until the series finale. Miniature American flags for some, mandatory purple bow wigs and lobster hats for others! The little monsters swagger and pound their way through a delightful rendition of “Bad Romance,” a simple stage performance which, if anything, simply highlights what a truly bomb-ass song “Bad Romance” is. I would have loved to see the performance interspliced with scenes of the glee kids getting picked on (for the plot, you see! Just for the plot), or you know, any connection to the larger storyline at all, but hey, as a one-off song it was spectacular, spectacular.

Finn is immediately pouty (or as pouty as the giant stone head from Zardoz can be) that the ladies of Glee always get to choose super-girly songs for everyone to sing. This despite the fact that Lady Gaga has low-hangers like Finn has never seen (I saw a video online!). So of course the guys cram their genitals into manly spandex pants and smear on deeply masculine scarlet lipstick for Kiss’s “Shout It Out Loud,” a number I was ready to HATE for taking up my valuable Gaga-swooning time, but was actually sort of fun once it got past its stilted introduction (Sorry but, “Now it’s the boys turn!” just ain’t cutting it for me in terms of integrating the music with the rest of the show any more). Mike and Matt (GUESS WHO THEY ARE?!?!) (TEE HEE) both had one whole line each in this episode! Hurray! I hope they use the pay raise that comes with having one line to buy platinum-plated Hummers and fill their swimming pools with Perrier and purchase a huge mansion for me to live in as their mutual wife!

Now, we get into the deeply “Argh!” part of the show, I just want to put out there that in my view the problem with “Glee,” as demonstrated by almost every plotline this episode, is that it veers so wildly between genuine feeling and shallow throw-away bits that it is really hard to accurately read any scene for emotion. When two football players shove Tina against the lockers for dressing “like a freak show” in her Gaga garb, I was seriously afraid that she or Kurt would get hurt (a fear possibly compounded by the fact that their school’s administration is clearly too busy plotting each other’s destruction/sharpening stakes to take any real security measures). That is some very real hostility to be throwing at kids wearing insane claw shoes and bubble dresses and who burst into song at the drop of the hat.

The same goes for the plotline of Finn’s obvious discomfort with Kurt’s IN YOUR FACE gayliciousness. Finn’s mom and Kurt’s dad announce that the two families will be moving in together, with Finn temporarily sleeping in Kurt’s Clockwork Orange boudoir. Kurt can barely contain his boner excitement at the prospect, but Finn soon lashes out at him after Football Thing # 1 and #2 hassle him too for hanging out with our fancy boy. While Finn obviously is a shitty friend for turning on Kurt over being out and loud, I get why the new living situation would make him feel weird. Sometimes a moist towelette is not just a moist towelette, people!

Now, the thing that makes these scenes hard to process is, of course, that Kurt has reverted, at least momentarily, to the Terror Kurt we meet a few weeks ago: creepy, always watching, promising to make-over the room he now shares with Finn in the exact way “I…I mean, you…want it to be.” Terror Kurt is not the super-fey but mostly real gay teenage boy that won our hearts over with his La Roux voice and passion for fashion; Terror Kurt works at the Bates Motel and tells everyone that his mother is doing just fine, thank you very much, even though no one has seen or heard from her in years. That’s not our Kurt! Our Kurt’s a real boy! I guess what I’m saying is, we can’t have it two ways. We can’t have the show writers slamming their keyboard with their ham fists one minute, and then using real human hands the next. We don’t want to have this weird, “Desperate Housewives” cardboard cut-out of Kurt to periodically show up to connive about befriending, then boyfriending Finn by getting their parents together, because how can we expect him to handle real emotion when Finn inevitably blows up in his face (J) (L)?

Everything comes to a boiling point when Finn flips out on Kurt for redecorating their shared sleeping pod into a sumptuous Moroccan enclave. O, so everything in Morocco is gay now! I see how it is! In the beginning, I thought Finn’s rant walked a fine line between insulting Kurt’s sexuality and actual valid unease at having to share a room with someone who so clearly lusts after you, until finally he slips off into the underlying pool of venom that has been welling up throughout the episode. Finn resents that Kurt doesn’t keep his head down, strutting around as if they lived in “New York or San Francisco or some other city where they eat vegetables that aren’t fried.” Hearing a main character that we are meant to like (and that I generally do) say the word “faggy” was really difficult to stomach, so hats off for the writers for making him do it. It seemed gross and honest and sad. And that’s why we all practically cried when Kurt’s father Burt busts in and goes FULL FRONTAL DAD on Finn. “This is our home,” Burt says, clearly pained as he tells Finn he can’t live with them if that’s how he is going to treat Kurt, “he’s my son.”

Mike O’Malley is completely flawless as usual, but Burt’s speech would have been more rock solid if 1) Kurt didn’t start out this episode acting like Snidely Whiplash and/or 2) Finn was capable of expressing emotion in his facial area. Imagine what this episode would have looked like if the writer’s keyboard hadn’t have been all slippery with ham juice! When Burt puts his hand on Kurt’s shoulder and says, “I think the place looks great.”? Forget about it, you guys, it’s Hysterical Sob Town. I will tell you though, one of these days Kurt is just going to stop crying into his watch fob and start strangling bitches with his caftan; I can only hope Brittany is there to help him dispose of the body.

Rachel and Shelby have meeting up after school throughout the week, first to make Rachel a new, less bean-filled Lady Gaga outfit (two gay dads and neither can sew? Well, then what is even the point?), secondarily to get to know each other better. Rachel shyly describing the origin of her name, explaining that her dads “were big fans of Friends.” Well, who wasn’t?! But things quickly took a turn for the WORST. “I really wanted this to work out,” Shelby tells Rachel as she essentially breaks up with her own daughter, “but I’m just not willing to try in any way or do anything that would require effort of any kind. Even though I set up an elaborate, months-long scheme that involved having a student relocate to a new school district, befriend you, and then plant falsified information to lead you to me, I’m going to have to reject you three days later because I realized that you aren’t a baby and I can only love babies. BABIES BABIES BABIES! See you when my team is crushing you!”

So wait, Rachel only gets to know her mom for ONE FREAKING EPISODE?!?! Guys, you don’t have to rush everything. Rachel had a mom for less time than Mercedes had an eating disorder. I swear, Shelby had better be lying about being her mom in order to ruin her at regionals, or I am gonna be PISSED. I might be alone on this one, but personally I felt that Rachel and Shelby’s duet of “Poker Face” was a serious turd in the punch bowl that is “Glee.” I HATED this rendition, even if it did have a hilarious tip of the hat to omnipresent piano player Brad (“He’s Always Just Around: The Brad Ellis Story” is the working title of his memoir). Wouldn’t “Speechless” have been better? Or even “Paparazzi”? Or anything that does not require a mother to tenderly sing the phrase “bluffin’ with my muffin” to her teenage daughter? Epic yeesh. As a going-away/ “I’m probably really a crazy person” present, Shelby gives Rachel a cup with a star on it. A CUP WITH A STAR ON IT. YOU. GUYS.

Back at the ranch, Puck pulls his beautiful head out of his devastating ass long enough to serenade the quietly awesome Quinn with Kiss’ “Beth,” following his realization that Jackie Daniels, while a sweet name for a power boat, was unsuitable for an infant. That is going to be the hottest baby this world has ever known. O and Tina told Principal Figgins that her dad would fly into the principal’s room and eat his face if he didn’t let her wear black tulle to school, so now she’s BACK IN BLAAAAAACK.

At the show’s conclusion, we cut to Kurt being harassed by the football thugs, scrambling around in his home-made Alexander McQueen hoof boots like the beautiful, foolish pony he is. He vows never to tone his fierceness down, claiming that “it’s the best thing about me!” Ugh, you little sweet thing. You are going to get your backpack thrown under the wheels of a bus. The thugs turn in typical “Duh? What? A distraction from behind us?” fashion to see Finn standing tall and fabulous in a red rubber dress and glue-on eye mask, ready to kick some ass. Man, there is almost TOO much to unpack in this scene.

Finn’s final stand in Gaga drag is so awkward, so unbelievable and yet so touching. What kind of teenage boy would know enough to put together a fabulous red frock out of a shower curtain in order to make it up his asshat-ery to his potential future stepbrother (And WHO has a shower curtain like that? I’m imagining Sue Sylvester scrambling around her apartment in a towel, looking baffled)? I’ll tell you: a very special, very smart, very not-real boy. In Our World, both of those kids would have had their heads slammed into a combination lock and their lockers stuffed with dog shit. But in Glee World, a rubber dress is short-hand for “I’m sorry I made fun of your filigreed dividing partition. I see you”.”

Luckily the rest of New Directions shows up at that exact moment to back them up, delaying Kurt’s eventual battery by at least a good 15 minutes until he has to leave to walk home. And, man, did Schue ad lib the last 30 seconds or what?!? “What a great lesson! Wish I had thought of it! Haha, okay, instead of having those bullies suspended or calling their parents or generally acting in anyway like a responsible adult, I’m just going to remind us that we have to win sectionals or regionals or divisionals or whatever -ials we’ve barely remembered to plan for! Haha! Everyone turn and walk away…now! I said now!”

It wasn’t until the very end of the episode that I realized why this week was particularly airless and stultifying. NO SUE! What were they thinking? We need that fabulous gust of poisonous air to fill our lungs and take us away into sweet, sweet oblivion. Luckily it looks like next week she is back in full force, looking appalled/aroused in the preview as Schue apparently attempts to seduce her. Love it, love it, love it hottie! That sounds great, because I need a week off of this seriousness to regroup. If you need me, I’ll be draped over my 15th-century Moroccan reclining bench with a damp chilled wig over my eyes.

Halle Kiefer, who is a nice lady, won’t take this laying down (for long).

An FCC survey of cell phone users has found that one in six have experienced what they’re calling “bill shock,” huge leaps in price for what the Boston Globe terms “inexplicable” reasons. Why? Has AT&T; instituted a “spillage surcharge” every time its crappy service drops a call made from someplace not at all off the beaten path like, I don’t know, its customer’s street-facing bedroom? Nope!

The “shock” comes from people being surprised that they didn’t read the fine print on the documents they signed when they initially get their palm-sized electronic leashes. Because who knew that a contract that requires a signature would have important information within?

More than one-third of the survey’s 3,000 respondents said their phone bills have inexplicably jumped by at least $50 in a month, and 23 percent said the increase topped $100, according to the agency, which released the results today.

Eighty-four percent said they were not contacted before they exceeded their allowed limits for text messages or data downloads….

The FCC unveiled its bill shock initiative earlier this month, citing a Boston Globe story on Dover resident Bob St. Germain, who received an $18,000 phone bill from Verizon in 2006 that covered just six weeks of usage. St. Germain’s son, Bryan, now 26, racked up the charges by tethering his cellphone to a laptop computer after the expiration of a two-year promotional period that included free Internet access.

So “bill shock” should really be termed “people not paying attention to limits because they are true Americans”? Don’t get me wrong — I am not a cell phone company apologist; I think AT&T;’s Death Star should be immolated ASAP, preferably sometime before the iPhone exclusivity window ends. But when I ran up $250 worth of extra charges in Ireland a few months back because I had to tell my friend about the terrible, drunk-filled Dublin club I was visiting in excruciating detail, I sucked it up and paid!

Anyway, I look forward to all the people who sent in thousands of text-message votes for the eternally in search of pitch Lee DeWyze after last night’s American Idol finale wailing about their votes costing them even more than a ticket to this summer’s Idol tour. If I had my way, they would get charged double for having terrible taste in lousy post-grunge wannabes who are not even that cute, but I don’t run the world, so.

[Pic via]

by Erica Sackin

My friend Sarah [not her real name!] and I were wandering the streets of Nice, wearing 60-pound backpacks. We needed a place to stay. I hadn’t made a reservation. I hadn’t thought you needed to make reservations at the kind of cheap youth hostels I’d been planning on staying in. My Lonely Planet guide hadn’t mentioned that part, or at least I hadn’t paid attention. Let me tell you, should you ever plan on making such a trip, to a vacation destination like Nice in the middle of the summer, make a fucking reservation.

“What about that hotel over there?” Sarah asked. “They might have some openings? And maybe air conditioning?”

“I thought we were going to stay in a youth hostel,” I said, through gritted teeth. “We can find something. I know it.”

Sarah and I had been best friends, freshman of college year. We’d gone skinny dipping at the reservoir, planned crazy road trips that usually never happened, played pranks on boys we liked; and often trekked to the diner at 1 a.m. for pie with ice cream. She’d left after our sophomore year, to go to culinary school or outdoor survival school or both, I think. We stayed in touch for a little while, but it got harder when she lived in the mountains for a few months. Slowly, we fell out of touch.

Until three years later, when I got a $10,000 settlement from a car accident (I’d been hit by a minivan while riding a moped, and was bruised but otherwise fine, thanks for asking) and decided to say fuck you to the working world and leave for Europe. I’d had full time summer jobs since I’d been 17, and had started working at a law firm two weeks after graduating college (yes, that’s how I got such a big settlement. Next time you’re negotiating with an insurance company, do it in the room your law firm hangs their awards in). I had been planning on going to law school before realizing that I was on the fast track to becoming the most boring person I knew. I wanted an adventure — to do crazy things I’d never done before. Also, that summer was sweltering. I wanted to topless-sunbathe on the beach.

Sarah, who had been dawdling her way towards an MFA at that point, was my only friend who both had the resources and was uncommitted enough to come with. I was going for five months; she would come for the first two weeks. Never mind that we hadn’t really spoken in two years. She was perfect.

Until our plane landed.

As soon as we got to London, she started bringing up the idea that maybe instead of my whirlwind London-Paris-Nice-Barcelona-Portugal in two weeks plan, we could just stay in London for a few extra days.

“But,” I said. “I bought the four-country Eurorail pass.”

“You bought a Eurorail pass?” she asked. “Was I supposed to too?”

As a compromise, we knocked Portugal off the list. Paris was fantastic. Sarah had gone on a magical trip there in high school, and we spent a lot of time visiting those same sights. The Notre Dame was still just as beautiful as it had been back then. The Latin Quarter, slightly less interesting. We tried snails (me, for the first time, her again), and ate lots of pastries. And, before Sarah could decide she wanted to stay for a few extra days in Paris too, we’d left for Nice.

Finally, at the end of the hostel section in my guidebook, I noticed that it suggested we ask at a restaurant for a room. I dragged a sweltering Sarah to the address, and inquired if they had a place for us to stay.

Yes, the hostess there assured us, they had room. “You do?” I asked, I trying not to let the smugness creep into my voice.

“Sure,” she said, “it is on the couch. Is that okay?”

I couldn’t hear Sarah’s reply over my enthusiastic “Yes!”

She then led us to a living room to wait on one of the most disgusting couches I have ever seen. This thing was long, covered in sheets and occupied by the owner’s crippled, blind dog. The dog had obviously been using the couch to relieve itself when it couldn’t make it outside. It also could only use one of its front paws, and so spent most of the time we were in the room with it doing a kind of rock-slither thing across the cushions, occasionally emitting the most blood curdling bark-yelp-moan I’ve ever heard. It was as if, robbed of all the normal attributes that might make a poodle terrifying, it had decided to disgust us into submission. We did start to wonder if we should help it when it almost rocked itself, head-first, crashing onto the floor. At the last minute, the dog saved itself and let out another blood curdling moan. It then promptly threw up.

“You don’t think… that this is our couch, do you?” Sarah asked.

“Can’t be,” I replied, my faith in the power of adventure still unshaken.

And it wasn’t! Our room was worse.

The hostess came back and led us up four flights of stairs to what was going to be our room. She turned on the light and immediately a flock of two-inch cockroaches scurried out of sight. There were molding dishes in a sink and three bunk beds crammed into what felt like a hallway. Backpacks, men’s underwear, magazines and sneakers were strewn everywhere. There were mattresses on the floor. Hesitantly, we asked the hostess if we were the only girls in the place.

“Well,” she said, “I think there’s a girl the boy in that bunk over there sometimes sleeps with.”

“This is your couch,” she said, pointing to a molding, stained piece of foam that was, I guess, folded into the shape of a couch. She unfolded it. Its insides were more torn than its outsides. She flopped the edge down on the floor where moments earlier, an entire town of cockroaches had been mating.

“Here you go,” she said. “Fifteen Euros each.”

While we were settling (read: figuring out how to unpack without having any of our stuff touch the floor) a young Irish man wandered in. “Oh,” he said. “Are you sleeping there?”

“Yes?” we replied. “Sorry, was this your spot?”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “Madame charges me less if I sleep on the floor for the night.”

He moved his pillow from on top of the “couch” we’d just been maneuvering and laid it on the floor in front of one of the bunk beds.

Since Sarah and I got blackout drunk that night (the dinner that came with our room consisted of wine and a baguette), I can’t remember exactly what happened. What I do remember is wandering the streets at 2 a.m., screaming that I had to take out my contacts and my case was in my pack. Sarah, in turn, was screaming about not walking anywhere alone. I think she insisted on coming with me? I’m not sure. Neither of us knew where we were going. I may have screamed at her that she didn’t have to have come on the trip with me in the first place. Somehow we ended up back at the beach, where we spent the night, away from the cockroaches: me contact-free and she making out with an American boy we’d just met.

When we were woken up at 6 a.m. by the men who sell beach chairs, neither of us talked about the fight. We quietly agreed to find another place, any place else, to stay. After one night in an air-conditioned Best Western, we moved on to Barcelona. There the heat seemed to have hit new levels of oppressiveness, in the hundreds and packed with humidity. We were staying in a 20-bed room with no fan and no window. The was an opening in the wall that looked onto an airshaft. The airshaft, with its clear plastic roof, actually made the air ten degrees hotter. Occasionally through the opening wafted the vague smell of sewage.

Sarah got sun poisoning from our first trip to the beach. I hadn’t slept in three days and was starting to get a series of small red bites across my stomach that I hoped wasn’t from bedbugs. We went to a cheesy nightclub where we got hit on by backpackers and danced to American hip hop. You didn’t even want to drink, it was so hot.

“Don’t you want to go to the beach?” I kept asking her, each time hoping that maybe by then the 100-degree temperature in our room had helped her sun poisoning fade. As a result, I spent a lot of time wandering the streets alone, discovering the wholesale jewelry market. Sarah spent a lot of time sleeping.

By the time we flew back to London, she and I were barely talking. Since we’d pushed back our itinerary by so many days, we were getting in just in time for her to make her flight back to America. I rented a cheap hotel room with a shower for us to both freshen up in before we parted ways. At that point the only thing I felt was exhausted and overheated. I also had a strong desire to take a million showers and maybe get this bedbug thing checked out by an expert. I think Sarah just wanted to go home. I’m not sure. We didn’t really talk about it. Instead,

Sarah put on her bag and looked at me.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” I said. “Thank you so much for coming!”

“Totally!” she said, and turned around and went down the stairs to the cab waiting to take her to the airport.

We haven’t talked since. Also, 14,802 people in France alone died from the heat wave.

Erica Sackin found out later that she did indeed have bedbugs from staying in that hostel. But don’t worry, she hasn’t had them since.

“Now we’ll be giving you the ability to control who can see your friends and pages. These fields will no longer have to be public.”
–The Zuckbot has spoken: changes are being made in privacy settings on Facebook. For more entertainment, the conference call is archived here. (“Q (Nick Bilton, New York Times): What are yours plans for the upcoming location service? Will this create another backlash? A (Zuckerberg): We will try not to create another backlash.”)

Thanks to a variety of factors, including the gigantic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, 2010 is poised to be a big year for Atlantic hurricanes. One member of the Colorado State University hurricane forecast team, which is putting out its full forecast next week, said that 2010 could shape up to be a “hell of a year,” and that the forthcoming Atlantic hurricane season could be as active as 2005 — the year of Katrina, Rita, and enough nameable storms that the alphabet was exhausted and we had a Tropical Storm Zeta. Which would seem to indicate that the “hell” in that statement is not being used in an approving sense!

Knifecrime Island Drunks Gearing Up To Get Extra Loaded

To Britain, where the natives cope with the ever-present danger of knife crime by drowning their fears in booze: “A MASSIVE half a million Brits are hungover at work on an average day, a shock survey revealed yesterday. One in ten workers suffers three times a month from a boozy night before.” Such staggering numbers are of great concern to the small group of sober Britons -whose miserable lives on that terrible island are a never-ending nightmare of blade and vomit avoidance-given that the national habit of imbibing anything which might have trace amounts of alcohol in it is sure to rise during the upcoming World Cup. Will Knifecrime Island’s productivity be affected by the increase of drunkenness during the event? Experts say yes, but caution that there is not much of a reason to panic, since the English team’s habit of exiting the tournament early will curtail the period during which its people can overdo it.

12. The clouds never expect it when it rains,
But the sea changes colors,
but the sea does not change.
-”Edge of Seventeen”

11. The loneliness of a one night stand is hard to take
We all chase something and maybe this is a dream
The timeless face of a rock and roll woman while her heart breaks
Oh you know the dream keeps coming even when you forget to feel.
-”After The Glitter Fades”

10. You can ride high atop your pony, I know you won’t fall
’Cause the whole thing’s phony.
-”Bella Donna”

9. Heartbreak of the moment is not endless.
-”Think About It”

8. And the summer became the fall
I was not ready for the winter
It makes no difference at all
’Cause I wear boots all summer long

My eye make up is dark and it’s careless
Some circles around my eyes
Sometimes the real color of my skin
Is my eyes without any shadow.

-Nightbird

7. And he says, “What do you love to do?
Outside your world,
Who spends time with you?
Whom do you love when you’re not working?”
-”Sweet Girl”

6. She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
-”Rhiannon”

5. Run around like a spirit in flight
Fearlessness is fearlessness
I will not forget this night
-”Wild Heart”

4. I’ll follow you down til the sound of my voice will haunt you.
-”Silver Springs”

3. Races are run
Some people win
Some people always have to lose.
-”Races Are Run”

2. She was that kind of lady
Times were hard
But she could come curling ‘round you
Like fingers.
 — “Crying In The Night”

1. So I close my eyes softly
Til I become that part of the wind
That we all long for sometimes.
And to those that I love
Like a ghost through a fog
Like a charmed hour
And a haunted song
And the angel of my dreams.
-”Angel”

Singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks, best known for her solo recordings and her work with the band Fleetwood Mac, turns 62 today.

Emily Gould’s And the Heart Says Whatever

is available now!

Photo by Matt Becker