Thom Yorke, who’s spent the last few weeks taking a break from his Radiohead-fronting duties to play a handful of shows with his all-star backing band Atoms For Peace, threw Joy Division’s oft-covered “Love Will Tear Us Apart” into his set last night. Somehow the Internet has not broken wide open and swallowed itself as a result of this particular song making its way to YouTube! Is it Flea’s fault? [Via]

Oh, thank God. Poor Wilson Goode almost had the world’s worst flashback.

by T. J. Clarke

“You have sex with my mother.”

His tone is flat. He could have said, “I have a dog.” Or, “I ate burritos for lunch.”

I can feel my cheeks burning. It is idiotic, but I sincerely believed, all these weeks that Nan and I had spent together, pretending to go to the movies but instead ending up in my apartment, fucking each other madly like teenagers, that Devon didn’t know, didn’t even have a clue. But he knew all along.

“I am sorry” is all I know to say.

A smirk flits across his lips and is quickly gone. He shoots me a look that confirms his superiority. He is the man of this household. He knows its secrets. I want to go back into the kitchen and tell Nan that it is all over. I am not ready for this. It was foolish to think that I could have been.

It is nighttime. Nan is inside the house cooking dinner. I tried to help, but was sent outside to “check if Devon wants a salad.” I understood that Nan wanted me to talk to Devon more. Not necessarily to become fast friends, but to get to know each other so we could have something to talk about during dinner. Our outings are becoming less frequent. We only had sex once this past week. I sense that she wants to get back into her old routine: work, groceries, then dinner with Devon, when they catch each other up on their lives. She has lived this way for the last 15 years. Who am I to change it?

Nan had Devon young. I am twenty-seven. Devon is seventeen, still a child. But at this moment, Devon has all of the power. Warm light streams out onto the deck from the dining room windows. Devon dribbles the basketball to the far corner of the yard. A crisp, hollow twang springs up from the ground every time the ball hits the concrete. He turns and aims. The ball traces an arc and lands directly in the hoop. He is full of confidence, the grace of youth.

He is alone on the court, but he plays as if surrounded by fierce opponents. He moves quickly against a first defender, looks for a teammate, sees no openings. So he goes for it alone. He jumps. Layup. He scores.

“Great shot.” I can try.

The neighbor’s porch light had come on. But Devon’s face is still half hidden in the evening darkness. I can’t see but I know the smirk is back. Like a warrior collecting his weapon after a victorious battle, he runs to the yard’s edge to retrieve the ball.

“Do you want a salad?” I haven’t forgotten my purpose for coming out here.

He isn’t listening to me. Or at least he is pretending not to hear. He throws another perfect arc. The ball spins twice around the rim of the hoop and then falls in.

In the kitchen Nan is making beef rendang. Three plates are set out on the dining room table. The tangy, warm scent of tamarind and cardamom brings my mind back to the first time we had sex. She was warm and sweet. Nan sees me walk in and gestures me toward the stove. She hands me a small plate full of potatoes and beef, all carefully cut into small pieces.

“Try the wine with this,” she says.

I eat a pice of the beef. “Devon knows.”

“What does Devon know?” Her mind is focused on the multiple, bubbling pots on the stove.

“Devon knows that we are having sex.” I am surprised at how sharp and squeaky my voice sounds. I am no match for this kid.

“Oh, of course he does. I told him.” Nan says this without looking up.

“What?” Hot steam rises from the pot containing the rendang. The sauce has almost completely evaporated. Dinner will be ready in no time. “When?” I managed to squeak out another word.

She is looking at me now. “I don’t remember, a couple of weeks ago, when we first started. Why are you so surprised? He is not a kid.”

Of course. Of course she would have told him. The powers have shifted again. Now I am the child, the fool who thought lies are the best alternatives to truth.

“Look, I didn’t tell him anything else. But he has to know what your role in my life is.” She knows she is right. “Can you let Devon know that dinner is ready? And check your phone, it rang a couple of times.”

There is a text message from Dree: I think Jason and I broke up.

Previously: Part 1

T. J. Clarke is the pen name of a struggling writer. She lives in Brooklyn.

I used to like volcanoes. What’s not to like, I thought, right? Huge mountains that explode and spew fire and hot lava everywhere? Nothing if not totally exciting and fascinating. I enjoyed the volcanoes in Tarzan and King-Kong and Godzilla movies as a child. I did the requisite science project in third grade-papier-mache, rubber tubing, baking soda and vinegar, etc. Fun and educational, I thought. I learned how to play Eddie Van Halen’s riff from “Eruption” on guitar and everything. Vesuvius, Etna, Krakatoa, Mount St. Helens, you name it: If it was a volcano, I thought it was pretty darn cool.

Well, not anymore. Now, I say: FUCK VOLCANOES!!! Godamn useless, silicone-shard-pollutant-spewing, airplane-engine-destroying, travel-plans-ruining stinking lumps of molten crap! Some people who haven’t taken a vacation in a very long time were supposed to be leaving for Paris tomorrow. But this stupid Icelandic force majeure blows up and becomes a majeure pain-in-the-ass. Volcanoes suck! I hope a tornado or an earthquake comes and knocks them all down. I hope a fucking asteroid storm from outer space rains down and blasts them all back down into the liquid-gaseous core of the earth where they belong. Motherless piece-of-shit geologic…

Wait. Scratch that. I just had an idea. In light of the news of out of West Bengal, where police are investigating a possible human sacrifice (a story that prompted BBC News to print the incredible sentence, “Human sacrifice is illegal in India.”), let me try a different approach. Please, please, Oh, mighty Eyjafjallajokull: Please, Oh great one, please cease sending your plume of ash so high into the heavenly flight paths. I beseech you, I pray to you. I come on bended knee. I have brought you a gift! Well, I haven’t brought him yet. But I am prepared to bring him, if you would so wish. He is not a virgin. Really, not even close, he’s done some horri… but I think you’ll find him a suitable offering. His name is Ted. Ted O’Brien. He’s a close friend of mine. I’ve known him since high school. It would bring me great sorrow to see him cast into the bubbling cauldron of your gaping maw. But if that would appease you and get you to stop this terrible vacation-ruining display of nature’s awesome power, he’s well, sacrificeable?

What exactly is News gossipmonger Joanna Molloy trying to do with her bizarre screed on how she could never even think of sleeping with many-times-married CNN yakmeister Larry King, even as she spends 564 words doing exactly that? Is it misguided satire of the way ladies’ sexuality is brushed under the rug as they age? Did a slightly tepid item on some D-lister fall through at the last minute? Is she engaging in an extended troll for incisive comments like “Larry’s already dreaming of his next wedding cake,it doesn’t matter to him what the bride looks like,he love’s that wedding cake !”? Or is this some weird attempt to play hard to get in front of an audience — and make off with the cash she mentions over and over again in the piece? If it’s the latter, well, hats off to you, lady.

by Robert Lanham

One of the familiar-looking strangers in my shared writing studio thinks I enjoy watching videos of barefoot women pumping gas pedals with dildos attached to them. I can’t blame her since said video was on my monitor when she walked by this morning. I contemplated telling her I was researching a weird phenomenon known as pedal pumping, but realized this would sound about as plausible as suggesting that men read Black Tail for the articles-which incidentally are excellent.

Truth be told, I generally feel pretty conventional when it comes to fetishes since, well, I don’t have any. (Unless they’re buried in some dark, pervy recesses of my mind that will one day awaken and compel me to dress like a plushy squirrel in a cop’s hat.)

But when it comes to pedal pumping, sometimes referred to as cranking or revving, I just feel confused. In case you’re not familiar, pedal pumping is a car/foot fetish for men who enjoy watching women pump the gas, generally in vintage cars, until they strand themselves by flooding the engine or draining the battery. Um, what? Countless variations on this scenario exist-girls getting cars stuck in mud, Asians revving mopeds in the desert, stranded pedal pumpers with “stinky work shoes.” According to The Daily Beast, Michelle McGee even confesses to making a few pedal pump videos. So evidently there’s a market for painted hags who look like Skeletor pumping the gas with swastikas on their toes too. Most of the videos make up for their poor production values with sophisticated dialogue like “start, godammit,” “no, I don’t wanna be stuck here,” and “fuck this Mustang.”

A search for the fetish yields over 200,000 Google returns and thousands of YouTube videos. There are hundreds of websites that cater to the fetish including pedaltube.com, asianpedalpumpers.com, pedalteens.com and carstuckgirls.com. [All sort of/not really/but kind of Not Safe For Work?]

As informative as you’d expect them to be, leadfootimports.com provides a compelling exegesis of the fetish by outlining the six different styles of pedal pumping: “Slow & Soft, Sensual, Seductive, Sexy (hence sexual), and Savage.” I especially enjoyed their explanation of savage pumping:

Savage pedal pumping is pretty much the same as sexy pumping, but with a really mad and crazed eager attitude. When you pump the gas pedal, savagely, you go to Pedal to the Metal all out war with your car. You want to make it down-right, absolute that it is YOU who is boss, queen, and Goddess. YOU are the one that’s total control of the car and you treat it like the most horrendous bitch you despise off the face of the earth…. Stomp, and smash the flying fuck outta that gas pedal.

Another popular site, pedalmall.com, has some well-crafted blurbs adjacent to their downloadable videos that pedal pumping aficionados are sure to find irresistible:

[Dolly] is a fast learner watch her sexy snow white virgin foot press the gas pedal harder and harder as she finds her new addiction. Engine Revving…. This clip was created to show you how sexy a young girl looks revving a car that has never sat in the drivers seat before. True First time. The audio levels of the engine are mind blowing as her foot takes control of the pedal.

And my personal favorite:

Hot blonde pumps her pedals for you in her hot pink pumps. Get a peek at her white panties as her skirt rides up. She revs her engine loudly before leaving for a drive. See the big puddle of brake fluid she leaves behind.

Brake fluid?

It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that the gas pedal is a phallic symbol. Dr. Susan Block-she’s been on those creepy Real Sex and Cathouse shows-says this:

The basic kinetic movement is a masturbatory motion: the muscles releasing and contracting as the foot rubs repetitively against a phallic symbol, which is the gas pedal. Men think of themselves as cars. The ‘vroom’ of the engine reminds them of their own libidos being revved up by this hot woman.

But there’s clearly more at play here. Pedal pumping appeals to men who enjoy fantasizing about rescuing stranded damsels in distress, which introduces some potentially bizarre power issues. (Not to mention a few trite jokes my grandpa would love about women being terrible drivers.) Also, I find it interesting that in most of the videos, the cars remain stuck, unable to “perform.” Erectile dysfunction anyone? The whole scenario could be interpreted as a metaphor for a man’s feelings of inadequacy.

Clearly I’m in the wrong business, because I talked to several insiders who are pedal-pumping their way to decent money selling videos online. Evidently, there’s a big market for pervs who want custom videos that they script themselves. In fact, there are dozens of websites that allow users to submit their own car-stuck fantasies, most of which allow users to select a girl, shoe type, clothing, and of course the type of car they’d like to see featured. Pedalpulse for instance, has a rather diverse selection of cars available including a 1979 Corvette, a 1970 Trans Am, a 1969 T-Bird and a 1997 Nissan Maxima. This of course begs the question, who the fuck is requesting the Nissan Maxima?

“Scarlet,” a redheaded pedal-pumper who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, has been making custom videos with her boyfriend “ShisHKbob” since 2004.

“This started out as a way to make some side money and now it’s our full-time job,” she told me in an email. “We have the wonderful opportunity to work from home, having been fully self-employed since July 2006.”

On her site, Pump That Pedal, Scarlet invites users to write their own scenarios to be filmed. “No rambling or gibberish please!” she instructs beside an online form where custom screenplays can be submitted. Surprisingly, pedal pumping fetishists sometimes need to be reminded to behave.

There is nothing overtly pornographic about the videos Scarlet produces-”we have one exception in which one of our models was in lingerie,” she wrote-but I asked her if fantasizing about airheaded damsels in distress could be interpreted as being misogynistic.

“I don’t see how anyone could think there’s a hatred for women regarding pedal pumping,” Scarlet said. “Categories like revving don’t have anything to do with distress. It’s more about the power of the vehicle. However, if you’ve heard these statements from those who have no clue about what pedal pumping is, then there ya go… This was an odd question since I’ve never heard anyone suggest misogyny in pedal pumping.”

Rico, co-owner of the German website PedalTube, says he first heard about the fetish about eight years ago. He launched his site back in 2004 and has made hundreds of custom movies since. (Pedaltube also features work from producers in the United States.) Rico agrees that there’s nothing misogynistic about the fetish. His clients “love women” and enjoy “role playing the hero,” he says. A majority of the requests Rico receives involve vintage cars being revved by barefooted women. When asked about the strangest video he ever filmed, one stood out above the rest.

“I remember one special scene,” said Rico. “The girl is in a hurry because she has to pee, but the gearshift makes some trouble, so she has to drive backwards very fast to reach her house right in time.”

As I said, I don’t understand.

A Typical Pedal Pumping Video.

I still don’t understand.

YouTube’s Most Watched Pedal Pump Video (Does Not Actually Contain Pedal Pumping!)

Similar to traditional porn where multiple positions are filmed, this one features a girl stuck in mud, stuck in sand, and stuck in snow.

For Some Time, YouTube’s Highest Rated Pedal Pump Video Was a Crocs Video, Not Unlike This One

Why the Fetish Primarily Appeals to Straight Men

In an apparent attempt at tenderness, frequent man-pumping YouTube poster “Reebocks Man” refers to his truck as “Jimmy.” Still, you just know those nasty-ass Reeboks smell like Satan’s armpit.

Previously: Winterband

Robert Lanham is the author of the beach-towel classic The Emerald Beach Trilogy, which includes the titles Pre-Coitus, Coitus, and Afterglow. More recent works include The Hipster Handbook and The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right. He is the founder and editor of FREEwilliamsburg.com.

Daryl F. Gates, the former Los Angeles police chief who once suggested that black people were more likely to die from chokeholds because of clogged arteries and whose mea culpa for his department’s poor handling of the Rodney King riots was, “Clearly that night we should have gone down there and shot a few people. In retrospect, that’s exactly what we should have done. We should have blown a few heads off,” has died at the age of 83.

Photographer Victor Huang was diving off Wellington, New Zealand recently when an octopus snatched his video camera and swam off with it while it was filming. Huang gave chase, and got the camera back after a few minutes, lucky for all of us. The octopus has a nice eye for close-up action sequences and effectively establishes a dramatic tone through the use of the natural lighting available in a bed of kelp. “He swam away very quickly like a naughty shoplifter,” Huang said: “I honestly believe that it saw the bright blue digital camera and went,’Oh I need that,’ you know?”

We really, really do.

When my German-American mother married my black-American Indian father, her dad and stepmom disowned her immediately. They would have been upset had she married an Irishman — “Those people kiss the filthy Blarney Stone,” my grandfather would say — but a dark man was practically incomprehensible, like marrying an ironing board. “Race-mixing,” as my grandfather called it, was an abomination.

The last thing my mom remembers her dad saying as she walked out of his modest Akron home is, “I never want you in our lives again.”

Because she is a deeply kind, God-fearing woman, a couple weeks later, at Christmas, my mother went shopping for gifts for the parents who had abandoned her. She wrapped them neatly and asked her sister, her best friend, to bring them to their parents. A few days later, my mother returned home to a patio filled with the gifts she’d sent, still wrapped. Attached to the bundle was a note: “When I said never, I meant never.”

When I think of my mother, I can’t help but think of the head-spinning ignorance she endured to marry my dad and have me, from the familial isolation to the sidelong glances to the post-divorce date that ended when her suitor saw my picture and said, “You didn’t tell me you were married to a black.”

And so it went that I thought of all these things when I filled out my census form, staring at the sentence “Mark one or more boxes.”

Though what certain people perceive me to be varies depending on where I am in the world — in New York, it’s Puerto Rican; Miami, Cuban; Europe, Spanish — if a few dozen Americans saw me robbing a bank, I’m fairly certain most of them would describe me to the police as a “black guy.” Like a parolee who returns to crime when nobody will hire him, as a teenager looking for an identity, I decided it was simplest to become what people thought I was. I made certain my “blackness” was to the fore of my personality, joining the black student’s union, wearing Fubu religiously, hiding my Jawbreaker CDs from friends and wearing my Yankees hats cockeyed, a la my hero, Method Man. But by 17, I realized, as many people do, that I didn’t have a sense of being, I had a costume — a dope one, complete with lots of fresh kicks and ill music, but a costume nonetheless.

It was around then that I began to wonder what my mom had thought of my Afrocentrism. Undoubtedly, the crucible in which she forged much of her adult life was one of inhuman (or perhaps very human) rejection, most of which she took because a wellspring of love for my father and me compelled her to do so. And yet there I had been, checking off the “African American” box at the doctor’s office while she paid the bill and stroked my feverish head with her white hand. Remembering times like those, I’d never felt more mean and aloof. Most teenagers tell their parents they can’t understand them because they’re uncool or too old; I told my mom she couldn’t understand me because I was only from her, not of her.

Unlike Glenn Beck et al., I like the census. I don’t necessarily pore over the information it ultimately provides — though that’s important, I know. Instead, I like the fact that it forces us, in the solitude of our homes, to confront questions we would probably be content to constantly ignore otherwise: Who am I (which sounds corny but really isn’t)? Where do I come from? How do I want the world to know me?

I can understand why Barack Obama checked only “Black, African Am., or Negro” on his census form, leaving the “White” box blank entirely. It’s something I would have done myself at one time — and I never even had to worry about political backlash, which John Judis discusses nicely at The New Republic.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t do the same.

In a way, though it means he doesn’t really identify with me, I’m glad Obama has a desire to be seen as the first black president of the United States. But I can’t help but wonder if my grandfather, who died certain the races should never combine, wouldn’t have wanted it that way.

Cord Jefferson is a writer-editor living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in National Geographic, GOOD, The Root and on MTV.

Britain’s first-ever televised election debate between the leaders of its three major parties occurred last night, and the press is rather unanimous in declaring Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg the winner, mainly because nobody knows who he is so he started with low expectations. The easily excited British media is in full hyperventilation mode today, asserting that Clegg’s strong performance and ability to not be the other two guys will result in a hung parliament, but it is early still: There are two more debates, which means there’s plenty of time for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to savagely beat Conservative leader David Cameron with his own podium. (British betting firm Ladbroke’s is listing that eventuality at 3–5 odds, making it slightly more likely than Cameron stabbing Brown with an extremely elegant knife that has been in his family for seven generations.) If you are at all interested in the debate itself, the extremely condensed version above will give you a fairly accurate feel of its flavor, but it is mostly rather depressing: The candidates are more or less adopting the tone and tactics of politicians from the televised talking point delivery shows in our own country. America has somehow managed to diminish hundreds of years of glorious parliamentary debate simply by the power of example. Yay us!