“When you like a critic, you trust his judgment not because he has a Doctor of Food Letters, although such things do apparently exist. He’s proved himself over a long period. You know what he (or she) likes or dislikes. You get him (or her). Maybe you don’t always agree; but when you’re looking at getting a babysitter and maybe dropping three bills on dinner, you need to minimize risk. For that, the user reviews on Citysearch or Yelp are beyond useless — faceless and contradictory; and the same goes for the blogs. (The blogs at least sometimes take pictures.)”
–This comes in a Defense of the Critics Piece. And is it seriously uh oh? Or LOL? Category confusion? Does the former “Senior Editor of Citysearch” and Grub Street and the current Rachael Ray blogger (!?) have The Dementia?

Are we witnessing the commercial comeback for New-York-rap-besides-Jay-Z that everybody’s been waiting for? Probably not. While you hear hear Lloyd Banks and Juelz Santana’s”Beamer, Benz Or Bentley,” on the city streets these days, the song hasn’t yet cracked Billboard’s national charts. I think it’s just okay. A catchy-if-formulaic beat built off the kind of simple, ascending and descending keyboard line that worked for Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” two years ago, and Mims’ “This Is Why I’m Hot” the year before that, and playboy rhymes about money, cars and women. Much less exciting, in my opinion, than the grittier sounds issued by Banks’ G-Unit colleague Tony Yayo, or Staten Island’s resurgent Wu-Tang Clan. The best thing about the video, I think, is Juelz’ eye-wear. Wu-Tang’s Raekwon was caught on camera in something similar lately, too. So at the very least, we might be witnessing the comeback of one of the greatest and most ridiculous ’80s hip-hip fashion innovations: urban ski goggles.

I don’t think this conceptual project is working out very well.

In a wide-ranging post that begins with the mention of a collaboration between David Byrne and St. Vincent, Byrne discusses the process of writing with other musicians (including, naturally, Brian Eno). The whole thing is worth your time, but this part jumped out at me.

It seems [St. Vincent’s Annie Clark] doesn’t like writing words — and she’s not alone there. Brian hates it as well. I find it to be the most labor-intensive part of songwriting, but when it works, and it doesn’t always, then the song can seem more like something that magically flowed out — something that emerged naturally, rather than something that was made in incremental pieces. But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about “that” (“that” being what the words say literally) and nothing else. They can, if not done well, destroy the pleasant ambiguity that is a lot of the reason we love music so much. That inherent ambiguity means that we can psychologically tailor music to our own needs, sensibilities and situations — but words limit that, or they can. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can’t listen to because they’ve been “ruined” by bad words — my own and others. So I understand some folks’ trepidation, and my own sometime-failures.

I hear that.

For some reason, I’m getting the Time magazines at my door? I had no idea! I can’t stop playing mash-up with their 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years “cover” “package.” (It is a “thinker’s guide” to ideas?) It is the least-specific package ever. Bandwidth Will Save the World! Our Boring White Anxiety Crisis! Remapping the Next American Century! In Defense of the Dropout Economy! The Twilight of the New Black Gold! Bandwidth is the New TV! Hey, some of these sound wayyyy more plausible than what is actually on the magazine.

This is the first and only morning that I’ve woken up and thought “I sure wish I lived adjacent to La Guardia”! (Although I can see it being useful, what with all those flights and stuff.) But yes today our friends in Jackson Heights get to vote in the best special election ever. (We welcome on-the-ground reports from readers). The choice? Three men, including a not-very-interesting, middle-of-the-road (ish) conservative, a fairly consistent working-class liberal Democrat and… in the far corner… in the red trunks… rootin’ tootin’ face-slashin’ Hiram Monserrate! I personally despise Monserrate for non-face-slashing reasons; having sat in on his Veteran Affairs committee meetings when he was a City Councilman, I watched him glad-hand adorable elderly gay veterans, only to later turn around and slash them in the face by opposing gay marriage in New York in the Senate. Ah, the land where you can marry your face-slasher but only if he’s not of the same sex. But your reasons to despise him may be varied and diverse! For people who may be voting in this election, there’s an actually useful breakdown from the Queens Tribune.

It goes pretty much like this:

If Peralta wins, the power in the Senate switches fully to the Democrats, who would hold a 32–30 margin, theoretically giving them all the votes they need to pass whatever they want. If the Republican wins, the Senate will split 31–31, keeping either party short of owning a party-based vote. If Monserrate wins, there is no telling what he will do, having helped throw the Senate into chaos last June when he voted with the Republicans and forced Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith out of power.

CHAOS! NO TELLING! Love it.

Hey now, really, to whom are all these people talking on their phones, all the time, behind the wheel, and in these stores and behind me and even in more improbable places, such as at the pedicurist’s? Are you on the phone that much? Do you people not have text messages or something? I personally have answered my phone to only two people in the last sixteen days, and then I don’t know who the rest of these people are (sorry, I don’t know what the numbers are, and their attending people), and so I let it go to voicemail, except I keep my voicemail full, because I don’t want any more voicemails. The voicemails I already have aren’t doing much for me really. And is there some kind of phone that is just like, text and web and email and stupid apps but no actual telephone system? (Maybe just an emergency dial out thing? You know, for when I’m… hiking. And there are bears. (??)) But that wasn’t what I was writing to say. My actual question was: is it appropriate for a man in his mid-late 30s to put “Telephone” on said outgoing voicemail, which then is followed by the phone company voice saying “Sorry, this voicemail box is full?” Today I might need a few cheap laughs like that. I might actually sit and stare at my phone and dare it to ring all day long.

It’s 4 p.m. on a long Monday. Of course you could get some work done, but your boss is elsewhere, you’ve got a headache from trying to cut back on caffeine, and it’s drizzly outside. Plus they stole an hour of sleep from you over the weekend! Meaning: you’d rather just cruise the net, floating on a raft of hyperlinkage toward that horizon of informational numbness. But before you can say “choking on the pen cap you were absently chewing,” a perfectly outrageous blog post title loads in your browser, begging for-or perhaps openly provoking-your attention.

Do you… ignore the inflammatory headline and continue surfing?

Or immediately register your disgust in the comments section?

Or do you begin reading in earnest, though with some skepticism?

What do you get the man who has been married six times and has fathered at least 20 children? Well, if you’re Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and your recipient is South African President Jacob Zuma, you get him pajamas and bedsheets. Because you just don’t give a fuck, and you probably think it’s pretty funny.

So this is what it’s all about. The Hummingbird Nest Cam is doing nearly 5000 viewers right now, and the hummingbird isn’t even in the nest. The bird apparently flew away some time ago? It’s just some eggs! OH WAIT SHE IS BACK. Oh man, see you later, I have a bird to stare at.