https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P78pl1FUXfA

I am sure the movie will be absolutely ridiculous-what little I remember about the original (and I actually remember the videogame inspired by it way better) was, even to a 9-year-old boy, utterly absurd. But they sure did a hell of a job with this trailer. But as we know, Jeff Bridges makes everything seem just that much cooler. [Via]

I was going to watch this David Letterman clip because it had an Elinor Burkett joke but I only made it to Letterman saying “Anybody been in a cab in New York City? Well congratulations, you’ve cheated death!” and I was done. Late night talk show monologues! What is the deal with them!

This “behind the scenes” teaser trailer from Orbit Books (awesome publishers of scifi and fantasy!) which shows, in time-lapse, How Yer Book Cover Gets Made won’t make authors feel any better about the time and resources devoted to their book covers but it is fascinating and funny.

Have you been outside lately? It is absolutely gorgeous. After the long winter we are finally enjoying the kind of weather which makes you think, “You know what? Yes, life is full of worry and suffering and existential dread. Only a fool would expect otherwise. But just because the human condition is geared toward sorrow and discomfort does not mean that I need to accept that as the sum total of my experience. From now on I am going to enjoy the happy moments as much as possible and do my best to make it through the less cheerful times comforted by the knowledge that a day like today is always just around the corner.” Even better, this is the kind of resolution that nobody expects you to stick to, particularly since it looks like, starting Thursday, we are scheduled for ten solid days of rain. Get out there and smile while you still can, because come the middle of next week we’re all going to be the same irascible cunts we’ve been since Thanksgiving.

I guess we have to go here: “The phone was ringing off the hook. So I prepared a little canapé of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper.” Thus Daniel Angerer, a chef who is garnering a ton of publicity for his restaurant in Soho by serving cheese made from his wife’s breast milk. You will probably have all the normal reactions to this one-”Ewww,” “Gross,” “That’s disgusting,” etc.-but really, is it any more unusual than some of the other items restaurateurs place on their menus in hopes of drawing attention? I could see a compelling argument that this is a lot less obscene that a $1000 burger which gets its price tag from a sprinkle of caviar and gold leaf. Anyway, milk-provider Lori Mason is down with the whole thing, despite some attendant creepiness.

“Some people who clearly have issues have . . . e-mailed me saying, ‘I wasn’t breast-fed as a child, so can I taste your breast milk?’ “ she said.

Mason politely declines the offer.

“I’m not here to walk people through their psychological problems,” she said.

That said, Mason is now prodding her husband to make gelato.

Which will, no doubt, result in even more coverage. In a tough economy it’s good to see people getting creative.

A Long Island courtroom is having trouble putting together a jury because the trial is of a white man who, along with his friends, spent his free time beating brown people, sometimes to death. So far, reports the Times, a substantial number of potential jurors have recused themselves from serving on the trial of said white man who, in this case, killed a guy who worked at a dry cleaners, saying that they are either related to Mexicans or because they despise illegal immigrants. But they’ll get there eventually, once they find people who have no opinion whatsoever on the irrelevant matter of immigration or, I guess, just straight up murdering strangers for no reason.

The current, short-lived mini-vogue at gay circuit parties and megaclubs? Gayvatar sexploitation. It even makes sense conceptually, according to a club publicist: “The drama of the movie parallels the drama in the nightlife world. Everyone’s calling the police on each other, liquor license inspectors, booking celebrities against each other.” Yes, just like on Pandora!

One lone German is helping to fix New York, by way of extreme patchwork anality. (This is sort of like if some American went to Germany and started using pressboard and styrofoam to patch up Berlin, which, come to think of it, sounds fun, BRB!)

Happy International Women’s Day, everybody! (Especially all you FINE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN out there.) Anyway, just in time for your special day, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has released a study showing that men in its member countries spend, on average, half an hour more of leisure time each day than do women. The OECD, reports the Daily Mail, “used the comparative laziness of men as evidence to support calls for new action to bring greater equality for women.” But there is more!

However the report appeared to ignore evidence in the OECD’s files which suggests that in fact the difference in leisure between men and women may be more to do with how each sex chooses to spend its time than with one working harder than the other.

The rich nations’ club reckons that shopping, soaking in the bath, doing your hair, having a lie-in or taking a long lunch all count as work rather than leisure.

Once the extra time women spend shopping and in the bathroom is added to the leisure hours count, British men have only 10 minutes more spare time a day than women.

Hahaha, because, you know, ladies love to shop. And they like to look nice. And sometimes they get so tired they need to lie down!

Okay, though, here’s the thing: Women eventually are going to dominate the workforce, particularly in the upper-echelon positions that have proved so resistant to allowing more than a token number of them thus far, to an unprecedented degree. No matter how strongly the economy bounces back, the “Great Mancession” accelerated this inevitable trend, which you see every day with more women than men are obtaining degrees in higher education and choosing to delay childbirth to better focus on their careers. I am not making an argument that there should not be continued agitation for equality-even though I am a white heterosexual American male, and therefore a member of the most privileged class in the world, I am not so dense as to imagine that there is anything like an equal opportunity even for white American females, let alone women of any other hue-but I do believe that progress on that front will come no matter what.

When it does, and women are finally able to control the levers of power where the choices are made about what skills are prized and what sorts of activities are valued, I think we’re going to be looking at a very different world. I don’t think that men-probably through a combination of general indolence and an inability to reflect on how deeply in our own favor the deck has been stacked-have actually thought through the reality of a world in which they are not the ones who assign the definitions. But I’m hopeful about it. All I ask is that you ladies will are kind enough to classify “sitting around on the couch, drinking” as “personal care.” Because, you know, I am already working AROUND THE CLOCK at that, and I’d like to be recognized for my efforts. Thanks!

There are about 2000 extremely quotable things in this Jim Behrle essay on how to become America’s Most Famous Ever Poet. It is fantastic. May I just quote three???

1. “We might believe that what the media term ‘buzz’ gets created organically-that everyone just starts tweeting about Jersey Shore episodes on their own, without any prompting. But it actually takes a concerted effort across a spectrum of sources to create the phenomena we have come to know and love. I learned this in the publicity office of a big-time Manhattan publisher, where most of my time was spent on my knees.” And!

2. “What was the name of the poet who, one year ago, read a poem at President Obama’s inauguration? [A few people name Elizabeth Alexander.] No one knows. But Maya Angelou wrote Clinton’s first inauguration poem and segued that into a dream we all dream. If she comes to speak at a university or college, a car must pick her up at the airport-a car with no poets aboard. That’s literally written into the contract. Whoever is driving, he or she does so without speaking to Maya Angelou. The contract is very specific. She travels to the venue and away without having to read anyone’s poems or comment on any manuscripts. She is driven back to the airport by maybe the same deaf-mute non-poet. And then she is gone, check in hand. That is the dream-a poet so important and renowned that she literally is not contractually obligated to deal with poets or poetry whatsoever.

It is a sweet, sweet dream.”

3. “Relentlessness does not come easily to poets. They are generally a stoned and timid bunch, playing with their beards or sitting mousily with hands and ankles crossed. Poets do very little 24/7, except perhaps worry that they’re not as widely popular as they should be. Worry does come naturally to the poet-it must be suppressed with booze or sex (or in my case, in which neither of those is a possibility, baseball). And how does one imagine a career being built out of all of these weirds used weirdly? There are many paths through the art. Having enough money to sit in a log cabin all day watching foxes make out, with berries on one’s breath. Having an entire university beneath one’s command. Ability to drag friends in for a little merlot and sloppy sex with students.”

WAIT ONE MORE.

4. “Jay Leno, not Conan O’Brien, is the future. Why? Because Leno is more devious, sinister, and craven. These are things to aspire to be. Jay Leno would reach through your skin and deep into your stomach to fetch an undigested Skittle if he were hungry for one. That’s the spirit of Ruthless 24/7 Careerism in a strawberry shell. Make a deal with Russia to not invade Russia and then, when Russia least expects it, invade Russia.”