Next time your boyfriend tells you he can’t make it over because the trains are all re-routed, point him here.

Of course, for some, the good times are right now: “According to a study from Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Studies, unemployment for those in the top income decile-individuals earning more than $150,000 a year-was 3% in the fourth quarter of 2009. That compares with unemployment of 31% for the bottom 10% of income, and unemployment of 9% for the middle decile. The differing rates of underemployment-including those working part-time for economic reasons-are also notable. Underemployment for the top 10% was 1.6%, while the bottom was 21%. In other words, the top 10% is experiencing what economists would consider full employment.”

Tom: “Even with requisite journalistic care (including round-robin meetings with editors), it would seem that a [David] Paterson story should have been ready to be printed by Friday morning, especially since any yet-to-be confirmed charges against the governor could always run in a later article. Instead, the Times has yet to publish. While there may be extenuating factors, we have reached the point when the Times’ care at being journalistically responsible has become irresponsible.”
Choire: I mean. How do you even come to that conclusion?
Tom: It is crackers.
Tom: It might be a new low in media-critical dumbshittery.
Tom: “Any yet-to-be-confirmed charges against the governor could always run in a later article.”
Tom: So then what would go in the “Paterson story” that “should have been ready” by now?
Tom: What if there is only one charge, but they don’t have it nailed down yet?
Choire: Also, you know, traditionally newspapers do actually publish articles on a daily basis, sometimes about the same people or stories as those stories evolve? But they are articles with things that have a thing to say?
Choire: It “would seem” that they “should have” already asked about those rumors, to people who have nothing to do with the situation and don’t know anything.
Tom: And this goes back to the business about how dare reporters ask about scandalous unsupported rumors.
Tom: Not all reporting is performative!
Tom: Some reporting is still an attempt to figure out whether unconfirmed claims are true or false.
Choire: And sometimes that takes some time?
Tom: And sometimes you ask about the terrible thing and the answer turns out to be, no, it is not true, and then you chuck that notebook in the pile and find something else to write about.
Choire: That happens!
Choire: Also very frequently one cannot reconcile accounts.
Choire: That is frustrating!
Choire: I’m still struck by “a newspaper that will do things its own way on its own schedule.”
Choire: As opposed to… any other media outlet?
Tom: Well, didn’t Renata Adler have something to say about that?
Tom: About the question of when a writer chooses to say the thing that the writer is in the midst of writing.
Choire: Oh I believe she did.
Choire: You mean when, the New York Times wrote about her that: “As it stands, Ms. Adler and Simon & Schuster, a unit of Viacom, are either cheaply smearing Judge Sirica-with legal impunity-or they have evidence…. But neither the publisher nor the author shows any urgency about resolving the issue, either by retracting the accusation or establishing its accuracy.”
Tom: That was the one, yes.
Tom: Sauce for the goose, I suppose, but I don’t much care for this flavor of stupid-sauce on any fowl at all.

by Matt Ealer

Last weekend, I didn’t watch the Super Bowl either. But it was neither political nor an aesthetic preference for the alternate programming made available by the NFL’s hydra-like presence and counter-presence in our broader culture. I had just come off the crippling debilitation of an internet-fast brought on by some malware thing, and I really just plum forgot! Reveling in the ability to stream things off the Internet, trolling YouTube, burning Camels with Teddy Pendergrass, I was bathing in the life that had felt so neglected lo those many (couple of) days.

And on the “related videos” beside a video from some stoopid group of local punks was an MTV performance of “New York City Cops” by the band the Strokes and I watched it and I thought, hey. And: this isn’t so bad? Why did I always hate these guys again? And then I went and listened to the whole first album all the way through and I continued to think that!

Which is a funny thing, but not an altogether uncommon one. I can remember very specifically as a teen, surprising my cousin at a summer day camp by picking him up in my mother’s stead, blasting Led Zeppelin while he expressed his relief. “You saved me, Matt. You saved me from Frank Sinatra.” And we had a hearty laugh because, oh, who would listen to such dreck? Frank Sinatra didn’t even write his own tunes! Surely my mother is insane. Of course now, I take Francis Albert as some sort of totem spirit animal and think that, while they sure wrote some great songs, Zeppelin was always kind of silly. And they taught a couple of generations of Real Rock Radio DJs to use the saying “GET THE LED OUT” ad nauseum.

And I know someone who-while readily admitting that she would probably like the thing-has put conscious effort into avoiding ever knowingly consuming the music on The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs just because she does not want to be associated with the type of people that are associated with liking 69 Love Songs. (Full disclosure: I still haven’t seen Avatar for quite the same reason! (SORRY ALL OF YOU?))

I thought about Julian Casablancas and his friends more later and I think my resistance was all some younger-me “authenticity” issues. Like, they felt very calculated when they came out, with the hair and the clothes and the equipment they used to make the guitar tones and the drum patterns and the vocal distortion and EVERY-damn-thing, it was all so meticulously put together that younger-me scanned it as “fake.” But really? They were, yes, being super-meticulous about all those trappings while also being meticulous about writing good, scuzzy pop songs.

Which is all very funny because I think that where a lot of my hate came from was a budding form of anti-rockism-I hated so much the idea that MTV and Rolling Stone were selling to me, that they were “BRINGING ROCK BACK” and that “I HAVE SEEN ROCK AND ROLL’S FUTURE” and so on and so forth. And then they put Slash in that one video and I was all, “Oh please, gag me with a spoon.”

But then again, not even all that is true. Because really, when I first saw the “Last Night” video, I didn’t quite have a “this x is our y” moment, but when those mussed tresses came up in stark relief against those 70s game show brights, I definitely did start thinking along those very lines. I actually liked-earnestly responded well to-all those carefully primped and polished signifiers. But somewhere along the line, a Buddyhead take-down glaring back at me from the other side of one glowing Parade magazine-style profile from the Respected Rock Press too many, I switched 180 degrees. (Oh believe me, I realize the contradiction in claiming a nascent anti-rockism in a kid reading Buddyhead and pre-poptimist Pitchfork and FakeJazz, but hey! I was younger-me! I was impressionable.)

I drop those names because I think that this is all related to this thing on which I am talking at you right now, this Internet. Because, even apart from the issue of illegal downloading, there is a ridiculous amount of noise to sift through, in terms of identity-consumption, now. Even if you still go to movies and shows and buy records, the amount of voices pointing you in virtually limitless directions is so vast as to be deafening. For all the talk of how homogeneous the blogs are and how Pazz & Jop was; even people who are plugged into this stuff can let so much of what they were “supposed to” listen to fall through the cracks.

So. What to do? Well, as this is the internet, you complain. My views on the band Vampire Weekend have followed the following trajectory: pleasant acceptance, violent and self-righteous disdain, cynical musing, and, now, pleasant but somehow also cynical acquiescence. And I don’t even listen to Vampire Weekend. (Though I did use two precious eMusic future-credits on a Vampire Weekend single one month, and got yelled at by a cross-the-hall neighbor for playing it too loud in my second floor walk-up in Glover Park. (WHITEST SENTENCE EVER WRITTEN?)) Because, as Mike Barthel so succinctly pointed out, they have become (have had to become?) masters at gaming this situation. (For much, much more on this particular internet fracas, Nitsuh Abebe’s coverage has been peerless.) Or maybe they’re not doing anything, and we’re the ones doing all the gaming.

The Internet, and the cultural glut brought on by technology totally apart from the Internet, has brought us to a situation-since we could never possibly in a normal human lifetime consume all the things we might find enjoyable-we grab things in snippets and soundbites and half-formed conceptions based on half-read blog posts and yet, it all gets heightened. You like Vampire Weekend? You are a privileged white person who goes on cultural rape cruises! You don’t like Taylor Swift? You are a bad feminist! You do like Taylor Swift? You are a bad feminist!

Ten years later, you may quietly admit to yourself that “Mansard Roof” was a pleasant song or you tear up at the “Love Story” video and think about what might have been.

And you know? There’s nothing really wrong with any of this! If I had a time machine-a time machine that wasn’t very good and could only be used to benefit myself in the most useless and navel-gazing of ways-would I go back and buy Is This It the day it came out on 180 grams of virgin vinyl? No. I would not. I actually wouldn’t trade in being a snotty kid with the world all lined up in neat little boxes for the world. Because then I wouldn’t have the fun of knocking them all down today.

I am listening to Room on Fire for the first time as I type this. And I’m rather enjoying it! I mean, the band’s image is still a little Gawker Stalker for my taste, and I won’t be papering my room in Albert Hammond Jr. clippings any time soon. But this sure has a good beat, and, if I were to stand up into a position where I can’t type, which I will not do, I certainly could dance to it.

Matt Ealer promises to still support the scene, man. (And would like to thank Maura Johnston for asking the question that drew all this out to begin with.)

Who is the world’s most famous living Canadian? I think the answer is pretty clearly Avril Lavigne, but opinions differ.

You know what? It is a golden age for cheese. I had some last night, and it was good stuff! [Via]

It is now confirmed that Harold Ford has never filed a New York tax return, even though he says he lives here and he’s worked in New York since 2007. On the upside for him, you’re not a real New Yorker until you don’t pay your taxes, so I guess it’s a wash.

It takes a certain amount of testicularity to say something like this with a straight face-if indeed their faces were straight-so you’ve got to admire the top brass at Politico for this one: “We know we’re part of the problem — and we’ll surely continue to run stories about [Sarah Palin.] But — we’re looking at you, top newspaper editors and network executives — listen to your grumbling political reporters when they try to tell you why going overboard on the Hockey Mom beat isn’t wise.” I mean, they’re not gonna, but you totally should.

If you are planning on attending this weekend’s Valentine’s Day Pillow Fight in San Francisco, be warned: They city’s Department of Public Health wants you to know that it’s not all ironic whimsy or whatever. You are AT RISK.

Hospital records show that 17 individuals with a range of injuries were admitted to the emergency room after last year’s pillow fight in Justin Herman Plaza.

“Folks should be aware of the danger of corneal abrasion, penetrating injuries, and even orbital fractures,” according to [Director of Health Mitchell H. Katz, MD].

While feathers are soft and pillows as a whole don’t tend to injure, a quick scrape of the edge of some fabric can cause serious harm, said Katz. Not to mention the occasional wild swing that results in the collision of a person’s clenched fist with a sensitive region like the eye. We recommend refraining from such public displays of violence, even if they are out of an innocent desire to have fun.

See, love hurts, but even lack of love hurts! Take care, kids.

Nothin’ but good times ahead: “The Obama administration projected Thursday that the unemployment rate would fall this year by only a little, if at all, and would remain well over 6 percent until 2015.” But hey, they’re predicting that we’ll be back down to 8.2% by the time Obama is up for re-election, at which point the “Unemployment Real Feel” will make it seem like a workable 7%.