https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1VsGyPYMCs

I would think Annie Lennox’s “Why” would be high on the list of most challenging songs to cover. (Ask Justin Bond.) So, much credit to Justin “Bon Iver” Vernon, who took on the 1992 classic at Brooklyn Vegan’s Haitian benefit concert at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday.

Besides Lennox’ giant church bell of a voice, the scruffy Wisconsinite had to compete with the original’s lush, miasmic production-the chorus of backing vocal tracks, layers and layers of airy synth, plinkling strings and percussion and piano notes. It’s a lot, and it’s gorgeous. Plus, the song is something of a women’s anthem. And Bon Iver is a guy. So, more power to him for pulling it off. With simple four-piece support from St. Vincent, he threw his falsetto out front and really showed how the beauty of the song comes from the basic chords and melody. He even got the audience to help out on the chorus-”louder,” he kept telling them, “even actually louder now!”-so he could get his Annie on for the song’s signature coda. “This is how I feel! Do you know how I feel? You don’t know I feel!”

It reminds me of when Maxwell covered Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work.” (Cake, on the other hand, gets no credit for playing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” as a droll joke. Boo.) It takes balls to get up in front of an audience and think like a lady.

It’s really the only dream of the phobic: to have a job where you don’t have to fly. This is where Howard Wolfson made his biggest mistakes-signing on to national campaigns, where he was regularly forced to either drive huge distances overnight or, God forbid, get on an airplane. Now Wolfson and his ugly sweaters have made the best possible extremely weird choice: the long-time campaign operator is going to work for Mike Bloomberg at City Hall? His job is to “sell” proposals issuing from the Bloomberg Everybody Live Right Think Tank? (You know, the one where they don’t let us smoke or eat fat or sell guns on the street.) He is coming in at a $200K a year salary, that is pretty much just below the longer-term deputy mayors, and just as much as the press secretary, Stu Loeser, makes. There will be some meowing about all this in City Hall. And the worst part is he’ll probably still have to fly sometimes, to go “sell” the mayor’s schemes at like the Conference of Mayors and stuff. Sucka!

Female Innumeracy Anxiety Transmitted Through Classroom Inculcation

So it turns out lady teachers are making little ladies nervous about their abilities in math, probably because the lady teachers are worried about their own math skills, since everyone knows girls are no good at math. But have they done any studies on whether the lady teachers are helping the little girls feel pretty? Because I bet they totally are! Also: Larry Summers was unavailable for comment.

Dear Tubby.

I’m sorry I told you I was a banker.

This was in the mid-90s, after college. You’d graduated a couple years ahead of me. We’d never known each other very well, but we shared some close friends, and you’d never been anything but very nice and very friendly. Your nickname, I would think, said more about your personality than it did your weight. You were jovial, and certainly not that tubby. You played on the soccer team.

We hadn’t seen each other in a while. Probably more than a year. I was living in the East Village, freelancing for a music magazine, smoking pot all day and dabbling in harder drugs when they’d come around. You were living in New York, too. Or at least working there, since that day-it was a Friday, I think-we ended up on the same train out to Tarrytown, where our friend Todd was having a party. Todd shared a house with two other guys. There was a pool table in the basement. His parties were fun, even if they tended to fill up with a meatier sort of Westchester dude than I usually hung out with.

An old girlfriend who I was still in love with had been visiting from out of town that week, staying in my apartment but not having sex with me. She’d brought some drugs with her and we’d done them that morning and still not had sex. So I was in a bad mood.

Besides the Westchester dudes, Todd’s parties also drew a crowd of people from our college who had settled in New York. I liked these people, generally. I liked you. But being all coming-down and unrequited, I was not looking forward to seeing people with whom I’d have to talk about how and what I was doing. In hindsight, it’s clear that I should not have gone to the party at all. Why did I even get on the train? I don’t know. Something to do except sit around and listen to records, I guess. My old girlfriend had gone home. Something to do to get my mind off her, maybe. And I’d told Todd that I would.

Metro-North out of Grand Central was packed on a Friday afternoon. Hazy-brained and crazy-haired, unshaven in an old sweatshirt and army fatigues, I felt like an alien amongst all the business suits, and thought uncharitable thoughts. Automatons, all these commuters, sell-outs. Trudging through life with their briefcases and their Wall Street Journals, punching the clock, working for the man. All the clichés. Of course, I was living just as much of a cliché myself, just one on the opposite end of the spectrum. And my clothes probably smelled worse.

I didn’t see you on the train, didn’t know that you were coming. And I’m sure my hello was less than exuberant when we met at Todd’s car. You were wearing a suit, too. We got into the car, you in the passenger seat, me in the back, but Todd had to go to the ATM or something, and so left us there for a minute. You were friendly as ever, talking about how nice it was to get out the city. I stared out the window at other people getting into other cars, suppressing a sigh as I waited for the inevitable question.

When it came, “So what are you doing, Dave?” I surprised even myself with the snarl in my answer. “I’m a banker, Tubby.”

Downright rude. No two ways about it. But you took it very well, chuckling and repeating it like it was funny. “A banker! Dave Bry the banker…” We didn’t say a lot more before Todd returned. I was quiet on the drive to his house, while you two chatted and laughed like normal people do. I moped my way through the party, smoking pot and playing pool but not talking to people much. You were your gregarious self, walking around with a beer in your hand. “Hey,” you said a few times, when we passed each other, “It’s the banker! Dave Bry the banker!” But your teasing back was warm, friendly. As if you hadn’t even heard my snarl. As if I hadn’t been so obnoxious. You were having fun. Probably wishing I would lighten up and do the same.

Of course, you were a banker. Not that I knew that. Not that I’d bothered to ask. Todd told me later and I felt like an even bigger idiot.

You should probably bookmark “Off the Rails,” the weird-funny and very old-world yet very new compendium of subway news from City Room, for occasional delights.

I know you’ve been wondering: Why won’t the Democratic majority force Republicans who threaten to filibuster to actually do some filibustering? Because they’d enjoy it too much.

“Gold Rush,” “King’s Quest,” “Leisure Suit Larry”: All your favorite old Sierra games are right here! Now if only someone could direct me to an Internet version of “Seven Cities of Gold,” which I played for weeks when I was a kid. Loved that game. [Via]

For obscure historical reasons plenty of people have asked me what I thought about Justin Timberlake’s cover of the Leonard Cohen standard “Hallelujah” during that Haiti telethon the other night. And, you know, whatever, at this point there’s nothing that could be done to that song that would surprise-or, probably, interest-me. What DOES interest me today is an assessment of Leonard Cohen written by “an octogenarian who still considers Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and Baez’s ‘Diamonds and Rust’ to be two of the greatest folk songs ever written.” He appears not to be a fan.

Hero entertainer and thinker Ann Magnuson has some truly excellent suggestions on how to improve the Oscars. For one thing? “More clip montages! Tom Ford could present the Glamour Montage, Tarantino puts together A Bit of the Old Ultra-Violent Montage, Meryl Streep hosts the Accent Montage, Kristen Stewart and Christopher Lee present the Sexy Vampire Montage, and Jon Voight presents How Hollywood Liberals are Destroying the Country Montage.” Oh, yes please. Also? Yearly themes!

There should be dress code “themes” for each year, a la Truman Capote’s famous 1966 Black and White Ball. The first theme, to honor the new “old” location, would be the year 1962. Think JFK’s inaugural ball meets “Mad Men” and Tom Ford’s “A Single Man,” with everyone dressed in black and white with accents of green and gold, as seen in the glittering decor inside the pavilion.

The next year, we could progress to Fellini. All will be sent screeners of “Toby Dammit” and expected to dress like those in the Ferrari/award ceremony sequence. Later, the academy could turn to ancient Rome. All are sent screeners of the 1953 film “Quo Vadis.” Women are asked to pay close attention to Deborah Kerr’s dazzling Technicolor costumes, while men can go in Tom Ford or full-on Praetorian Guard. Togas, of course, would be “too much.” Finally, we reach the ultimate goal — Pasolini’s “Salo” — and members are asked to dress and act accordingly.