Last week, R&B; singer/songwriter The-Dream let the world know via Twitter how upset he was that his album Love Vs. Money was not nominated for a Grammy award. “Isn’t it funny the best album of 2009 didn’t get a nomination for the second year straight?” He wrote, which sounds funny. But we know what he means: He thought his last album, Love/Hate should have been nominated last year, and it was also not. “I know clearly my album belongs there, period,” he wrote. “Maybe it’s my label, maybe it’s just my ass-kissing skills aren’t up…” I would have guessed it could have maybe been the hyphen he uses in his name. But as the Us Weekly photo from his recent wedding to Christina Milian in Rome would indicate, maybe it has something to do with the unacceptable faux-equestrian boots?

“I’m sorry if some people have lost their jobs. I want to make that part very clear. But it’s never been a publication worth anything. The reviews were almost always negative and not helpful in any way. And so that’s it. Good riddance.”
-ICM co-head Esther Newberg, who says screw you to Kirkus Reviews as its closure is announced.

The 2010 Whitney Biennial artists have been announced. There’s a sort of weird (and unbelievably, unembeddable!) video of the curators reading of the list of names that reminds one, unfortunately, of a prison roll call. Two of our fave ladies are in it, but man, we have not heard of like 44 of these people.

The Weather Report: OH GOD. CALL IN SICK, IF YOU ACTUALLY HAVE A JOB. IT SUCKS OUTSIDE. SERIOUSLY, IT’S SO BAD. IT’S LIKE HELL FROZE OVER BUT WITH BLINDING WHIRLPOOL STORMS OF FLYING LEAVES.

It’s back! The American Express Tower at the World Financial Center and the Bank of America Tower in Tampa were evacuated today due to envelopes full of harmless white powder.

“You know that feeling when you’re sort of floating around like a ghost and so exhausted that you consider drinking the Lola perfume in your goodie bag at Marc Jacobs? No? Me neither. Except this one time when I went to New York Fashion Week and it was sort of crazy.”

Gah. I want to douse the flaxen-haired author with superspicy haterade, snatch her bag, smash the perfume behind me like a smoke bomb, and go legging it down the block cackling like a maniac-but can’t. Because Tavi Gevinson, the writer, is a fashion blogger who’s been featured in Teen Vogue, the Times magazine, graced the COVER of the POP magazine relaunch and IS A CHILD. Like a teeny wee baby person, who can’t feel all that good to maul. Or at least it would feel FUCKING FANTASTIC but, like, only for a second.

Tavi is 13, small for her age, a dweeb, happens to be besties with Rodarte’s Mulleavy sisters, gets to go to ALL the shows, ALL the parties, and has Rei Kawakubo sending her Comme des Garcons like it’s no big whoop. People who know she exists are tired of hearing about her and people who remain ignorant of her existence get to go on feeling like they’ve made good decisions about their lives.

Whatever, girl’s got a grind. But on the heels of the video she shot for the launch of Rodarte’s Go collection for Target that was released on Style.com earlier this week (with a pretty extensive Q&A no less. Also, I think the line is barf, it’s Rodarte distilled to the point of looking like colored fondant), she’s reviewing spring collections for Harper’s Bazaar.

Here’s what she had to say about her BFFs’ runway collection:

“Rodarte was the most enchanting. It began with fog slowly crawling up the legs of our chairs. A few people coughed, unimpressed. But through the fog flew the Mulleavy sisters’ California condors, draped in burnt cheesecloths and distorted leather. Immediately, the unmoved were intrigued and didn’t care to hide it. The audience broke into roaring applause.”

Eh. Not dreadful. I get it, she likes it. But then she spouts some mess about how “effortless cool” is “always in style” and some other pshaw, which is right at the point that other magazines’ fashion editors, who you know were just spoiling to get their licks in, are turning on the girl, calling her gimmicky and JT LeRoyish. And sure, Bazaar’s on some WaPo shit with this anyway but now I’m wondering if this is the exact point that the wave crests and the backlash begins? Did this girl (who I think is clever and endearing and who I kinda don’t care if she’s nothing more than a brand because her market positioning is KILLER) peak at 13? And after a scant 2-year stint? If you look at the video, the expressions on everyone’s faces are exactly like they’re talking to Brüno and if you look at her blog, EVERYONE is posing for photos with positively vulpine rapaciousness. And it’s not just ’cause they’re starving.

Are they all colluding with the understanding that with one signal she could be flung from the party? Why does this start to feel like some elaborate parlor game and one in which whoever attempts to evict her prematurely can be blackballed too? Are there pony-hair animal masks involved? And gloves? And candelabras? And chanting? Am I giving these people way too much credit? What is this feeling of protectiveness I am feeling in my womb-area? I think I’m going to sleep now.

W “design blogger” Aaron Betsky-who is actually the head of the Cincinnati Art Museum-puts forward his Christmas wish list. I mean: this is a thing I would want as well? Except, for that price, can’t I buy one of the lesser islands of Turks and Caicos?

New poll! “Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is trailing President Barack Obama by only one percentage point in a potential 2012 matchup.”

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

This week in The Poetry Section, two new poems by Michael Schiavo: Scarlett Johansson on the Fourth of July and We All Operate in a Ghost World Where We Are Maharajah.

Scarlett Johansson on the Fourth of July

Hey the island is way out there. My Captain

you collapse the particulars to crystalline

epiphany the color of Rome in May

the warmth of 2,000 years washing over kitten &

cougar the same. Arapaho birthmark

the new Animal Collective makes my mind.

My Friend you are a skilled hunter

the roses bombing the pyramid serve

your patriotic lips. All around you knives

of sun serve up bountiful banana perfume.

Told the man I wanted a raven

roosting on my shoulder when I woke

all I get some crappy lights green

streaks of melon-rays bathe my crotch

nuzzling like the Immortal’s corgis.

Ah so this is the empire what the empire

brings me so much wonderful why recall

how I complained! My Siren silky

milk-white garden under lavender moon

light lodged in my mind marvelous

invention but in reality you are here on top

of me. Woman running from no more

straight to the arms of maybe

sometimes you concoct dreams about

me & you & lions emerging from tall grass.

From the time of witches you

emerge your penis as long as the President’s

at least when she still had one. My Domina

I await the future with open arms &

sister here comes my summertime.

But that happened. This. I’m talking

about all the advantages a black man has

in this country in this real radical age

John Lee Hooker. My point exactly.

He rescued those iguanas from

the terrorist librarians at Great Adventure.

Repaired a spaceship & they flew

him to Saturn. Collected nebulae

in a firefly jar returned to Coahoma

where there he built the largest reptile farm

in the western hemisphere raising

the stakes. Shimmy shake my Long Love

a month of smooth-fucking. Vampires

couldn’t even vanquish the man

had so much power. I saw him once

at the Varsity. He called me by my name.

We All Operate in a Ghost World Where We Are Maharajah

I am before you tiny as a bird as the tiniest bird

you can hold in your silver palm of rose.

In the midnight a little noise go off

in the forest of your mind & very

far away a lighthouse keeper wakes

to the sound of another sound you make

when you’re not making your always sound.

Winter. Not just any old. I couldn’t call you

Doris if I tried. Manu Ginóbili. Too many lions

surround your heart even on the sunniest day.

When entering another country you must

size up the anatomy of the architecture &

take your time doing. A moonlit garment

yet to be encouraged. Stop boring us

& get to the real. Whatever you mean

I mean it a little nefarious. Last one

to make me delirious delivered Montana.

How many suspicious packages must arrive

’til you conjure me through your XBox 360.

No time for footnotes when the new dawn

battles me for your attention. What chance

have tiny birds? Gray in the pink lemon

light over you sleeping inside

the traffic outside an ocean to never near.

Above you circle osprey. Above their squalls

a million astronauts ride triceratops

in what may turn out to be an extremely

valuable piece of contemp’ry art. No soothsayer I.

Save for the arena in which we two now square.

There is over your shoulder some kind of

werewolf. And as you’re distracted

finally the aubergine curtain rises where she is

the pirate ship come to capture you home.

I fear you say I hate to see the evening sun go down.

On this blood-dimmed shore with the relative

deep feelings shared by those with common sense

who have insight about desire compassion

the stupid things no one pays money for

I tell you wow I love the nighttime. Cuz

if not in dreams how do we summon

the day won’t come when I see you never.

I see everything always & everyone a little better

the sun is a fox in the henhouse.

We fulfill one another without

one another even. Wonderful in the night.

Energy in the night. Something to be said for

not ever being alone. The moon comes out electric

your mouth when you sigh is the Lariat

of Truth in the hands of them lions.

Strange days I say what chance have tiny birds?

Michael Schiavo is the author of The Mad Song. He is editor of The Equalizer (coming 2010), a co-editor of Tight, and contributing editor to CUE. His poetry has appeared in Forklift, Ohio, The Normal School, Sixth Finch, jubilat, La Petite Zine, and Fou. He lives in Vermont.

You may contact the editors at poems@theawl.com.

Some cheering news: Staff at St Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, have designed a strict regimen of diet and exercise that will, if all works as planned, result in Snowball the overweight albino hedgehog’s eventual release. I know you were all worried.