Commuting from Gracie Mansion is hard — just ask Bloomberg, he used to have to drive 22 blocks to the subway to catch the express! Poor Bloomberg.

Now Dante de Blasio faces the challenge of maybe having to get from Gracie Mansion to his high school on the downtown edge of Fort Greene. Except of course his fellow students are like “LOL I take three buses and two trains.” :/

Alex Gaviria, 14, a freshman at Brooklyn Tech who commutes over an hour from Queens on the No. 7 and G trains, said the appeal of Dante’s possible new home should trump any travel concerns. “Come on, it’s the mayor’s mansion!” he said. “Why would you want to pass that up?”

Others offered a series of suggestions for a student unaccustomed to a subway commute.

“You can do homework and sleep,” said Sam Fishman, 16, a junior at Bronx Science.

“Check out girls,” added Faiaz Sharar, 14, a freshman at Brooklyn Tech.

“I would probably say cut his hair,” said Jordan Page, a classmate of Dante’s, “so that people don’t notice him.”

Dog, get a boat. And welcome to public life.

A Friendly PSA: It’s “Kenan.” Yes. Kenan Thompson.

by Megh Wright

Despite his status as a former Nickelodeon star and 10-year “Saturday Night Live” veteran, Kenan Thompson has never been one to grab news headlines, so it was surprising when he spoke up about SNL’s lack of black female cast members. Unlike Jay Pharoah’s more incendiary call for SNL to “pay attention” to the issue a few weeks prior, Thompson’s contribution to the debate was sparse and seemingly reluctant, and his remark that the show “never finds [black women] that are ready” in auditions… did not go over well.

The few times Kenan does make the rounds on the internet, though, I always notice a bigger problem: Those backlashers, and even top-shelf TV beat writers, can’t be bothered to get his first name.

Oh, we’ve all done it. I don’t mean to nitpick or fuss, because the “Keenan Thompson” problem is not a typo or mistake but a much bigger blogger contagion. Could it be that Kenan is just so irregularly mentioned in the press, such a low-profile yet consistently present star, that he’s almost invisible? What would Ralph Ellison say?

Thompson’s refusal to portray black female characters this season played out perfectly in Kerry Washington’s SNL cold open last Saturday, and if nothing else, Washington’s hurried switch from Michelle Obama to Oprah to Beyoncé (and asking Pharoah, baffled: “Kenan won’t…?”) shows one thing: Reactionary bloggers, especially those from reputable blogs, should judge Kenan by his actions and not his words, and if they want to judge him at all, they should start by spelling his damn name right.

Perhaps you think I’m overreacting. Okay! For starters, barely used Twitter account @KeenanThompson has more followers than the barely used @OfficialKenan Twitter account. And for the rest of it… well, here goes, in reverse alphabetical order.

Yahoo!

The Wrap

VH1

Vanity Fair

TV Guide

Thought Catalog

Splitsider

Slant

Salon

Rolling Stone

People

NPR

New York Times

New York Observer

New York magazine

NBC

Los Angeles Times

Jezebel

Huffington Post

Hollywood Reporter

Gothamist

Gawker

Flavorwire

E!

Digital Spy

Deadline

The Daily What

The Daily Beast

Chicago Tribune

Comedy Central

BuzzFeed

The Awl

The AV Club

The Atlantic Wire

ABC News

Megh Wright is a regular contributor to Splitsider, where she writes the weekly SNL column Saturday Night’s Children.

★★★★★ A small flight of pigeons veered through the sun-filled space between buildings. A stray plastic bag was trying to float up and out of the trash chute on the building’s internal gusts. The kitchen garbage overbore it and carried it down again. Little dots of cloud peppered the sky in the west. Then quickly, but not for long, there was a fused and rippling cloud surface. Early afternoon was bright and gleaming. Purple undertones showed through the fake-weathered Ralph Lauren shop sign. A blur of taxi color reflected in the high second-floor ceiling of another clothing retailer. A cab ride of a dozen blocks crosstown was inferior only to the return trip on foot. Readers sat out on benches; sun glazed the facades down West Broadway. A dog walker blocked the sidewalk, mostly with a pair of Bernese mountain dogs, as two-legged pedestrians admired his clients. People stood out on a balcony, on the fake-turf roof of the boutique hotel, on the hotel’s fire escape. It was obvious what was coming, as thin sheets of southern cloud waited for the sun to keep lowering. Then there it was, a peach pastel rubbing by the hand of God, annotated in silvery indecipherable cirrus script. The trees across the street were wine red. Now a couple on the hotel roof was embracing and kissing. The blurry crescent moon faded out behind a pink cloud, then faded back again. In the turquoise nearby, the white light of Venus shone steadily.

“In analyzing their results, the researchers found that sitting on a toilet, as most men well know, results in the least amount of splash-back (the contact point is much closer). They also discovered something likely few men have considered — that urine follows what is known as the Plateau-Rayleigh instability — where a pee stream breaks up into drops before striking something else. That’s the worst thing that can happen, the team reports, because each drop creates splash-back. To avoid that, men should stand as close to the urinal as possible they advise. Also helpful is directing the stream to hit the back of the urinal at a downward angle. That creates less splash-back and the drops that do bounce, head downwards into the urinal drain. Conversely, to prevent messing one’s trousers (or angering neighbors) they suggest men not spray directly into the urinal or into the pool that forms at the bottom of the urinal, both cause a lot of splash-back.”
 — There is video, but I have not watched it. I mean, no judgments if that’s the kind of thing you’re into, but I gave it a pass.

The fish in this photo is indeed unattractive, but you are not exactly George Clooney yourself, are you now?

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

In a Landscape: XXXVII

I think “getting out of the way” is a great way to be helpful
to most people most of the time, especially
when I meet one of those people who reminds me
of the truth behind “killing someone
with kindness.” And so we’re all, no matter what, trapped
in our own heads, of course, and there’s usually nothing different
about the day you started, it was the day you started,
that’s all. What that has to do with being overly helpful, I’m not sure,
it just kind of came to me. Maybe it’s just that it’s all
some version of the unknown, and getting out of the way
seems an idea that assumes the least about other people.

It’s good, I think, to assume as little as possible at all times. I had that
“ass of you and me” thing drilled into my brain
early on. Now, though, I find that you really can tell a lot about a book
by its cover. Currently I’m wearing a brown belt
with sneakers, and thinking, as I was always taught,
that sneakers aren’t meant for outfits that require belts. Maybe we’re all
right or all wrong or these distinctions are insignificant
over time. But isn’t this just the sort of thing
people from the future will be seriously researching?

The book I’m OK, You’re OK was floating around the house
when I was a kid. It was the 1970s, you know? The author, Thomas Harris,
postulates that the brain records past experiences
like a tape recorder, and keeping to the simple math, comes up with four
“life positions” that each of us may take. The four positions are: 1.
I’m Not OK, You’re OK; 2. I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK; 3.
I’m OK, You’re Not OK; 4. I’m OK, You’re OK.
It’s a dumb idea, most likely, but that’s probably fine too,
because if you take a dumb idea far enough,
it could touch glory. You never know. And sitting here,
as we mostly do, talking about all the people
we know, we’re just census takers. We have these forms to fill out.

John Gallaher is utterly ordinary in all respects, and is learning to be OK with that. His next book, In a Landscape, will be out in fall 2014 from BOA Editions.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

“I would definitely use [Twitter] if I were famous and had stuff to sell though.”

“The rubber duck has squeaked out a win for a place in the National Toy Hall of Fame. The bath toy joins the ancient game of chess in the class of 2013 inducted Thursday. The pair beat out 10 other finalists for a spot in the 15-year-old hall. The finalists that didn’t make the cut include bubbles, the board game Clue, the arcade game Pac-Man and little green Army men.”

“What are we to make,” observed the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, “of creation in which routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types — biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out — not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in ‘natural’ accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer.” On the other hand, a photo posted to Instagram reveals that actress Jennifer Aniston got a new haircut and a new ear piercing, so who’s to say?

by Matthew J.X. Malady

People are always saying things on the Internet. But they are such teases! So we have to ask.

Saw a guy on the subway offering to give up his seat to a, uh, little person (?). (He declined.) What’s the etiquette there?

— Dan Amira (@DanAmira) October 23, 2013

Dan! So what happened here?
I was standing on the N train, and I just happened to look over as a middle-aged man of average height was offering his seat to a middle-aged little person. (I am going to use “little person” throughout this piece even though I’m not 100 percent sure that’s the most appropriate terminology. But it’s the name of a TLC show, so I feel like I’m on pretty solid ground. Please direct all angry tweets and emails to TLC.) The entire exchange took place entirely through gestures: Seat Man did that thing where you half-stand and point to the seat and look at the other person expectantly, as if to say, “Hey, you want this?” The little person, who was holding on to the pole about a foot away, gave him a “No thanks, I’m fine” wave. And that was it.

How would you answer the question you posed in your tweet? Put another way: What would you suspect is the appropriate manner of proceeding in that situation?

It’s a difficult question! The etiquette surrounding seat priority is complex and ambiguous. Obviously you should get up for a pregnant woman, an elderly or frail person, a young child, or an injured or handicapped person. But it’s not always so clear who fits into these categories. How young is young enough? Am I getting up for a 7-year-old? And how old is old enough? It’s not as if people walk around with name tags reading “I’m 68 and have a bad hip and have trouble standing for extended periods of time.” Dan, why not just err on the side of being a nice person? Okay Mother Teresa, settle down over there.

The little person scenario is not one I had thought about before, and it’s more fraught than most. On the one hand, Seat Man was trying to be selfless and courteous, and hey, all other things being equal, maybe a little person would get more benefit from the seat than an average-sized person. However, I personally wouldn’t have offered my seat to the little person because I would be worried about embarrassing or insulting him by *assuming* that he required my act of charity. As with the seemingly pregnant woman who isn’t actually pregnant, this is one of those situations in which trying to be nice can backfire.

Lesson learned (if any)?

I learned nothing from this. I have more questions than ever before.

Just one more thing:

My hope is that a little person advocacy group sees this post and announces some kind of ruling before I get on the subway again.

Matthew J.X. Malady is a writer and editor in New York.