“Even her physical beauty seemed ironic; she seemed to deploy it as an analytical torch, a secret agent, dismantling the stereotypes she cheerfully traversed. In the Polaroid snapshots that Andy Warhol took of her in 1980, she gazes at him — and at the viewer — from across the moat of received wisdom, whose toxicity can’t touch her; with us, she exchanges a complicit glance, as if to say, We understand the joke that gender is, and we understand how masterfully I embody its barbed glories.”

Drinkers gain the least weight over time, but only “moderate” drinkers (two a day for men, one a day for the ladies), so it hardly seems worth the effort.

The band HAIM is a new one to me, but that is a category that increases with each passing day. At this point I feel a certain amount of satisfaction if I can at least claim to have seen the name somewhere before; knowing anything about the music is an almost impossible dream. I can only imagine that I am but a few years away from expressing confusion over entire genres. What joys await! Anyway, this one: I was not particularly into it at the outset and stayed solely for the actual video part, because there is nothing so enjoyable as watching men cry, if only because I find company comforting. But lo and behold, by the song’s end I was actually somewhat into it. And now HAIM gets filed away into that recess of my brain where the next time they are mentioned I can hit “retrieve” and say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

“Now that the semi-naked ‘selfie’ can make or break people’s Facebook and Twitter accounts (with serial sexter Anthony Weiner being a cautionary tale), an increasing proportion of dudeoir clients want a professional to art-direct and light the shots, so they look as flattering as possible.”

“When the battery is low, phone-toting New Yorkers will plug into just about anything — but prior to hooking up they should consider who that charger’s been with before.”

by Brendan O’Connor

It was standing room only at The Ainsworth on 26th Street last night, right by BuzzFeed’s headquarters, so that BuzzFeed edit honcho Ben Smith could interview Anthony Weiner. “You’re gonna wanna whip out your press passes,” said the bouncer. “Go ahead. Whip ’em out.” He laughed. Onstage, Smith sipped what looked like a very light beer. Weiner got wolf-whistled as he walked onto the stage. For him, there was something that was maybe an iced coffee. “Anthony has stopped drinking, in case you missed that,” Smith said. For the audience, there were a lot of snacks.

A woman in town from Boston for work told me that she found the whole thing “Sad, and a little bit funny… mostly people just laugh and then go back to ignoring it.”

To my right sat someone from EXTRA. “Because what is Weiner if not entertainment?” she said. “I really hope he digs himself into a hole tonight.”

When BuzzFeed reached out to his campaign to set up the interview, Weiner was leading the polls. Siena College yesterday announced that he set a record unfavorability rating of 80%.

“No one did this to me,” Weiner said. “I did this to me. I made these mistakes.”

To the meat: The last time he sent anything inappropriate to anyone other than his wife was about a year ago, he said. The texts he exchanged with Sydney Leathers up until April 12th of this year were, Weiner said, “completely how-ya-doing, whaddya-think-of-this.”

Smith asked Weiner if he is back in therapy. Weiner joked that you’re never really out of therapy. “They just have this thing where you just remain in forever,” he said.

Smith asked Weiner how often he sees his therapist. “I see my therapist when I can,” said Weiner. “It’s tough on the campaign trail.”

Smith made a gibe — one of several — about Weiner’s scandal. “You can do this,” Weiner said, drawing his breath, his eyes darting left and right as he prepared to try to deliver a zinger. “Or you can post videos of cats, or whatever you do at BuzzFeed.”

“We do it all,” Smith said.

“Substance and politics doesn’t get covered in a campaign like this,” Weiner said, unbelievably. “It’s almost, like, mocked that you would do substance. And I’ve done it every single day. Voters respond to it, but frankly reporters don’t really…” He trailed off. “There’s no space for it, particularly in a municipal race.”

Someone was in the bathroom drying their hands and we could all hear it.

So, let’s see, substance: Weiner said that, somehow, he doesn’t think that New York City’s stop-and-frisk tactics having just been roundly trounced by the courts disqualifies Ray Kelly from heading up the Department of Homeland Security. Right.

Weiner talked about the qualities people want in a mayor that he thinks he exemplifies. Toughness is one. Audacity is another. He talked about talking about “ideas” so much so that he sounded more like a prospectus for a liberal arts college than a candidate for mayor. “The fundamental ethos of my campaign and also my private life is I like ideas.”

“Why not use Snapchat?” Smith asked.

“I don’t have a good answer for that,” Weiner said. Smith laughed. Weiner didn’t. Actually, Weiner was mostly humorless throughout the whole event. Huma wasn’t here either. You might say he was… Huma-less.

Contrary to popular belief, Weiner is not anti-bike, or anti-bike lanes; he is anti-bad bike lanes. He whipped out his key chain and showed it to everyone. He has a Citibike fob. “I take bike share to my campaign events,” he said.

So after reminiscing about the time he told Mayor Bloomberg he would tear out his “fucking bike lanes,” Weiner complained about “policy jihadists” — which sound a lot like the “Powerful Voices” of his new campaign ad — who have set themselves against him.

“Around all policies there are jihadists in this town,” he said.

Smith asked him who of the other Democratic candidates he would vote for, or if there is anyone he would refuse to vote for. Weiner dodged, saying that’d be impossible, given that he is going to be the Party’s candidate.

And if lightning strikes? Smith asked.

“That would be the only bad luck thing that hasn’t happened,” Weiner said, and laughed.

He dismissed critics who point to his legislative record — or lack thereof. “I fought like the dickens” for a single-payer health-care bill and for the 9/11 responders bill, he said. Like the dickens, he said.

Let’s go to the transcript.

BEN SMITH:
Do you think — 
ANTHONY WEINER:
That makes them nuts.
BEN SMITH:
 — Arthur Sulzberger has a problem with you? Do you have a sense of where that’s — 
ANTHONY WEINER:
I actually wouldn’t — 
BEN SMITH:
 — coming from?
ANTHONY WEINER:
I couldn’t pick him out of — I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. He’s alive, right? (LAUGH) That — that would be bad if he wasn’t.
BEN SMITH:
I don’t know — I don’t know which is worse.
ANTHONY WEINER:
Who owns it — well, who — who — 
BEN SMITH:
The Sulzbergers.
ANTHONY WEINER:
What — what baseball team owns them?
BEN SMITH: Own — owns the New York Times? I’m not sure which baseball team owns the New York Times.
ANTHONY WEINER:
Bezos — 
BEN SMITH:
I think that’s a question for the audience.
ANTHONY WEINER:
Did Bezos buy them, too?

Serious issues! “I do not care,” he said, responding to “the haters” at the New York Times. “And it makes them nuts that I don’t care.” Ha ha, nuts.

Brendan O’Connor is an Awl summer reporter. Photo by Macey J. Foronda for BuzzFeed.

“There’s something deeply classist about Web coverage of the gathering of Insane Clown Posse fans,” argues Salon. This is particularly striking when you consider the strenuous efforts most organizations take to ensure total awareness of the extent to which socio-economic issues affect the underlying assumptions they bring to their coverage of everything that is not Juggalo-related.

The reviews are in for BBC2 “Newsnight” host Jeremy Paxman after the reader returned from “summer hols” or whatever those weirdos call it with a frisky white beard. The Paxman has no real U.S. equivalent: he’s basically like if you multiplied Brian Williams by Oprah but subtracted Katie Couric.

The presenter’s facial hair divided commentators with some saying he looked like a hostage filming a video plea, while others likened him to a “rubbish Doctor Who.”

A number of people are also concerned that every hipster in Shoreditch is shaving his beard at the moment. In response, Paxy issued this statement that, in America, would have gotten him fired or possibly imprisoned in Guantanamo but in England was met with titters and of course drunkenness. Naturally, punters everywhere are now incensed though that he apparently spelled “pogonophobic” incorrectly.

Jeremy Paxman has issued this statement after Twitter went into meltdown when his beard made its Newsnight debut pic.twitter.com/xruDncID0N

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) August 13, 2013

“A high-octane debate has broken out among the world’s physicists about what would happen if you jumped into a black hole, a fearsome gravitational monster that can swallow matter, energy and even light. You would die, of course, but how? Crushed smaller than a dust mote by monstrous gravity, as astronomers and science fiction writers have been telling us for decades? Or flash-fried by a firewall of energy, as an alarming new calculation seems to indicate?”
 — Who cares, so long as you die?

Not a lot of event diversity on Tuesdays in New York City! It’s all about the literature tonight. (Spoiler, you can come see me read with a couple pals at a bar called 2A in the East Village apparently. You can also stay home and catch up on pirating Showtime!)