Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

Big DD&U news

2009-05-29T18:36:00.003-04:00

So it's been a while since last I posted. Sorry! But it's for a good reason: I was setting up dangerousdirtyunfun.com!

That's right, treasured readers. I took the plunge and registered the Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun domain. There are a number of very good and very important reasons for the move, which I'll go over in the post I'm about to write there. But this is just a reminder to change your bookmarks or RSS feeds (you can add the new DD&U to your RSS reader by clicking on the link at the way bottom of the page). I'll keep this Blogger site around, so you guys can always go back and read your favorite posts from your favorite blog-writing guy. I'll see you over at the new site!

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-05-26T21:36:00.004-04:00

I usually tend not to like videos that tack to the song too literally. (Witness my short rant about the video for "Dammit.") But sometimes it works. Especially when I think the protagonist looks kinda like me (since he has brown hair and glasses).

Listen to some Spill Canvas.

The Spill Canvas |MTV Music

: (

2009-05-26T20:51:00.003-04:00

Is there anything more disappointing than seeing a pretty girl on the train, and she's reading Atlas Shrugged? I contend "no."

Breath of fresh air

2009-05-19T22:23:00.003-04:00

So maybe BHO is doing the opposite of the right thing by suppressing photographic evidence of America's torture regime, and his administration may or may not be just as much in the pocket of corporate America as every other one. But things like this lead me to believe that his heart is still in the right place.

Crazy pills

2009-05-19T20:53:00.003-04:00

Haven't done one of these in a while. These sorts of posts would be cathartic, if they weren't so wearying to the soul.

The gist: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate is withholding money earmarked for closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay until the Obama administration presents a plan for what will be done with the prisoners. Which has the whiff of logic about it, although the pessimist in me wonders about a chicken-or-egg stalemate occurring: "We can't appropriate the money without a plan," says the Senate; "We need the money before we can come up with a plan," says the administration. (I readily admit that that scenario doesn't really have the whiff of logic about it, but keep reading if you want to see our dear old friend logic dragged out of the bar, thrown in a puddle, and mercilessly thrashed with a couple of socks full of stoopid.)

No, treasured reader, what really bothers me is the soupy dreck that Senator Reid posited to justify his caucus's stance. I'll cut and paste an exchange at today's press conference, guest-starring an undoubtedly dumbfounded reporter (or reporters) who, if my knowledge of human nature is accurate, walked briskly home to a darkened room and quietly wept. Here's the relevant back and forth, lifted wholesale from the good folks at Think Progress:

REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.

QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …

REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

Now, I can comment about the political efficacy of putting yourself in league with the Republicans. The generally smart thing to do these days, as any child, dog, or slightly damp sponge will tell you, is to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction of the GOP. But that's not my beef. My beef is that NOTHING THAT SENATOR REID SAID MAKES ANY SENSE!

It's almost as if the transfer of prisoners from one detention facility to another is a completely novel and alien concept to him. I imagine his reaction to this idea is akin to that of a Gallic serf trying to understand a fax machine. I refuse to believe that a human in the 21st century can be so stupid, so I have to assume that the majority leader is adopting right-wing talking points, which just makes him a terrible leader and, well, I guess it does make him that stupid.

I mean, honestly! If you want pornography, you look to the United States. If you want avarice so potent it can be bottled, you look to the United States. And if you want a prison-industrial state that would compel Stalin to stand up and golf clap, you look to the United States. Here's a fact sheet from Senator Jim Webb's site, outlining some of the more stunning details about prisons in the U.S. According to the King's College World Prison Brief, we've got 760 prisoners per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world. That's 100 more than the second-place nation, for those of you who didn't click through. Those numbers are obviously inexcusable, but the point here is, locking people up is something the United States does with relish and aplomb.

But I suppose, if you were a certain type of craven torture-and-Constitution-shredding fetishist, you could rationalize not wanting to have terrorists, or guys we just assumed were terrorists and threw them in prison without a hearing, on American soil. I'll look past that, for now.

If you want my real beef, dear reader, scroll back up and re-read how Senator Reid responded to the reporter's first assertion. Actually, don't scroll up. I'll re-paste it for you:

REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.

Oh, you can't, can't you? Really? Did the majority leader swish that one around first before it fell out of his mouth? It must have been all that poor reporter could do to keep from screaming "They're already in prison! There's no releasing involved!" I feel bad for everyone in the room. It would be no different if Senator Reid leaned over the podium and, with a cocky grin and arched eyebrow, authoritatively said "You know, ice cream has no bones. Purple monkey dishwasher." I know it goes without saying, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Gossip Girl reveals my secret identity. It's Timmy

2009-05-18T19:56:00.003-04:00

This is it, precious readers. The season finale of Gossip Girl. I’m already envisioning the jealousy my future self will have for my past self, after I (will have?) realize(d?) the long, sorrowful months we’ll have to wait before a new season.

Quick housekeeping note: it’s currently 8:02 and I’m waiting for my friend meg to come by and watch, so the timestamps will be a little off for this week’s diary. Like anyone pays attention to the timestamps. Or even reads this stupid blog for jerks!

8:06 So Meg just showed up!

8:07 Serena's mugshot, on the cover of the Daily News? As the sole story? Get the hell outta here. If A-Rod in a gimp suit punched a puppy with Mayor Bloomberg recording it on his webcam, it wouldn't be the only story on the front page of the Daily News.

I secretly love when the characters talk about Gossip Girl. Remember when we actually cared about the identity of Gossip Girl? Like that makes any difference whatsoever.

Good question, posed by my pal: Why the hell is Serena wearing that blue dress to brunch?

8:09 Is V wearing makeup? Has she always done that? She seems a little less pretty.

And remember when this show was like, about Dan?

8:11 Wouldn’t it be fun if J were the queen . . . J? And did they cast a girl that looks and sounds like a rat, with creases under her eyes, to be Jenny’s rival on purpose? Of course.

Has there been any indication ever that St. Jude’s colors were blue, and Constance was green? Not that it matters. It just seems a little out of nowhere.

When did Lily Rhodes’s eyes change color? Let’s talk about that.

And why isn’t Serena wearing her mortarboard? Even the headmistress is wearing one!

And what happened to poppy and Gabriel! Shouldn’t that be like, the first thing that we’re presented with on this dopey show?

And why can’t I start a sentence without a conjunction? And why am I only asking questions?

8:17 GG tosses some relatively innocuous barbs at the gang, and now they’re all pissed and ready to take action? If only they put this type of conviction into bringing down poppy and Gabriel . . .

Grandpa seems pretty switched on by Nate’s story. Effing creep.

8:19 Serena here reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons, where Krusty becomes an edgy comic, and Homer wants him to start bagging on pants. “Can you believe Gossip Girl,” she asks. “Don’t you hate pants?” Homer wails.

Shouldn’t Nate, S, B, and Chuck have a dopey canine sidekick with them?

Jonathan? That seems anticlimactic.

8:23 Back at live TV. And Jonathan “hacked into” her server? Anticlimactic and beyond a reasonable suspension of disbelief. This is GG at its best.

It’s ok for me to conflate Rufus Humphrey and Butch Walker, right? That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?

8:25 This is a legitimate question: what’s up with the yellow-label South American beer that these people are always getting in Brooklyn? Garrett Oliver couldn’t spring for a product placement?

8:28 This all reminds of how poorly they handled Jack Bass’s character. He could have offered us fun and excitement for seasons! Instead, he was dispensed with in a few episodes. Bad job by you, writers.

8:30 Oh boy. Are they now gonna burn the Gossip Girl (unitalicized) bridge like they burned the Jack and Ms. Carr bridge?

8:35 This is sort of like that episode of the Twilight Zone, where there’s that cocktail party where everyone puts on the masks that are supposed to mirror their souls. And then they can’t take the masks off, so they have to look as rotten as they really are, forever. You know, with the “labels” gimmick. That made sense when I started typing, I swear.

How many more times is B gonna go back to the Chuck Basswell? It’s getting tiresome!

8:37 Are Rufus and Lily gonna get married baked? Maybe they’re more like their idiot kids than they appreciate.

Also, remember when Serena and Nate had sex?

Speaking of beyond a reasonable suspension of disbelief: Serena ever outsmarting Gossip Girl.

8:45 "You can’t make people love you, but you can make them fear you." That’s some cold stuff there, B.

“Whoa whoa whoa, Dan is Gossip Girl?” Oh Nate. This reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the family goes to the magic show, and Marge gets put into the Killotine, and transforms into a bunch of monkeys. “So she was made of chimps,” Homer realizes.

8:47 Okay, I’m an idiot, because I actually got a tiny twinge of excitement thinking they’d reveal Gossip Girl’s identity. What a moron. I mean, really. Who could it possibly be that would make any sense at all!

8:50 Don’t these people EVER wear t-shirts?

No, seriously, what happened to Poppy and Gabriel?

8:53 That’s your brother, Dan! It's Scott!

8:55 So, Scott transferred FROM bu, which is good, because it means there’s one less bu student, even if he’s fictional. And it makes sense that to signify that Scott is from Boston, they would pick bu. Because why would ANYONE transfer out of the other Boston school.

8:59 Am I an idiot, or did that “Carter looking for Serena’s dad” thing come out of nowhere? Here's a hint, S: he's the DB that the girl from American Dreams beat up last episode.

9:00 Meh. So this episode ends with the writers realizing that A) we need a plotline to extend into next season, so let's pretend that S gives an F about who her dad is, and B) we need to wrap up that huge plotline with Poppy and Gabriel stealing everyone's money; let's do it off-screen! Does anyone remember how heart-wrenching last year's finale was? When Dan and Serena broke up, and it actually meant something? It was pitch perfect! Blah. Soothe yourself with this young lady's soulful and earnest cover of Death Cab's "The Ice Is Getting Thinner."

Cool moment

2009-05-17T21:08:00.003-04:00

It's always cool when there's an aerial coverage shot of Boston during game 7 of the Celtics-Magic series, and you suddenly realize "Wait a sec, that's my apartment!" How fun!

Memory lane

2009-05-17T20:39:00.003-04:00

So I'm talking to my friend, who is going to Yankee Stadium to watch the Yanks play her beloved Twins tomorrow. The series so far has been decided three times by walk-offs: Melky Cabrera's single on Friday, an A-Rod homer in the 11th yesterday, and a Johnny Damon dinger this afternoon. So of course tomorrow's game will go extras.

Which reminded me of a game I went to a few years back, a 16-inning loss to the A's. What a game. On the one hand, Jeff Weaver pitched one of the best games he would ever throw as a Yankee. On the other, there were 5 errors! And I happened to be sitting behind the only Oakland fans in the whole game stadium. And then I was stuck in the South Bronx after a six-hour ballgame. But still, great game!

There are no words

2009-05-11T21:23:00.003-04:00

So last week ended with this bit of crushing news: the Gossip Girl spinoff had the kibosh put on it. Treasured reader, if you know me, you know how furious I was. I won't recount the poisonous stream of vitriol that issued forth when I read that news, suffice it to say, it was pure venom. The awful news was compounded by the fact that I KNEW tonight's episode, irregardless of what happens in our pathetic real world, would still be the "pilot" for the spinoff. We would get a taste, and then have it cruelly ripped away from our innocent, grasping hands.

The awful news was further compounded by the fact that tonight's episode was 100 percent, unadulterated dynamite. Here's some timestamped evidence, an IM conversation with my pal Katie:

9:10 PM
Katie: what do you think of the flashbacks
Timmy: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(That's no joke, precious reader. Even I'm amazed by how many exclamations points I used. And I LOVE exclamation points.)

Anyway, it was a great episode, but there were so many unanswered questions! Like, how did Lily end up with that lame blond Van Der Woodsen jerk? What could CeCe possibly have done to Lily's punk-rock boyfriend Owen? Why is Nate such a drip? (Okay, that question wouldn't be answered by any spinoff, but it's still valid!)

All seemed lost. And then, merciful providence shined upon all good GG fans. Behold. Behold, and then ask me how it's possible for me to even begin to attempt to contain my joy!

Music is my imaginary friend: Success Stories in Music Publishing Edition

2009-05-10T21:55:00.003-04:00

So this week's episode of the Office, "Cafe Disco," was really good. And during the final dance party, this really catchy, really boppy song was playing. I'm always on the lookout for new music, so naturally, I was anxious to find out what the name of the song was and who sang it.

The Internet is, obviously, amazing, but it's the type of thing that's become so enmeshed in our lives that we don't even realize that 15 years ago, the way we engaged the culture was completely different. If you saw a commercial or a TV show with a song you liked back then, what recourse did you possibly have? You'd have to hope that you heard it on the radio, or else you'd never hear it again. Nowadays, you can get on the ol' tubes and, although it may take a little effort, you can find that song.

Now, as I said, there are varying degrees of effort. There are some shows out there that are more in tune with young people's desire to integrate their cultural experiences. Gossip Girl, which as everyone knows is the greatest show of our time, does a fabulous job, plugging its featured artists at the end of every episode, and putting character playlists featuring music from the show on the CW website. Say what you will about how trashy a show the Real World is, but they actually put a pop-up of the song name on the screen as a song is playing. Other shows are getting there, but it's still a struggle sometimes.

To wit, this past week's episode of the Office. It seems self-evident to me that if you have an episode about music and dancing, you'd post a playlist on your website. But oh well. Good thing we've got the good denizens of the Internet to fill in the blanks. All I had to do was type "what was the song from office cafe disco" and boom, one click and I had it.

All of this is to say, my buddy works for a music publishing company out in LA, and his job, just like other guys that work for other companies all over the world, is to get songs from his company's catalog onto all manner of TV shows and movies, for the exact reason that I'm describing to you in this post: maybe some schlub will hear a song, and buy it, and then maybe get the album, and then maybe go to a show. So, whoever represents the Blam, a band that I think hasn't been together for a few years, congratulations. You earned your check.

In any case, listen to "Various Disgraces."

Classic DD&U

2009-05-10T18:01:00.002-04:00

Machine wash tepid
Sunday, June 10, 2007

Here’s something that I thought of today, and I’m amazed, nay, shocked that it hasn’t already been implemented by someone out there. You know how it takes something like a half hour for a laundry machine to run its course, but between 50 minutes and an hour for a dryer to do its thing.

So imagine this scenario: you roll up to the laundry room as someone is removing their clothes from the laundry machine and putting them in the dryer. Both machines start at the same time. You return a half hour later, with clean, fresh, wet clothes. But alas, you still have to wait another 20 to 30 minutes for the dryer to be done (presuming there are no other available dryers—a distinct possibility). In the meantime, your clothes are sitting in this moist, damp, out-of-the-machine limbo, getting slimy and mildewy, while you wait for the dryer to finish.

Why not make washing machines that take as long as a dryer? Yeah, it’s nice that the washer only takes a half hour, but in a lot of cases, you’re still sitting around waiting for a dryer. I’d like to see a washing machine that takes its time, maybe slows down a little on the rinse, maybe spins a few more times. I know that there are a host of other factors that come into play in the laundry room (like savages who leave their clothes in the machine long after it’s stopped running, or villains that open up your dryer but then don’t turn it back on), but I think we should try to be even-ing up the playing field as much as possible. The best and the brightest minds in the laundry industry should be on top of this.

I know it was you, Manny. You broke my heart.

2009-05-07T22:32:00.003-04:00

Today was an emotional roller coaster for me.

First, there was immediate anger and frustration. I paid 39 bucks for the guy in my fantasy league, and now I have to scramble to make up for his production for the next 50 games. I was furious.

Then, of course, there was my favorite part of the day: the schadenfreude. Is there any better type of freude? As a Yankee fan living in the heart of the beast here in the Hub of the Universe, the past five years have been awful. In that time, I've seen two Red Socks world championships, but even worse, I've seen my team become a collection of aging, overpaid, mercenary cheaters. It's like two ships passing in the night, except one is on its way to Tahiti, and the other is headed toward a hurricane. Even when Major League Baseball commissioned an independent study on the use of performance enhancing drugs, they picked a guy on the Red Socks payroll to conduct it (I'm looking at you, George Mitchell). Cmon!

So finally, a former Red Socks player was implicated in a performance enhancing drug scandal. I know the counter to that, precious reader: but Manny isn't a Red Sock any more! He said it was a mistake! There's no evidence of prior use! I've read a lot of articles today, and had a lot of conversations, and I have to tell you that I'm amazed at the level of credulity that's been injected (pun intended, of course) into the performance enhancing drug debate overnight. There's no evidence that A-Rod used PEDs outside of the time frame that he admitted to, but that didn't stop all manner of commentators and armchair critics from wildly speculating and throwing out all sorts of salacious rumors. Which is fine; A-Rod is a cheater, and he deserves it. But you know me, dear reader. Where I come from, if we go down, we go down together. So if you think that a highly paid, elite slugger whose physical prime started in the free-for-all pre-testing era became a first-time PED user at age 36, well, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

That's not the end of the story, though. When these steroids allegations first started coming out, beginning with McGwire and Sosa, you'd read a lot of old-timey types writing about feeling betrayed. These guys were heroes, after all, and we admired them and trusted that the legacy of the game was safe in their hands. After we realized that they were cheaters, and worse, that they were only the thin edge of the wedge, there was a collective (and brief) "Say it ain't so, Joe" moment. I say brief, because that betrayal that you read about turned into cynicism, and now the stock reaction from the sports punditocracy when a new name surfaces is "how can we be surprised" and "you're guilty until proven innocent." It's like that Copyrights song: when you find that your heroes are all assholes, you'll put that pedestal away.

Problem is, I never really felt betrayed. Firstly, because McGwire and Sosa and Bonds and Palmeiro never played for my team, and I never thought of myself as having allegiance to the game. I still don't. And even when it came out that Andy Pettite juiced, and Clemens, I can't say I felt like their cheating was an affront to me. And they were Yankees, so I supported them to the greatest extent possible because they were my guys.

Manny wasn't my guy. Or at least, not in the way that a Derek Jeter or a Paul O'Neill is. I like those guys because they're Yankees. I liked Manny because of who he was as a ballplayer. Manny played a kids' game like a kid. He goofed off in the outfield just like me and countless others like me goofed off in the outfield. Sometimes he admired a home run a little too long or showed up a pitcher a little too much, but is there anyone among us who wouldn't do the same if he hit a home run out of a major league ballpark? Because he was such a goofball, people accused Manny of being dumb. And maybe he is dumb. But every time I saw him out there in left field with a vacant look on his face, I imagined him looking at all the other players on the field with him and thinking "These poor bastards are taking this kids' game seriously."

I love sports, and I take them seriously, to an extent. Watching Manny play always gave me an important sense of perspective. Baseball was his job, and he was good at it, but I always got the sense that he knew he was playing a game, and being paid handsomely for it.

And of course, he played for the hated Red Socks. And he killed the Yankees more times than I care to remember. In spite of all that, I still liked him as a ballplayer. So he wasn't my guy like Jeter is my guy. But maybe that made him my guy even more, because liking Manny required something more than an allegiance to the team I was raised to like. I had something, however trivial, invested in this guy.

So at the end of that roller coaster, after the ups and downs and twists and turns, when the car jerks to that sudden stop, is the betrayal. I know that betrayal is a hyperbolic term here. Manny wasn't thinking "gee, I know Timmy will be disappointed in me if I do this, but I'm going to cheat anyway." I know. But we all want to root for guys we like, and especially guys we like because we choose to. And when you make that choice, to root for a guy whose teammates you hate, and who most other people think is an oaf at best, and it turns out that you cast your lot with a guy who's not any better than the likes of Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez, how else are you supposed to feel?

Read this to be saddened and depressed

2009-05-05T23:10:00.003-04:00

Has anyone seen this Wendy's commercial? Where they show the guy eating a Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich at various points in his life? I suppose if the idea of consistent goodness as portrayed by advertising is important to you, this might be an effective commercial. But if the idea of witnessing an otherwise vital young man withered by the ravages of age while holding a sandwich makes you not want to eat that particular sandwich, well, I don't know. Judge for yourself.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-05-05T21:58:00.003-04:00

Before I left for Savannah, I took in a concert at the new House of Blues on Landsdowne Street. I like New Found Glory, but I'm not such a huge fan that going to see one of their shows wasn't a risk: what if they played a bunch of songs that I don't know? Compounding the issue was the fact that their new album wasn't on Myspace and I wasn't about to like, actually buy it, and you can imagine my apprehension.

Turns out I had no need to be worried. The band played four of five of the new songs, which actually were pretty rocking, and then the rest of the show was pure pantheon stuff. I'm talking Hit or Miss, Something I Call Personality, Better Off Dead (Better Off Dead!), My Friends Over You. Hell, they played Glory of Love and Don't You Forget About Me from their From the Screen to the Stereo albums. It was a profoundly satisfying show.

Anyway, listen to the second song of the set, which witness will attest got me wicked pumped up.

New Found Glory |MTV Music

Cool thing

2009-05-04T21:49:00.003-04:00

Here's a collection of user-generated mashups of fine art and cartoon characters. Some of them are better than others, but I thought the Wile E. Coyote/Death of Marat one was particularly fun. Here's the original for you philistines out there.

I think I'll go to Boston

2009-05-04T19:47:00.003-04:00

So I just got back from a little four day trip to Savannah, Georgia. It's an annual thing with a couple of my buddies, and we had a tremendous time. A few notes:

# I may have said it before, but Savannah, like a few other cities, has an institution called the to-go cup. Basically, if you're leaving a bar or restaurant and you haven't finished your drink, you can just take it with you in a plastic cup. As you can probably imagine, this is awesome. And anyway, what activity, including walking around downtown, isn't made infinitely better by having a cold brew dog in your hand?

# We were at this piano bar, which was pretty fun. The playlist was mostly typical piano bar fare. But since this was the south, there was a smattering of country music, and they wound up playing my three favorite songs! "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver, "Dixieland Delight" by Alabama, and "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" by David Allan Coe. Of course, I was singing along with everybody, and my friends looked at me like I was an idiot. But it was "Dixieland Delight"!

# We went here for dinner. I got the barbecued grouper with creamy grits, and the artichoke and goat cheese fritters for an appetizer. Ooh la la creme.

All in all, a great trip. Did I miss anything while I was gone?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2009-04-28T23:09:00.004-04:00

So last week, I told my friend Amanda that I would put her picture on my blog, for a reason that's too long and mundane to explain (suffice it to say, if you want your picture on the blog, all you probably have to do is ask).

However, comma, now there's a news hook, so to speak, as today, she finally cut off the pink portion of her hair. It's the start of a new era, I suppose. Amanda has had pink hair as long as I've known her. So, because Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun loves its friends, this is your favorite blog wishing Amanda the best of luck in the new, non-pink-hair epoch.

Bayonne on the teevee

2009-04-28T20:29:00.002-04:00

A few big Bayonne-related events on big-time television recently:

# Young Mackenzie Brown, a 12-year-old Little Leaguer, threw a perfect game, becoming the first girl in the history of Bayonne to throw a perfect game. She struck out 12 batters, including the final six. She was invited to throw out the first pitch of last Saturday's game between the Mets and the Nationals at Citi Field. (Is there any doubt that she threw a strike?) Ninety-nine out of a hundred kids would pop their jersey and start acting like the king (or queen) of baseball if they threw a perfect game. However, comma, 99 out of a hundred kids aren't from Bayonne. Here's Mackenzie, displaying the type of poise, purpose, and sense of priority that's pure, archetypal Bayonne:

Although the perfect game has earned her national attention, including television interviews and seeing her own highlight reel on TV, Brown said the best thing about it is "probably just being able to throw like that," according to the newspaper.

Awesome.

# This is a segment from CBS Sunday Morning about my friend's dad. Long story short (and I'll try to make it real short, because you should really watch the video): Jonathan Singer is a podiatrist in Bayonne. He's also a photographer, and he's got a novel technique for photographing flowers (not that novel, of course, since it's derived from the Dutch masters). His photographs are so good that the Smithsonian Institution gave him access to their rare and endangered flower collection, flowers that now appear in Dr. Singer's opus, Botanica Magnifica. They say, without irony or exaggeration, that he's done for flowers what Audobon did for birds. High praise indeed.

Dr. Singer was always an interesting character, but who expects their friend's pal to get a segment on a morning show? Or an article written about him in Vanity Fair? Or write a huge book? Isn't that cool?

Important question

2009-04-27T19:41:00.002-04:00

Why is the closed-off, under-construction half of the Arlington Green Line stop lit like a dentist's office, and the open-for-business half is lit like Buffalo Bill's basement in Silence of the Lambs?

I don't begrudge the construction workers their well-lit jobsite; they should have as much light as they need. But now that we know that it's possible for that station to have bright, inviting light, isn't it about time we gave the actual station, where thousands of commuters wait for the train every day, the same treatment? I don't often use the Arlington stop, and I'm glad I don't. It's like the train station in downtown Bratislava down there. Soul-crushing stuff.

Official friend of DD&U

2009-04-25T12:32:00.002-04:00

For those of you who, like Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, are living up here in the Hub of the Universe and thinking "where can I possibly go to eat tonight," I've got a tremendous treat for you: Dish This!, a blog written by my pal, um, Dish Gal. (Her true identity is a tenaciously guarded secret. I'll never tell!)

Dish This (and Dish Gal will forgive me if I dispense with the exclamation point) is great for a number of reasons. There's a ton of restaurant reviews from a bunch of Boston neighborhoods, and they almost always include pictures, so it's easy to judge how big portions are (and Dish Gal's opinions are spot-on: I've been to two Dish This–recommended restaurants in the past week, Gaslight and Antico Forno, and they were great.) And it's not just reviews. Dish This points you in the direction of all the food-related ephemera out there on the Intertubes you could possibly need.

And finally, Dish Gal writes with the whimsical style of someone that actually enjoys what she's doing. So good for her for finding a nice little niche (unlike some other blogs, which write about TV commercials, Gossip Girl, politics, laundry, journalism, the T, music, and nonsense. Woops.) Go throw Dish This in the ol' Google reader, folks.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-04-21T23:55:00.002-04:00

Listen to a little Blink 182.

But before you do, let me vent for a sec about how this song was like, my anthem when I was in grammar school and high school. Younger readers will be mystified by this, but every day after school I would go to my room and turn the radio on while I did my homework, and I would always leave a blank tape in the stereo. Every time "Dammit" came on, and then later "Josie," I would hit "record." As a consequence, I had a stack full of radio mix tapes, the majority of which had this song at least once on them. I've never seen the video, and I was disheartened (to say the least) that it took such a conceptually goofy (and childishly literal) approach. You guys are killing my youth!

blink-182 |MTV Music

A day late, but hopefully not a buck short: the GG diary

2009-04-21T22:43:00.002-04:00

You can imagine that after like, a hundred weeks of no new Gossip Girl, I would be 100 percent on top of yesterday's new episode. Unfortunately, it's playoff season, and my roommate absolutely NEEDED to watch the Rangers get shut out by the Capitals on our big TV. Fortunately, your favorite blogger has the patience of . . . that guy that has a lot of patience. And also compassionate, because I know you folks have been jonesing for some GG levity on the ol' blog. This one was a stunner.

9:30 I’m watching on DVR, so the times are all off. Woops. On another note, go Caps.

My other roommate, who barely watches, recognized it at the word go: Blair is a nutcase. Nice dream.

Cyrus is back. This is tremendous news.

9:32 I forgot that Serena made the completely irresponsible decision to take a trip to Spain with Poppy and her boyfriend.

. . . or maybe Poppy wasn’t there. A mystery!

9:34 Nate? Getting into Columbia? By himself? Maybe grandpa didn’t make a call, but I’m sure a call wasn’t even necessary. It’s Nate we’re talking about, people. Columbia material, he ain't.

9:35 Who’s this greasy chucker that Jenny is doing homework with? What a decidedly ordinary looking young chap.

9:37 With Bart out of the picture, I feel like there’s been a manipulative-jerk-shaped hole left in my heart. Thank you, Grandpa Vanderbilt.

I’ve legitimately forgotten all of the little GG spoilers I’ve read online. And now I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out why s needs a lawyer.

9:40 Is it ok for me to read a little antisemitism in B’s steadfast refusal to be around for the Seder?

“You look familiar. Have you worked for me before?” Welcome back. Eleanor.

9:43 Nate, choosing Columbia and showing some rare backbone. What am I supposed to think?

Oh, that’s right. Serena got married in Spain. I knew that!

9:45 I’m glad Dan is displaying a nice little bit of incredulity and indignation at Serena’s ridiculous story. And he’s right! Theirs is a love that transcends reality, and they couldn’t make it work, but then Serena goes and gets married to Poppy’s ex? As Brodie Bruce would say, the guy’s a walking hard-on!

9:50 “If you hear screams, don’t be alarmed. We’re fine.” Welcome back, chuck. Actually, welcome back everybody. How did I survive all those weeks without gg?

9:52 Nate! I’m not prepared for you to not be a drip!

9:53 You do owe Gabriel at least a talk, S.

. . . and Serena, I swear on everything good and holy on God’s sweet and merciful creation, if you drag Dan into this and break his heart . . . well, I don’t know what I’ll do. But it’ll be bad!

9:56 Sitting in Elijah’s seat is bad juju. This Seder can only end poorly!

9:58 Ooooh. The rare bit of long-term continuity on television. I COMEPLETELY forgot about what happened at the Kiss on the Lips party. Bravo, GG writers. Bravo.

What is it with this show and adults mixing kids up in their games? Does Grandpa Vanderbilt REALLY need to exact vengeance on a 17 year old girl?

10:02 Is it bad for me to read a little bit of antisemitism in every character’s willingness to make a mockery out of this most holy of rituals?

The viewing public can’t think of a single reason why you should trust B either, Nate.

Can we get a prequel episode about the Constance Mother-Daughter Luncheon? That incident with the lacrosse team sounds like fun!

10:06 Gabriel leaves, Serena follows, and then . . . hello, god. How did you get out of your machine?

There’s definitely something uplifting about Nate and Chuck actually acting like pals. Remember when they used to smoke joints in the park together?

10:09 And then Rufus suddenly doesn’t like owning an art gallery any more? How convenient. Now Dan can go to college.

10:11 And then Chuck is suddenly apologizing for being a lecherous creep? GG writers, you’re throwing a LOT at us this ep. Take it easy!

10:13 And then Blair is suddenly cool with NYU? And easily reconciles with Nate? My head = spinning

Oooooooh baby! Poppy and Gabriel, conspiring against Aerena. I couldn’t be more excited. And S, don’t forget that I promised it would be bad news if you dragged Dan into your mess for nothing. You better hope he doesn’t take this Gabriel business the wrong way!

Happy Patriots' Day

2009-04-20T19:04:00.002-04:00

Well, precious readers, we're approaching the close of the best day of the year, Patriots' Day. It was a good one! I hung out with some friends, had some beers, watched the Boston Marathon. Couldn't ask for much more.

My pal was visiting this weekend, which didn't leave a ton of free time for blogging over the past few days, but hopefully I'll get around to putting up some stuff for you folks. I dumped everything in my Google Reader, so I have absolutely no idea what's been going on in the world. I hope I haven't missed anything.

And did I tell you about the pyogenic granuloma in my mouth? No? Look it up. I don't have the heart to type about it.

FYI

2009-04-15T21:45:00.001-04:00

Ben Linus's father on Lost is actually Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. Cool?

Tax Day hijinks

2009-04-15T18:46:00.003-04:00

You can imagine my dismay as I strolled through Government Center on the way home from work when I saw all sorts of Tea Partiers, placards in tow, walking away from Faneuil Hall. I'd missed all the fun!

If you're not aware, these tea parties were organized for sites all across the country, as a protest of . . . I can't really say. Higher taxes on the wealthy? Mortgage cramdown legislation? The Wall Street bailout? Tariffs on newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards? Who knows. The whole movement has become a catch-all for all manner of glibertarian causes célèbres. And I wanted to watch!

I did manage to catch a few pithy signs. "Free markets, not free loaders" was a good one, but not as good as "I can stimulate myself." I ran into someone who was apparently a member of the "Tar and Feather Committee," carrying a large sign entreating her fellow citizens to impeach those responsible for TARP.

However, comma, the highlight of my early evening was walking by a long-haired, bearded gentleman with a professional-looking sign that read "It's time to water the tree of liberty," a sign which, for obvious reasons, I found to be long on rhetoric and short on sanity. So as I read, I shook my head and chuckled, not because I found anything particularly funny, but rather as a cloaking device to hide my dread. As I walked past, the young revolutionary looked me in the eye and thrust an object in my hand. This:

A free book! I had this guy all wrong. Sure, he implied that letting Congressionally approved sunsets on tax cuts for the wealthy take place was cause for bloody and violent revolution, but he gave me a free book. Dedicated readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that my motto is "If it's free, it's for me." Will I read it? Eh. Probably not, although to paraphrase my boss, Ron Paul is a lunatic, but he's my kind of lunatic. Irregardless, I got something for free, so if you're reading, Angry-Sign-Carrying-Guy, thanks!

. . . without news

2009-04-13T19:21:00.002-04:00

I'm a little late to the game on this one, but here's a fascinating piece by Clay Shirky about the tough reality that the newspaper industry has to face up to. Shirky is an Internet consultant, but he puts on his cultural historian hat, comparing the current newspaper crisis to the revolutionary changes that occurred when the printing press was invented. It's a great piece, and I recommend you read the whole thing. Shirky certainly doesn't pull any punches. Here's a great quote:

And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-04-13T19:13:00.001-04:00

Listen to a little The Academy Is . . .

But before you do, join me in shaking your fist menacingly at bands who post videos on YouTube with the embed feature disabled. I'm looking at you, Mae.

The Academy Is... |MTV Music

This blog was written by a professional

2009-04-07T23:09:00.002-04:00

So this afternoon, I participated in a panel discussion, put on by the Boston College Career Center, for students interested in careers in writing. No joke!

My fellow panelists were Michele Meek, a screenwriter/director who founded NewEnglandFilm.com, and Erin Dionne, whose young adult novel Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies was recently published by Dial Books.

I gotta tell ya, it was a little jarring, being asked to represent long form narrative journalism, sitting next to one person who has a three-book deal with a Penguin imprint, and another who actually publishes a magazine and has written and directed award-winning films. That is to say, these were real people making it in the writing business, and I was just me. But I like to think I held my own, and I gave some good advice to the youngsters. The organizer from the Career Center said she would do a post on the Center's blog about the event, so as soon as that comes up, I'll pass it along to you guys.

Cassandra shrieks

2009-04-07T23:03:00.002-04:00

Hardcore readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun (and by hardcore, I mean readers who took the time to pore through my oeuvre in the archives of the Heights, the independent student newspaper of Boston College) will recall a column your favorite blogger penned waaaaaaaay back in 2002 about the Unz Initiative, a ballot initiative which essentially eliminated bilingual education in Massachusetts. As you can tell from my righteously indignant rhetoric (I was able to squeeze in "the voters of Massachusetts fell victim to clever sophistry and a willful manipulation of facts" and accused the fair people of this Commonwealth of perpetrating "an anachronistic display of nativism"), I wasn't a big fan.

Six and a half years later, it appears that the facts are starting to back me up. This isn't an "I told you so" post. Rather, it's meant to make you think, once again, about why we still make decisions on matters as hefty as the education of our children in the same way as we decide the new color of M&Ms.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-04-07T22:10:00.001-04:00

Listen to a little Straylight Run

Straylight Run |MTV Music

Classic DD&U

2009-04-06T22:18:00.001-04:00

Never-ending battle
June 7, 2007

Do you ever notice that every commercial for toothpaste, toothbrushes, or mouthwash always mentions that brushing and flossing is the best way to get a healthy smile, but . . . and then the pitch. Little plastic dealies coming out of the bristles. Flavor crumbs in the paste. Some kind of high-tech acid polymer that gets between teeth. The purpose of every advance in consumer dental products, it seems, is to give flossing the old end-around.

They don’t even advertise floss! And it’s not like they haven’t made improvements in the world of floss. I’ve seen all kinds of fancy different flosses at the drug store, but awareness is built solely through word of mouth (Get it? Mouth? ‘Cause it’s floss? Hello?). I understand there are economic factors here, and it’s in the interest of Big Toothpaste to sell ten-dollar electric gizmos as opposed to 99-cent rolls of floss, but doesn’t it bother anyone that our collective oral health is in the hands of people that try to convince that we don’t need the stuff we really need? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I’m not really sure where this came from. I just like flossing, I guess.

. . . without news

2009-04-06T19:09:00.002-04:00

Lots of stuff piled up last week while I was moaning about my wisdom teeth. Let's take a look at the future of journalism today, shall we?

# Perhaps the biggest news was the announcement that the Huffington Post was teaming up with a number of philanthropies to form the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. The fund will basically support a team of investigative reporters, whose focus will be the economy. Whatever work they do will be available for publication anywhere. Here's a post from Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU who will be a senior adviser on the project, with some more details. Here's my favorite part:

But I also counseled Nick and Arianna (she will help raise money for the fund, and find partners for it) that the best approach is to have no orthodoxy and to support very traditional investigative reporting by paid pros who are good at it, as well as teams of pros and amateurs, students working with masters of the craft, crowdsourced investigations, and perhaps other methods. They were already there with an ecumenical approach, combining old and new.

I won't say that this is THE model that's going to work; I think the point is that the Investigative Fund could be a success, as far as it goes. At its best, I think a non-profit project like this can be a credible and high-profile part of the eventual melange of sources from which we'll all eventually get our news. The idea of leveraging the talents of amateur experts and novice reporters and crowdsourcing certain reporting tasks (something Talking Points Memo does frequently) is very exciting. The more people have a vested interest in the news, the better, I say.

# Two posts on the same topic: the oft-forgotten idea that in many cases, what's bringing newspapers down is plain old poor management. Athenae over at First Draft spews some righteous venom at Conrad Black and David Radner, who escorted the Chicago Sun-Times right into bankruptcy. Daniel Gross in Newsweek has a bit more of a measured approach. Here's a good quote:

The actions of the top executives in other bankrupt newspaper companies were criminal only if you consider gross financial stupidity and recklessness to be jailing offenses. Who loads up newspapers—cyclical companies whose revenues are in secular decline thanks to the disappearance of classified advertisements and the rise of the Internet—with tons of debt at precisely the wrong time? Financial geniuses, that's who.

Newspapers are businesses, obviously. But they're not, as Gross writes, "assets to be flipped, leveraged, and stripped." In any given city, the local newspaper is a public trust, and it fills a need beyond those of other businesses. To piggyback off Gross's example of mattress companies, if Sealy were to go bankrupt, that would be bad, but you could still buy a Serta. If the Baltimore Sun goes bankrupt, well, then Baltimore doesn't have a newspaper, and there are very dire consequences to that prospect.

# At Slate, Jack Shafer calls for a return to yellow journalism. Shafer goes a bit into the history of yellow journalism, and dispels some oft-bandied-about myths. Money-ish quote:

Far from being a flavor consumed by only the poor and immigrants, yellow newspapers enjoyed wide readership across class, sex, and age lines. Media historian John D. Stevens found that the yellow papers "published a fair amount of sober financial, political, and diplomatic information." They crusaded against the privileged and the powerful; they exposed corruption in government and corporations and "probably encouraged the rise of magazine muckraking in the early twentieth century." The yellow papers also paid reporters well, which is a big plus in their favor.

Sober objectivity is important in journalism, and so is the adversarial relationship that journalists are supposed to have with those who pull the levers of power. The problem with many journalists today, especially the big media stars on TV and in the Washington press corps, is that they view that objectivity and adversarial role as states of being, and not goals that need to be constantly striven for. Read any post by Glenn Greenwald or on Media Matters for examples of our media stars acting more as stenographers than as the people who are paid to ask the tough questions and keep our leaders' feet to the fire. (The press corps' general acquiescence to the Bush administration's claims leading up to the Iraq War is the prime, although far from the only, example.) All of this is to say that it's not like we're living in a golden age of quality journalism. It would be arrogant to think that there's nothing we can learn from yellow journalists.

# This was a very interesting post from the Times' Idea of the Day blog. The gist: advertising just isn't enough. The post quotes Eric Clemons, a professor at Wharton, who believes that even if newspapers could develop a decent business model based on Internet advertising, the revenue wouldn't be sufficient. The general Internet-using public has more effective and more trustworthy ways of determining what products they want to purchase. Definitely click through to Clemons's TechCrunch post: it gets feisty!

Sharpen your pitchfork

2009-03-31T20:09:00.002-04:00

According to the Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun Mission Statement, the confluence of cheap populist rage, current events, and humanities boosterism is right in this blog's wheelhouse. Consequently, witness the backlash against the modern business school education. Matthew Lynn of Bloomberg launches this salvo, titled "M.B.A. Schools Have Nothing to Offer in New World." Bold language! Here's a money quote:

the intellectual tools that led us into the financial meltdown were largely invented within academia. Complex models for pricing risk created the market for the options and derivatives contracts that have caused so much trouble in the past year.

The business schools took something that was mysterious and unknowable -- risk -- and tried to make it as easy to count as peas in a pod. By doing so, they encouraged a whole generation of young men and women to go into investment banking armed with the belief that they had mastered risk, that it had been tamed and brought under control.

The truth, of course, turned out to be different. Bankers can no more tame risk than sailors can tame the oceans. All they can hope to do is steer a safe course through it.

Then, over at The Big Money, Matthew Stewart offers his dirge, "RIP, MBA," and reminds us of the Randian objectivist underpinnings of the modern Wall Street philosophy. He writes:

The reality is that business school is now chiefly a community of intention. It brings together people who share certain career aspirations—for the most part, to make big bucks—and occupies their time teaching them a few technical things that they don't need to know, along with a code of conduct that says, in essence, whatever is legal is ethical; and if it makes money, it's a positive duty. It's now clear that we would have all been much better off if, instead of cloistering these people on fancy campuses with world-class golf courses, we'd have sent them off to do two years of national service.

Now, I don't have a lot of experience with business schools, so I won't profess to know whether Mr. Lynn or Mr. Stewart are on the ball or not (although my instincts point to an entire system built on moral bankruptcy). But speaking purely academically, it's not so crazy to rethink the way we teach business; if it's not working, it's not working. I mean, Newtonian physics gave way to relativity, which will give way to whatever wacky idea they come up with next. Formalism gave way poststructuralism which gave way to, I don't know, performatism? Back to formalism? Whatever. The point is, when theories are discredited (and it appears to me that a lot of what business schools are putting out there has been discredited), new ones need to rise up and take their place. In the new world order, there's still a place for business education. Just as long as it doesn't look like what it looks like today.

Incidentally, I read the Stewart piece and had this really nagging feeling that I had read something very similar before. In fact, I had! It was this piece in the Atlantic from June 2006, called "The Management Myth," by the same writer. The gist: just study philosophy.

Great idea in action

2009-03-31T19:47:00.002-04:00

The Washington Post checks in with a story about two young entrepreneurs (and BC grads) who have a "green" wireless Internet startup called Anaptyx. The gist: instead of having 20 separate wireless routers in 20 different units in an apartment building, sign up the whole building for one network with one or two high-powered routers. It's one of those ideas that makes so much sense that it's almost impossible to believe that no one has come up with it before. Hopefully it works out for these guys.

And since I'm nothing if not a shameless self-promoter, here's a story about the Boston College Venture Competition that I wrote. It features Anaptyx, as well as a bunch of other pretty cool startups. And it's very well-written.

Ding ding ding!

2009-03-29T23:31:00.001-04:00

The Herald is alright, but nobody does punny slammers like the New York Post.

If you know Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, you know that "Boar War" is my favorite.

Uh duh

2009-03-29T22:36:00.002-04:00

So the Globe checks in with this story about an industrious young go-getter who's leveraging Facebook to petition the MBTA to put their transportation system on Google Maps. (Apparently, teh Google has a Transit site for a number of cities where you can get directions that include public transportation options. Pretty sweet, eh?)

As you can tell from the title of this post, this is a no-brainer. I've complained about Boston being a rinky-dink town before, and it would be one thing if the Hub were lagging behind New York and Chicago. But Lexington, Cape Cod, and Framingham have their transit systems on Google, and Boston doesn't. Huh? Cmon, guys!

In the meantime, if you're looking for something slightly helpful, here's a map of town with the T superimposed on it. Not quite the same, but it works!

teh awesome

2009-03-27T14:36:00.000-04:00

Photoshopped?

. . . without news

2009-03-26T18:28:00.001-04:00

Funny.

h/t

Liveblogging my wisdom tooth surgery

2009-03-26T09:34:00.008-04:00

9:35 Well, not literally, as I'll be under while the actual surgery is going on. And I'll probably be sort of loopy immediately after. But I'll be home from work for two days, recovering, so you, my precious readers, will get an inside look at what it's like to convalesce from getting four wisdom teeth out. Come back later for more updates!

1:40 "A little bleeding and seepage from the surgical sites is normal and expected." What a nice little euphemism for "you're going to look like one of the zombie people from 28 Days Later." I feel bad for the girl I talked to at CVS. Anyway, I'm home, cooking up some noodles so I can take my narcotic drugs.

4:42 Just woke up from a napski. I have to tell you, I was hoping the Vicodin would pack a little more punch than it actually is. That said, perhaps my pain is so transcendentally intense that even the most powerful narcotics are powerless against it? That could be true.

Anyway, I've been thinking of a few things. I don't remember going under, and I definitely remember being awake for quite some time, but I don't remember the surgeon going into my mouth. Is this how anesthesia works nowadays? I always vividly remember asking them to keep the teeth, which I have to assume is not standard protocol, as I didn't get the teeth back.

Talking to all my friends who have had their wisdom teeth out is making me QUITE paranoid. Like, I didn't get that little water-shooting gizmo to clean out the holes in my mouth. I even asked if I needed it, and the oral surgery folks said no. I trust them, because they're professionals, but still . . .

Also, I'm second guessing every little thing I do with my mouth. What if I swallow something too vigorously? What if I move my tongue around too much? Should I be talking? Help!

5:30 The human mouth is really a foul and loathsome thing. I recommend not coming into contact with it unless absolutely necessary.

7:24 I suppose I'm obligated to post this.

8:15 Nobody told me this was going to be a Kafka-esque nightmare of confusion and self-doubt. When are these gaping holes in my mouth going to stop bleeding? Soon, I hope! Should I not have eaten that oatmeal? Am I drinking too much water? Not enough? Is this blog going to turn into nonsensical rantings of a lunatic mind?

9:42 Not much more to say except that my mouth is starting to hurt again. I think I'll pop some more narcotic drugs before I go to bed. Sweet dreams, Angelface.

Gossip Girl is trying to convince us that Lily is all Rufus ever wanted of a girl

2009-03-23T21:06:00.002-04:00

The Gossip Girl running diary is back. I got a weird vibe from this ep. Don't know why.

8:01 Awful awful awful. It’s snowing in the opening scene tonight. Nooooooooo!

Chuck is wearing a plaid button down. Ironic? Post modern? Post post modern? And of course he makes a gross “lick her wounds” double entendre. Chuck, you cad!

8:04 Oh hey, it’s the art purchaser that Rufus went on a date with. I totally forgot about her. I wonder how they’re going to fit that other woman in. Remember, he got her confused with the art purchaser lady?

Lily: "Let’s make lists." Has this ever worked out? It sort of reminds me of that Lifetime movie, “7 Things to Do Before I’m 30.” Lists are like radioactive dynamite!

8:07 Nice one, V. Getting Nate ensconced back with his shady-ass family is almost as bad as making lists.

8:10 Commercial for Adventureland just came on. Remind me to write an entirely different post about this.

8:13 Of course Nate assumed his family hated him without actually like, asking. Then again, maybe they do. And of course the Archibalds play touch football. “Football and distinguished public service. That’s what Archibalds do!”

8:15 Is Serena old enough to know who Trent Reznor is? She’s my brother’s age, and I’m certain he has no effing clue.

8:19 Sorry if the times are messed up. I paused the show to try to read lily’s list. Nothing to write home about, I suppose. Do you think the John Henry on her list is the owner of the Red Socks, or the steel-driving man?

I don’t like it when storylines drift too far toward bad Serena’s past. I’ve got an ideal I’m trying to maintain here, GG writers!

8:26 Are we really to believe that the frontman for Lincoln Hawk only has one index card of gal pals? He’s dated at least two women in the course of this show already! And he was married for a good portion of that time!

8:28 Chuck: "I’m not gonna play where’s Waldorf all night." Delicious!

8:30 Wow. B is crying to the dean of Sarah Lawrence? Wow.

8:31 And there we go. Blair admits to defacing herself. Now I feel bad for all the girls at Aarah Lawrence who are watching. Then again, who am I kidding. If B slandered Boston College on Gossip Girl, I’d be out of my seat cheering.

8:32 17 Again? Didn’t they make this movie already and call it 13 Going On 30?

8:35 B: "Garcon with the bubble butt"! Please don’t stop this meltdown, Serena.

Also, what is it with people rifling through people’s bags on this show? I’ve never rifled through one bag in my whole life!

8:38 Can’t V cut Nate a little slack? His dad is in prison! He helped put him there!

8:46 Thanks, writers, for not forgetting that Nate and B dated for like, ever. This show was starting to have less continuity than the Simpsons.

8:49 I like Serena with this flat hair. On a related note, I just got my new rolling stone in the mail (we get it for free, for some reason.) All I can say is, ooh la la crème!

8:52 Cmon, V. You knew what you were getting into. Don’t act like Nate being a feckless drip is any kind of surprise.

8:56 What makes Jenny think that Nate and V belong together? They probably belong apart.

Ok, I legitimately laughed out loud when Lily read the wrong side of the napkin. That was cheap, writers.

8:59 Nate and B getting back together should be the exact type of thing that would infuriate me. And yet I feel oddly serene. What gives?

Crazy pills

2009-03-23T19:56:00.002-04:00

Another week, another writer trying to make sense of the financial crisis. At bat is one of my favorites: Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, with an offering titled "The Big Takeover," and subtitled "The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution ." There's a lot of high-quality vitriol as only Mr. Taibbi can deliver it, much of which I'm sure my more banking-sympathetic readers will find over the top. But he's got a great point toward the end, channeling a bit of the Shock Doctrine:

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

Do with that what you will. I'm getting crazy-pilled out.

Six years

2009-03-19T21:14:00.002-04:00

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the day President Bush launched the war in Iraq. Regardless of your politics, please take a minute, or more than a minute, to remember that there are thousands of Americans, as well as soldiers fighting for our allies, who are over there ready to die in our name. And each one of them has friends and family back home. And then there are innocent Iraqi civilians whose property and lives are at risk every day. If you're someone who prays, these people deserve to be in your prayers.

More music is my imaginary friend

2009-03-17T22:34:00.003-04:00

So did you ever let some music fall through the cracks of your normal iPod rotation? You get in a little bit of a rut, and then after a few months, you realize "Hey, I haven't listened to Butch Walker in a while." And then you listen to a few songs and you wonder how you could have gone so long without listening to this music that you love so much? And then you see that Butch is coming through Boston and you jump on a pair of tickets? And then the show is effing awesome and it pumps you up for the rest of the week?

"Here Comes the . . ." is burning a hole in my noise-canceling headphones. I can't get enough of it! It's got soul, it's got hooks. Bee-Dub is the greatest. And I was thrilled to find a video of a performance on Ellen, of all places. Listen to some Butch Walker.

DD&U in the news

2009-03-14T09:54:00.002-04:00

So your favorite blogger was interviewed by Meg Tirrell, a reporter from Bloomberg, the other day (not in my blogger capacity, unfortunately. Someday, though). Here's the story. It's an interesting little piece about Kodak's strategy for remaining relevant in a post-film world, and it captured my imagination for three reasons:

1) I'm in it! Thousands of people are going to read this story and think "Wow, this guy has some insightful things to say about business and marketing. He make say 'like' a little too much, but that's only an indicator of his authenticity and credibility." I hope to somehow leverage this article into a permanent role as spokesman for Young People Everywhere.

2) Kidding, of course. It was something of a revelatory experience, though, to be interviewed and then see my words in print. As the guy that's usually doing the interview, I usually think nothing of distilling long conversations with subjects into a few quotes and paraphrases that fit the narrative that I'm crafting. That's just the way it goes. Thinking back on the conversation I had with Ms. Tirrell, it's interesting to see which quotes she picked, which she left behind, and what she decided to take generally out of the interview. Which is not to say she picked bad quotes or took me out context. They're good quotes, completely in line with the rest of the interview. I found it fascinating to have a more inside view of the choices that another writer made. What fun!

3) In terms of the article's content, I think it lines up with a lot of what I've been writing recently about newspapers, which is a philosophy that can be applied to pretty much any business in a time of transition. As you've heard me say (or seen me write) before, newspapers are in the news business, not the paper business, but that's a realization that many newspapers may have come to too late. Here's an illuminating quote from Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern:

“What Kodak stood for was really memories,” he said. “That is still an incredibly important thing even though the technology has changed.”

A company like Kodak had choice (and maybe it still does) of being in the memory business, or the photograph business, just like way back when railroads had the choice to be in the transportation business or the steel-rail-and-wooden-tie business, or any of a number of other examples. One choice gives you the agility to change with the times and the tastes of the consumer. The other ties you to what eventually will become a dead, or at most a niche, technology. This is why I'm amazed to read things like this. Exxon will spend $29 billion this year on "finding, drilling and refining fossil fuels and chemicals," but then complain that research into alternative energy sources is too dependent on government underwriting. Exxon, one of the richest companies in the world, has decided that it's in the oil business, not the energy business. Remember that.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-03-12T23:13:00.002-04:00

Hmm. Those last two posts put me in a pretty bleak mood. So here's an appropriately bleak song from the aforementioned greatest album ever created, Bon Jovi's Keep the Faith. I think that after the past few years of watching unbridled executive authority exercised by craven and evil lunatics, and unchecked greed on the part of our Wall Street overlords, this is a good tune. After all, aren't we all just swimming in the sand, praying for some holy water to wash these sins from off our hands?

Listen to Dry County.

Bon Jovi - Dry County

. . . without news

2009-03-12T22:43:00.002-04:00

Here's a story that ran in the Times yesterday, putting in print the macabre parlor game of conjecturing which major city will be the first to have its newspaper fail. It sends a shiver down one's spine.

Of course, given the financial straits that many newspapers are in, it's not inconceivable that a big city (Seattle? Boston? San Francisco? Really?) could be without a daily newspaper. It's very hard to imagine what the news landscape would be like in that city, thought. I'm going to go ahead and say it would be a combination of Mad Max, the wedding dress sale at Filene's Basement, and the upcoming season of Real World/Road Rules Challenge.

I liked this article, though, because (even though it doesn't realize it), it wanders around the outskirts of one of the main problems with the newspaper world perspective:

Nearly every large paper in the country prints fewer pages and fewer articles, and many have eliminated entire sections. Bureaus in foreign capitals and even Washington have closed, and papers have jettisoned film criticism, book reviews and coverage of local news outside their home markets.

In the heady days of 20 percent profit margins, it made sense to start new sections about books, style, travel, food, et cetera. It made sense when the newspaper was the most convenient, most thorough source of current information. That's obviously no longer the case. The internet puts restaurant and book reviews, classified ads, ruminations on style, and pretty much everything a newspaper does, at a person's fingertips. Even the type of commentary that's the bread and butter of newspaper op-ed pages is on the way to being rendered obsolete. Why read Tom Friedman when there's an entire blogosphere filled with writers who are smarter than him?

Newspapers are paring down the functions that the internet renders redundant. News-gathering, of course, is not, and can not, be one of those functions. This is not to say that internet-based news outfits can't do a good job of reporting; they clearly can. Whether it's economically sustainable is yet to be seen. What I mean is that, going forward, established newspapers, if they want to survive, need to start looking at news as their niche, in the same way that classifieds are the niche of Craigslist and reviews are the niche of Yelp. As I've said before, and will surely say again, newspapers aren't in the paper business or the website business. They're in the news business. If the rest has to be made extraneous, oh well.

Then again, when you've got the coordinator of Columbia Journalism School's reporting and writing program saying things like "F*ck new media," maybe all might actually be lost.

Bubbles can burst?!

2009-03-12T21:45:00.002-04:00

Remember, that was Bart Simpson's incredulous query when the Repo Depot came to take away BetterThanTv.com's ping pong tables and pinball machines after the company went bankrupt, and Milhouse said "Well, I guess the bubble burst." Fans of The Simpsons will also remember that the repo man observing the action with Bart and Milhouse replies "Yeah, but it's a golden age for the repo business, one that shall never end," and then lights a cigar with what we can only presume is a $100 bill.

Mmm, that's good satire.

Of course, that episode (featuring a web TV startup that distributes stock certificates out of a paper towel dispenser) was a send-up of the dot-com bubble, but the repo man might as well have been a Wall Street banker. After all, wasn't the era of securitized mortgages and credit default swaps, built on the rock-solid foundation of ever-rising home prices, a golden age that would never end? Nobody could have predicted that home prices would eventually stop rising, that predatory lending would lead to foreclosures, and that there's only one logical conclusion to a Ponzi scheme!

All of this is by way of introducing this doozy of a story that ran in the Globe yesterday. Here's the lede:

WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no insurance premiums from most banks from 1996 to 2006.

Let's refresh: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was set up after the Great Depression to protect people's deposits in banks. If your bank failed for any reason, the FDIC insured your money up to a certain threshold ($250,000 today). The confidence that ordinary Americans had that their money was safe prevented the sort of runs on banks that occurred in the early part of the Depression and contributed to more than 4,000 bank failures in 1933. Bank failures are bad. Deposit insurance is good. Like other insurance plans, participating banks pay premiums to the FDIC, which goes into the fund that would, you know, pay for the deposits that are lost when a bank fails. It's easy.

It's a shame most banks didn't pay premiums for a decade. The FDIC could kinda use that money about now. I'll let James Chessen, the chief economist for the American Bankers Associant, explain the reasoning:

"[T]he fund became so large that interest income on the fund was covering the premiums for almost a decade." There were relatively few bank failures and no projection of the current economic collapse, he said. "Obviously hindsight is 20-20," Chessen said.

Isn't that so typical? Of course Congress wouldn't authorize fees on its enablers in the finance industry. Why do the legwork of actually paying your insurance premiums when you can kick up your feet and let the interest do it for you? After all, we were living in a golden age! One that would never end!

I love that dirty water

2009-03-11T22:48:00.002-04:00

A couple relatively Boston-related links for you all.

## The Globe's Braniac blog offers up this post about conflicting schools of landscape architecture thought on Boston's City Hall Plaza. Apparently, the Cultural Landscape Foundation has designated City Hall a "Marvel of Modernism." Problem is, the local architectural community doesn't really want City Hall Plaza put on any pedestals. You know, because they hate the place. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know my true feelings about the City Hall building. By logic, these same strong feelings should extend to City Hall Plaza. And they do! This was all true, even before I learned that the plaza was designed by I.M. Pei. How can you not preserve a space designed by the only non–Frank Gehry contemporary architect that anyone can recognize by name? Ridiculous!

## This isn't as much about Boston as it is about New York. But by comparison, it makes the Hub of the Universe look wicked good. Here's a report from Rolling Stone about my former favorite radio station, 92.3 K-Rock. You can click the link for all the detes, but quickly: 92.3 is switching formats from mostly-classic-rock-and-some-contemporary-stuff to Top-40. This is after switching to mostly-classic-rock-and-some-contemporary-stuff from mostly-talk-and-rock-on-the-weekends. And this was after switching to mostly-talk-and-rock-on-the-weekends from just straight up contemporary alternative rock. Sad times for the rock faithful in the tri-state area. Apparently, the only rock station left in New York (not counting classic rock station 104.3) is something called 101.9 WRXP. I listened to the radio every day for something like 13 years in Jersey, and I ain't never heard of 101.9.

What does this have to do with Boston? Not too much, except for the fact that the Cradle of Liberty is blessed with at least three alternative rock stations: 97.7/107.3 WAAF, 104.1 WBCN, and 92.1 WFNX. Now, I'm sure there are a lot of demographic factors involved with 92.3's change in format. However, comma, I kind of have a hard time processing the idea that Boston has more quality rock stations than the greatest metropolis in the galaxy.

First impressions

2009-03-10T21:14:00.002-04:00

Here's a fun list: the 25 most epic opening rock tracks. It should sufficiently pump you up.

In today's age of individual iTunes downloads and, heavens forfend, music piracy, the order in which an album's tracks are organized doesn't matter as much as it did back in your mom and dad's era. But if you think of bands as collections of artists, and albums as tapestries, lovingly crafted out of well, smaller tapestries, then you can appreciate how important the order of tracks can be. And when it comes to rock, you want something that'll melt some faces from the starting gate. A quick jaunt through my music library turns up these all-time favorite opening tracks.

"Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today," Fall Out Boy, Take This to Your Grave
This tune, in addition to featuring some fist-pumping guitar riffs and quintessentially emo lyrics, is followed by two other tremendous songs, "Dead on Arrival" and "Grand Theft Autumn," making the rare epic-opening-tracks trifecta.

"I Believe," Bon Jovi, Keep the Faith
All that needs to be said is that this is a sweeping anthem that happens to be the first track on the greatest album ever written by humans. About this, there can be no debate.

Bon Jovi |MTV Music

"Hands Down," Dashboard Confessional, A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
When the song that a band consistently uses as a show-closer also happens to be the first song on an album, I think that adds up to a pretty good opening track. Also, "Hands Down" is followed by "Rapid Hope Loss" and "As Lovers Go," making another maybe-not-so-rare opening track trifecta.

Dashboard Confessional |MTV Music

Hmm . . . this is getting a little long. How about I stretch this bad boy out into a couple posts? That sounds like a capital idea.

One more Watchmen commentary amongst foundations makes little difference

2009-03-09T21:20:00.002-04:00

I saw Watchmen on Friday. Like all good fanboys, I was tremendously excited, but also trying to temper my expectations, for fear of having my hopes and dreams crushed.

I thought it was great, but then again, I'm not a very critical viewer of movies. Spencer Ackerman has a nice and thoughtful post about what the movie did well and not so well that I'll pass along. I more or less agree with most of it (how equivocal).

If you've read the book, or are familiar with the seemingly interminable struggle to get the movie made, you can understand that the fact that Watchmen movie exists, and that it makes narrative sense, is in itself a triumph. Matt Yglesias pretty much made this point yesterday: the curse of Watchmen is that it's only 12 issues, so there's a temptation to look at it as capturable on film. It is, in a way; the current movie is proof. But you don't get the reputation of being the greatest comic ever without being incredibly dense and nuanced; so much of the original wound up getting left on the cutting room floor (or who knows, not even being filmed), that the book and the movie are essentially different stories. Both good. But different. Here's a money quote:

All-in-all, I’m torn between immense admiration for the film and regret that it was done as a movie at all. In retrospect, I kind of wish we’d instead gotten a 12 part HBO maxi-series that was really uncompromising and didn’t leave anything out.

I was very pleased to read this comment, to say the least. Not only because I agree with it, but because I've always felt that the actual best graphic novel ever written deserves the sort of high quality cable treatment that we've seen out of shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Mad Men.

I'm talking about Preacher.

Wasn't Preacher, the tale of the minister Jesse Custer, who was imbued with the power to command men by an angel/demon hybrid spirit, built for a five-season run on HBO or Showtime? Preacher is a comic that does exactly what comics are supposed to do, and it does it better than anyone: create a unique, American folklore. It's got God. It's got cowboys. It's got vampires. It's got a cross-country quest. Fast cars. Trucks. Women. Booze. Watchmen is a superbly crafted tale with a powerful political message, but it's very firmly rooted in the 1980s and the Cold War. Watchmen engages history to that point, but in the end, it ends. Preacher, in this writer's myopic opinion, is a little more ambitious in its tackling of wider themes of love, friendship, faith, and Americanness. It obviously can afford to be, being 66 issues in length. Short of doing an actual close reading (sorry, dearest readers, I'm not going to do that much homework for a dopey comic book blog post), I feel like I took more out of Preacher than I did Watchmen. Then again, I'm a romantic.

But this is all to say, the series has the right number of twists and turns, memorable characters, huge explosions, emotional moments, and cliffhangers to make an awesome, unrated television series . . .

And of course, in the process of writing that paragraph, I decided to Wikipedia Preacher to see if, in fact, there were any film projects in the works. And of course there was an HBO series in development, and of course it got canned in favor of a big screen film, the script of which was still being written as recently as January. Punch me in the face. They better not mess this thing up.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-03-09T21:19:00.000-04:00

Listen to a little Lostprophets.

. . . without news

2009-03-05T20:53:00.004-05:00

One of the sub-genres of scare stories that has cropped up in this age of doom and gloom that's very near to my heart, as a pseudo-journalist, is that of "the death of journalism." Now, newspapers were in bad shape as a business before this recession. A waning tide lowers all boats, though, and newspapers have the problem of also being a leaky skiff, at best.

So it seems that not a week goes by without another alarming think piece fretting over the sad state of newspapers today, and our sad future should newspapers go the way of Lehman Brothers or the walkman. (Let me warm you up with one from Time magazine from early February, in which Walter Isaacson proposes an iTunes-esque micropayment system for individual bits of news content.)

As a service to you, my darling readers, I'm starting this recurring feature, where I'll present some of the better pieces that tackle the future of journalism. I've got a dog in this race, guys, so you can at least count on me having actually thought critically about this stuff.

(And in case you're wondering about the title of this particular recurring feature, since I don't often explain these things [you guys know that "Zelda Warriors" are links, right? You know, like the hero from the Zelda Nintendo games?] allow me. When I was the news editor at the Heights, the independent student newspaper of Boston College, I used to have a little catchphrase: you can't spell "newspaper" without "news." It was a way of making my section seem more appealing, compared to the glitzier sports and features section. As you'll come to see, that phrase more or less sums up my view of the newspaper industry.)

Anyway, this installment is about a piece that appeared on the New Republic's website, by Yochai Benkler. It's a response to an earlier story speculating that the decline of newspapers would result in a proliferation of corruption by our politicians. Benkler refutes this premise, and lays out a sensible vision for the future of journalism, one where we get our reporting from a melange of different forms, ranging from traditional newspaper operations, to TPM-like online outfits, to motivated individual citizens. Money quote:

But policy interventions, if any, need to be designed for this networked environment of diverse models of news production. More important than a national fund to assure the continued existence of certain journals in their present mode would be transparency regulation that would assure that data about public action and behavior will be made available, at all levels of government--federal, state, and local--to the public . . .

As money as that quote is, it's not actually the reason I liked Benkler's piece. What I really like was his calling out of the pastoral ideal of journalism that today's worry-mongers hold up as perilously close to being lost forever. Moneyer quote:

Two weeks ago and then last Friday, The Washington Post was still allowing George Will to make false claims about the analysis of a scientific study of global sea ice levels without batting an eyelid, reflecting the long-standing obfuscation of the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change by newspapers that, in the name of balanced reporting, reported the controversy rather than the actual scientific consensus.

You don't even have to look closely at any newspaper to see examples of this pernicious little habit of reporting the controversy as opposed to like, you know, the actual facts (any story on intelligent design can serve as a case study). Glenn Greenwald consistently does a good job of pointing out this behavior, like in this withering takedown of former NBC White House correspondent David Gregory, who said this about the media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq war: "I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role."

None of this is to say that there's no good journalism out there. There's plenty. But it doesn't help to pretend that the way we've been doing things is some Platonic ideal of journalism. There are some branches that can be pruned in this present crisis, and it'd be a shame to waste the opportunity.

Wall Street's cosmic cube

2009-03-05T20:14:00.002-05:00

When I'm not busy peddling half-informed liberal vitriol, I like to think that I'm helping y'all learn a little something about the world around ya. In that spirit, please read Felix Salmon's cover story from this month's Wired. It's about David Li's Gaussian copula function, the formula that, simply put, allowed Wall Street to easily quantify the risk inherent in heretofore unquantifiably complex pools of securities. Money quote:

As a result, just about anything could be bundled and turned into a triple-A bond—corporate bonds, bank loans, mortgage-backed securities, whatever you liked. The consequent pools were often known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. You could tranche that pool and create a triple-A security even if none of the components were themselves triple-A. You could even take lower-rated tranches of other CDOs, put them in a pool, and tranche them—an instrument known as a CDO-squared, which at that point was so far removed from any actual underlying bond or loan or mortgage that no one really had a clue what it included. But it didn't matter. All you needed was Li's copula function.

Salmon's lede references the Nobel prize that, had things played out differently, Li might have been eligible for. This allusion can't be accidental. Alfred Nobel, plagued by the guilt of inventing an instrument of both great utility and great destruction (dynamite, in this case), famously willed the majority of the fortune he earned to fund the Nobel prizes, which would reward great achievements in science, literature, and the furtherance of peace. It's actually refreshing that in this time of tremendous crisis, with heaps of blame to be divvied up on a great many guilty parties, Li's name hasn't really come up much. After all, it's not his fault that his creation was turned into an engine of devastation.

Zelda warriors: Crazy pills edition

2009-03-04T20:49:00.004-05:00

Remember the presidential campaign? Those were some nutty days. The epically crazy stuff coming out of the McCain campaign, combined with the Bush administration taking advantage of its last opportunities to show its genuine and sincere contempt not only for the American people but all of creation, truly made right-thinking people feel as if they were, in fact, taking crazy pills.

You'd think that once an intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, and capable individual took a seat in the Oval Office, our addled brains would get a rest from what can only be described as a clandestine spiking of our Pepsi Max with some sort of pernicious insanity-inducing potion. Alas, that's not the case, and you've got the economy to thank for that. If you're a regular reader of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, you can probably tell where I stand on the whole "giving billions of dollars to the guys that burned the world economy to the ground" thing, so these posts won't beat you over the head with the sheer injustice being perpetrated on regular American people. However, comma, there's enough unadulterated lunacy out there that I don't have to put up a "wait, why wouldn't we want to help people pay off their mortgages instead of letting them foreclose" post every other day.

## Now, I'm not an economist, but I do know a little something about like, logic. Where I grew up, when you took someone's money in exchange for a service, you provided that service. And if you didn't, there were consequences. AIG, obviously, didn't grow up where I did. Imagine if I sold you a glass of lemonade on a hot day. But instead of giving you your lemonade, I just took your quarter and put a $1,000 bet on the Washington Generals. Is that not what AIG did?

## This ABC News story has had the S flogged out of it throughout the liberal blogosphere for the past couple days, so I won't add any more than my own few cents: we should all be so lucky, that we can choose to be latter-day John Galts and work less (and cost other people their jobs) in a recession, all to, I don't know, give Obama the finger? Prevent poor people from getting health insurance? What's the angle here?

## Here is, incidentally, a dose of sane pills, courtesy of Boston College's own Alicia Munnell: Social Security isn't in a crisis. And it would be utter maniacal insanity to even consider cutting benefits.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-03-03T19:10:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the lull in posting, gentle readers. I was off doing some actual like, professional writing. But I couldn't ignore you guys! In honor of it still being winter, listen to some AFI.

Funny

2009-02-24T18:35:00.001-05:00

Imagine my surprise when, during my usual post-work trawl of Collegehumor.com, I found a picture of the Bayonne Shop Rite!

Shop Rite wants you to know they're suffering in this recession. (from CollegeHumor)

There it is, folks. Right on Avenue C between 26th and 25th.

Great post, eh?

I love that dirty water

2009-02-23T20:43:00.002-05:00

So, a treasured reader informed me that in writing a post about how Boston is taking steps to burnish its "real city" credentials, I was remiss in not mentioning that Boston cabs are getting backseat credit card readers. Which, for people who patronize cabs, is a pretty nice convenience. Great, huh?

Oh, what heights we'll hit...

2009-02-23T00:07:00.003-05:00

Yep, it's that time of year again, treasured readers: the Annual-If-I-Actually-Decide-To-Do-One-Next-Year Academy Awards Running Diary. (I was obliged to embed that video up top for three reasons: my first Oscar post incorporated those lyrics, and I'm nothing if not a slave to tradition; it's one of my fave Seinfeld moments; and everything I know about anything, including Hollywood, before the 1960s comes from Looney Tunes.)

As the year progresses, I always forget how much I love the Academy Awards. Most of the time, I never even manage to see the movies that garner the most nominations, but it's still a fun show. (Disclosure: I actually saw Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, and, obviously, The Dark Night. I also saw Step Brothers, Role Models, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. So, that should tell you a little something about my cinematic sensibilities.) Anyway, if you care to read my instantaneously conceived gut reactions to this year's show, venture forth!

8:31 Ah, Hugh Jackman is the host. I’m a huge Hugh Jackman guy.

8:39 See? 7 minutes in, and Hugh Jackman has knocked the whole house down. He’s the best! I saw him a few years ago in The Boy from Oz on Broadway. My mom is a huge Peter Allen gal, and she actually got Jackman's autograph on her program after the show. Anyway, long story short, he was a delight in that show. Just like tonight!

8:41 Fifteen Oscar nominations for Meryl Streep. Wow. Did you know she’s from Jersey? Like all good things. So is Anne Hathaway.

8:43 My roommate just noticed that Tilda Swinton is wearing a Snuggie. I can’t argue with that observation.

8:45 Whoopi Goldberg is riffing on Sister Act and Sister Act 2. I love it!

8:55 I can’t decide if this way they present best screenplay (with the presenters reading stage directions out loud) is dopey or brilliant. I mean, for one thing, it’s interesting to see exactly how much of a given film actually comes from the mind of a writer. For another thing, some of the stuff that screen writers write isn’t very interesting to read when you’re already watching the action on the screen.

9:09 Best animated short. Good time to hit the bathroom.

9:10 Good thing I was only being snarky up there and not actually going to the bathroom! The guy that accepted the award said “Domo arrigato, Mr. Roboto.” Bravo, sir.

9:20 Ok, I’m gonna say it once: I haven’t seen it, but I resent that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button even got made. On the list of Scott Fitzgerald stories that need to be made into epic, Oscar-caliber movies, Benjamin Button is waaaaaay down there. This Side of Paradise, anyone? How many nonsense bildungsromans get made every year that are written by schmos and aren’t half the quality of This Side of Paradise? And if we’re going to talk about short stories, what about The Diamond as Big as the Ritz? It’s got suspense! It’s got thrills! It’s got sweeping landscapes! It’s got drama! Get your act together, Hollywood, and toss us English majors a bone.

9:32 Is it in good taste for Ben Stiller to be making fun of Joaquin Phoenix? Like, what if he’s actually ill? Or addicted to drugs?

9:58 Hey, Baz Lurman designed that last musical number. Good to see he’s getting work. His Romeo + Juliet was stinktown, but Moulin Rouge remains one of my all-time favorites.

10:04 Are Josh Brolin and Diane Lane together? I gotta tell you, I like that couple.

10:07 Supporting actor is a good category this year. These other guys have to be kicking themselves that they’re competing against Heath Ledger.

10:08 There we go. Perhaps the foregoniest of foregone conclusions.

10:16 Whoa! Who is this French dude? He’s doing magic tricks! He’s balancing Oscars on his chin! Somebody hook him up with the Mr. Roboto guy and see what happens.

10:27 Benjamin Button won for digital effects? Give me a break. This category was invented so that popular movies that people like can win Oscars. Then again, maybe I should see the movie before I complain any more. I mean, it might actually be good.

10:46 Jerry Lewis doesn’t look too bad. Good for him.

10:55 I think I would like Alicia Keys to read aloud to me. That voice!

11:02 Ok, my battery is running out. If anything preposterous happens, I’ll do my best to retroactively record my bitingly sarcastic observations.

um, approximately 58 minutes hence: Looks like everything played out the way it should have. Although I was definitely rooting for Frank Langella (the pride of Bayonne) or Richard Jenkins (starred in a movie directed by Boston College graduate Tom McCarthy) to win best actor, I can't complain about Sean Penn. Especially considering I actually saw the movie he was in.

Dangerous, Dirty, and Updated: So I just read in Salon's Oscar recap that the French guy I referred to before was actually high-wire walker Phillipe Petit, the subject of the winning documentary, Man on Wire, which explains why he was able to so deftly balance the Oscar statue on his chin. (Sorry, I wasn't really paying attention to the documentary categories. What a bad documenter of the Oscars I am.) Apparently, Petit wasn't actually supposed to be on stage; not because he's a crazed lunatic, which was my original instinct, but because of the Academy's strict rules for who can be on stage to accept an award. I'm glad he decided to buck the system!

Great idea in action

2009-02-21T14:06:00.002-05:00

Boston is finally getting the wheels in motion to start up a public food market, a la Pike Place in Seattle. I say, tremendous!

I'm a frequent patron of the Haymarket fruit and vegetable stands, which are fine for cheap produce. There's definitely something to be said, though, for an indoor, year-round, daily venue for purveyors of local and regional food. (It's tough to sift through a pile of apples when it's 10 degrees outside!)

I actually wasn't aware of how much of a staple the public food market was to the big American city. Apparently, dear reader, it is. I had an argument with a friend from college one time. She's going to law school in New York now, and tried to convince me that Boston wasn't a real city. (Her main reason for thinking this: real cities don't have subways that stop at red lights. I hope she learns how to argue a little better in law school.) Irregardless of the weakness of her case, the whole discussion rattled me. The subways do stop at red lights! The bars do close at 2! All of this is to say, it warms the cockles of my heart to see Boston take another stop to bolster its "real city" credentials.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-02-19T20:25:00.001-05:00

If this doesn't put a smile on your face on a dreary and wet February evening, you should probably see a doctor. Listen to a little Faith Hill.

Faith Hill |MTV Music

New feature: Classic DD&U

2009-02-19T19:37:00.004-05:00

So since my old .mac site doesn't exist any more, and I feel that it's cruel to deprive you, my treasured readers, of a significant part of my oeuvre (and in a blatant attempt to increase my posts-per-month stats), I've decided to occasionally re-post some of those old Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun entries. After tonight, I'll do them in chronological order, but by special request, here's a food-related post from last year.

Chipotle = teh suck
Saturday, February 9, 2008

Yeah, I haven’t posted in a while. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

A Chipotle opened in Cleveland Circle, down the street from where I work. Judging from the lines that I’ve seen in the past few days since the grand opening, it seems that people are thrilled about this development. Indeed, burrito proliferation is on the march in the Hub of the Universe, to the point that Boston Magazine ran a trend piece this past December.

Burritos might be the new national sensation, but in Boston, we’ve had our own transcendently awesome burrito mongers here for years: Anna’s Taqueria. I’m an Anna’s partisan, and I have no shame saying it. I have a friend from Minnesota who, for the longest time, has insisted that not only is Chipotle awesome, but it’s better than Anna’s. I had never eaten a burrito from Chipotle, but like a true zealot, I had faith without experience: no burrito could be better than an Anna’s burrito. Once Chipotle opened a week and a half ago, I knew I would have my chance to validate my unshakable belief in Anna’s.

As you can tell from the title of this post, Chipotle doesn’t even come close, and I’ll enumerate those reasons below. Two pieces of disclosure: firstly, there’s a written record of my Anna’s devotion, including some rather . . . blasphemous language. Secondly, as I was eating my Chipotle burrito, I kinda ate some of the foil it was wrapped in. While that may have affected the eating experience slightly, you can rest assured that my palate is sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a good burrito and a not so good burrito. On to the critique.

1. The line
I understand that in the first week that a much-anticipated new eatery has been open, novelty alone will make for long lines. However, comma, the way that Chipotle is set up doesn’t bode well for hasty queue movement. Essentially, there’s a person manning a station for every possible element of the burrito. The assembly line is a good idea in some instances; you wouldn’t want just one guy building your Model T, for instance. But for a burrito, there’s a lot of time wasted by passing it from one set of hands to the next. At Anna’s, you’ve got one guy running the tortilla steamer, one guy making the burrito, and one guy at the register. Bing, bang, boom.

2. The cheese
Umm, you have to choose either sour cream OR cheese? What is this, Soviet Russia? How about sour cream AND cheese? And then if you choose cheese, it’s added at the end of the burrito making process, as opposed to the very beginning. At Anna’s your cheese is on your tortilla when it goes into the steamer, making it melty and delicious.

3. The meat
I got a carnitas burrito. Honestly, I found it to be dry and not as tender as it could be. There’s something to be said for having whole pieces of pork that are cut up, made to order.

4. The rice
In a word, uninspired. It had a good moisture and texture, but it added nothing to the picture. Anna’s rice is cooked with chicken broth, and it makes all the difference. In a regular burrito, the rice is there as a space filler. In an Anna’s burrito, it’s a valued addition. Tasty, too!

5. The beans
Pinto beans: check. Black beans: check. Refried beans: no check! How are you gonna offer burritos to the consumer, and not have refried beans available? It’s almost unspeakable. Add to that the fact that the pinto beans were a little gritty, and you’ve got a burrito dealer that doesn’t know beans about beans.

6. The salsa
More cilantro, please.

7. The fixings
Of all the crimes perpetrated on the burrito by Chipotle, this one may be the most heinous: where are the jalepenos? ’Penos might not be for everybody, but at least give the people a choice! I’m actually getting worked up over here.

8. The guacamole
I don’t even like guacamole, but as a burrito evangelist, I feel the need to defend my brothers and sister who do. Here’s the problem: it costs $1.75! What are those avocados made of, gold? What a racket!

9. The wrap
An Anna’s burrito is deftly wrapped up, and so tight that every second you hold it is spent in mortal fear that it will burst and explode all over you. My Chipotle burrito was loose and floppy. Loose and floppy = messy!

In closing, I’ll paraphrase Rick James: I wish I had four hands, so I could give Chipotle four thumbs down. If one lived in a desolate wasteland, where there were no burritos for 100 miles, I can understand why Chipotle has an appeal. But here in Boston, we’ve got Anna’s, a taqueria that makes what can only be described as the Platonic ideal of a burrito. I won’t be switching.

Sweet fancy Moses!

2009-02-17T20:27:00.003-05:00

I promise I'm not doing all these posts to artificially drive up my stats or anything. Any other day and I'd compile the past few into a hodge-podge of links and videos.

Irregardless, watch this amazingly incredible video about shrimp. For real. Watch it, and then get on your knees and pray that the pistol shrimp never chooses to use its devastating powers for evil.

Pistol Shrimp - video powered by Metacafe

h/t to Atom

I <3 puns

2009-02-17T20:17:00.000-05:00

I'm obligated to pass this along.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-02-17T19:48:00.000-05:00

Listen to one of the all-time greatest hair metal ballads.

Skid Row |MTV Music

tf, GG?

2009-02-16T19:48:00.003-05:00

What's a guy gotta do to get a new Gossip Girl around here? I'm wicked frustrated.

If you're in as foul a mood as I am, hopefully my new favorite commercial will cheer you up.

I love that dirty water

2009-02-15T18:04:00.002-05:00

Well, I don't necessarily know if this is a Boston-specific phenomenon, but the Sam Adams White Ale, the spring seasonal, is out. (I mean, it stands to reason that we would get it first, but who knows. Some jobber in California could have been drinking it for weeks now.) Since the Winter Lager and the Summer Ale are so popular, it seems to me like the White Ale gets the short shrift. They release it, and then in the blink of an eye, you'll see the Summer Ale on the shelves. Even though the White Ale is secretly like, the best seasonal. Anyway, drink up.

Blatant political advocacy

2009-02-13T13:18:00.002-05:00

Take a minute and sign this petition, initiated by Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He's drumming up support for a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the various lawless activities of the Bush administration, including, but not limited to, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretapping, and abuse of executive authority. It's a little milquetoast for my ravingly liberal sensibilities, but I fear a commission like this is the best we can hope for. Do the right thing, folks.

Amazing

2009-02-11T21:32:00.003-05:00

So on my way home from work today, I looked into a Faneuil Hall restaurant and saw, no joke, a twenty-something wearing a sky blue Lacoste shirt with the collar firmly up, drinking a 40 of Bud Light. And from every indication that I could sense, this was all done unironically. Amazing

Our crappy discourse

2009-02-09T20:03:00.002-05:00

In four panels.

h/t

Arthropods donning chapeaus

2009-02-09T19:40:00.003-05:00

In a meeting today, my boss recommended an article in the latest New York Review of Books about ants. (Specifically, Tim Flannery's piece on Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson's book The Superorganism.) I'm not going to distill a distillation of a 500-page book, so you'll have to take my word that this thing has to be read to be believed. Apparently, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between human society and the way ant colonies become superorganisms. There are a number of money quotes to choose from. Here's one, about leaf cutter ants, who amazing-but-true have actually developed agriculture:

When growing fungus on such a large scale, waste management becomes a crucial issue, and the attines have developed a finely tuned solution. Their sanitation teams comprise one group of workers that gathers the refuse from inside the colony and dumps it at depots outside. From there dump managers that work exclusively outside the nest carry the waste to great disposal sites far from the colony. The dump managers that work outside are mostly older ants that have only a short time to live in any case, which is a good thing, for the great refuse dumps they toil at teem with pathogens and toxins. This system effectively quarantines the colony from a dangerous threat and at the same time minimizes worker loss of life. Curiously, humans have found a use for the ant refuse. So strong is the ants' aversion to it that South American farmers gather it and sprinkle it around young plants they wish to protect from attacks by leafcutters.

Incredible.

I'll go ahead and utilize this serendipitous bit of topicality to ask you, my dearest readers, for some help. As anyone that has actually spoken with me is undoubtedly aware, I have a term that I use a lot. Whenever someone posits a scenario or question that is irrelevant, inconsequential, or generally a nonstarter, my response invariably begins "What if ants wore hats?" It's most synonymous with "What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?"

The provenance of my term came up this weekend when a buddy of mine considered using it in correspondence, but then thought better of it when he realized it's a term that only I use, and he'd look like quite the fool if he used it in mixed company. Which leads me to ask you, my precious readers: did I actually invent this term? I'm almost positively certain that I got it from a dumb TV show or cartoon or movie, but I can't pin it down. Teh Google is no help. So if anyone has any idea where this phrase came from, whether it was my own genius or some dumb show, let me know! And let's pretend this is a real blog, and instead of just talking to me personally, put your responses in comments. Thanks!

Winter is teh suck

2009-02-07T14:10:00.002-05:00

And I'll tell you why. Here in the Hub, it snows every week. That's a problem in itself, but there's no sense in railing against it. Everybody in the universe just indiscriminately throws salt on the ground, which is wonderful for preventing a buildup of deadly ice. But then it gets all over your shoes, and you wind up dragging the stuff into your house. This is a picture I just took of my bedroom. Awful!

Peggy Noonan is a villain

2009-02-06T16:05:00.002-05:00

Here's the proof:

The question for the Obama administration: Do they think Mr. Cheney is essentially correct, that bad men are coming with evil and deadly intent, but that America can afford to, must for moral reasons, change its stance regarding interrogation and detention of terrorists? Or, deep down, do the president and those around him think Mr. Cheney is wrong, that people who make such warnings are hyping the threat for political purposes? And, therefore, that interrogation techniques, etc., can of course be relaxed? I don't know the precise answer to this question. Do they know exactly what they think? Or are they reading raw threat files each day trying to figure out what they think?

I love how this quote assumes that torture is the baseline, on one side of which is a body of useful and vital intelligence, and on the other are American cities in ruin, crops burned, stores looted, people stampeded, and cattle raped. (My apologies to Ms. Noonan. I was taught to use words that are true and precise, like "torture" instead of "interrogation and detention." Those euphemisms just smack of Orwell.) Aside from a muttered nod to "moral reasons," it never occurs to Ms. Noonan that we would change our stance on "interrogation and detention of terrorists" because our stance on "interrogation and detention of terrorists" is ineffective, dangerous, illegal, unethical, hypocritical, and generally repugnant. A kinder, gentler nation, my ass.

Meanwhile, Steven Benen over at the Washington Monthly blog takes a different tack.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-02-05T21:28:00.002-05:00

Listen to some Midtown.

But first, wonder to yourself how you didn't notice that not one but two of my "Music is my imaginary friend" posts included the song "In a Big Country." It just goes to show you how little I actually pay attention to the junk that goes on this crappy blog.

tf?

2009-02-03T20:53:00.002-05:00

So I was watching the first round of the Beanpot and then last night's 24, so I had to watch Gossip Girl on DVR tonight. Soorry, guys.

I was totally ready to complain about this episode. It had all of the elements that, when jammed down one's throat week after week, can make GG a frustrating show. Hey, did you know Chuck is an over-sexed slimeball? ("It makes the kama sutra feel new again"?) Did you know that Blair is a vindictive schemer, and would throw anyone under the bus to get her way, and gets away with everything with nary a consequence? Did you know Dan is a moron, but not as big a moron as Serena? (Dan, you had to know that seeing Rachel outside of class was a bad idea. And Serena, you sold out your boyfriend without even asking what was going on? You act like you haven't been a character on Gossip Girl for a season and a half!)

Then Dan and Serena broke up for what seems like the jillionth time, and I know that things had changed. Every time this happens, I get visibly upset. (Like at the end of last season, when they played Death Cab's "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" over Dan and Serena's last dance. I won't bore you with the gruesome details, suffice it to say it got a little dusty in my living room at that point.) But after tonight's breakup, I could only think "Finally! Now maybe these idiots will stop wasting our time." How could I think that! Dan and Serena's love is supposed to transcend reality! I felt betrayed. By the show, and by myself.

And then I watched the last five minutes. Chuck is involved in a murder mystery! Blair got Yale back, but her father doesn't love her! And Dan? Holy smokes! Every paradigm has shifted! GG is back! I can't stop using exclamation points!

Zelda warriors

2009-02-02T21:10:00.002-05:00

Here's a few links that have been kicking around.

# I love that I came across this. It's a Flickr album of barber shops and hair salons with supposedly clever puns in their names. I don't think the creator expected me to laugh nearly as much as I did at some of these, but then again, I love puns. Here are a few of the best ones: The Sharpest Image, Barber Q, E-Nail, Mane Attraction, Shylocks, Hairsay, Hair Today Gone Tomorrow, Noonan's Hair 'Em, Yankee Clipper, and my personal favorite: The Best Little Hair House.

# Here's a great blog: Photo Cliches. I would explain, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Just click and things will become self-evident.

# From Strange Maps, a bunch of real-life objects that happen to be shaped like countries. How neat!

My literary pedigree

2009-02-02T20:55:00.002-05:00

Some of you may be aware of the contentious battle over the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, the great writer, poet, critic, and general weirdo. More specifically, who gets to claim Poe. Much like Oxford, Mississippi can claim Faulkner, Monterrey can claim Steinbeck, and Albany can claim William Kennedy (or vice versa), several cities are engaged in a tug-of-war over Poe, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Richmond, and the Hub of the Universe. The battle has become all the more pitched because this January marks Poe's 200th birthday. Here's some background on the latest volleys.

You can judge for yourself. The reason I'm bring this to your attention is because Poe was born right here in Boston, but the plaque in the theater district commemorating the legend isn't even near the place of his birth. Fortunately, two years ago Joshua Glenn at the Globe's Ideas blog did the legwork and figured out that Poe was born in a building on the same city block as my old apartment on Warrenton Street! Look at the map! Isn't that cool?

'chos and 'trails

2009-02-02T20:09:00.002-05:00

So I just got back from a trip to Stratton Mountain up in Vermont for a little skiing, a few brew dogs, and the company of good friends, and I have to say, precious readers, that I feel juvenated, combobulated, and fully in of sorts. There's nothing like the cold air blasting you in the face, looking at your shadow stretch out in front of you on that bright white slope, and seeing that fan of powder fly out behind you . . . there's nothing like it! Expect some good blog posts this week. The ideas are percolating!

DD&U Update

2009-01-29T21:09:00.002-05:00

A couple housekeeping notes that I wanted to run by you, my cherished readers.

# I read your comments! I love comments! But you can't keep making comments as "Anonymous." I'll never know how many readers I have if you comment as Anonymous. What if all of my Anonymous comments are the same person? Or they're all different? I won't know! If you don't want to leave your real name, pull an Alexander Hamilton and come up with a clever handle. Do it for your old pal Timmy!

# I'm in the process of adding tags to all of my posts. This one won't have any tags, because I'm going in reverse chronological order, but I'm getting there. So if you ever wanted to read all of my posts about the T, or the perils of laundry, you'll soon be able to check them out in one place.

# Um, I'm going skiing this weekend. Not a housekeeping note in the strictest sense of the term, but I kind of needed a third item to justify a list. Thanks for reading!

To the max!

2009-01-25T16:39:00.003-05:00

So the one thing that I explicitly remember from all my Boy Scout leadership training (besides "lead by example," which is obvious) is that all goals should be measurable and attainable. It's good advice, and I try to apply it especially when it comes to New Year's resolutions. Sometimes I hear people make resolutions like "I want to be a better person," or "I want to keep in touch with my friends more." Noble aspirations, but how does one measure the goodness of oneself as a person? Similarly, you'll hear someone resolve to lose 20 pounds. Wonderful, but losing 20 pounds is a lot of work! Not very attainable. The point is, when you set unrealistic goals, or goals that you can't really know if you've achieved or not, failure is, by definition, inevitable.

Last year, I resolved to only press the snooze button once when I woke up in the morning. As it turned out, I couldn't get it done, but I went from like, five snoozes to only two. So it sort of worked. This year, I made a couple resolutions. One was to set my alarm clock earlier in the morning; it's working out like gangbusters. Another was to make the switch from coffee to tea in the morning, because honestly, I don't even like coffee. Also working out swimmingly.

The toughest one, though, is going to prove to be my resolution to switch from a bottle of Pepsi in the afternoon to, I don't know, something with less sugar and calories. (I'm trying to maintain my girlish figure, after all.) I say it's going to be the toughest one, because I haven't even really started yet.

The whole point of this post, which took me several paragraphs to reach, is that I bought a bottle of Pepsi Max today, and it didn't taste nearly as much like deadly poison as I thought it would. So maybe this thing might be attainable after all. I'll keep you all abreast of my progress.

I woke up to my cold sheets and the smell of New Jersey

2009-01-24T18:10:00.002-05:00

Lee Siegel (he of the anti-blog cri de coeur Against the Machine) has an essay in the Wall Street Journal about New Jersey as a rich cultural tapestry. Siegel may be a charlatan and a hack, but the piece is really well thought-out, and goes far beyond my usual method for broadcasting New Jersey's overall awesomeness: shouting "Springsteen!" and "Sinatra!" and "Baseball!" loudly while wildly flailing my arms. Money quote:

At the same time, you can refine Jersey's countless dimensions into two polarized elements: industrial and pastoral. The struggle for dominance between them is at the heart of the American drama -- the Civil War, for example, or the urban/agrarian friction that has shaped the schism between liberal and conservative to this day. It could be that Jersey is so representative of America's original strife that dismissing the state as a crude and unlovely place is a good way to sweep certain national anxieties under the rug.

Siegel uses the dichotomy between the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike as a device to illustrate the competing rural and urban sensibilities in the state's art and culture. And it works! I can't speak for all New Jerseyans, but I can speak for the many that I've encountered when I say that one of our many indicators of identity is the answer to the question "which exit?" Being from 14A on the Turnpike (remember, the A stands for "almost heaven"), I'm of the opinion that all good things can be found off the Turnpike. A good friend of mine from Westfield, exit 135 on the Parkway, has been disagreeing with me vehemently ever since we met.

The comparison resonates, because we're all aware that the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Linden Cogeneration Plant is only a few exits away from Princeton or the Horse Park of New Jersey. I'm doubtful that many of us have thought about the differences between Turnpike and Parkway mentalities as analogues for the greater American story. Maybe we should. After all, just remember Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize–novel American Pastoral is split between industrial Newark and the sticks town of Old Rimrock. It's not called New Jersey Pastoral for a reason, folks.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-01-24T17:02:00.000-05:00

Listen to a little Big Country.

Zelda warriors

2009-01-20T22:15:00.003-05:00

A week between posts. Hoo boy. Better throw some links up so you guys don't lost interest.

# I've had this story lying around for a while. It's about this guy in Watertown that found a suitcase full of old photographs on the curb in a pile of garbage. Turns out, they were photographs of Hiroshima after we dropped the atomic bomb, which no one knew existed. It's a nice piece about how visual images help to form historic consciousness.

# This guy is amazing. And a hero.

# This is how light rail is going to take root in big cities that aren't accustomed to public transportation: an interactive map that shows you where the bars along the route are. This one could be a little more dynamic (more information via e-mail? Meh!), but I like the idea!

# A slideshow from Slate of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in America. It's a sad state of affairs when an objectively weird-shaped district, like my former one, doesn't make the list, and I can't even complain.

# Finally, in honor of Inauguration Day, here's the car that follows President Obama's limo. Incredible.

Music is my imaginary friend

2009-01-13T21:52:00.002-05:00

This song has been burning a hole in my iPod. I've always liked Panic At the Disco, but they've always been a little too, I dunno, twee to really get behind. But their second album, Pretty. Odd., is pure dynamite. They've ditched the techno-y pop punk and instead are channeling Sgt. Pepper's and the Hush Sound. I don't want to use the term "mature" to describe an emo record, but it's getting there!

Listen to a little "That Green Gentleman."

The dream is dead

2009-01-12T19:59:00.003-05:00

Well, I knew this day would come, but somehow, I was unprepared for it.

See, I started off spending my Monday evenings watching 24 back in college. Way back in the day, it wasn't a problem, because Gossip Girl was on Wednesdays, and even when it switched to Mondays, the writers' strike had knocked the new season of 24 back a year.

It's over, though. 24 is back, and according to the majority rule in my apartment, that gets watched in real time. Tonight presents a particularly thorny problem, since it's a two-hour episode tonight. So I'm watching GG right now until my other roommate comes home, but he could arrive at any moment!

Dearest reader, I know you're accustomed to a GG running diary at 9:30ish sharp every Monday evening, but it's not in the cards tonight. It'll be back at 10:30ish next Monday, though!

In the meantime, since I feel bad that all of my posts recently are about my TV-watching habits, here's a link to the Barney Frank profile that ran in last week's New Yorker. Did you know he's a fellow Bayonne High School graduate? Here's a fun quote:

When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, the Democratic leadership in the House made Frank a kind of one-man immediate-response team to Newt Gingrich, the new House Speaker. Frank and Gingrich sparred almost daily, and Frank still professes surprise that Gingrich took their disagreements personally. “Barney Frank hates me,” Gingrich said at the time. (He would not discuss the matter for this article.) According to Frank, Gingrich is a “bleeder”—a derogatory term for a boxer who is prone to cuts. For Frank, the word has particular resonance: one of his high-school classmates was Chuck Wepner, a heavyweight boxer who was known as the Bayonne Bleeder.

The greatest moment in Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun history

2009-01-10T00:39:00.002-05:00

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun are keenly aware of my love for Gossip Girl. It's unavoidable, since I do my best to post weekly on the show. Here's my most recent offering.

I do the running diary, because it's easy, and it's a format that I stole primarily from Bill Simmons. Other blogs take a different approach. One of my favorite blogs, New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer, does a weekly Gossip Girl reality index, basically doling out and subtracting points based on how authentically New York a given episode is. Here's the most recent installment. I trust Daily Intel authors Jessica Pressler and Chris Rovar implicitly, since they wrote the book, or at least the article, on the Greatest Show of Our Time.

A recent addition to the weekly GG post is reader-submitted tallies, posted every Friday. Since it's been a while since I've lived in the tri-state, I've never had anything particularly insightful to contribute to the GG reality index. That all changed when the Hub of the Universe, in folded map form, made its cameo in last week's episode. So I submitted my comment, one of at least 300 on the blog when I posted on Tuesday.

Days pass.

Friday afternoon arrives.

AND MY SUBMISSION MADE THE CUT ! ! !

You'll recognize my uber-witty NY Mag handle, timmyinboston, attached to the very last item in the post. And super bonus, commenter afarerkind gives me a shout-out in the comments section!

I can hardly contain my joy!

Gossip Girl thinks there are as many orphanages in Boston as there are Dunkin Donuts

2009-01-05T21:01:00.003-05:00

8:00 Gossip Girl! Teacher, mother, secret lover. Urge to kill fading . . . fading . . . fading . . . rising! Fading . . . Gone.

Eew, S and Lonely Boy use Myspace instead of Facebook. What gives?

Also, did you know that Elanor Waldorf is also Jeff Goldblum’s ex-wife from Independence Day?

8:04 “The most exclusive club in New York, which means the world.” Oh, Blair. Such a New Yorker.

I still don’t understand when Nelly Yuki got herself a spot on the steps, so to speak. Wasn’t she just a pawn in one of Blair’s wacky schemes last season?

8:07 Hey, Boston makes an appearance in Gossip Girl! Do you think anyone watching has any idea where Dorchester is?

8:08 Serena! Doing the right thing! Dumping Aaron’s ass! Dan! Doing the right thing! Going in for the smooch! Love’s completely real, so forget anything that you’ve heard!

During the commercial break, I’ve been thinking about the unceremoniousness of Aaron’s downfall. I think as a viewer who’s had to put up with his smarmy, D-baggy affect and gross semi-stache for however many episodes, I deserved more than just an off-screen breakup. Where’s the blood?

8:13 Hmm, so it wasn’t a smashmortion that Lily is hiding. Good to know.

8:15 “I’m not Little J anymore,” she goes. Is Jenny going to become a Met-steps vigilante? I hope so!

8:17 Rufus pulls a wicked CB on Dan and Serena, playing the “this is my home” card. Way to take out your own frustrations on your kid.

I simultaneously love and hate the look of this Jack Bass character. The fact that Chuck is smiling leads me to believe that we’re in store for some Bass family hi-jinks. I mean, he’s got Chuck’s youthful good looks, and, presumably, Bart’s cutthroat style. I feel like putting Jack in this show is like throwing a wolverine in a shark tank. Can you say “ding ding ding”?

8:24 Serena is nine times hotter than Dan. Perceptive, J. Perceptive. Also, did the costume designer put Rufus in a lame turtleneck because he’s acting like a lamewad?

826 “I was surprised too. That’s not entirely true.” Oh, Blair. Such a . . . Blair.

Now that Blair brings it up, isn’t it weird that Chuck still has to live with Serena and Lily and Eric? That’s like, his home.

8:29 The tables belong to everyone, Jenny says. She’s like a cross between Giuseppe Garibaldi, Lenin, and like, Mylie Cyrus.

8:31 Don’t those burlesque dancers think it’s weird that their place of employment is owned by a 17-year-old kid, who leers at them from the front row?

8:32 If you think I’m not rewinding to see if my neighborhood is on that Boston map, you’re fooling yourself!

8:35 So close! It’s a map of the Financial District. I’m a few inches up on the other side of the fold. Also, I think there are more homeless shelters in that part of time than child services facilities. Whatevs. And no, I’m not calling the number.

8:37 Because he knows that Rufus was in Boston, Dan knows that he wasn’t looking for an artist or a sculptor. Is that a dig?

Oh wait . . . is the Gossip Girl spin-off going to involve Rufus and Lily’s love child and take place in Boston somehow? I would die. My heart would stop, and I would die.

8:39 Chuck uses “hoi polloi” and “Dickensian” in consecutive sentences. Good man.

Duh! How could I not have realized the incest angle behind Rufus and Lily’s Bostonian love child?! Where the hell is this show going?

8:44 Why do I have a bad feeling that I’m going to start watching Bromance?

8:46 Hey, Blair just did the right thing and didn’t throw every one of her friends under the bus.

8:48 Hey, Eric has the same text message alert as me. Cool.

8:52 I feel like this rooftop balancing act by Chuck is beyond a reasonable suspension of disbelief. I’m out of the narrative.

8:57 You know, Blair, you probably can’t trust Jack. He’s the shiftiest guy on this show since Aaron.

Well, irony, we had a good run . . .

2009-01-05T19:01:00.002-05:00

. . . but it appears as though you have perished, unmercifully cut down by John "I never met a Middle Eastern invasion I didn't like" Bolton and John "If the President does it, it isn't illegal, part deux" Yoo, who, in a New York Times opinion piece today, argue for a weaker executive and more Congressional oversight of presidential authority. Glad to see they've finally come around.

I read your comments

2009-01-04T20:49:00.004-05:00

Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is a radical social experiment, exploring the ability of one writer to somehow escape his en-ruttedness in a nigh-unshakable daily routine. Results are hence far inconclusive, but as last week's ball-dropping shows, I do a pretty poor job of posting if I haven't been trawling around the intertubes, and don't have a desk, or a schedule, or a rocks glass filled with bourbon next to me.

Lesser bloggers would blame the holiday season, the travel, the trip to Atlantic City, or any of a host of other factors for the lack of posts. Not me! I'll tell you to your face that I'm terribly undisciplined. But you knew that. Anyway, back to the rut!

Huh?

2009-01-04T20:45:00.002-05:00

Have you ever gone to the grocery store, and you're waiting in line at the deli counter, and the guy in front of you gets a quarter of a pound of something? What's up with that? Is he making one sandwich? A quarter pound is like, five slices. I get a pound of cold cuts, and I eat that in a week. What are these quarter-pound buyers doing with that little meat?

Mashups are my imaginary friend

2008-12-27T15:41:00.001-05:00

Listen to some Cansei de Ser Sexy vs. L7.

Also, here's the website for the dudes that put this thing together. It's actually pretty awesome. "Gimme Sufragette City Shelter" is my fav.

Happy Winter Solstice Celebration of your choosing

2008-12-25T10:57:00.002-05:00

Specifically, merry Christmas, but in general, I hope you, my dear readers, are enjoying whatever excuse you have this weekend to surround yourselves with friends and family.

Two things. Since we are, ostensibly, celebrating the birth of Jesus today, I'll pass along a little bit of wisdom from the man himself that I think is worth remembering not just today, but every day.

Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven times."

Even if you don't go to church or believe in God or believe in anything, it's still a good idea to forgive your brother when he sins against you.

Secondly, I had a chance to talk to my friend Rich yesterday. He's with the army in Iraq, and his brother brought a laptop to a Christmas party I was at and hooked us all up via Skype. Whatever your politics, there's no denying the hardship that soldiers serving overseas and their families back home have to go through, and that sort of thing is only heightened during the holidays. So if you're in a position to comfortably sit back and count your blessings today, please don't forget that there are people out there who have been put in harm's way for our sake.

I <3 puns

2008-12-20T23:31:00.000-05:00

Bravo, Reuters headline writer. Bravo.

Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun update!

2008-12-20T18:08:00.002-05:00

Oh noes. The dreaded "blog post about the blog." That can't be good!

Nah. I just wanted to let you, dear reader, know that for the past week I was doing some actual like, you know, professional writing, so the ol' blog took the ol' back seat. Add to that the short trip home I took for the Eagle Scout ceremony of the Office Little Brother of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, and the lack of updates starts to make a lot of sense, eh?

But I'm back, and you'll be delighted to hear that I'm taking my Precious with me back to Bayonne for Christmas break, so you all will be getting some Jersey Fresh posts. Ding ding ding!

Zelda warriors

2008-12-10T21:15:00.002-05:00

# For whatever reason, I had to stand on the B line this morning. Maybe once every three months, a B train will originate beyond Government Center. As a guy that rides the entire B line twice every day, truly the only perk my commute has is that I always get a seat in the morning and evening. This seatless train experiment on the Red Line scares the bejesus out of me. And I can't imagine how the grizzled subway vets in New York will handle it.

# Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that I <3 puns. So I'm always pleased when wacky animal stories come out. For whatever reason, if your story is about a pet, you have free license to pepper your prose with a plethora of puns. Enjoy these.

# If ever there were a tale that absolutely begged for the long form, it's the story of Clark Rockefeller. Kudos to Vanity Fair for heeding the call. For those of you who aren't local, here's a quick summary: Boston blueblood Clark Rockefeller kidnaps his daughter during a supervised visit. The subsequent investigation reveals that Clark Rockefeller is actually a con-man who's traversed the country under a half dozen different aliases. And he's a suspect in the murder of a California couple that went missing in the 80s. It's reached the point where I cannot read enough stories about this guy. Having consumed everything the local papers put together in real time, it was good to see a big-picture account in VF. Read. It's sordid stuff.

# Am I the only one worried that this will cause a Zero Hour–esque, chronology-engulfing destructive rift at the beginning and end of the timestream?

Music is my imaginary friend

2008-12-10T21:01:00.000-05:00

Listen to some Say Anything

Say Anything |MTV Music

My friends, that's not change we can believe in

2008-12-09T23:31:00.003-05:00

Is this true? Did Barack Obama just appoint the Green effing Goblin to be in charge of the entire Marvel universe? Is this what we can expect from our new president? What next, normalizing diplomatic relations with Latveria?

Gossip Girl is the capers on the smoked salmon that is my week

2008-12-08T21:28:00.002-05:00

So I’m chilling (literally) in my heat and hot water–less apartment. I feel kind of like Nate, except he got to squat in his parents’ posh Upper East Side apartment. And I’m not technically squatting, since it’s my own place. I guess I’m nothing like Nate. Here’s a running GG diary.

8:00 Lonely Boy and S are so getting back together. Ftw.

Did I talk about the lameness of the off-camera death? It’s lame. Glad to see CeCe is back, though. Do I hate her or love her? I’ll check later.

8:05 Dan being the rock feels natural; probably because him and Serena were born for each other. Look at him next to Aaron. It’s no contest, S!

Oooh, CeCe catches Rufus walking away from a rendezvous with Lily. Her evil countenance makes me think I hate her.

8:07 I think I like Chuck as the creepy, cocked-head, tousled-hair, unhinged loner whacko. I’m sure it’ll be less endearing when he’s wreaking havoc, but we’ll see how this plays out.

8:11 I like the completely non-veiled disdain Dan and Aaron have for each other. It reminds me of my own loathing of that greasy-haired, dirt-stached creep.

A search through the DD&U archives tells me that I described CeCe as a “good lady” during the season premier. I have a feeling she’s about to disappoint me.

8:14 Did we just witness the formation a Chuck-CeCe-Aaron entente mauvais aligned against Dan? Holy smokes!

And yes, I definitely do like Chuck as the creepy, cocked-head, tousled-hair, unhinged loner whacko.

8:21 Isn’t this back-and-forth between Dan and Rufus a little too jaunty? Bart’s dead. And Chuck isn’t necessarily wrong to be pissed at Rufus. There’s almost blood on his hands!

I bet CeCe loved that she was kind of related to chuck. He’s her kind of guy.

8:24 Jenny, once again flaunting her ability to not only design and make an outfit overnight, but an outfit worthy of Elanor Waldorf.

Of course Aaron wants to take Serena away from her family in a time of crisis. Selfish jerk.

8:26 Aww, Jonathan.

8:29 Sorry. I had to tell my roommate about the broken hot water heater, so now I’m a minute or two behind. Woops!

8:31 This hospital in France sounds as juicy as it gets. I’m pumped!

8:33 Wow, Chuck. That was cold as ice. Also, thanks to the commercial break, I’m up to speed. Yay Tivo!

8:34 Of course Aaron would go to a weird place like Buenos Aires. Who goes there for vacation?

Dan’s passive aggressiveness and fear of confrontation remind me a lot of my own passive aggressiveness and fear of confrontation.

8:38 Serena DID beg Lily not to get together with Rufus. The blood is on her hands!

Jenny is right. Sometimes you do have to play games!

8:40 I’m a sucker for true love, but even I find the haste with which Lily and Rufus are trying to get together to be ghoulish and morbid.

8:48 Serena is such an idiot. Why do I even like her? Seriously.

AARON IS THE WORST! ! !

8:51 Are they not gonna tell us lily’s secret? Really?

8:55 Woops. I guess I didn’t realize that the episode wasn’t over.

Serena so obviously doesn’t even like Aaron. Why is she spinning her wheels? Because she’s an idiot.

8:59 So wait. Is Lily pregnant? Or does she have some sort of lovechild out there? This ending was too ambiguous!

9:00 And there’s no new episode until January. What the hell am I supposed to do for a month?

Official friend of DD&U

2008-12-08T19:38:00.002-05:00

I meant to do this the other day, but got tied up in...forgetting to do this.

Anyway, here's the blog of my pal Christy, Chitown Fan in Boston. She blogs about sports, sports journalism, sports photography, and other sports-related topics. Christy says the blog is for a class, but Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is hoping she keeps things going once she gets her undoubtedly sterling grade, because she's wicked sharp and a general delight. Leave her some comments and tell her to update more!

Peeled

2008-12-07T21:46:00.004-05:00

So the Boston College football team lost its second straight Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game to Virginia Tech. Later on in the day, the Boston College hockey team lost its game against hated rival boston university. The next day, the New York Giants lost their game against hated rival Philadelphia. And then my gas got shut off. Awesome.

And yes, those peels are from one of the oranges I bought on Saturday, so that I would be prepared to celebrate BC's Orange Bowl berth. What a jinx, right?

Pre-Christmas miracle 2?

2008-12-05T20:53:00.002-05:00

There are no words to express my joy.