Gore Vidal is the sort of person whose interviews I read not because I enjoy or respect (or, erm, am familiar with) his work, but simply because I hope that some sort of internet-negotiated mental osmosis might bless me with his covetsome verbal acrobatics–I yearn for his ability to insult with a detached elegance; instead, my own sense of humor is increasingly shaped deformed by a Gawker Media-influenced sense of crude snark.¹

1. Snark ain’t in the dictionary? Get on it, Webster! You too Merriam!↩

TAGGED: whining

I think if I am ever personally confronted with the ostensible short-comings of my generation, I will widen my eyes in disbelief, furrow my brow in mock concern, lower my voice in full and somberly declare, “We survived 9/11.“

TAGGED: USA!USA! • vexation

Realizing with glee that there’s a new Death Cab for Cutie album early on a Sunday morning makes me a little ashamed and a lot happy.

TAGGED: music • popculture • shame

Why is it that I am the only person I know¹ who is truly charmed by the obnoxious hipsterish cook Spike on the current season of Top Chef (example: he does not hesistate to declare himself as from “Williamsburg” instead of the apparently staid and boring “New York”)–it disgusts me that I might find myself attracted to such an unremittant nincompoop; I never thought that I would be so weak as to find myself enamored with so cliche an affectation as perfectly-cocked hats or perfectly-pursed lips or a perfectly-clipped beard…I guess there’s no accounting for poor taste in mildly-hirsute scenster braggarts.²

P.S. There is such a thing as Jedi Chefs. My life calling? Found.

1. And by “only person I know” I mean “only person I know of the readers and writers of the food blogs that I read.”↩
2. It’s certainly not new for me…*sigh*↩

TAGGED: food • popculture • starwars • whiteboys

All of the visual media I have consumed over the past two weeks–the uninspiring movie version of Ghost World, almost the entirety of the inaugural season of 30Rock, and the first half of The Big Lebowski–have featured the singularly peculiar personage of Steve Buscemi, a strange and delightful series of coincidences that leaves my interest piqued for May-December romance with a snaggletoothed curmudgeon.

TAGGED: popculture

So if there’s a more harmonious union than bacon and chocolate (which there isn’t), it’s most likely saving the environment and tossing back vodka; the only other drinking-while-green products I have seen are unappetizing wines occupying a lonely shelf at Whole Foods (poor things seemed almost ghettoized, even compared to the paltry local wines section) and a serendipitous mention of green bars I came across while composing this sentence–luckily, my drinking habits are not quite so habitual as to warrant any real time spent on reconciling them with 500-mile or 250-mile or 100-mile nonsense, but I feel for the eco-friendly drunkorexics nonetheless.

TAGGED: drinking • food • green • ridiculosity • vodka

At risk of sounding like a White Whiner, I simply cannot comprehend why it requires such great bodily, mental, and spiritual strength to find chocolate that satisfies me; I am not particularly particular–promise!–all I want is an ethically-traded, organic, seventy-plus-percent, independently-produced bar with few additives, which really isn’t too much to ask for–in fact, for a good while I had what I coveted in Dagoba, a former favorite of mine due as much to the taste of the chocolate as to its name (homophonous as it is with my favorite Star Wars system), but they have since been bought out by Hershey’s, tarring them with the unacceptable brush of corporate shame; in any case, I hope that mulling over the memories of my cacaoed past somehow convinces me that the bacon chocolate bar that grabbed my fancy yesterday while browsing the posh grocery store down the street is worth its $7.99 asking price–which, of course, it most likely isn’t, but the obscenely titillating combo of bacon and chocolate makes me think there is a clandestine epicurean-dreams-into-tempting-realities converter lurking nearby…

TAGGED: BACON • caprice • chocolate • food • nomnomnom • starwars • whining

I suppose the initial narrative of the Democratic primary season–black folk verses white women folk–was becoming tiresome to the media, so they are now looking to the political leanings of mediocre MCs like 50 cent (“He hit me with that he-just-got-done- watching-’Malcolm X,’ and I swear to God, I’m like, ‘Yo, Obama!’”) and DMX (“Barack Obama?…That ain’t that nigga’s name.”) as a measure of public opinion; in an age when LOLNIGGERS is par for the YouTube comments course, and when there are legitimate and hilarious intersects between the hip-hop communities and Obama’s campaign, it’s a bit scary to see folks like Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan reporting on the inane gibberish of second-tier gangsta rappers alongside their usual insight.

TAGGED: eyeroll • politics • vexation

There is nothing that exasperates me more¹ than having someone speak to me while I am trying to listen to This American Life; when I listen to the radio, I am listening to the radio and doing nothing else–sipping some tea or nibbling on shortbread, perhaps, but really, doing nothing else–I simply do not have the cognitive capacity to truly process complex aural information² if I am the least bit distracted by anything else–I have tried to catch up with Ira Glass while baking or reading or soundlessly practising guitar fingerings and I have discovered that any other task is suffiently distracting to keep me from following the stories at hand and, yeah, while I know there is a sense in which I should be participating in the TAL backlash, my social circle is not white or upper-middle class or generally StuffWhitePeopleLike-ish enough to care about affecting an air of NPR fatigue–but for me, after years of having Glass’ voice as soothing white noise, I find myself prompted to pen a hagiography based altogether on his arresting patois³.

1. An admitted bit of an exaggeration. For effect, you know.↩
2. This American Life: complex aural information. Heh.↩
3. Though perhaps I am in the minority in finding his voice so pleasant; it has been suggested that the show be called “This American Lisp”: Dude, you’re a radio presenter. See a speech pathologist already. Hm. I suppose for every empty critique of TAL that in one contradictory breath mentions yuppies and hipsters and the literati, there is a hilarious one precipiced on speech impediments (admittedly, I could personally live without hearing Sarah Vowell ever again for the rest of my life). [NOT LISPIST]↩

TAGGED: glee • vexation • whiteboys

As nauseating as it sounds, I cannot stand non-web-2.0 sites; I initially chalked it up to a design issue, but I now realize that is much, much more–I am lost without the ontology of tags (and the promise of emergent meta-data!), the dearth of read/writedness (I do not fear the new online colectivism! I embrace it! Whole-heartedly, even!), superflous page-loads (eff synchronicity and hand me the AJAX!), and un-open formats–and, well, you know: there’s also the fact that serif fonts, unrounded corners, and unmuted, harsh colours make me want to stab myself in the eye¹.

1. Alright, so maybe it is just a design issue.↩

TAGGED: bloviating • geekery