Asked & Answered

Q1: Say the Joker abducted Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, and suspended one above a shark tank using dental floss while, in a different warehouse, a slow-motion laser seemed poise to cut the other in half. Which of his professed heroes would John McCain save?

A1: "I think he would save Ronald Regan because Teddy can take care of himself and Regan would spend the entire time trying to remember the name of that diner where he had the really good chocolate chip banana pancakes" -- my brother


Q2: If John McCain and Barack Obama shared a passionate, intimate moment, what would it look like?

A2: Dear lord help us:




Q3: If one candidate leaves a town hall stage after a somnolent debate, is the debate over? What if the other candidate hangs around for the encore? What if every participant suddenly wakes up, smiles, snaps pictures, gets a handshake, chats with the fellow who's still hanging around?

A3: That's a terrific question, my friend. Check this shit out:




Q4: What if Nora Ephron were married to either candidate?

A4: This!

McCain repeats himself way worse than Obama -- "my friends," "earmarks," etc. -- but both of them are guys we've been married to for a long time, and we know their stories. It's true I had no idea that McCain learned everything he knew from a chief petty officer, but that was about the extent of the surprises he had in store for me after all these years together, and in any case, it was clearly bullshit. ... If I were married to him, an unlikely scenario, we would probably have fought in the car on the way home tonight, because I told him a million times not to try to be funny, but he never listens to me.

And if I were married to Obama, another unlikely scenario but a far more attractive one, I would be driving home having a hard time not thinking about the curtains.

Q5: How would we know if ester were getting too emotionally involved in this election? If she teared up on the subway reading New Yorker endorsements and in the park seeing homeless men which brought to mind the Bradley effect? If she were about to head off to Yom Kippur services and all she could think to pray for is a satisfactory resolution on November 4?

A5: Yes, yes, and yes. G'mar hatimah tovah, everyone. Non-Hebrew speakers: that means, GObama!

True Calling: Not a Hater, a Judge

For the second time since I've been in New York, I attended the Moth, a live storytelling competition that travels from venue to venue (as well as to iTunes!). Last night it took place in the fabulous Union Hall in Park Slope. My friends and I got there early enough to snag seats, and our proximity to the stage and our Liberal Arts College vibes caught the host's attention: she tapped us to serve as one of the three teams of judges who get to rate each story.

When asked to come up with a team name related to the evening's topic of Blood, we were determined to justify her faith in us. So while the other two judging teams offered somewhat predictable ideas, "A Negative" and "True Blood," we went with "First Blush." Applause from the crowd! To which we replied, Enjoy your approval of us now because you will be booing us soon.

Yes, that's right: we, the judging team of First Blush, were booed. Why? Because we have STANDARDS, dammit! We like (a) coherence; (b) things that are funny; (c) surprises. More importantly maybe we weren't drinking, whereas by the end the hipsters packing the house were pretty tilty with wine.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that's why they roared at cheap shots at fat and/or androgynous people. First Blush does not stand for that shit, no sir. We will bravely hold up a 7.9 for an utterly conventional, mundane story about you getting your period while wearing borrowed shorts if you, in the telling, direct unreasonable wrath at the massive "he/she" blocking your way to the bathroom. Or your self-hating story about being a chubby kid who eats your brother's birthday cake during the night, including the line "I was fat but crafty," which involves no blood being spilt at all.

We did unite with the crowd most of the time. We gave a great score to the eventual winner, a guy whose tale about getting cheap, painful, and inept plastic surgery in college made everyone wail and cringe in sympathy. The runner up, who talked about the time he almost died after being stabbed by the Latin Kings and then, when he went home to recuperate, was thrown through the windshield of his brother's car, also had us screaming. It's a good scene, overall -- if you're in NY or LA, I definitely recommend going. And be a judge if you can! The power feels awesome and terrible in an Old Testament kind of way.

MOST AWESOME

While reading this Rachel Sklar liveblog of the Colbert New Yorker festival event, I followed her instructions and decided to see if, since Colbert and Stewart just decided to expand their shows through the election, there were any tickets. And this is what happened!

We have reserved 1 tickets for you to attend a live taping of The Colbert Report on 10/14/2008. In a short time you will receive an E-Mail at [redacted] containing information on the next steps required to confirm your attendance. YOU HAVE 48 HOURS TO CLICK ON THE LINK THAT WAS SENT TO YOU IN THE E-MAIL TO CONFIRM YOUR RESERVATION. If you do not confirm your reservation within 48 hours your tickets will be released.

I tried to get tickets for all of you too I swear but there was only one (1) left. Yes, I am one very lucky Rainbow Brite.

Mr. Ben and I hit up two New Yorker festival events this weekend too and they were awesome. And then, cuz we were all dressed up, we dropped in on Equus on Broadway, starring Captain Janeway, Uncle Vernon, and a naked Harry Potter. What a weekend.

because i never blog about fashion

These days, Emma Watson looks much less like a kid and much more like the Dutch au pairs who lived with us when I was little.

(via Go Fug Yourself)

Look, I did it! I made it through an entire blog post without mentioning Our Sarah! ... Oh. Shit.

Speaking of Our Sarah, one of my coworkers approached me this afternoon and said, "You're going to hate me but I actually watched the debates and I liked her! She seemed really great!" In an UNRELATED INCIDENT, another coworker approached me ten minutes later and, when I asked what his girlfriend did, said, "You're going to hate me: She's a model."

"I can't believe everyone thinks I'm a hater!" I said to a third coworker shortly thereafter.

"You do hate a lot," she answered kindly.

Yikes! When did I get this alarming reputation? Let's clear this up. Here is a FULL LIST of the things I hate:

• One-word footwear (Uggs, Crocs)
  
• Dippy, sentimental movies that are a waste of talent and often have offensive subtexts (Love, Actually, Serendipity, 200 Cigarettes)
  
• Dictators, except wacky ones straight out of Douglas Adams who force all citizens to read their poetry
  
• Mmm injustice? Unfairness? Stuff like that.

And that's it! Seriously! Now am I a My Little Pony or am I not?

"What's six times seven?" "No, stuff she knows!"

For posterity, I wanted to capture this, from FiveThirtyEight, whose name reflects how many times I click over there every day:



Right now, on Oct 2, 2008, it's predicting an Obama victory with 336 electoral votes. This is pre-debate, mind you.

ETA: Post-debate! Palin needs to stop winking at me. It's disturbing. Either she wants to fuck me or she wants to fuck with me -- either way, I don't like it.

Where I grew up, and that's Washington, D.C., and I know that's not Scranton or Wasilla or one of them Real Places with Main Streets, so I figure that means we kill every fourth born child and roast its flesh on the National Mall as we dance around naked, flinging out feces in the direction of the Reflecting Pool and singing about how much we love corruption and hate mavericks, but where I grew up in Washington D.C. ... I forget where I was going with this. Let me start again.

God bless Joe Biden. If Sarah Palin wasn't about to fall down literally foaming at the mouth, and I knew she wasn't, they would never let her go out there unprepared, then he had to really bring it. He had to be knowledgeable but not abstract, intelligent but not arrogant, forceful but not condescending, and he did it, he really did. Honestly, I think he did it by not watching any of those Katie Couric interviews or the fabulous Tina Fey parodies, which enabled him to go into the debate with real respect for Our Sarah.

People are going to be buzzing for a while about how she didn't knock her own eye out or start speaking in tongues or striptease into a Betty Boop outfit. And that's true! She didn't! That's why I wanted to capture this image of the map showing America swooning for Obama, because Palin is going to, I think, deliver a bounce to McCain -- hopefully not the entirety of what he lost over the past couple weeks, but I think she'll help him make back some of that ground.

When that clapping dies down, I hope everyone remembers to say, But Biden did better. and That is the man who is seasoned and capable enough to be Vice President of the United States.

ludicrously

I do not understand our current financial crisis. I do, however, understand adverbs, and Dana Milbank apparently likes them a lot, especially ones that begin with C:

Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House banking committee, made his way into the House media gallery to face 75 reporters yesterday afternoon. ... "The Endangered Species Act apparently does not apply to financial institutions," he joked, cruelly.

He vowed, callously, that there will be "no golden parachutes while we are the owners" of Wall Street firms' bad debts. ...

He then cynically turned Paulson's defense of the Wall Street executives upside down. "Let me defend CEOs against Hank Paulson's attack on them," Frank said with feigned sincerity. ...

Lest adjectives feel left out, Milbank also goes hog wild with them too, describing Frank as hard-hearted, merciless, and brazen.

What is he going for here? Sarcasm? Hyperbole? Sloppy writing? I am not clear. But one thing is: Raymond Carver would not approve.

In other, more straightforward news, the Republican ticket had a big day today. Sarah Palin met with world leaders and war criminals and John McCain held his first news conference since fish flopped on land and decided to grow legs. And I am cranky because I am watching the very last, rather grim episodes of the Wire and they are giving me nightmares.

My irritation is probably nothing compared to George Will's, though. He is one serious Grumpy Gus today: he mutters that Obama isn't experienced but McCain is insane and only one of those problems has a possible fix. He'll be lucky if the GOP doesn't disappear him like they disappeared Carly Fiorina (and her golden parachute).

Postcards from the Verge

Jonathan Dee's NYT Magazine's article "The Tell-All College Tour" came out this weekend, making half of my face famous, offering new evidence on the Who's Bigger, Me or Katie Price question (don't I look TINY in that picture down there in the corner?), and catapulting my fledgling company into the spotlight. Our internet traffic spiked on Friday as soon as the link appeared on the NYT website, and there was much whooping and sending it back and forth in the office.

The media attention guarantees nothing, of course, except that we now have a chance. And although we at one point hit #1 on the Most Emailed list, the Sunday loudmouths have crowded the top and bumped us down to #6. Just what you'd expect of the media elites.

Though I'm glad Jonathan Dee had a positive take on us, I have to say that I'm astonished by the utter lack of fact-checking that occurs over at Gray Lady HQ. You'd think the Paper of Record would take note of the following, wouldn't you?:

• there were initially 15 editors, not 20; now there are 13
  
• we each were assigned 14 schools to cover, not 10
  
• our office is on Park Avenue South, not Park Avenue, though I agree that the latter fits better into Dee's narrative
  
• there are only 20 of us in the entire office, not 26
  
• my brother, the quoted "current Cornell student," is, as he should be at 27, an alum

and so on. Also, I maintain that "the New Face of College Admissions" would have been a better title. But it's churlish to complain. The buzz is beginning! Perhaps we are well on our way to becoming the next medium-sized thing.

My coworkers and I hooted over Dee's dour-sounding note at the end of the piece:

It all might seem less suggestive if it weren’t for the fact that this whole “grass-roots movement” seems poised to make a lot of money — most of which seems destined to find its way to the usual suspects, none of whom are part of a grass-roots anything.

As someone who is yet to have made over $30K a year in New York City, I can only say, Amen, brother JDee. Amen.

Say Goodnight, Fiorina

How appropriate that in a campaign built on lies, a person can get shitcanned for telling the truth:

Asked by a St. Louis radio station whether she thought Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could run a company like Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina responded: "No, I don't."

The McCain folks are pissed.

"Carly will now disappear," this source said. "Senator McCain was furious." Asked to define "disappear," this source said, adding that she would be off TV for a while ...

Fiorina was booked for several TV interviews over the next few days, including one on CNN. Those interviews have been canceled.

No $50 million golden parachute on this ride down, I guess. But who will cry sexism on Palin's behalf now?

What's so frustrating is OF COURSE none of these political contenders could run a major corporation. That's not what they've trained to do. Even George W., who *had* an MBA, couldn't helm Hewlett-Packard. But putting Sarah "Bush in a Skirt" Palin in office would be worse than average, an awful lot like putting Norville Barnes in charge of Hudsucker Industries. Except that Norville Barnes was authentically a nice guy, not someone who fired her enemies and appointed old high school friends with no experience to run million dollar agencies.

Sarah Palin is officially Not Fun Anymore, even if she does have an action figure.

Please Note

It's unsettling to see one's bra size in the NYT mag prefaced by the words "startlingly large." Especially because I suspect the author has his facts wrong. Seriously, here's me:



And here's Katie Price:



No comparison, right? Right. But why should I expect fact-checking from the NYT? Last week Mo Dowd claimed Hillary went to Wesleyan. (The snobby, media-elitist northeastern liberal arts college Hill attended was, as everyone knows, Wellesley.)

Speaking of secondary sexual characteristics, Mr. Ben and I saw fabulous cabaret/burlesque Saturday night, courtesy of Lazy Rizo and the Assettes. In fact it's the only successful burlesque/cabaret I've ever seen -- it managed to be hilarious and sexy and entertaining all the way through.

In one incredible number, a man who began tap-dancing to "Momma's Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread" in a sailor dress and pigtails transformed, via striptease, into glitter Jesus, backed up by a bouncy version of "Let The Circle Be Unbroken."

Digest that if you can.

The next day, for a change of pace, Mr. Ben headed off to a patriotic photoshoot and the LES Pickle Festival while I hit up the Brooklyn Book Festival with friends. We got to see Richard Price (the Wire, Lush Life), A.M. Homes (the L Word, the Safety of Objects), Simon Rich (SNL, the New Yorker), Russell Banks (Cloudsplitter, Affliction), and Jonathan Franzen (the Corrections, How To Be Alone). FOR FREE. And Franzen flirted with me! Okay, he didn't, but he could have -- we spoke briefly, and he gazed at me with his sad, soulful eyes.

This was definitely an "I <3 NY" kind of weekend.

brightening

Wow! Both my parents are energy lawyers who have worked for the federal government off and on their whole lives, and they never had this much fun. But then, aside from Jay McInerney, and, we now know, members of the Bush administration's Interior Department, who does?:

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The investigation separately found that the program’s manager mixed official and personal business. In sometimes lurid detail, the report also accuses him of having intimate relations with two subordinates, one of whom regularly sold him cocaine.

The culture of the organization “appeared to be devoid of both the ethical standards and internal controls sufficient to protect the integrity of this vital revenue-producing program,” one report said.

The sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives sound particularly enticing, don't they? Also the paintball outings, because god knows they're hard to come by.

I am trying to be in a better mood about things. The oh-so-wise Gail Collins is telling me to be, for one. Also, contrary to expectations, Rushdie's entertaining but narratively muddled Enchantress of Florence was not even shortlisted for the Booker this year, which means all status quos change eventually. AND the Large Hadron Collider succeeded in creating a small black hole but not in destroying the world. This feels like a good thing right now, although ask me again if McCain/Palin are elected.

NOTE: Do you ever think about the fact that life could end suddenly, in a flash, depriving all the religions of the world of ever knowing whether they were right?

glum.

The events of the past couple weeks have been dragging me down bit by bit, especially as we near the end of my favorite season:

• kind rejections
  
• an extended meal with the Russian hordes. Hours at a time of food I can't eat, drinks I can't drink, and jokes I don't understand tends to get to me, but yesterday's get together was harder than usual.
  
• misuses of the word "limpid"
  
• the disrespect shown to the em dash in my office
  
• the delayed launch of Unigo
  
• The Year of Magical Thinking
  
• of course, Palinpsests. The country loves it some Sarah, while I am scared to the soles of my feet of this book-banning beauty queen and her effect on national polls.

I am scanning the horizon for mermaids or bright spots, anything that might cheer me up:

• The New Yorker Festival. I'm on Year 5 in the city and I've never managed to get to one of these events. Will this be the year?
  
• Unigo launches tomorrow, 9/9! This is it, folks, the real deal, the website I've been helping conjure out of the ether for the past eight months: The next medium-sized thing. Tell your friends.
  
• "America's Next Top Model"

Honestly, I can't think of other specifics. There has to be something to look forward to! Please, Send Help.

ETA: Gawker mocks my pain and friends email me reassurance. Already I feel somewhat better. Thanks, pals and blogs!

Sarah, Palin and Tall

The Mommy Wars rage on around and about Sarah Palin, yesterday's Bold, Maverick Choice and tomorrow's Harriet Miers:

“When I first heard about Palin, I was impressed,” said Pamela Moore, a mother of two from Birmingham, Ala. But upon reading that Ms. Palin’s special-needs child was three days old when she went back to work, Ms. Moore began questioning the governor’s judgment. Partly as a result, she plans to vote for Senator Barack Obama. ...

Her thoughts were echoed by some Republicans, including Anne Faircloth, daughter of former Senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina. Being a governor is one thing, Ms. Faircloth said, and Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, seems like a supportive spouse. “But running for the second-highest office in the land is a very different kettle of fish,” she said.

Many women expressed incredulity — some of it polite, some angry — that Ms. Palin would pursue the vice presidency given her younger son’s age and condition. Infants with Down syndrome often need special care in the first years of life: extra tests, physical therapy, even surgery.

Sarah Robertson, a mother of four from Kennebunk, Me., who was one of the few evangelical Christians interviewed to criticize Ms. Palin, said: “A mother of a 4-month-old infant with Down syndrome taking up full-time campaigning? Not my value set.”

What a thankless job it is, in America, to be a woman in the public eye making decisions about family. And what a thankless job it is, as well, to be the vice president of a man who lets the press know you were his third choice because he wasn't allowed to ask out either of his preferred dates. How tacky is that? John, will you keep your aides in order, please? They're embarrassing both you and your "soul mate."

The GOP has suddenly become the party of drama, of chick flicks and Lifetime movies. Good for them for defending the ability of women to raise children and have jobs, at least. And good for them for being able to change their tune so fast! The opinion-makers were far less happy about the idea of Palin before the decision was made, according to this hilariously off-message Fox News clip.

While we're on the subject, good for Obama for refusing to engage with this tawdriness and pointing out his mother was only 18 when he was born. Truth be told, Obama doesn't have to do much except keep campaigning and keep Biden from putting his oh-so-tasty foot in his mouth. And Biden's doing pretty well so far:

If Sen. Joe Biden was hurt that Republican operative Karl Rove called him a “big blowhard doofus” at an event in Minneapolis Monday, he didn’t show it. On hearing the news, Biden grinned and said “he’s a great American.” ... A reporter asked if the senator would now answer to “Senator Doofus.” “You can call me anything you want,” he said. “I learned a long time ago you can call me anything you want.”

Oh, I hope the rest of the campaign continues to be chock full of vituperative mothers-in-law and fake blog entries about Foreign Policy that end, "In conclusion, Foreign Policy is a complex but fascinating topic." Please, Election 2008, tell me you're not done entertaining us yet.

Also, Remember This?

On a day when Obama prepares to speak again, let's all take a moment and review where we were four years ago, when a state senator for Illinois ascended the national stage for the first time.

Four years ago, when that speech first blew my mind, I had just begun working at what I like to call the Very Important Talent Agency, a place where I was sworn at, berated, objectified, and sexually harassed, and generally introduced to the "real world." Although we peons were encouraged not to let a lunch break distract us from our ten-hour days, I would sometimes slip out for some stabilizing fresh air.

On one of those days, which coincided with the Republican National Convention's takeover of NYC, I had the good fortune to be hit on by an aging delegate:

i was eating lunch in an outdoor plaza and a delegate (complete with cowboy hat -- they seemed to come standard) started a conversation. his mother sat next to him, spilling things on her blouse and sometimes chiming in.

... him: so where are you from?
me: dc
his mother: she's from new york, of course.
him: no, mom, she's from washington.
his mother: ohhh. (clear implication: if there's any place worse than new york ...)
him: so what's your name?
me: ester.
him: that's a great name.
me: it's a little old-fashioned.
him: i like old-fashioned women.
his mother: [spills something on herself]

And, to keep injecting sex into this political conversation, here's Rude Pundit's totally obscene take on the Convention so far. Enjoy.

Remember the Maine

On our trip to Maine last week, we decided that we had to eat either blueberries or lobster every day. In effect, we decided to eat lots of blueberries, because it turns out that lobster is hella expensive even in Maine, where I figured they basically give you two just for waking up in the morning. But we all got gold medals in blueberry eating: in pie, in muffins, on yogurt, on ice cream, and straight off the bush.

Also, I learned that Maine is about much more than food. It's also about really cold water. The water up there was clearly on loan from Titanic. One lovely day, just outside the idyllic, remote town of Machias, we decided to risk hypothermia, just for fun. We swam out to a bridge, let the river's rapids carry us, screaming, to the other side, and then swam quickly towards shore to avoid getting dragged out to sea and ending up dropped on a beach in Newfoundland looking like the Montauk Monster.



It was awesome. And, to thaw out our purple fingers afterwards, the lovely family we were visiting gave us all china teacups of homemade lobster bisque. It was as salty as the many locals who cut their eyes at us at rural gas stations along Coastal Route 1.



We also spent one long, hilarious night playing Settlers of Catan, a German colonialist board game. It's like Diplomacy meets Monopoly meets Sim City, and it's so absorbing we were up til 2:00 AM. We didn't even remember to watch the Olympics.

The area where Ben's dad has a beautifully decorated house is peaceful and small; there was very little to do except to tire ourselves out walking in the woods or on rocky beaches during the day, cook a lot, and then fall into a stupor not long after sunset. We did make it to an adorable little library, watched over by a woman who knew the name of everyone who came in. I listened to her making personalized recommendations and I realized that, in another life, I would totally be her. And pretty happy, too.

A Country Song

I had to agree with George Stephanopolous about the DNC stage: gross. Barack Obama's head appearing in that screen, framed by neon lights, made him look like he was inside a jukebox, some kind of alien warlord informing a fifties diner that he is going to attack.

But that's my only complaint. Ted Kennedy looked even stronger last night than he had the last time I saw him, speaking at my little brother's high school graduation. How can you not go all mushy and sentimental when you hear him he say, "I promise you, I will be on that Senate floor on January 5"? Remember to factor in that you have your period in this scenario, with hormones coming out your eyes. Okay, go.

Michelle, meanwhile, is a goddess, and her brother is adorable. You don't get to see that kind of close sibling relationship too often; the narratives of Father-Son, Mother-Daughter, Parent-Child, or Feuding Siblings take up too much space. And, of course, with this convention, the narrative of the Clintons Hate Obama but Love the Kennedies who Love Obama. It's a country song!

God, I'm tired of thinking and hearing about Clinton and her disgruntled, spiteful supporters. It's like no one ever lost a primary before. "It is a fact that millions of Americans voted for Mrs. Clinton this year," acknowledges the NYT. Well done, factcheckers! Millions of people also voted for Jesse Jackson when he ran, but you didn't see him hosting cry-ins about not making it to the White House.

Silver medal, Hillary! It's not so bad! Other fabulous women have had to settle for silver. Try to do it with some grace.

Meanwhile, in *actual* drama, four people have been arrested for plotting an assassination:

The police said they had found two rifles, one with a scope, in the car, along with walkie-talkies, a bulletproof vest and licenses in the names of other people.

And enough meth to power ten long-haul truck drivers.

Luckily we're being prayed for: the DNC even has an official prayer guy! And Tara Leigh knows him! Because apparently the world of Christians who are willing to chill with Democrats is very, very small.

Remember the Maine

Kicking my feet up in Bath, Maine, en route to Macchiasport. The houses are old, the locals are salty (and eco-friendly!), and the lobster rolls are very tempting. Thus far in my life the only lobster roll I've ever had was in Chelsea Market in Manhattan. That's gotta change.

Back next weekend!

Olympic Madness

This is like the movie version of My Fair Lady, with the studio casting Audrey Hepburn instead of Julie Andrews and then using Marni Nixon's voice: the little girl who sang in the opening ceremonies was the face China was looking for, but the voice was provided by a less adorable seven-year-old. God, how depressing. We'll never get over our perfection-obsession, will we?

(Because I can't resist the Biblical reference, I have to admit this quote also sprang to mind: "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.")

Predictably, people are pissed:

The outrage was especially heated over the cold calculation used to appraise the girls. “Please save the last bit of trueness in our children,” wrote one person with an online name of Weirderhua. “They think Yang Peiyi’s smile is not cute enough? What we need is truth, not some fake loveliness! I hope the kids will not be hurt. This is not their fault.”

Another person added: “Children are innocent. Don’t contaminate their minds!”

Though I'll happily debate the "children are innocent" canard, otherwise I agree. It's this kind of stage management that makes people either strive for the unattainable or become cynical about everything. Like the New Yorker article about photoshopping, which made it clear you can never fully trust what you see. Do you think there would be so much conspiracy theorizing -- about the moon landing, 9/11, and Britain's 7/7 -- otherwise?

The idea that a child needs to not only have the best voice but the best look is American Idol-type nonsense. So is the idea that no female Olympian is complete, not even with a gold medal, if we don't know that she also has a husband and a baby in the wings, as a Johnson & Johnson ad last night made clear, or is about to start a family, as the media and announcers during the women's beach volleyball competition kept stressing. Already they have to compete in bikinis, so that we can objectify them even as we admire them.

Seriously, isn't it enough that these athletes do unreal things with their minds and bodies to perform for us on an international stage? Do we really need them to shrink back to human size once the cameras are off?

Welcome to the Team, Condi!

Everyone's letting the masks slip these days! Is it the August heat? First Paris Hilton reveals that she's actually shrewd and funny. Then Morgan Freeman decides to stop pretending his marriage is working (he and his wife have been secretly separated since December!). Now Condoleeza Rice has admitted she's an Obamaniac:

"Look, I’m a Republican, all right? Senator McCain is a fine patriot and he would be a great president. But there’s something to be said for fresh blood." ... Rice was also asked “Would you feel safe with a President Obama?” to which she responded, "Oh, the United States will be fine."

Check out that future tense! Very sly.

I'm going to try to move away from thinking about politics and polls all the time, the ridiculousness of which this New Yorker piece captures nicely. If only there were more distractions. At work, we're grinding through the last month before we go live -- exciting but stressful -- and mourning the sudden loss of our CTO. The office feels a bit like a bachelor pad these days, lacking necessities like toiletries and water (not to mention an HR department and an Office Manager) but boasting a big-ass flatscreen TV and an X-Box to go with it.

When I told a friend about the X-Box, she replied, impressed, "Are you guys like Google now?" The answer is, Absolutely, if the employees at Google have to fish used paper towels out of the trash can to wipe their hands.

Largely, the boys in the office are thrilled to get to play Rock Band and Avatars Play Soccer and Shoot That! And That Too! Get Him!. But I'm past the point in my life where I can enjoy watching other people work a controller. At least you can use the X-Box to play DVDs. Chipper McCheerful and I are staying after work to watch Season 3, Disc 3 of The Wire.

A Good Year

dancey dancey
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

Instead of doing work, I'm reading archives, since work right now makes me cranky and archives make me agreeably nostalgic.

One year and sixteen days ago, Mr. Ben studies -- hilariously -- for the Bar.

One year and five days ago, I reflect, "I’ve had over a year to get used to the idea of being a "wife." I’m not quite there yet. I am more comfortable with the idea of being a "bride," anyway, but that’s largely because my mother has made it easy on me. And now the wedding is in five days. FIVE DAYS!"

And one year ago, a woman on the street gives me a pre-celebration blessing: "'My GAWD,' she twanged, hand over heart, 'you look so beautiful! You look just like I did before MY first marriage!'"

Here is the wedding entry. Thanks to mystical good fortune, I am as happy now as I was then, although I am still not yet okay with the idea of being a "wife." Perhaps I can just be a Newlywed for a really long time.

Happy One Year, baby.

Top Five Things Wrong with McCain's Newest Ad

#5) Britney Spears <3s President Bush. Remember this, from 2003?:

CARLSON: You're going to be on the National Mall [in Washington, D.C.] soon performing for Pepsi and the NFL and also to support our troops. A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?

SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.

CARLSON: Do you trust this president?

SPEARS: Yes, I do.

This interview also includes the following unrelated, hilarious exchange:

CARLSON: You worked with Pepsi for a long time. Candidly between you and me, how much Pepsi do you think [you drink] on an average day?

SPEARS: I really do like Pepsi.

CARLSON: Really?

SPEARS: I really do.

CARLSON: What's your favorite kind?

SPEARS: My favorite kind of Pepsi? Pepsi's Pepsi.

CARLSON: You don't drink Diet Pepsi.

SPEARS: No, just regular Pepsi.

Britney is my idol. Okay, back to the list!

#4) The Hiltons <3 McCain, or <3ed, anyway, to the tune of $4,600, the maximum allowable donation to his campaign. Now, not so much.

#3) McCain <3s 25-year-old blond heiresses. His own wife was one when he met her.

#2) The world <3s Obama -- why isn't that a good thing?

#1) The GOP <3s celebrities.

This shit makes me tired. Worse is the most recent deflating Gallup poll, which puts Obama only one point ahead. In one corner, you have a young, dynamic, intelligent, good-looking, thoughtful, church-going family man. In the other, you have the technologically illiterate Grampy LaGrumps who traded in his first wife for a far younger lady, one who came with a well-connected political father and no embarrassing personal disfigurements. And voters are painfully divided?

Well, as I do every four years around this time, I will try to keep from sliding into cynicism about the American people.