AatomBomb

This city speaks to you in mysterious ways. Waiting to cross Madison Avenue at 34th St. today, I stood next to an elderly gentleman with a crate on wheels. As we waited, he looked into the sky and started shouting very slowly and very loudly, "New York City! I love you!" He repeated this joyous mantra at least 10 times before I got out of earshot.

There's a whole lot of crazy in this town, but sometimes it's the crazy that makes the most sense. I love you too, New York City.

Joe.My.God. posts a new Chris Crocker video, consisting entirely of him blinking a few times. Over a million people have watched already. Internet performance art. Love it.

Back in the proverbial day, a friend and I would often see a particularly tragic club queen at Twilo named Asia. She must have had rather unique personality quirks that would have lent themselves to our mordant humor, but given the context of the situation we resorted to the only tool at our immediate disposal. Fat jokes. She would glide by in some form of gaudy drag, and we would gravely intone in the manner of a BBC documentary: "Asia...a large land mass." We would then crumple to the floor in fits of juvenile hysterics, and retire to the dancefloor.

Likewise, I have no doubt that the rich tapestry woven by the experiences of 1.3 billion Chinese people lends itself to insights, wit, and analysis of their complex society. But when you read these types of things it's hard to resist saying: "China...full of fucking fascists." Or something equally nuanced.

What on earth would we do without research studies? Without them, we may never have known that people who suffer from Alzheimer's have trouble with money. Coming soon: the results of a 10 year, $5 million study linking Alzheimer's to poor driving.

Holy shit. I did not see this coming. Somehow, it seems like an Obama cautionary tale. Beware the rosy glow of the anointed ones, or something. But I still hope Barack wins. Better the devil you don't know, in this case, I'm afraid.

"Yet in the teeming religious marketplace of Britain’s cities, [Adam] Smith also saw pressures that would limit the political impact of religious beliefs and prevent theocracy. With so many competing denominations, he noted, religious leaders could acquire political influence only by finding allies outside their own version of the faith—and the process of forming those alliances would drive them toward agendas that could appeal to a wider, multi-faith audience. To be politically significant, he wrote, religious extremists had to move toward broader and necessarily more-moderate coalitions. Their entry into politics would, itself, moderate them." - Walter Russell Mead, on TheAtlantic.com

Andrew Sullivan quotes Massimo Pigliucci on the nature v. nurture "debate", and could have taken the words right out of my mouth:

Wake up, ladies and gentlemen on both fronts: the reality is both more complex and more fascinating than either caricature would allow. It is neither nature nor nurture, it is -- as the title of an unusually balanced book by Matt Ridley puts it -- nature via nurture.

Amen, brother. Now, can we all finally grow up and stop treating genetics like a zero-sum operation?

I also wanted to thank Joe.My.God for giving me props for a long-winded comment I left on The Malcontent. As we become more and more mainstream, which I fully support, the gender issues that lie just beneath the surface of so much of our slang and behavior toward one another will become more and more divisive and important to understanding who we are. Things like "pink face" in the media, and the growing intellectual divide between effeminate gays and the "average Joe" set will play an important role in how we perceive ourselves, as well as how we are perceived. As usual, there's really no "there" there, as there's plenty of room in this world for all types of queers. Nevertheless, I see this evolving into a type of lesbian/gay divide, where we are lumped together by society-at-large, but don't really see eye-to-eye with one another on most things.

A study in contrasts: Time, Inc recently unveiled its response to the Conde corporate advertising blitz. Conde's campaign is called "The Point of Passion" and leverages their celebrity access to emphasize the luxe yet familiar feel of its titles and how they form an intimate bond with their readerships. Time, Inc.'s response? "Trusted Connections", an orange nightmare of creative leveraging what Time, Inc. does best - write boring memos and pander to a faceless mass audience. "We don't sell pages," they brag, "we sell influence." They certainly got that first part right. With the luxury market moving further and further into Conde's nest, and the mass tabs/gossip blogs outflanking the People mothership by being even more bawdy, cutthroat, and let's face it - British, there's less and less solid ground for Time, Inc. to stand on. For a company that survives by growing its audience, not merely struggling to keep the one they already have, these are tough times indeed. One would think a bolder, sexier campaign that focused on our much-touted digital revolution and found a way to connect with ad people (ad people!) with more acumen than this would be in order. It's pathetic.

Aww. My first Gawker redundancy. Took them long enough. I stand by my comment though. "Inster Fashion"? Slow news day doesn't really do that justice.