overheard outside my apartment

man on cell phone apparently standing right under my window holding this conversation: "the chick is willing to do all of us at once, so we gotta get on that. we gotta be on top of this."

"i never did meet spike lee. he now lives in manhattan."

this op-ed piece is a little "ok i get it, brooklyn should be listed on stuffwhitepeoplelike.com" but the final act in which he insanely starts rambling about the warriors is worth the price of admission. also: colson whitehead is quite a name.

it's 10pm. do you know where your fall is?

aaaaand it's friday!

and this is why i stopped reading jezebel

so subjective opinion about the worth of two terrible actresses is apparently enough to start calling sexism on the entire critical world. seriously, fuck you. save your feminist outrage for shit that actually makes sense and maybe people will take you seriously (if you're thinking i'm overreacting, you're right. this author already is on my "ugh" radar after--weirdly, considering her name--dismissing hispanics and, to a lesser extent, asians kinda wholesale in her vaguely pandering "which models of color are in which magazines this month?" round-up). i love my big gay critic friend who disliked this movie, and somehow i don't think that lack of scarjo titty is why he disliked the film. what with the not being into the ladyfriends thing and all.

i feel bad missing out a lot of moe's shit but seriously this kind of thing coupled with asinine "reality tv updates" from slut machine is enough to make me want to shoot my own face off.

speaking of grating faux-feminism and idiotic tv updates, where the hell is the subscription to cosmo my grandma claimed she got me for xmas?

r.i.p.

work e-mail just now from the publisher:

"In light of the [sexual harassment] seminars that everyone will be taking part in today and Monday, we must bid farewell to the cat. This means that images of the cat should not be on display in your cubicle and the masks should be retired (burned or buried)."



;_;

pimp my friends

bill saw a shitty movie so that you don't have to. ultimate bro move. not that i would've went to a movie starring natalie portman, scarlett johannson, and eric bana to begin with, unless i decided that i wanted to see what happens when all of the most boring, inexplicably infuriating people in hollywood are suddenly stuck together in a period drama. by the way, if i ever do indicate that i want to see the aforementioned event, please call the authorities because i will be very unwell and dangerous to myself and others indeed.

the new york bullshit fucking times

eh, i broke my promise to myself to not bother reading this today. and found this, which seems to be putting forth the shocking and new theory that the clinton family is a political powerhouse machine, but i basically couldn't read past this line fragment:

As an equally loyal fan of the Republican Party and of the Green Bay Packers football team

you, sir, suck mightily.

your meowrch activities calendar

meowrson welles says: i must apologize to my fans for my long absence from this website. i don't want to get into the dramedy that is my existence, but i was pulled out of my funk by the news of william f. buckley's death. if there's one thing that i can't stand in the world, it is people who speak in such ridiculous manners, and i always find it delightful when there is one less "ten dollar word" person in this universe. also, i am back because your regular author is a bit "under the weather" today, if you get my meaning, and does not feel like reading the "new york bullshit fucking times" for one more second.

so, with no further ado, here's your activities plan for march! go forth and have fun.

march 1: go to environ bar mitzvah, for those of you who like to dance. i also have a birthday party i was invited to that evening, and since that event is free, i might be attending that instead, but i can hardly recommend you all go to a private party with me. it's gauche.
march 2: go to any of these restaurants for your sunday date. 10% of proceeds go to the ny food bank so you can be full and self-satisfied at the same time.
march 6: go see chuck klosterman read an excerpt from his latest book at highline ballroom! ha ha, i'm just kidding, no one in their right mind should do something like this. go get a delicious dinner at diner instead.
march 8: NEW YORK WINE EXPO! head over to the javits center to get your blitz on. it does cost a pretty penny per head but you could theoretically drink 600 glasses of wine at this thing, which works out to fourteen cents per glass, which anyone could tell you is quite a deal.
march 11: go to the 92nd st y and listen to tim gunn, project runway judge and noted sad man. dress appropriately: you will be rejected at the door if you have not made it work.
march 20: it's the first day of spring! celebrate by getting some bbq at fette sau.
march 23: this is easter! [ed. note: every animals (meowrson note: "every animals"? really? go back to sleep, dearie.) my family has ever owned has died on easter, i swear to god cross my heart and hope to die. so watch out, meowrson] which means...the easter parade and bonnet festival. true, i had no idea this existed until ten minutes ago, but the website promises it to be "less organized" than other nyc parades. which could mean that you will die at this parade! it's got that je ne sais quois, you know? the element of surprise. when done, go to life cafe and eat the delicious eggs blackstone and have a manmosa.
march 30: the boredoms are playing at terminal 5. terminal 5 is kind of a weird, shitty club that i don't understand: it looks like a giant european dance rave party night club but they keep hosting indie rock bands and things like this. it's not a great space to actually see a band. however, unlike nyc parks, terminal 5 has some form of organization so if you purchase a ticket, you will actually be able to get in (though, judging by the hold steady show, you will have to wait on a line, not just to get in, but also to go smoke).
march 31: home opener at yankee stadium! there will be 700 more games at the stadium between now and october though, so don't feel too urgent to go see this particular game. they're playing the blue jays.

bonus:
never: go see the new musical, in the heights, which looks to be pandering and offensive. i mean, more so than a musical usually is.

the department of everything is commercial now

you know, honestly, i'm more frightened of the type of people who are in malls than i am of incarcerated criminals. i mean, one of them is locked up. why would having a big ol' mall in the jail make this more palatable to any neighborhood?

how to date a video gamer

become a sad, pathetic, shut-in world of warcraft freak too, and make the sex in the second life. thanks, ny times!

He focused on killing monsters, and she ensured that they maintained good social relationships with other players.

just like men and women! lol! dudes are always killing shit, ladies always be talking. amirite?

surprise news story of the day

unpopular girls are often heavier than popular girls in high school! there is absolutely nothing insightful in this article, no discussion of cause versus correlation, nothing. though, hey, heads up:

Ms. Lemeshow notes that future studies may also look at the link between a girl’s perceived social status and her risk for eating disorders.

waited with baited breath, ms. lameshow. lemeshow. whatever. it's going to blow her fucking mind when her "scientific methods" show that girls who self-select themselves as being worthless are also at a higher risk for being anorexic. but i thought they were all fattays with frostings hidden under they beds!

someone should really stop this before these otters get hurt

click for full image. i mean, really? wtf? i mean, i guess i can't really judge a man who pretends to write with an otter friend considering my contributors but still. thanks rich for pointing this out.

everyone in the world is hugely stupid today

just fyi. it was exhilarating at first to read abject stupidity, but now i'm just depressed by it.

overheard in ny. by me. because i was involved in the conversation.

this gawker post reminded me of a conversation i had this weekend. walking down 38th st, where two different establishments called "spandex world" reside. names redacted to protect the innocent, especially me.

boy: do you see that ad in the spandex place? "fran drescher and friend arrive at spandex world."
girl: huh. i thought that girl looked more like julia allison.
boy: if julia allison was half as hot as fran drescher, she'd be an interesting person!



honestly, though, i mean, is it just me? does she not look like some poor man's fran?

(and this is the last and only time i will post about my talentless hack of a coworker)

{UPDATE: ooooooooooor not. a coworker saw this and just im'ed me asking why i have to insult julia's looks. looking like fran drescher is a goddamned compliment, people! her "writing" makes me look like nabokov, on the other hand. fran also probably wouldn't be deathly offended by her neighbors having sex.)

and, really, rats are kind of cute anyway

the problem with this story, which is being blogged everywhere on the internets right now (so why shouldn't i join in?), is that i don't actually believe that jennifer 8. lee ever lived in dc for "a couple of years" earlier this decade if she isn't pointing out that the dc metro is full of rats too.

for the record, the biggest rat i ever saw in my entire life was not in a train station at all. it was late night in adam's morgan, i'm thinking mid-fall 2005. i kissed a former friend of mine for photographic purposes and then she ran around chasing some guys with a jumbo slice and then an astoundingly fat rat ran out of the jumbo slice place (dc readers: pizza boli's).

my favorite rat story did occur in the essex/delancey subway station in nyc though. right before i moved, so this would make it early spring, 2005. two tweeny girls were standing, staring at the tracks, pointing, and literally screaming hysterically at some poor little rat. it looked pretty young, it was very small, but it didn't seem particularly phased by being pointed at and screamed at. i have wondered ever since why those girls didn't just look away.

desPURRado

desPURRado, originally uploaded by willlaren.

this is the most important thing i've ever seen

omfg

JANE RUSSELL IS STILL ALIVE?

some more info on that kristol piece from yesterday that angered me

commenter penix (!!) pointed me to dani rodrik's blog which has a good response piece to the times op-ed insulting the obamas. wanted to share with those of you who don't click through to the comments. the salient point, which i was vaguely certain of yesterday but had no real data to back it up at all:

People like me with graduate degrees have done great. But the median compensation (that includes fringe benefits, by the way) of high school graduate men has declined by about 10 percent since 1980! Mr. Kristol: that means that for a high-school graduate, the odds that his compensation would have fallen by more than 10% is 50-50. Note that even college graduates have not seen any income gains since around 2000. The increase in labor productivity has outpaced the earnings of all these groups, including that of workers with graduate degrees.

thanks for pointing me to this, i only barely scraped by economics in school (i received what some of the commenters on rodrik's blog refer to as a "gentleman's c") so i'm pretty terrible at expressing these things myself!

harrison ford: delighted by strippers

hey 39, yr doin it wrong

MUST...SMASH...COACH...