Dear people who know me personally, have my cell phone number and my email address (some of whom have even referred to themselves as my friends) yet apparently still can't be bothered to contact me for verification because it would ruin the scoop on your blogs**:
New York Metro experienced technical difficulties this weekend and the primary URL for The Kicker is not resolving properly (nor are several of the other pages.)
The Kicker has not been shut down.
That's not to say that The Kicker won't be shut down. It may; it may not. Today was Adam Moss's first day and we haven't talked about it yet.
** I'll let Felix and Gothamist off the hook a bit here, because they were re-reporting, but Choire and Nick have no excuse...
· Drunk Drawing (Post-Oscars)
· Rick Bruner's Daily News article on female bloggers. (Blaise has the photographic evidence.)
· I swear to god I still have a job. If you want to hear me say it, I'll say it.
· From transcript: Live! With Regis And Kelly Syndicated TV Syndicated TV National 03/01/2004 9:00 - 10:00 am [Derived from Captioning] 04.40 We all had assigned seating. The guy who was just here, peter and lorraine i can't think of the guy who is raymond's father. Pointer boyle. A what peter boyle. What's the matter with you? Can't you remember anything? Kelly: it was such a strange thing, peter and elaine, you know, ray's dad. What? Regis: peter boyle, great guy. Then next to me was an editor for "New York Magazine" of the intelligence column. Kelly: i would have been very intimidated and not spoken all night. Regis: what the pressure. I have just been through a tough week with mill mill and all of that. With "millionaire" and all of that. Yet i had the intelligence watching every move. She was very sweet. 05.34
Bergdorf Goodman Magazine (they have one--who knew?) approached me several months ago about writing a first person secret-of-my-success article on, say, how I broke into journalism with blogging. I told them that I thought it would sound too much like an after school special and would erroneously presuppose that there was some level of intelligent planning on my part. So instead I wrote the following:
On the Virtues of Being a Dilettante (The Secret of My Success: An Utter Lack of Focus.)
Bergdorf Goodman Magazine Spring 2004
I could tell you that I'm a Jack of All Trades and a Master of None, but that would be a bald-faced lie. I am, in fact, a Jack--or Jill, as it were--of Enough Wildly Disparate Trades to Be Thought Somewhat Eccentric Yet Not That Terribly Interesting and Master of Three or Four Obscure Areas of Specialization, Most of Which, If My Career Trajectory Is Any Indication, Have No Practical Applications.
In centuries past, there existed a certain type of person sophisticates called a "Renaissance Man." The Renaissance Man was an artist and a musician, a scientist and a mathematician--all at the same time. He was respected, admired and heavily subsidized by powerful Italian bankers.
But the Renaissance days are gone, and with them, the respect and admiration once showered upon Renaissance men. (The Italian banking industry, surprisingly and against all conceivable odds, still exists.) Renaissance men are now wrongly and unfairly maligned as "dilettantes."
They are not dilettantes.
I, however, am.
In December of 2002, I became editor fo a weblog (an online journal that provides readers with news and commentary) called Gawker.com that purportedly chronicled what I then described as "the darker Manhattan-centric themes--class warfare as recreational sport, pathological status obsession, and the complete, total and wholly unapologetic embrace of decadence." Frankly, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that, but it looked good (or at least spell-checked) at the time.
During my nine-month tenure as the editor of Gawker, I accumulated a small following of loyal readers, a disturbingly expansive repertoire of bad jokes about the recreational abuse of trendy narcotics and a cease-and-desist letter from Catherine Zeta-Jones. (I also thumbed my nose at the oppressive--dare I say, fascist--style conventions of most traditional publications and used parentheticals with ruthless if not wild and gratuitous abandon.)
My tendency to mock New York-based magazines and newspapers made Gawker a masochistic pleasure for Manhattan media people, and, as a result, a number of ostensibly sane editors at otherwise respectable publications hired me to write for them. I awoke one morning to the startling realization that I was, professionally speaking, a journalist. (Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find himself a cockroach, and I imagine that the experience was not entirely dissimilar.) It was at that point that I left the weblog for the milk-and-honey of free office supplies.
Gawker was, career-wise, the inevitable product of a series of statistically improbable circumstances and my own crippling inability to focus on any single subject for more than five minutes. As a dilettante, I had assiduously built a resume by taking a progressively unlikely series of unrelated jobs, until the only remaining unturned stone involved writing satire about the Hilton sisters.
I've been a tech equity analyst, I've screened deals for venture capitalists, and I've written business plans for companies that needed capital. (I also wrote turnaround plans for the same companies after they got funding and spent the money on bad technology and overpaid employees--the former of which didn't work and the latter of which didn't work, either.) Prior to that, I was the fifth employee hired into a Silicon Alley dotcom at the height of the tech boom--a job I got because I co-founded an industry-related nonprofit while still at Duke University. My lingering hopes of working for a nongovermental organization in a foreign country had been dashed by a failed attempt at the same, and my plans to become a spy were curtailed by the CIA's repeated insistence on ignoring my resume. (I had written a senior paper on the ethics of terrorism, an award-winning policy paper for a state agency on chemical weapons disposal and could say "Where are you going with my luggage?" in Italian, Spanish and Arabic. You'd think this would have made a difference, but no.) I exhibited, at the time, a certain moral flexibility that would have made me an excellent candidate for investment banking, but I was apparently allergic to exceedingly large paychecks and health insurance. (Thus my latest career in journalism.)
Popular Western philosopher David Byrne asked American radio audiences in the 1980s How did I get here? "This is not my beautiful house," he added. "This is not my beautiful wife." To Byrne’s existential query, the audiences responded that they had no idea how they got here, that their beautiful houses unfortunately belonged to Charles Keating’s S&Ls, and that their beautiful wives were in fact characters in made-for-TV movies starring Meredith Baxter-Birney. But it’s not a bad question, and my answer is fairly simple. I know exactly how I got here: I tried everything else.
The cover of New York magazine this week (and next week--it's a double issue) features a little second person fiction piece I wrote. It is, quite literally, the cover story.
The text is a bit difficult to read on the cover, so here's the full version:
“I haven’t had good sea urchin in ages,” you think. “And I’m really, really in the mood for good sea urchin.” Any kind of sea urchin will do - fried, flambéed, you don’t care. Your sea-urchin craving happens only once every few months or so, and your wife thinks it has something to do with your mother, whom you once described as “prickly.” This is not surprising, because your wife hates your mother. At any rate, you have no idea where to find good sea urchin. Or bad sea urchin, for that matter. You’d ask your assistant for a recommendation, but she’s too busy faxing merger documents to the wrong tax attorneys. You’re not even sure she knows what a sea urchin is.
The day’s mail sits unopened in a pile on the edge of your desk and you reach under a stack of FedEx envelopes for this week’s issue of New York Magazine. It’s the annual “Best of New York” issue. You’ve never considered “best” an objective qualifier, and you suspect that magazines that publish “best of” issues are engaging in some sort of institutional solipsism - things are “the best” because the magazine thinks they’re “the best,” but you decide to go with it. They’ve obviously spent months researching this stuff, and what difference does it make how New York Magazine differentiates between one knitting circle and another? (Is the instructor wittier? The knitting better? Do the amateur knitters - the knitting poseurs - go elsewhere?) You note that the Best Place to Buy Flat-Screen TVs is the place you bought your 36 inch three months ago, and you feel a little smug. You didn’t get your massive, superamped entertainment center from any old store; you got it from the best store.
You continue to flip through the magazine, see the Exhale yoga center, and remember how flummoxed you were when you were feeling even more stressed out than you feel right now and were looking for a yoga center that didn’t creep you out, and you resolve to try this one. You also notice that New York’s food critics have singled out your favorite restaurant as having the Best Quesadilla. You applaud your own good taste. Your stomach growls. You ask your assistant to call your wife and ask her for the name of that place you had that sea urchin dish that time. “You know. That place,” you say - clarifying for her benefit. “I’m not going to have time,” your assistant protests. “I’m leaving today at 4:30.” You look at your watch. It’s 2:15.
You wonder if New York will receive protest letters from readers who disagree with their picks. “Dear Editor,” you imagine yourself writing, “In your ‘Best of New York’ issue, you stated that Asiate had the ‘best’ potted duck in New York. I feel that you have misrepresented the facts. Had you been more thorough in your investigation, you would have discovered that the best potted duck in New York is in fact found on West 78th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam in the kitchen of my dear aunt Geraldine.”
Your mental composition is interrupted as Best Poker Weekend catches your eye. You wince as you think of the $600 you lost to Jack’s annoying younger brother two weeks ago and vow revenge. You ask your assistant to call the Borgata in Atlantic City and inquire about registration for the next tournament, but she’s busy responding to an urgent and confidential e-mail from the only surviving son of a dead Nigerian dictator, who is apparently willing to enter a lucrative business partnership with her if she’s willing to accept the transfer of $18 million into her personal bank account. You wonder if New York has a Best Incompetent Assistant-Replacement Agency category.
A few pages later, you notice a recommendation for Best Men’s Facial. You’re fairly comfortable with your metrosexuality and freely admit that this may be the best category so far. You absent-mindedly rub your face, irrationally assuming that you can determine whether you need a facial by doing that. Yes, you conclude, it appears that you need a facial.
You recognize the Best Place to Spend a Mint on a Puppy as the place where your wife bought her chihuahua’s “couture” dog collar. The dog - which you hate - has a habit of running between your kitchen and living room, yapping ferociously and punctuating turns with a sharp little ARF! Yap, yap, yap, yap, ARF! Yap, yap, yap, yap, ARF! Sometimes it slips on the rug and goes crashing into the wall. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, ARF - whack! You feel a tiny bit of glee every time it happens. You wonder if the Best Place to Spend a Mint on a Puppy is interested in buying a slightly used chihuahua. You write down the name of the Best Craft Studio, because the yapping, couture-collared piece of evil in question recently decapitated your 4-year old’s beloved doll, Clare, mistaking her for some sort of threatening domestic predator. You also make a note to call the Best Environmentally Friendly Exterminator, since the only thing the dog appears to have no interest in chasing, biting, or even mildly annoying is the bug population in the basement.
You continue flipping through the magazine. Best Vintage Lamps. The perfect gift for Aunt Geraldine, you think. Best Same Day Dry Cleaner. That would have come in handy yesterday when your assistant spilled her venti latte over your Hermès tie. Best . . . Sea Urchin. You smile. Mmm . . . sea urchin.
The charming and wonderful John Hodgman has asked me to read some fiction at his next Little Gray Book Lecture, the topic of which will be "spying".
Details below:
For review by MEMBERS OF THE WORLD PRESS, and other ACQUAINTANCES, only
****THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION HAS BEEN REPORTED WITH A CONFIDENCE LEVEL OF 9.3 (VERY HIGH)****
Little Gray Book Lecture No. 26: OHUUQ GQYRP YJVZA BUVUS FGOI
shall occur at 8PM on Wed, April 7, 2004 in the front room of Galapagos, a known meeting place in Williamsburg that is located at 70 North 6th Street between Kent and Wythe and shall welcome briefings on spies and spycraft from,
MR. DAVID GUION, writer/actor/INTERNATIONAL VOICE of Oral B "Professional Care" power toothbrushes, illuminating that overlooked genre of popular music known as SPY ROCK;
MR. PATRICK KEEFE, a FELLOW of the mysterious agency known as D.A.L.B.C.C.F.S.A.W. (the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers), reading from LISTENING IN, his forthcoming book on the art of SURVEILLANCE;
MR. PETER KUPER, the renowned ILLUSTRATOR and co-founder of WORLD WAR III magazine who, since 1997, has been the sole member of Mad Magazine's "Joke and Dagger" department as artist and (wordless) writer of SPY VS. SPY;
and
MS. ELIZABETH SPIERS, the former GAWKER and current KICKER, whose last name is actually pronounced SPY-ERS, discussing the unique pains of WANTING TO BE A SPY.
plus:
ONE SPY RELATED SONG FROM MS. ROBIN GOLDWASSER
****THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION HAS BEEN REPORTED WITH A CONFIDENCE LEVEL OF 2.3 (UNCONFIDENT)****
Night vision goggles will be distributed to all members of the audience; the Lecture will be held entirely in the dark.
******THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION HAS BEEN REPORTED WITH A CONFIDENCE LEVEL OF 7.9 (USEFUL ONLY TO THE VERY CURIOUS)****
The brave Bristish cryptographists of Bletchley Park could not have broken the German Enigma code without the letters "GRY" and, of course, Shockwave:
****THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION HAS BEEN REPORTED WITH A CONFIDENCE LEVEL OF 9.8 (EXTREME CONFIDENCE)****
Salient details are as follows:
Little Gray BOok Lecture No. 26: OHUUQ GQYRP YJVZA BUVUS FGOI
Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 8PM
Galapagos Art Space (Front Room)
70 North Sixth Street, bet Kent and Wythe
L Train to Bedford Avenue
718-782-5188
www.galapagosartspace.com
www.littlegraybooks.com
A FIVE DOLLAR DONATION IS REQUESTED AT THE DOOR BY "HILL"
This ends the transmission to the world press.
THAT IS ALL