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Double the Hocus, Half the Carbs!

In a coup for small unassuming women who ask a lot of questions everywhere, my mom won a small poker tournament in Las Vegas. My sister and I asked her to play a few hands with us since neither of us feel that comfortable with Texas Hold ‘Em (we’re Seven Card Stud players, kinda) and while this was going on I started to think how cool it would be if I could do cool shit with cards, like throw them out accordion style and deal them quickly and shuffle impressively, etc. And I became more and more obsessed with this idea and determined to learn — on the internet of course– because surely this kind of useful info is to be found there. I was wrong. Instead, I found voluminous information on card tricks, so I learned a few of those, because what the hell, right? And then I performed a couple for my sister. The first one I messed up but the second one she admitted was “impressive” and the whole things was all jokey like “look how funny and retarded this is that I’m doing these dumb magic tricks oh my god hahaha how silly.” So then of course I decided I may as well learn a few more or at least master the couple I knew and I started thinking about magic quite a bit and the scary thing is that I think this is how it starts. Because right now it’s all joking but before long what if I’m the ass at the party who’s doing tricks? Not just turning them? A-HA! But really. Can a cape be far behind?

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Foiled Again!

I have an unhealthy fascination with reality shows along with a whole host of far-flung theories about what their proliferation means which perhaps I’ll one day foist upon the world in a book of staid, inscrutable and self-satisfied cultural critical essays referencing things like the Frankfurt school and tropes. In the meantime though I’d just like to make out with all the producers of Joe Schmo. And so for reasons both adulterated and un, I was looking forward to MTV’s Reality Show Awards Show, which I didn’t realize only concerned reality shows that had aired on MTV. I mean, entire categories were based just on Punk’d. The whole show could have been packaged as a Top 100 Outrageous Moments in MTV Reality Shows or A Look Back at MTV Reality Shows or Ashton Kutcher Did Not Just Say That Ohmigod. The Awards Show conceit was quite a stretch though, and I could have been watching I Love the 80s or SVU. Network, please!

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Redolent

Tonight I saw Comets on Fire and Sunn0))) (I have no idea if that’s really how they spell their name, it’s some aggravating combination of letters and punctuation. This just in: that is how they spell their name!) at the Knitting Factory. While I could review the music, I think my words would be better used reviewing the smell of the show: ripe with a musky gamey funk I haven’t enjoyed since riding public transportation in Europe. About two-thirds of the way through Comets on Fire the scent suddenly turned decidedly skunky and acrid and I looked around to see whether someone was burning something hydroponic but I didn’t see anything of the sort leading me to the sad conclusion that I was just smelling the same smell I’d been smelling before, and maybe it was fermenting. Overwhelmed, I stepped outside, thus reducing the show’s female population by 50 percent.

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Upcoming Posts Will Include

The Brooklyn Speech, which is delivered by people who’ve moved to Brooklyn and can’t believe how much they love it because they thought they were going to miss Manhattan but blah blah blah, best of both worlds, blah blah, bike riding, yadda yadda yadda, know the deli guy’s name etcetera parks et al.

The I Just Love All Women Speech, which is delivered by guys curiously driven to announce that they just love woman in general, all kinds, ever since they were kids, and there’s just something about women they love, they way they smell, the way they move, the way they sound, etc.

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Uncomfortably Sanctimonious

I’ve been thinking lately that it seems there’s a new breed of rock star (not talking about shtick bands anymore) for whom the idea that a journalist’s agenda is anything other than to write fawning publicity pieces is inconceivable. (Do I need to make that sentence less doubly negative? I don’t not need to.) Why is this? Are they cutting their teeth on fanzines? Which is not to say that I’m trying to rip anyone a new one or even be unduly harsh because I think I’m a pretty gentle writer especially compared to some music critics who give off the impression that they delight in verbal evisceration but just that my job is not to patch the dings in some inked neophyte’s public image and that my allegiance is to the truth and reality first and foremost. And I realize how frigging grandiose that sounds and at the end of the day it’s all fluff anyway but journalism and truth are supposed to be pretty closely affiliated and it’d be a shame, and kind of dangerous really, to forfeit such a beautifully lofty goal.

That said, off the record is off the record and my allegiance to human decency probably guides me, as a reporter, more than the aforementioned ideal.

This is screedy! And pretentious!

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