Sturm und Drang: A Walking Tour of German Romantic New York

STOP #1.
In case you'd forgotten about signing that lease, here's a bust of Goethe in Bryant Park. He is facing the carousel on 40th Street.


That is all.

Two Years Late in Hypegeist: Machinima, the Machines of God

Clearly retaliation for that umbrella song right?

Quarter- (okay, Third-) Life Crisis Update: I Will Never Have This Much Fun

"Sk8er Boi"–era Avril: Critic. "Girlfriend"-era Avril: Genius.

Note how she scrunches her nose when saying "remix."

Live Blogging the Dubya/Putin Mandate

No. No grand bargain has been reached. I mean mandate in the old homosocial sense—lobster, fishing, hanging out at dad's house. CNN's showing the press conference live with Vlad and George talking in their respective mother tongues (interpreters off-screen) in front of a beautiful coastal-Maine backdrop. Bush made small talk (does he make another kind these days?) about how Putin was the only guy who caught a fish this morning. Putin riffed back that it was a team effort and that credit has to be given to the captain of the ship—"the 42nd president of the United States."

Bush's giggles hid the reporters' stirrings, but I trust they were there. The 42nd president? Was Clinton clandestinely on the Bush family vessel, he and H.W. divining away below deck for another tsunami to get people to care about the brains in the family again? The only other explanation is that Putin counts Grover Cleveland (generally considered the 22nd and 24th) as one person, which obviously makes more sense than the more typical counting method but still seems awfully, with apologies to Sulky, Russian.

Then Putin offered, unprompted, that they let the fishy go. The coverage cut away before any Chechens could get ideas.

UPDATE: According to CNN, George H.W. Bush gave Putin a Segway (as a token of American culture? Its like McDonald's in Moscow all over again). Putin rode the Segway around the Kennebunkport compound. Umm, WTF?

What I'll Be Wearing Next Spring

Thanks to Electress Cathy Horyn's transcendent On the Runway blog, I've learned that my friend Junya Watanabe (right) and others at the Paris shows have decided to dress me in manpri high-water pants next season. It's about time! Somehow when Horyn overcomes what must be an awful case of carpal tunnel and gets on AOL to tell me this is a trend, it makes sense in a way, say, David Skulls Skulls Skulls Colman's article last year on the same short-pantsed subject did/could not. Or as commenter Anjo writes re: Cat's flood-pants entry:

Cathy, I think it does matter—unless you think it doesn’t, in which case I concede the point—but cropped trousers have been on nearly all the runways this season.

Unless you think it doesn't, in which case I concede the point! I AM WHATEVER YOU SAY I AM, IF I WASN’T THEN WHY WOULD I BE WEARING THIS? [Incidentally, the designer most cited as the foremost theorist–practitioner (or practitioner–theorist) of male ankle nudity is a guy named Thom Browne, whose schooldays were likely an unrelenting series of noogies and wedgies and growth-spurt rejection.] In any case, now that Rorty's dead (lol!), let us again praise Horyn as the one public intellectual we have left who really improves the conversation and whatnot. A poster on On the Runway named Autre:

RAF SIMONS’ SS COLLECTION: THE BIG HOMECOMING

My, my, what shall we do with this...There is a problem with amazing designers that go back to reality, to the “material”, rediscovering (= key word) the street like Ghesquiere, youth tribes (”the alternative chic is only chic” as we call it here, from pseudo-rebellious collegiates, to hackers/travelers/ globetrotters). Usually, it comes down to nothing but showing just fashion (no wonder it was Prada-esque, just a bit harder, edgier)...

If anything, the idea behind the material is simply wrong, and even desperately naive. Plus, it relies on a truly childish alternative between the globetrotting youth that are out there, discovering and rediscovering Mother Earth, constantly moving, with large backpacks not being in the way, “writing it with actions” (Raf by Raf Simons slogan), and the inertia of the “www-generation”. What I immediately thought of was Immanuel Kant: the man practically didn’t leave his hometown all his life, looked like a living mummy, yet he gave us something that will be read and read and read. Because the mind travels farther.

No strategic essentialism on the runway! Tactical universality! The critique of pure fashion continues for hundreds more words, leading an Alex W. to write to Autre: "It’s late but I wanted to add, I thought your post was brilliant, you completely touched on decontextualization (the African Queen in Paris/Paris in African Queen)...To be honest [w/r/t Galliano] I didn’t even pay attention to the clothes, so much as the overall message." I'd probably still wear socks with that outfit.

BTDubs: I suspect "SS" stands for Spring/Summer (Spring–Summer?) and not, you know, SS.

A Million Little Blue Pills

Question: how does a notorious fabulist rebuild his confidence after the humiliation of a Quaker justice campaign led by America's emasculator laureate Oprah Winfrey? If this correspondent's Gmail spam box is any indication, the answer's obvious: start shilling cut-rate E.D. drugs. Sneaking a peak, I discover that "[i]n fact, more than half of all men over 40 have difficulties getting or maintaining an erection. This issue occurs with younger men as well!" Yeah, right. Fool me once, shame on you; fool my twice, Mr. "Jame" Frey, shame on me!

Not Organic, But Rich in Antioccidents

From the food court of an alcohol museum (!) outside Taipei, another lesson in cultural relativism. That is to say, whole-food fetishism is as much an Austin aberration as George W. Bush; it turns out most of the world finds putting unmodified nature in one's mouth positively ga-ross. Your faithful ethnographer must report, however, that this particular stall does not in fact sell Biotech,Baked Food. "Biotech Baked Food" would be similarly misrepresentative of the establishment's wares, as would, regrettably, "Biotech-Baked Food."

In conclusion, let us just say that the ideographs characters words above advertise a biotech–baked food (or baked food–biotech) joint. Meaning, if memory serves, they sell cupcakes with vitamins inside.