Excuse me, pardon me—

Whoa whoa, slow down Seenyor Speedy! It's me! Me! Your close close close friend!

Jeez are you in a hurry or what? I'm here on the corner just handing out funny, mock 'speeding tickets' to people who are in a rush, like you. Here you go! "One ticket for being insane and unattached to your surroundings, 60 dollars." Ha ha! Isn't that cute?

You see, among my many career paths as a chocolatier, weaver, singer-songwriter and spokesperson for Ducati, I am the new Goodwill Ambassador of the Slow Movement.

If you haven't heard about the Slow Movement—Slow Food, Slow Design, Slow Cities—then that's probably because you have been so stressed and unaware that you haven't stopped to read the newspaper!

It's all about slowing down, and how practicing patience is actually better for the environment and for your own health. As you know, I have always been harping on you and others to just take time to breathe and relax and enjoy life. Studies have shown that slower, more mindful people have higher IQs, live longer and are better looking!

Ugh. And you are eating while you are walking too! Wow. Looks like I need to administer another ticket to you! "One ticket for eating and walking at the same time! 150 dollars." Teehee!

What is that? Is that sushi? Did you just eat a tuna roll?

Hello! Mercury, Ground Zero! Why don't you just munch on a thermometer!? Sheesh!

You know, instead of cramming that toxic fish down your gullet, why not spend some time in the morning and lovingly peel some carrots, apples and cilantro into a healthy slaw?

So tell me where you are off to in such a rush, you crazy New Yorker! Are you late to your job at Yahoo?

Oh. Well I'm sorry to hear that.

Well...um...now...now you will have MORE time to do what you want, and appreciate the beauty surrounding you. There's a really great aspect of the Slow Movement that would really appeal to you.

It's called Slow Unemployed.

Instead of stressing yourself out and checking Monster.com and Mediabistro and then dashing around the city, try this: simply sit with a cup of chamomile tea in your apartment, read the Want Ads in the newspaper, and circle them with a big red pencil, just like they did back in the 80's before there were fax machines! Your jobless, low-income heart rate will slow in a matter of minutes, and if you recycle the paper, you lessen your carbon footprint!

It's funny because this is similar advice to what I am telling my more, um...globally ambitious friends... when I was at Davos last week. While there, as a keynote speaker, I imparted the wisdoms of Slow Wealth. I taught them how to knit, make windmills, meditate, and have a nurturing sense of patience while they slash jobs and cut back on benefits for their employees.

But I have to tell you, more than anything else I am really inspired by my work in the Slow Fame movement. I have been to Hollywood five times this year to help celebrities and household names cultivate their notoriety at a relaxing, healthy pace, so as to avoid the curse gaining success too fast and self-immolating like Britney.

On of the tenets of the Slow Fame movement is "Do one thing and shine in your achievement." For instance, I'm working closely with Shia LaBeouf and Ellen Page to build their careers with a sense of mindfulness. I encourage them to just make films and not release terrible dance-pop albums or fashion lines.

I am also consulting for many other marquee names, helping them slow their frenetic pace. I have encouraged Natalie Portman to throw out her blackberry and cut her own hair! Jessica Alba is personally answering fan mail parchment paper, with a quill! And when on tour, Dr. Phil encourages hookers to simply take a brisk walk to his hotel room!

Oh. Wait. You weren't supposed to know about that one.

Anyway. It's really really gratifying work to see these people get their lives into a healthy slow pace. For a fee of 12,000 an hour.

Back to you. I'm worried. I see how living a fast life has made you cranky, tired, and slackened your skin. Why don't we stand here for a second and breathe. Ready? In....out....in...out....

See how much more relaxed you are? Now you can go apply for hosting positions at mid-range restaurants with a sense of purpose and universality.

Be well, my friend. And S-L-O-W D-O-W-N! That's an order.

Savor the moment, bye.

Hello? I'm sorry could you please make a little room? I am here enjoying my simple, tall beverage of peppermint tea and -

You! Ha. In Starbucks! How perfect. So you are here typing away, with your earphones in, playing Scrabulous, eh? You are such a Laptopian!

Ugh...look at this cover of Us Weekly on the table here. Britney Britney Britney. Doesn't the hideous mass culture of idiots realize they are killing her with their obsession?

Oh. It's your US Weekly. NO, cool cool.

Me? Ha ha, no no no. I'm not really here at Starbucks as a patron. I am here sort of on business? As you know, among my various crazy careers as a producer, sneaker-designer, branding executive and cranial sacral therapist, I am sort of a sought-after "Early Adaptor." It's dumb but companies actually hire me to go to their stores and kind of re-jigger the cool factor, because I guess my very appearance in or near the store increases sales or something. So, ever since Howard Schultz admitted that Starbucks has lost its soul, they called me to help, well, I guess bring it back with my good energy? Blah blah its dumb it's dumb.

Anyway. I haven't seen you in so long you look great, you do. You look so great. You know, I had dinner last week with a mutual acquaintance who said he saw you recently and that you looked 'really healthy, not as tired as usual' and he was right!

What have you been doing? Chewing a lot of Extra sugarless gum? I just know from my hard training as a triathlete, that in the end its all about portion control.

It's like you are as thin as...my new MacBook Air! Ha ha, yes yes. I have the new MacBook Air, the very one that was just presented at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. I was there, helping to produce Steve's masterful lecture-show. Another winner, I have to say.

You are going to love it in about 2 years, when it is on the bigger market. I love it because I can carry it anywhere, even when wearing my expertly cut vintage Fall 2003 Cloak topcoat. But I also like it because I can work on my novel, touch base with my reps at Sundance, work on my powerpoint proposal for the Whitney Biennial, yadda yadda. Truth be told it doesn't have as much memory as some of their other laptops, but I am the type of person who doesn't need extra things? Like I am not some zombie who needs to download the uncut version of the Cloverfield trailer and check the hits of my Youtube video? You know? It's just so sad how some people spend their time...

Speaking of, have you read Lee Siegels new book?

It's brilliant, brave. I mean, I know he called himself that when he was a sock puppet, but he really IS brilliant, brave.

Wait, do you even read anymore? Well I know you read Perez and Jezebel but...books?

Oh of course you do, sure sure sure. I mean, I am sure you will read at least the People Magazine review of Siegel's book. But in a nutshell, Lee questions the prevailing assumption that the internet bringing us together. And I have to agree, it's just so sad how the country has become a mass culture, a depressing hive of robots: obsessed with celebrity, artistically and politically ill-informed, staring at their laptops and blogging all day like idiots...in... a Star...um, bucks—-

Anyway, I hate to say it but I guess this really means that there is a correct way to create art and express yourself (Siegel, Starchitecture, anything printed by Knopf which I don't mean to be like so smug but it is printing my new novel), and an incorrect way (American Idol, everything else). Looks like our culture is dividing into high and low again, and it's cool to be pessimistic. Just in time for the major economic recession!

Well. I guess I better run. I have to make an appearance in front of the Gap. You have fun there on your old, ancient iBook from 2005! Maybe you will "blog" about seeing me! Ha! You are so cute!

Kiss kiss.

FACEBOOK

The Underminer sent you a message.

Re: HIeeeeee!

"Hey! Great new photos in your profile! You went to Mustique! How cool and early 2000's retro! Ooh la la. And it looks like all of your friends are drinking Diet Pepsi and are sober. So does that mean that you no longer get uncontrollably drunk? Ha ha. Just joking. It works if you work it.

I noticed though that your photos are sort of bleached out and lacking color. Next time you should use a Kodak One Time Digital Disposable Camera. They are soooo amazing to help people in the $13,000-$25,000 a year income/ no IRA and Health Insurance demographic like yourself create memories!

Anyway, hi baby! I just looked on your profile and saw that YOU are the 153rd most Hottest person! Okay full disclosure I just added major points to you because I sort of have that ability so that you can be number one because I know how much that would mean to you. (Speaking of, have you seen the new movie Juno!? I think you would really like it. Take a look and then tell your friends!)

I heard from Paul that you kind of keep trying to be his friend. Totally don't take it the wrong way that he doesn't respond. He's just going through a lot right now, and it's hard for him, you know, since he is a model and has been number one on SexiestAbs.com for four months running, to really trust people? And their true intentions for being his Facebook friend?

Also can I just ask you one thing? Could you just do me a big big huge favor and stop Poking and Superpoking me, unless you are responding to a product or segment of entertainment that we have been Facebooking about? Not that I don't like hearing from you, its just that I am a little busy right now. See, I'm earning money from my own popularity on Facebook through this awesome company Weblo

I am sort of their prototype, because they noticed that I am a "Hubster"—meaning that I am a central connector to at least 400,000 other profiles. So every time I mention a product or ad-related person or activity to one of my friends, I get paid!

Swiffer. Citibank. Eva Longoria. I just made $1000! Whee!

But anyway, that's not really why I do this. I actually do really like connecting with old old friends like you and finding out what you are doing and stuff. In fact often I am at home, or at a comfortable Hyatt Regency hotel room, listening to my incredible Zune mp3 player, or just taking a relaxing bath staring at a Jo Malone candle, and I think about how much I do care about you. Really. Here, let me express that by throwing a dead sheep at you. Ha ha. Facebook is fun."

To reply to this message, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?compose&id=615305870

___
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Holy cow, I can't stop running into you! Ha ha! Look at you at the fancy new wine bar in the JFK airport drinking in the middle of the day! Aren't you a bon vivant.

Oh hold on...

Braddy? Braddy poo? I'm just here with an old old friend. I'll just see you at dinner. Oh by the way, Ange said we needed more low impact biodegradable hemp diapers so I just picked those up. You're welcome. See you later. I love you too. Blessings to all creatures and humans of all religions, bye.

So what brings you here to the airport? You are going to Art Basel. Wow, cool. Ha, I remember my Art Basel days. Did you make something fun out of pipe cleaners again? Are ya gonna do a lot of coke with all the spray tanned 24-hour party people? That's so awesome! So happy that your conceptual artwork is getting attention, now, right before it doesn't matter.

No I'm sorry I don't mean to sound judgmental. It's totally worth the extremely damaging carbon footprint you are stomping into our delicate earth. Because I know how long you have wanted recognition. You are doing it for YOU.

It's just that some of my friends like Brad and I are sort of reassessing our priorities? Seeing what really matters? And those old pre-apocalyptic ways of making a difference like becoming "art stars" or "stars" or "famous" just seems archaic and spiritually immature. Like Madonna in her Lucky Star phase. It's just the way we have been feeling lately. Me and my good good friend Brad.

What am I doing here? Oh no no no. I'm not flying on a commercial jet. Brad has an eight seater plane parked here than runs on electricity we have gathered from an intricate energy-gathering system built into our shoes. I'm just taking it down to NoLa to meet him and the wife and the family, so we can start trying to heal the world and reverse global warming and rebuild the scarred remnants of our country that have been neglected by our cynical government.

Hm? Well, I really don't want to divulge his last name, because I sort of respect him and the challenges he must face for being a person of stature amid the constant desperate eyes of our Paris-Perez-Hills-Hilton public? He's just going through a lot right now, and I am trying really hard to keep him from being hurt. You know how that must be, sort of like the way you felt when your cat died of feline AIDS a few years back.

Brad's just really going through a lot right now. It all started last summer, when he and I were shirtless, digging the foundations for one of the visionary homes he has had commissioned in the Jefferson Parish. I saw him there, not as a huge mega star, but as a sinewy, honest father, and my goodgood friend. I turned to him and said, Brad, you know I love you.

I love you too, he said.

And I carefully sat him down on a nearby stump, sitting close to him so that we were breathing as one, and then said to him, Bradford, I have watched you these past weeks, here in New Orleans, trying to make a difference. I see such happiness and conviction in your face. Something I haven't seen in so long. Maybe it's time for you to step away from acting and follow your heart.

And he looked at me, wiping sweat away from his pectorals with a ragged bandanna, and said, you know what? You're right. Blessings to you my friend. And then we embraced.

NO No NOT as lovers! No. Like comrades. Like the way warriors embrace in movies such as "300" or "Beowulf."

And now, thankfully, he has a whole new outlook! And I am living with him and Ange and the kids and just feel so blessed to be on this journey of good.

But enough about me! YOU are going to fun, crazy Art Basel! And doing coke. Ha! Have a great time.

I know it's hard to do inner work when you are in Miami, partying in air-conditioned, energy-sucking hotel rooms, eating overfished tuna, buying drugs delivered to you on the bloody backs of hundreds of poor, rural peoples living in squalid conditions. But, well, if you could just do me one favor.... take a moment, maybe on your balcony, and reflect on what you really want out of life. Just do that for me, ok? It's a good first step.

See you soon, I hope. Blessings to you my friend.

Hi you! How are you? Yes! I am back in New York! Ha ha! It's so weird to be back! Because when you aren't here for a while you really do see how tired and grey everyone looks. No, you look great! Like Helena Bonham Carter in Sweeney Todd!

I was just at Florent with Julianne catching up on old times. About all the crazy drug addicts and failed artists we used to know. And you walk up! What a blast from the past!

Sigh. Remember coming here to Florent after clubbing? Are you still doing that? How fun for you! How fun! You must be having fun!

No I really want to know! As you know, I have been so busy for the past few years as a showrunner for Deadwood and the Sopranos and some top secret upcoming cultural milestones.

But with the STRIKE going on I am finally free and can really re-attune myself ...so I have been working on my villa in Hana, deepening my yoga practice, spending quality time with Wentworth. My boyfriend. My boyfriend Wentworth. Who is also pretty freed up right now because of the STRIKE.

I gotta say, I got pretty sick of living in paradise. And since I can't make tons and tons of money being creatively fulfilled working for premium television, I decided to come to New York and pursue my first love: theater!

It's just so satisfying. Feeling the energy of the audience! In fact I just performed last night with Eva Longoria and the cast of Two and a Half Men. We just got onstage and did some crazy freestyle performance art! I cut up some old credit cards and cried. Charlie and John pretended they were gay and HIV positive and angry! Eva smeared herself with yams and cussed! Where? I don't know...some dirty East Village place called La Mamba? La Latka?

Oh! La Mama? You know it? It's so funky! Wow! You are still doing your crazy downtown performance art, huh? That's so cool, keeping the dream alive. You and your friends. Well get ready, because we media mavens are coming to town, and are feelin' experimental! Ha ha!

Sandra Oh will be starring in a production of Medea at PS122. And I am directing Josh Duhamel and the Fergs in a deconstructed dissonant musical version of Love Letters at some place called The Flea. And Carmen Electra will be performing this amazing, groundbreaking kind of dance form called "Burlesque"? Have you heard of it? Oh really? There are women doing it here? Well it's quite a sight when SHE does it.

Its just so...nourishing...for us established (okay, I'll just say it: rich!) writers and actors and producers to have this time to come back and see what its like to STRUGGLE for art. Just for a little bit. You know? Like to pretend we live in New York and were never discovered and can barely pay for our Cobra health insurance and have bags under our eyes? We are all so into it because it will help inform and legitimize our material after the STRIKE when we go back to making piles and piles and piles of money!

Anyway it really made me thankful for this Thanksgiving. And I hope you are thankful too. Because, I'm sorry I don't mean to harp on you, but you seem sort of down. I mean, you should really appreciate what you have going on in your crazy downtown scene. Whether or not you ever are able to open an IRA or travel to Barcelona is not the point. It's what is on the INSIDE that you should be thankful for. Take it from me! Coming here and roughing it for a month has really shown me how GREAT it is to be a struggling artist who may never make money. It's good for the character I am writing for my new top secret HBO show.

Anyway, be good to yourself. Maybe try to get some sleep. I'll see you soon I hope!

Toodles!

Oh wow, hi. There you are! Your hair is so much longer! And kind of...wild!

It's SO good to see you. I am so glad we could find some time to catch up while I am in town. Before I go back to BERLIN!

How ARE you? How's New York? Great, great.

You're writing a lot, huh? What are you writing? The Ten Best Butternut Squash Soups for Time Out? Cute kiddie Christmas Gifts for House and Home? Or maybe just something mean and snarky about socialites for a website?

Haha! I love New York, it's so insulated and strange now.

Me? I'm AMAZING. Thanks for asking. As you know, I have been in BERLIN for seven years now, just creating and living and being a fully realized artist, novelist, and lead singer. It's crazy I know. But I just have so much TIME there because unlike you (well not really YOU-you but people like you) I haven't had to scrounge around and take career-compromising odd pathetic assignments and gigs to pay for my overpriced life and instead I can really become a fully expressive ARTIST in BERLIN.

I mean I am not trying to really diss New York. It's just, well, over. And I know you agree with me. The luxury condos, the lack of dance clubs, the NYU robots, the Nanny-culture. In BERLIN, it's different. It's different in BERLIN. We don't ascribe to the narrowed, uptight, fitted, fashiony ideology that seems to have taken over this city. For instance, the other day I woke up in my apartment (I live in a huge former button factory on the Fingerstrasse for which I am charged about 60 dollars) and I decided I would just walk down the street with a teacup on my head! And no one even looked! Because we are all beautiful losers and artists and creators and puppeteers in BERLIN!

BERLIN BERLIN BERLIN!

What's even funnier is being here and seeing how New York is in love with BERLIN now. There's the Weimar show at Joe's Pub, and the Speigeltent, and my friend Ute is doing a show here too! I was eating dinner with her the other night and she couldn't believe how much The Big Apple emulates our beloved city. No, it's sort of cute. Like when your younger sister tried to dress 'cool' like you in high school.

After eating, Ute and I walked out into the street, and before you could say "Bienvenue" we ended up back at my hotel drinking cheap vodka and singing Kurt Weil songs with a dwarf accordionist, a Flamenco dance troupe and three Ukrainian baritones that we randomly met. It's weird when you live in BERLIN this kind of night is just commonplace, but somehow we still had our innate BERLINABILITY to make it happen in the boring, mid-level-restaurant-clogged Upper West Side!

There is of course a sense of tragedy in BERLIN. Sometimes I think that's what makes BERLIN thrive, because we walk among ghosts of the dead yet we still celebrate our artistic selves!

Maybe in like 50 years, after Guiliani becomes president here and turns the entire country into a hideous fascistic death camp, you guys can be as free as us, in BERLIN! But until then I guess you will have to be depressed, and write think pieces about 'Gossip Girl.'

No! Don't get all sad. Don't worry. If there is one thing I have learned from my amazing, expressive, incredibly cheap life in BERLIN, it's that we are all victims of history. Remember to celebrate life! Because it's a cabaret!

Well, I gotta get going. Could you remind me — which is the best subway to Marc Jacobs?

Oh right, perfect, thanks. Ciao!

3,000 dollars total? You can just put it all on my Double Obsidian Visa Card...

Oh hi! Ha, weird I have like no peripheral vision or something. I can't believe I didn't notice you were behind me in line here at Utrecht Art Supplies! You are so slippery and silent sometimes!

What are you doing here? Oh buying some sketchbooks and pencils. I didn't know you are still drawing and making art! That's so cool! It's great to hold onto your dreams.

I know! I am buying a lot of stuff! Well my business is booming! Hm? Yes my new graphic design business. This is dumb but I am being called some sort of design wunderkind. I have been redesigning various logos, softening their look for today's times, and it's really caught on. You didn't know? Maybe I started it while you were a real estate broker in Ohio.

How is that going by the way? Oh, no no worries, you don't have to talk about it.

Well anyway, business is booming on my end since my graphic design firm took on our new client, Blackwater. Yes! We redesigned their logo. We gave it a friendlier look. Here let me show you my portfolio.

See, Blackwater decided it was time to just soften their image a bit. So they turned to me.

Immediately, as if I was possessed by the Muses, I crossed out the old logo of a bear's paw print caught in red crosshairs, and, using my extremely honed Photoshop skills, I scaled back the scary gun-target graphic and tweaked the paw print and gave it a juicier look. After a couple hours of intense $3500-an-hour work rendering the image, I came up with this: a new logo that isn't macho but still looks masculine.

The rest of my portfolio is pretty interesting. For instance, here on the next page are our redesigns of Mel Gibson, The Congo and bagged spinach.

Oh and here is our work with AIDS. We just wanted to give the disease a chummy-old-pal kind of look, so we put it in an Old Western font. It really gives AIDS a lived-in feel. It says "AIDS, that loyal friend who will never go away, no matter how much you ignore it!"

For Rudy Giuliani's campaign, we are lengthening the first "i" and the "l" so that they look like two towers in the process of collapsing, and then we added some flames around the letters just to hammer home the Ground Zero thing and that he is a HERO. We may add a few charred bodies in the bottom of the "u" too. You know how voters are. You can never be too obvious,

But I've got a tough week ahead, we are redesigning the logos for FEMA, rape, and the often used phrase: "murdered Iraqi children." I see the phrase in the papers so often—"murdered Iraqi children"—I really feel like it needs an image overhaul, don't you think? Something cheerier and jaunty.

I'm just so busy!

Well good luck with your artmaking! That's so great and nourishing for you.

Excuse me but is this mini crabcake cruelty-free? It's just that I have an allergic reaction to any foods that have been prepared cruelly, even crustaceans, and I just don't—

Oh! Jeez I am so sorry! I didn't recognize you in your all-black catering outfit. With your hair combed and off your face. You look so respectful!

You know, I love New York. Here you are at the New Yorker Festival, and so am I, both in our own ways. This city is so jazzy!

Wow, it's so great to see you. I have been really wanting to talk to you actually. But you are a hard one to track down!

Oh you changed your email to a Gmail. Right, right, finally... Oh, hold on—

Junot! I'll be there in a second. Save a seat for me, my love.

It's so cool that you are here at this after party for NYF participants and their lovers. We were just coming from our close close close friends A.M. and Mirand's panel on Deviants and I thought of you.

No no no. Not that you are a deviant. I just thought of you and your crazy friends!

Phew. It's so good to be back in the States. Hm? Oh it's a long story. But I'll try to tell you quickly before you have to go pass around the rest of that food.

So, as you know among my crazy, busy activities as a journalist, actor, shaman, and amateur Corcoran real estate executive, I dabble in Digital Forensics. Well it just so happens that I had been working on a program that de-encrypted digitally altered images. Last month, I created "UnSwirl," a program that unwound photographs that had been "swirled" to conceal a person's identity.

Well, fast forward to now. I just got back from Lyon, working closely with Interpol to try and track down that evil, disgusting pedophile who had taken over 200 photos of himself with under-aged Vietnamese and Cambodian boys.

So what have you been up to? Are you still going to Bungalow 8 a lot? I just remember running into you last month and you told me you were going there a lot. (I remember this really well because I was like: Wow! People still go there hoping to see Mischa Barton?) And you were sort of, in your words, 'wasted.' You were also in your 'who cares who knows my dirt' modes and said that you like to procure sex online and send out images of yourself posing and performing your various predilections. You told me about how you like to go on Men4sex.com, Sex4men.com, and Iwantabigblackbaseballbatinmymouthandanusrigtnow.com.

And I told my pals at Interpol that there is a whole segment of perfectly innocent people swirling their images out there, and that they would just be really bummed if Unswirl™ became available to everyone. So we agreed just to keep it under wraps and not sell the software to Microsoft. For you. And others like you, to enjoy your privacy, and your unalienable right to trawl the internet for sex anonymously. Am I a good friend or what?

Oop! Gotta go, Zadie will kill me if I don't introduce her to those crazy guys from Sigur Ros. I'll come back and say hi when you guys are passing out dessert.

Hieeeee!
How are you? That is a cute shirt! You look so adorable today!

Let me guess: you got that top at Uniqlo, you are picking up a salmon patty at Whole Foods, and you are going home to watch amateur porn while wearing a Biore nosestrip.

Ha! No, I am not psychic, silly. But I AM a chief executive at the new internet phone venture, Pudding Media! As you know, we offer cheap phone service through the internet like Skype, but we use voice recognition technology and listen in to your conversation, and then deliver ads that pertain to what you are talking about. They pop up on your laptop or cellphone, lickety split!

As my co-executive Ariel Maislos said in the New York Times, we did LOTS of research and found that most people are doing something else while they talk on the phone -so we came up with a way to sell people advertising during those previously ad-free moments. I know, it's brilliant, right? We saw a niche, we saw a niche.

Like for instance, we know that while YOU are on the phone, you are either trying on clothes and hating yourself in them, masturbating, picking at your skin in the bathroom mirror, or eating cheese, a bad nutrition choice. No judgments! It's perfectly normal, and it's also why we placed ads on your laptop and cellphone for porn, healthy organic alternatives, and nosestrips. Voila! Here you are.

Anyway, how are you? No, you know what, don't answer that. I know you are sort of fine, but, according to your conversation with your mother last Sunday at 4.32 pm, you kind of wish you had a long term relationship. Have you ever tried Eharmony? Or maybe a you need to change up your wardrobe and wear something sexy like this tanktop from SJP's Bitten line? There's so much you can do. I am just gonna make a note here to send you some nice options tomorrow when you are talking on your phone, as part of our "Lonely Package."

Maybe it's the kind of person you are going after? According to that call you made last Friday at 2.30 AM, you told someone named "PeeRican" that you felt totally horny and were ready to, and I quote, "be treated like a human urinal." Again, no judgements, but why not join Facebook, or Linked In, or Tagged and just get to know some new people, have a little bit more of a social life, instead of sitting at home in a pair of shorts, trying to give yourself Hepatitis?

Alls I'm saying is it sounds like you need some new friends. On September 2nd you were complaining to Anne about how she doesn't seem to want to go out anymore because she is sober. Wouldn't this conversation go great with a "Jamaican Bum": a fresh cocktail of Malibu Rum, delicious Tropicana Orange Juice, and WinterClean ice, available at the Key Food down your street on 5th?

Yea a lot of people say it's scary and Big Brother-like. Funny what people say when they hear about something new and innovative. It's always their first reaction to lash out and criticize, right?

I have my own conversations monitored all the time, and I am personally grateful for the advertising. Like for instance today I discovered a great couch for my Richard Neutra home, found the perfect gift for my physicist boyfriend who just won the MacArthur, and was provided with many suggestions on how to give back to society because I am always yappin' on and on about how to help the poor and clean up the environment! I'm such a windbag! Ha!

Well at any rate, if you have any questions at all about your new phone service, please don't hesitate to call me, OK? Or, actually, you can just pick up the phone and say my name a few times and one of our associates will let me know. Till next time, be safe. I worry about you, you know.

Hi! Hey! Weird, YOU are at Bottino!? No, no, I'm so glad to run into you here! Hold on...I'm talking to one of my studio assistants.

...and after that, you need to tie together five yachts and suspend them over a children's hospital bathed in squid ink...yes. OK. Bye.

How funny that you are here. I didn't know you liked to come to Bottino, the social center of the West Chelsea gallery scene! Well I'll take it as a sign the art season is in full swing and everyone's coming to see what we creatives have been up to.

I'm so glad I was up here in the sort of public front section and not at my table in the back because I would have missed you.

Hm? Oh I'm here with my close close close friends Matthew Marks and Perry Rubenstein and Leo Castelli. We are just having a strategy sesh about my work and also celebrating our close close close friend Roberta's masterful piece in the Times about the whole Mass MOCA scandal, which I am not sure you read because I know you don't really follow— You did? Oh, no sure sure sure. Sorry I didn't mean to make it sound like you were clueless or anything! Ha!

I mean, can you BELIEVE Mass MOCA!? How DARE they cut the funding of my most brilliant colleague, Christophe Buchel, when he went over his 160,000 dollar budget, two times over, and delayed the opening of his work by months with his strange requirements? So what if he demanded near impossible things like a fuselage of a 737, a two-story Cape Cod cottage, a leaflet-bomb carousel, an old bar from a tavern, and a vintage movie theater? He is an artist, and has no choice but to follow his vision. How do they expect an artist to CREATE in that kind of environment!? We really live in an oppressive time. It's like Entartete Kunst all over again. Deplorable.

People like Buchel and I are ARTISTS! And we ARTISTS are allowed to do whatever we want because we make ART! Watch.

Hello? Sir? Yes, you there. What do you do? Oh, you're a high school teacher. Commendable. Well, I'm an ARTIST. Now get on your knees and drink my saliva.

See? I make ART.

Who can deny the power of Buchel's dirty, trash-laden historical dioramas? I look at the way he dumps crumbled cinderblock and dry wall into a pile and I just WEEP at the authenticity. And that authenticity takes money and time and creative freedom!

If they wanted something cheap, they should have just gone down to New Orleans and scrounged some poor folk artist's oil paintings out of the trash. Or simply exhibited pictures of The Ninth Ward or Baghdad or the Minneapolis Bridge disaster, which, I have to say, are sort of GOOD as art pieces, but don't quite capture the pain and anguish of the human soul as well as a Buchel diorama.

Which reminds me! I am so excited for my next project! I am working with Bridges.

The Getty has cleared funding for Damien and I to encrust the Golden Gate Bridge with diamonds. Just as soon as I finish this large piece for the Tate Modern.

Can you hold on one second? I have to talk to my assistant again.

What do you mean you are tired and need to see your family? I don't give a crap! I need a plum tree, four yaks, a pair authentic Mork and Mindy suspenders, and five butthairs off of Lisa Rinna's anus, freshly plucked. NOW.

Anyway I am just so grateful that my good good good friend Roberta finally gave a voice to those of us artists, nay, visionaries, who feel penned in by stupid, thoughtless institutions that only supply 12 assistants and 500,000 dollars for us to realize our art.

We are fighting, and will continue to fight the good fight for expression and artistic freedom for any and all artists. Well, I mean, the artists who go to Art Basel. Not like other ones who don't have careers. Well you know what I mean.

Oh! Sorry, I have to go, they're serving our octopus vinaigrettes.

Ciao!

Kiera! What do you want to drink?

OK, one Diet "Rejuvenate" VitaWater coming up!

Excuse me are you in line? Or are you just - Oh!

Hey! How hilarious to run into you at the airport! Happy Labor Day weekend, you! Where are you going to? Oooh Montauk. Wow. I remember my Montauk days.

Me? Oh nothing. No time for vacations for me! Well perhaps life is a vacation, you know? And I just don't need to get away from it? Does that make sense? Maybe it doesn't unless you are Buddhist and are good good friends with Pema Chodron.

Anywho, I just got back from the Venice Film festival. With my freind Kiera, over there. Hi Kiera!

Oh. She probably thinks you are from US Weekly. You sort of look like you are. No! You just sort of give off the energy of someone who works in the magazine or reality show industries. The highlights and jacket from Zara.

Me? I am here for just a New York Minute to promote our next big summer hit, Balls of Fury, which comes off our winter hit Blades of Glory. Yes, I have a production company now.

I didn't tell you? I guess so much has happened since I saw you last. Well it all started when I was "outed" as the key uncredited writer for Knocked Up and Superbad. Judd is such a genius, but he is a good friend and sometimes calls me when he is creatively blocked and I help him come up with transitions, tweak dialogue, finding the right actress who wears a C cup.

Yes, yes, I know, thank you. And sorry I haven't called you. I am obviously so busy. My cell is like a vibrator. A vibrator of money! Hah! It's all so surreal, it's so surreal.

Cashing in? Yeah, it's common that liberal grad-school types would think that. I gave up that way of thinking a while ago when I realized culture was happening around me and didn't care at all.

And I don't consider my projects to be money makers, really. That is a side benefit. I think it's just really important to give a voice to the awkwardly large-sized heterosexual male. They are an often misunderstood segment of society. The marginalized ones, their hearts and minds squandered on the forgotten edges of our world. And I just think it's important to give their lives a voice—to show the world that yes, a chubbier guy with bad hygiene and a constantly sweaty neck CAN have sex with skinny blond women and Asians! It's bridging cultures.

This fall we are coming out with three sure-to-be Box Office bonanzas. Goggles of Greatness, in which a plus-sized loser wins the Ironman triathlon and the heart of actress Bai Ling. Flip Flops of Flame, in which a 450-pound antisocial overeater is airlifted out of his home, placed on a large raft, and wins the National Surfing Championship. And Wads of Wonder, which follows a slobbering unwashed genetically altered pig-man who chews his way to fame, fortune, and in between the legs of Jessica Biel. It's Shampoo for the John Goodman Generation!

Oop! My car is here. See you in September.

Hello we have seats D12-18, center?

Oh, I'm sorry I think you have me confused with—

Oh! Ha ha! It's you! I apologize I didn't recognize you in your costume. How cute that they are making the ushers dress up in period garb. Are you actually appearing in this production? You are?

Oh. You are a part of the apprentice program. Don't you have to pay for that here? I can't remember.

Well no of course it's worth the experience... what part are you playing? You may remember I directed a version of the play for with Ethan and Marisa and the rest of the Naked Angels crew back in '99.

Oh. Well changing the set between acts can be a very gratifying role, too! You are learning about transitions!

Cynthia, Cynthia, I'll be there in a second. Just save me a seat.

I'm just here on a whim! Seriously I was just in the WestBeth building, talking to Merce, when Tony Kushner called my cell and says "Road Trip!" and not twenty minutes later he pulls up with Cindy Nixon, Joe Mantello and the doubly gorgeous Matt Cavanaugh and Cheyenne Jackson who were in such a hurry they forgot to wear shirts, and we sped up here to see our good good good friend Kate Burton in The Corn is Green.

Oh I'm just up here for the night to see Kate, OWNING her role as an idealistic teacher in a small Welsh mining town, enchanting audiences as she has done so many times before, and as her father had done, and as her son is doing on stage with her tonight. She is like acting in its most protean, magma-like state isn't she? You must feel so blessed to be on stage with her, even if it is to just strike her shoes.

See that's the good thing about Williamstown. They really give you apprentices a real 360 degree perspective of the theater arts so that you can see what being a professional actor is really like. Or, um, like, what being a professional usher is like, maybe. It's just good for all sortsa people to be involved in the theater!

My neighbor upstate in Rhinebeck enrolled her... special... son last summer and it really brought a smile to the boy's sweet, special, wide, emotionally disturbed face. And now he's got an agent and is being considered the "next John Heder." It's crazy it's crazy.

Yes the Williamstown Theatre Festival's training programs have inspired dreams and launched careers. But you know, that's not what it's about really what it's about. I mean if this doesn't end up jumpstarting a career in acting for you, then maybe, finally, you will know you did all you could. I don't mean YOU-you, I mean a general "you."

Speaking of launching, I have to hurry back to New York tonight because five separate theater pieces of mine are opening at the Fringe Festival. I know! I don't know how it happened, but it has been just a really productive year for me. It's just weird how they coincided: Bikram: The Musical, Barnes & Noble: The Musical, Baghdad 2016, American Firecrotch, and (:-P: an Emoticon Love Story in Three Acts.

Oh you have something on your face. Oh it's a whitehead.

Well I can't wait to see you up there, moving furniture around! Don't get nervous now! Ha ha.

Previously: "No, I'm Not Laughing At You. I Just Got A Really Funny Video Email On My iPhone!"

Hi! Ha! Whattaya know. You are here at The Apple Store.
Let me guess. Your iBook isn't working. Did you spill Merlot all over it like you did with your video iPod? You crazy drinking thing! Bummer!
Well the chummy, scruffy dudes here at the Genius Bar will surely be able to help you! And THIS time, maybe you shouldn't try to lie about it!

Ha ha ha ha!

No, I'm not laughing at you. I just got a really funny video email on my iPhone from my pal Tim Burners-Lee.

Me? Oh no no no no. Everything is fine with my new, efficient, flaw-free iPhone. I'm here at the Genius Bar as a consultant. I'm sort of a mentor to all these Geniuses here, to help them. It's just something that The MacArthur Foundation sets up for us after we, you know, have been globally recognized as geniuses ourselves.

Anyway let's take a look at your little iBook. Oooo. It looks bad. Ouch. Ooof. So the motherboard fritzed out late last night, around 4 a.m.

No it's just I can tell because according to your cache file, it looks like around 3.58 a.m., you were watching...let's see... GoofaceMoneyShot.com and HumiliateMyAnus.net. Am I right?

You don't have to answer that. Heh.

It's just my Genius mentor-opinion, but I think that they could repair it. It will take three months, because they need to ship it off to the special Apple iBook wine-removal facility in the Ukraine. But, it will cost you. Like about 1200 dollars. Because also according to your serial number your warranty ran out last night at midnight. Right before you started downloading "Deep Ass Chopra."

Bummer about the warranty!

Anywho, I gotta get going. I promised my agent I would finish my novel by this week.

Yes yes I have written a novel. Didn't I tell you? The deal went down last Spring. And since then I have been deeply at work. Working on my novel. And I am finishing it, my novel, this week.

It's so cool because the publisher and I have already worked out a promotional deal with several celebrities. In exchange for some of my Genius Mentoring, a handful of cultural icons have agreed to be photographed holding my novel! Posh will be carrying it around with her while she shops at Kitson, Hayden Panettiere is going to fan herself with it while walking into the Coffee Bean, and Courtney Love is going to use it as a nose oil blotter at her next secret concert (she is so irreverent!). And it isn't even finished yet! It! My Novel!

Oh! Sorry to jump. I have my iPhone on vibrate and i just got a reminder.

Ooop! Jeez I totally forgot I am supposed to meet Jonathan Safran Foer, JayKay and the Skinny Bitch girls over at the Mercer like right now! They are helping me... just advising me about how to cope with what is going to happen after my novel is published and I have to deal with the instant success and huge readership from people reading my novel.

I am just so busy! Busy writing, promoting, and thinking about my novel!

Wait, what about YOUR novel. Weren't you working on one. Oh no. Was it, um, on your hard drive?

Didn't you make a backup?

Wow. That's awful. I am so sorry.

Well. I am sure you have it in you. I know that for me, my novel is deeply woven into the very fabric of my consciousness. As I work on it, I am fusing it back INTO my very soul. It's like... I am my own backup, you know? Me. My Novel.

Well anyway, be good to yourself. And buy an external hard drive.

B-bye!

Dane! Dane! It's me! Hey how's it goin' dude? Excellent, excellent!

Shit, I haven't seen you in ages. Man you are really becoming a huge deal. You are so bloating up.

Ha, No I didn't. I said BLOWING up. Blowing up. Chill out, my most talented old friend.

Damn, I don't blame you for being touchy. You've been through so much the past couple of weeks, what with all that talk about you.

Fuck, I am so RELIEVED you denied those rumors you were gay. It's such a good thing you cleared the air. I mean of COURSE I didn't think you were gay.

I mean not GAY. You know, maybe sometimes you got a little funny in the showers at our dorm in college. I mean, doesn't everyone get drunk and end up teabagging their roommate once or twice?

And then there was that time after the DMB concert when you got wasted and made everyone play that game you made up, Anus Wars.

Whatevs. All that doofy messy stuff we did back in school doesn't mean anything. It's just good old college fun. Adrian Grenier and I were just discussing this last week! Who really knows what you like or what is good and worth your time in college, anyway? Ha, you should ask your predominantly college-based audience.

Or not.

It's all good, it's all good.

I look at it this way. You are FUNNY. And everyone knows that gay guys aren't funny. I mean, can you name a popular gay guy comedian? None. Zero. That's because they aren't funny! Making fun of them is funny, or acting like them, or just saying something "gay" is funny. But gay guys? Not funny.

You're right though. Being called gay is like a rite of passage in Hollywood. Just think: Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle—there's no buzz about THEM being gay but there is about you! Your career ROCKS!

Anyway, you don't even look gay, you know? In your distressed tee shirt and leather wristband and boyish spiky haircut that conceals your counter clockwise hair whorl.

I mean don't those faggots who started all those rumors listen to your material? You talk about going on dates and how having a relationship is a 'relationshit' and how chicks always win fights and talk to their girlfriends about everything! Man, you really know women! Ha! It's uncanny your knowledge of the female psychology.

But, um. Can I just offer you a really really small suggestion, man? You know that "SuFi" hand gesture thing you do? Well, Oh never mind.

No, well it's just that it almost looks like how gay men position their hands when they are preparing to fist someone.

No! It's not obvious! It's not a big deal! Totally keep it. No, really, seriously forget I mentioned it.

But anyway, I'm really glad you are straightening the public out. Dispelling all those rumors.

But, what about the rumors inside?

No, I just mean, maybe you kind of have some internal rumors you are gay to yourself? Maybe the rumors that you like cock aren't from somewhere else, but started within yourself?

Just something to think about, on your next Tourgasm.

Maybe you should just really do some heterosexual things to more convince yourself that you are straight as well as the public, you know? Like maybe you should just go headbut Andy Dick a couple of times. Or do some parkour! Or get in drag and play a woman in a film musical! That's totally heterosexual!

Alright Rock on! Catch you soon...

Hi!
Hello?
Oh my god it IS you! Ha ha! How funny to run into you here at Flares the Hangout on Second Life! And that is such a cute outfit you're wearing!!

You've really added some special flair to your wardrobe! With your long snakeskin coat and sunglasses! You look totally Matrix 2003! That is so sweet. I know you have always wanted to dress like this and now you can! Here! Are you going to, like, grapple or do some kung fu kickboxing on WWE Smackdown after this?

Oh, I know, I know, I look exactly the same as my avatar. Save for the gossamer wings. I am so uncreative! But, I just believe in honesty, you know?

You like my understated blue slim suit? Yea, this was designed specifically for me by my friend Hedi, who recently left his demanding job and had some time to create some virtual fashion for some of his close close close friends.

You know I gotta say I kind of knew you were here, because I was passing by the Fetish Tent the other day, and saw you getting raped by an octopus.

No! it's cool, it's cool! We are all here to explore our inner selves and really explore our inner desires.

Oh I am so rude, let me introduce you to my friends Buck, Linkin, Nyna, Sunnee, and Princess Amathustra.

...

Um. They're a little busy right now having an orgy. They are actually really nice. I'm sure there's a reason they muted you.

You may be thinking to yourself that Linkin looks a little like John Stamos. That's because he is. Ha! We have been dating. Both virtually and in the fleshly world. We just cant get enough of each other. A few weeks into our second lives, we had saved up enough Linden Dollars to move to an incredible island on the Sapphire Sea, next to the island owned by Reuters. We were lucky enough to buy land here wayyyy back in 2006, and have made a MINT selling off plots to late-adaptor types so they can build their little homes of hope. It's fine, because these are people who could never afford to live in luxury loft buildings in their First Lives. And John, I mean Linkin, and I are only happy to help broker the property. And all the Linden dollars we make we transfer back into real dollars and that helps pay for our Shelter Island second home! Second Life! Yay!

You know I just have to say...wait, let me put my arm around your shoulder. OK, there. I just have to say I am so happy you are here. I just think it is so good that you are doing something more creative with your internet addiction.

No! I didn't mean addiction, I just meant that I'm glad you aren't sitting in your soiled underwear playing Texas Hold'em for three days straight like you used to, and going out and meeting people, even if it is here, and you are an...um...more... lengthened representation of yourself.

Maybe when you get done satisfying all your fantasies, you can join in some of the more social aspects of this amazing universe. Like, community building. For instance I spend most of my time here working as Barak Obama's Second Life campaign manager.

Oh be careful! Here comes a gang of feces-throwing Chirstian Right vandalizers! They love to vandalize anything in their path that smacks of liberal politics! Quick, throw on your Cloak of Invisibility before they cover you with—

Oh. Too late.

You don't have a cloak of invisibility? You better get one. I got mine, along with my ability to fly, on the Floating Peninsula of Goodlooking People.

But you can get one anywhere. For about 25,000 Linden Dollars.

ooop! I'm late to meet Damien! He bleached Kitty Carlisle Hart's avatar's skull, encrusted it with rubies and mounted in on a gold sceptor, because I am being inducted into the Hall of Legends. Come by! If you can find it. It's so crazy here! We're all so crazy!

All the best!

Hey! I am so glad I got a chance to see you perform with your crazy Dad band! Wow that was fun! That was just fun! Really fun! You are like the newest sensation on the Kips Bay music scene! Ha.

I got here right at the end. I had a hard time finding the bar. Did you see those people clapping for you? Did you see me put money in that little hat they passed around? Even the twenty year olds who walked in accidentally stayed for one song!

What a great time for you to start a Dad Band! Did you learn your licks from one of those Weekend Warrior courses they were describing in that Times article?

It's so neat that you put together a band with your older friends, you know, in your off time from your REAL jobs. You must feel sort of validated, if you will, by that article. It's good to get back and just make music, pretend you are a rockstar, which I know was your DREAM when we were in college, because it will keep you from getting too bitter and hitting your wife.

Above all, it's so good to see you onstage. It's like your personal Make a Wish Foundation, except you don't have cancer, probably, except maybe just the very beginnings of prostate cancer but who doesn't, and you aren't a child. But you look SO happy to be there. Your smile seems bigger. Or maybe it's your face? I just mean like you reminded me of Paul McCartney while you played. I mean in the way you looked all happy, not necessarily in musicianship, no offense to you, but you know, he's like a virtuoso and all. I was lucky enough to catch at his private show in London last week. He's still got it.

Also you must be SO inspired by younger people who are actually really making it. I think of you and then I immediately think of someone like Beth Ditto, and how similar you are.

No, no reason. She just reminds me of you. Of your style. Your, um, spirit.

Anyway yay! You've really hit the ground running! Full steam ahead!

Listen. Can I just talk to you seriously for a moment? I know that this little side project band thing is really a big deal for you, but I don't want you to, you know, compromise yourself. I know how rock n' roll can tempt you to go down that dark path, like it did in college.

I just know what the indie rock lifestyle can do. I've seen what it can do up close. Because I, as you know, was Jeff Buckley's secret lover. And not exactly a friend but a close close close acquaintance of Kurt's. And, I was one of Elliot Smith's supportive, non-drug dealer friends. Why is why he left me his catalogue in a will he scribbled onto a copy of Raygun. How I miss him. And that magazine. And our woozy, drug addled, passionate indie rock youth. I should really make a documentary about it. I'm gonna just text a note to myself to call Sheila Nevins tomorrow. There.

Anywho, thank the Lord that many of my successful songsmith pals are alive and sober now. Like Chan, and of course, Ryan. Sweet, troubled, stormy Ryan. Everyone credits his dumb girlfriend for his recovery, which is fine, and I don't mean to sound like I'm so great or anything, but to tell you the truth it was me who actually REALLY got him to put down the needle. I just went over to his apartment, barged in, wrenched his works out of his hands, stroked his tattooed forearms, put my hands around his cute little pumpkin-shaped head and said "Stop Ryan. Just...stop..."

But what a career, right? Even when he was drooling over his acoustic guitar in a speedball induced blur, he was making incredible music! You should find that inspiring! See? This may really be your time!

No I'm not saying you need to clean up or anything. I'm saying you are pre-sober. Like Amy Winenouse! But maybe just cut down on the drinky-drinky a bit. And the pot. And, you know, maybe take a brisk walk in the morning just to get some exercise.

See you can think of this cute Dad Band as the perfect way to give yourself some grounding and structure. That's what you needed all along...a project! A nice project that has no risk of going anywhere...or being anything other than what it is: a fun band! Really fun! Yay! It fills up that empty void! Ha ha! Yay!

Hey, you! Were you...
I'm sorry, but did I see you catering last Monday night? At the Council of Fashion Designers of America gala?
Sorry if I didn't say hello. I was just deeply in a conversation with Diane about the future of fashion.

Later on I think you came up and offered me a crabcake, but again I was in a very intense conversation with Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez about staying focused on the work while being goodlooking so I hope I didn't seem rude!

That must have been a wet dream for you. Pouring champagne for Donna and Ralph and Thakoon. Because I know you have your little clothing line you are doing, right? Still? That is so great and amazing. You are just gonna stick it out and make clothes in this climate when everyone who doesn't have a name is either tanking or having to get Anna Wintour to pay for everything. Of course I am referring to that article in the Times on Thursday. It's like, if your name isn't Gwen or Sarah Jessica or Mary Kate or Ashley, then why bother, right?

I mean not that you shouldn't try. That's the American way. And maybe some weird Pussycat Doll will pick up one of your garments and throw it on. But, as a fashion investor (one of my side projects) and Eleanor Lambert's close close close friend, I don't have to tell you that things don't look good for the unknown designer. This fall, when you release your newest line, you will be competing with The Olsen Twins and their new clothing label, Elisabeth and James, SKJ's casual apparel, and Kate Moss's Topshop offerings.

And it's not stopping there. I have a hand in a number of new labels coming out, and we are all so excited about them. Later this fall, Anderson Coopers "Uptight" line is coming out: jeans, jackets, vests, and boxer briefs emulating his distinctive silhouette.

Then this winter, we'll be releasing Elizabeth Shue's tennis line, "Love," Cuba Gooding's resort wear, called "Cuba," and "Dirty on Top" by Lance Bass—dark earth-toned outfits for the straight acting gay man.

I'm working with Maroon 5 on releasing a very cool series of Starbuck barista outfits. Hats and polos with unexpected lines and inspirational quotes sewn into the collars.

Even accessories! Lesbian tie dye bandana headscarfs from Rosie O'Donnell, Rihanna's line of umbrellas... Oh! And Johnathan Adler, Padma Lakshmi and Cinnabons are getting together to make a whole kitchen line of aprons and oven mitts!

And perhaps most anticipated: Harry Knowles, the smelly guy from aintitcool.com, is coming out with body hair jewelry. It takes a while for him to grow it out, but he braids his hair into the most beautiful bracelets and necklaces. They have a real masculine edge, and are being bought up by the trendsetting men like Corbin Bleu and Orlando Bloom.

As for the denim market, hold on to your hiney, because here comes Mario Lopez's Bootie 5 jeans. Each pair has been specifically sewn by Mario, who works really hard at his sewing machine to make sure that each pair fit the contours of his delicious rump.

We were gonna do Lowrise by Lohan but that's on hold.

So there you go! How do I say this. Um. Well, if things don't work out and you max out all your credit cards trying to make a go and be an actual fashion designer, I could get you work designing for Lolita Davidovitch or Jeanne Tripplehorn, who are both DYING to get into the biz!

Just let me know.

See you at the next big bash. I promise I will say hi! Ha!

Oh! Hi there! Sorry I didn't recognize you in your gussied up French footperson outfit. You're working here? At Tom's new store? As a cleaner? That explains the feather duster, ha ha! That's so great!

But I thought they were just hiring models for this job. Oh. I guess you have a look they want. It sort of makes sense because Horacio was saying how the next season is all about environmental decline, and so models with blotchy sort of cancery skin are really big.

It's so the most amazing thing that Tom found sla—I mean, MAIDS, maids and butlers—to keep this place as immaculate and appointed as his London home.

Tom is a genius. When he said he wanted to open a men's store that focuses on "deeply personalized luxury," it's like he read my mind! I am so sick of feeling like my luxury is anonymous and superficial and not really ME, you know?

These products are made by some of the finest Italian crafstmen and artisans. A shirt here is available in 350 colors, 35 fabrics, ten collars and two cuffs! How do I know? The lust-dripping profile Vanessa wrote in New York magazine, silly! But Tommy and I go way back, to when were were both model-actors.

I'm just here picking up my made-to-measure tailored head-to-toe suit, monogrammed luggage, some Black Orchid Finishing Oil, and some bottled sweat of a man's balls, all of which I plan to use this weekend when I take a quick trip over to Cannes.

Have they shown you the secret inner sanctum of the store? Probably not, since you are just sort of starting out. I would be happy to show you - No! Don't worry, you won't get in trouble. Chill out! I know all the confidential codes. Tom gave them to me.

All I need to do is stroke the labial folds of the stainless steel Fontana sculpture here, and...wah la! A secret doorway opens up which takes us to the special deluxury chamber of the store where only a select few are allowed to shop, like Richard Branson, Clooney, Brad.

Ooo. I can see you are getting a little faint and light-headed, aren't you? That's because Tom's musksmell pervades the secret catacombs of his Upper East Side store. It takes some getting used to.

Tom's smell is like none other. I love his smell. Everyone does. Of course he loves his own smell because he is his own muse. So he has created fragrances that bottle his musky essence with notes of pine and orchids, as if you were walking through a sultry wood, while breathing in his oily thick chest fur at the same time.

Here is where they sell Tom's just-worn pants that stink with his crotch odor, and wads of his toilet wipings in a porcelain urn.

Here is Tom's B.O. Line: Body odor infused vodka, and Tom B.O Plug-ins for the bathroom and home, and a $10,000 dollar canister of Tom's intestinal gas. Do NOT whiff this mesmerizing scent or you may spontaneously fuck yourself with some nearby object! The last novice staffperson smelled Tom's fart and pierced his colon with a letter opener!

Ah...and here is the sealed off, air-tight Sex Chamber. No! Tom doesn't have SEX here. No no no. Tom and Richard are monogamous. It is a great personal sacrifice on the part of Tom, who just this week turned down sex with Iman, a threeway with Ryan and Scarlett, and the spellbinding Sting, who tried to lure poor Tom into his English castle with the sight of his resplendent foreskin.

But Tom must remain with Richard and his fox terriers, proper and barely pleasured! It is this act of temperance and restraint Tom makes, so that his irresistibly potent sexual supremacy can be harnessed for the greater good of the Earth.

See what happens here in the Sex Chamber is that Tom stands naked for about 15 minutes, exuding his powerful, almost noxious sexual allure. Technicians (wearing infrared goggles so as to not succumb to their animal desires at the unmitigated sight of Tom which would make them tear off their flesh in horny bacchantic abandon) capture the gorgeousness of his essential energy, and with state of the art nanotechnology, transform it into a series of print and media ads which further his legend for future generations forever and ever.

Anyway you better get back to work picking up the minute fibers left around the store from uglier, less interesting customers. But if you find one of Tom's gorgeously thick genital or chest hairs, be sure to get it to the backroom! They are weaving a sweater for me on the Pubic Loom.

Ciao!

Hieee! You look tired are you OK?

Oh... You were at the Costume Institute Ball last night! Your first time! That is so cute! Aw... I remember my first Costume Institute Ball... back when it was, you know, more of a major, pre-"Devil Wears" event.... What fun that was....

Did you have a feather moment? Did you meet Andre? Did he sweat on you?

Oh! You came to the after-dinner part of the event. That makes sense. No it's just I was getting confused for a second because I couldn't figure out why I didn't SEE you, and now I know why, because it gets like, clubby. I was long gone by then. I had to high-tail it to my friend's helipad because I had to go to this dumb white tie dinner thing in D.C., just this dumb and small dinner thing, whatever....

Uh! What a night though. Mary-Louise was avoiding Claire, Claire was avoiding Billy, and Billy was avoiding Mary-Louise; Kirsten arrived in a YSL gown dress I can only describe as magniloquent; and that little faghag Renee kept cockblocking everyone. I spent most of my time doing shots with Jenny and Sandra at the bar. Ugh.... For us veterans it's more work than fun. But it's good to see the old gang.

And then Tom Ford came up to me. Tom and I hugged for a long time, like... gladiators, if you will. We have a long friendship... going back to a more serious time in our lives when we were both fledgling models who, because we both speed-read, realized that for the sake of humanity, we could and should explore a more rigorous and complicated career path.

With my face buried in his abundant, faunal chest, his man-smell mingled with the peacock excrement and musty antiquities into a redolent cologne of desire. I related this to him and he immediately called his boutique's Fragrance Chamber so that they could recreate it for the public—you!

But all of the superficial gala gossip aside, I have to say am really worried about America. No, I mean, yeah of course I am worried about America. But I mean America—America. She is starting to look like a substitute host from the View and I so don't want that for her!

The biggest difference this year was the presence of bloggers and reporters who were covering the event were broadcasting it at lightning speed.

I was standing behind Cammy when she showed up in her BEYOND controversial fuschia gown with turquoise accessories! A large bubble of electronic energy surrounded her as everyone's eyes, cameras, BlackBerries, cellphones, and cellphone cameras began photographing, reporting and commenting on this outfit at once. Soon everyone in the room and across the world began to form rival factions as to who was living for the color combination and who thought she looked like a waiting room.

While that occurred I slipped away to the corner of the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court, where I sort of naturally kind of ended up at this back table—with Liev and Naomi and Julianne and Cate and Nicky Ghesquierre—you know the more mellow peeps, just drinking seltzer and watching everyone go by....

Then we all did some blow for Isabella and called it a night.

[Image via Style.com]

Hi oh my god I haven't seen you for so lonnggggg!

It's so weird because I was just about to ask our Sheila for your new email (aren't you finally switching to Gmail or something?) to invite you to my engagement cocktail party!

Yes! I know! I am getting married! To explorer, television star and modern Indiana Jones Josh Bernstein! Eeeeeeeeeeeep!

It's just a smaller gathering because we are actually celebrating our engagement in a village on the Bolama Islands off Guinea-Bissau, but we wanted to have a party for our fun crazy New York City tribe! Ritual is important.

I know I know I know! It's so weird. I know he publicly stated he is not ready to settle down, but you know, we were both at the annual meeting of Ye Olde Riche and Goode-Looking People's Club up in its secret location in Midtown (it's just a weird membership that's been in my family since the Mayflower) and he was giving a lecture on his recent trek through the Atacama Desert and then I shot my hand up defiantly and I asked him a question about the sustainability of semi-arid hydrology in riparian areas. And he just looked at me, and saw that I am SO interested in environmentalism and smiled his square-toothed snow-white smile and it was like—whammo! I feel like Kate Middleton probably felt about Prince William, before he became a dawg and slept with that Brazilian floozy.

On our first date Josh wore his cowboy hat and organic jeans and gave me a necklace of gnuooaukgnuuuaoks—an authentic gift of passion from the Teeheepa tribe—small pearls found in the gallbladders of owl monkeys. And it just sort of progressed from there. I don't know what to say. You know when it's right, you know?

You are dating someone too? That's great! The End of The Dry Spell! He's Jewish too? Let me guess... he's nice, incredibly smart, very accommodating in bed, glasses, maybe complains too much in restaurants but is totally sexy?

Hello! Can we say, Annie Hall? What is this, 1974?

You know what you need is an upgrade. You need a Jewish guy with a plan. Or what I like to call a Jew.0. A Jew-Point-O.

If it wasn't for Josh I would be the same way! But you deserve better. In my thinking, a Jewish boyfriend can't just be lovably neurotic and loyal anymore! These days, he better also have mastered Shaolin Kung Fu, have a television deal, or survived living in the deadly Tsodilo Hills of Africa supplied with only a toothbrush and knife.

Oh, no, my religion isn't an issue for him. Yeah, no, I read what he told the Times about how he was looking for a "tall blond Jewish girl who is interested in the environment," but true love sort of trumps everything, right? And also three out of four isn't bad!

Trust me, when you find the right Jew Point 0 you will know. Every night when Josh and I curl up together, he says to me how thankful he is. And the feeling is mutual—it's like he taught me the secret trail to the legendary treasures of El Dorado, and I taught him the way to his heart.

Anyway its just something to think about. Go for what you feel deep in your soul, that's my advice.

Be good to yourself, and expect an email from me soon!

Bye!

Kevin! Kevin!

Hey actor man ha ha! Welcome back to New York Fuckin City, yo!

You look so much better than I thought you would! No it's just the British diet can sometimes add poundage to Americans. All that bacon.

Anywho...I just wanted to say I'm so so sorry.

About that annoying Ben Brantley review in the Times. Oh, you don't read reviews, of course of course.

No, it wasn't horrible, or a pan...but it didn't quite TRUMPET your return to the American stage like it should have, you know?

It wasn't all that bad. He just said that you go through O'Neill's speeches at the pace of a stand up comic and render his classic language meaningless. He DID call you "lively as a frog on a hot plate," which is kind of cute.

Anyway Brantley can be so prissy sometimes. You know how those theater queens are. I mean, of course you don't know exactly...about theater queens...

But you know, what does he know...those who can't DO, write about it, right? I mean, being a two time Oscar winner and one of our most gifted actors, you deserve better. He should be on his KNEES in front of you. So to speak.

Gay guys can be so pushy sometimes, you know? Roseanne Barr was right - they're always complaining and yawing about their rights, always wanting people to come out of the closet and claim their identities and be honest, like it's going to actually matter or move society forward in some way. (Oh I am being so politically incorrect right now. This is just between you and me...two stable heterosexuals.)

But hey. How are you, really? I was worried about you. If you have recovered from that summer night a couple of years ago in London when you had that terrible run in with that young man in a park at approximately 4:30 A.M, while walking your dog. That horrible horrible young fresh boy conned you into using your cellphone so he could call his sick mother, then ran away, and you tripped over your dog's leash and got bruises...! The youths in parks of London in the middle of the night are so untrustworthy! It's like you can't walk in peace in the middle of the night in parks anymore, you know?

Anyway, don't let the evil theater fags get to you. Just keep on keepin' on. It's funny...I was backstage at "Magical" getting stoned with Vanessa before she went on to do her acclaimed performance in Joanie's play. And we were just talking about you and how brave it is of you to bring "Moon" to Broadway and how it's always so hard to return to the New York theater. Mamma New York is a cruel yenta: you leave her for a minute, and she will make you regret it like only a Jewish mother can...Of course Vanessa like the greatest living actress so she sort of rises above this, but we were giggling about it backstage.

Well, anyway, I for one am so glad you are back in the city. You haven't missed much: wine bars are hot, creampuffs have replaced cupcakes as the hip sweet treat, and there aren't any poor people.

Oh and the Roxy closed!

I mean, not that you would care. Except didn't I see you...? Oh never mind.

Break a leg tonight!

Earlier: No Impact Whatsoever

Michelle?
Is that you? You look so different. No not bad, just, like, pale. Are you sick? What's wrong? Is everything—

Oh that's right, you are doing that No Impact thing with your husband Colin.

That's so cute you're doing that! I mean cool! Cutely cool!

I remember how challenging it was when my boyfriend Viggo and I did it in 2003.

Me? Oh yes, totally. Well, Viggo was done with this... um... project he was doing in New Zealand and we fell in love with the country. I was living with him in a tent at the time and we decided we would try to live No Impact too and spend a year together traveling in a No Impact way. So we crafted a schooner using only locally found naturally-fallen teak wood, and then we sailed around the world, only eating the fruits, legumes and nuts of the lands in a 100 mile radius of our homemade craft. But if you ask me, I think we really survived on love.

How is your greenhouse cabbage and fruit scrap vinegar mush? That's a great starter-No Impact recipe. Maybe one day I can come over and make my very own No Impact sun-cooked ratatouille with heirloom fingerling potatoes in a gooseberry coulis. It's hard to source the gooseberries, but I know a guy!

Hey, can I tell you something kind of personal? Okay. You promise not to be offended? Your breath is kind of stale. No, it's not that bad! Just, like ... baking soda and parsnips. Here. Have this gum - oh, shoot, you can't. Well perhaps a chunk of sasparilla root? Maybe you can find it in Central Park. I remember near the end of our trip when Viggo and I were taking the schooner up the Hudson, we would chew on it before we shared full-mouthed, loving, passionate kisses.

Eep! I gotta get going. I am in such a rush! I have to run and get my flu shot, since the HP51 virus is definitely definitely coming this year, and then I—

Yea, I read an article about it in the Science Times. You didn't know? Oh right...you can't buy the newspaper. "Paper" is sort of a no-no, right? Well, yes, it's definitely coming, so it's sort of a really good time to just eat healthy and take vitamins and vary your diet, so as not to compromise your immune system. But I'm sure you'll be fine.

Um, I hope this doesn't sound morbid but I wonder if you have a plan about what to do if you died? No, it's just a crucial part of living No Impact that a lot of people who do it don't really think about, you know? I'm just thinking that you and Colin should really maybe secure a plan? Because death can be very high impact on the environment? Like, you can't be embalmed, because then you'll just be like a big leaking ball of pollutants and chemicals. (Just think what Anna Nicole Smith's body is doing to the environment! They should put her in a cooling tank for 50 years until the toxins in her body half-life.) And as you know, you shouldn't be cremated: carbon emission city!

Of course, yes, one of those "green" cemetaries would be best, but the closest one is out of the state, and your body would have to be transported, which would, dum da dum dum: create carbon emissions.

Maybe just to be truly No Impact, you should make a living will and designate that your body be buried locally? Oop! A will has to be written down. Paper. Darn it that pesky paper thing! Well perhaps you should scratch your will into the side of your door?

Well anyway I gotta get going. I'm meeting Al Gore, Melissa Etheridge, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Kolbert, Amory Lovins and some others on Randalls Island, just to talk about sustainable living, in a sort of more important larger civilization sense. Not that what you are doing isn't important! Oh dear I am so late!

What?

Um...no of course I would love it if you joined me. Yes, by all means. But, wait, you can't use a boat. Darn. Your scooter won't work on water will it? Ha ha, just jokin'! Well keep it up, you No Impact trouper! Be good to yourself. And call any time you need help or food or light.

Be good to yourself.

Earlier:The Poe-Biz

Late for brunch again!

Don't worry, I already ordered you a ginger mojito. I know how you love to get your drink on in the a.m.! I would LOVE to drink like you do, but I can't now, especially. I'll have clear water.

No worries. It gave me time to finish that seminal article by Dana Goodyear on the Poetry endowment and then David Orr's refutation in the Book Review.

Oh you didn't read it? Here!

The New Yorker tends to run bad poems by excellent poets....(in addition, many well-known poets don't write what's known in the poetry world as "the New Yorker poem" — basically an epiphany-centered lyric heavy on words like "water" and "light"). The second issue with The New Yorker's poem selection is ... what you might call "the home job": the magazine's widely noted fondness for the work of its own staffers and social associates....In 2002, for instance, the poet who appeared most frequently in the magazine was the assistant to David Remnick, the editor — that assistant's name, coincidentally, was Dana Goodyear. In fact, since 2000, Goodyear (who is 30) has appeared in the New Yorker more than Czeslaw Milosz, Jorie Graham, Derek Walcott, Wislawa Szymborska, Kay Ryan and every living American poet laureate except for W. S. Merwin. She's already equaled Sylvia Plath's total.

Frankly I don't know what the big deal is. Marrying poetry to the market, I mean. Isn't that a dynamic reflection of today's culture?

Wasn't it Jorie Graham who said,

The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.

Well it did for me! Because guess what! I just got another poem in the New Yorker!

My sixth one! Making me pretty much the record-holder for poetry, having had more poems in the New Yorker than Sylvia Plath, TS Eliot and Czeslaw Milosz combined!

Well, yeah. I have been writing poetry for a long time, actually. I just wasn't like ADVERTISING it the way you were, with your poetry workshops in college and your little glasses and Columbia Grad School...

By the way, have you paid off those loans yet? Yikes.

Yeah, well, things have a funny way of working out.

Wow that would be a great poem. Hold on I have to make a call. Hello? Alice Quinn? It's me. Heyyyyyy. How are yoooooouuuu.

Listen I have a poem for you. Should I fax it to you? Oh! I can dictate it and you'll just write it down? OK, it goes...no...no that's not the first line, I was just telling you I was about to recite it. Right, OK, here I go.

Eating brunch
I had a thought —
Sometimes things
Have a funny, light, watery

Way of working
Out

Yes a double dash after "thought," and lacunae after "watery." Thanks, Alice Quinn. Hey, is Dana done with her latest Starbucks "The Way I See It": Macchiato Version yet? Good for her! She's on a roll! But I know. I'm so sick of these "The Way I See Its" too. 20k for wordage on a coffee cup—big whoop. But whatever, it's the Poe-biz, right? Yeah. The president of Starbucks said mine was kind of the best since Rumi and John Milton but I still feel like I want it to be better. Maybe you and Dana and I should powwow? Cool. Bye, Alice Quinn!

OK, awesome, so my "Eating Brunch" poem's in the next issue. That's number seven.

So what've you been up to? Really, n+1? That's great. Are you still writing about your disease for them? Your angry period? No, that's really important, the small small small small literary magazines. They're vital.

I mean, The New Yorker, Starbucks and Big Pharma-Poetry and the Lilly Grant have been good for me personally, but like Pound, John Berryman, Walt Whitman, others, probably had to rely more on the n+1 places. And they were more into drinking and diseases like you. So. It's a good match.

You know what? Yeah. Let me get your mojito this time.

Annals of Poetry [NYT]
Earlier: Boerum Hill Heartbreak

Brooklynites Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams have hit a rough patch in their relationship.
"They had a huge fight, and they're not speaking," a source told us last week, although a separate spy says things thawed a little over the Oscars weekend. Our spy spotted heath in the company of a gaggle of other women (although not misbehaving) without Michelle on Valentine's day at Teddy's in los Angeles.
Williams responded frostily to a question about their relationship during Fashion Week.

No no no, its nice to see you. I'm just a little distracted.

I'm just in a rush to get to my, um... my very very very close friend's place and I can't talk long because she is very distraught right now. My friend and her lifepartner are going through a little rough patch and I'm like their sort of anchor?

I am always like there for them? And she just really needs me right now. So I went to Cake Man Raven and got some of his famous Red Velvet Cake and have my DVD of Love, Actually, and we're just going to deep condition our hair and talk. You know, that's what friends are for...

But anyway hi. Weird, do you live here now, in Boerum Hill? I can't believe how hipstery it's getting.

Not you per se, I just mean it's getting so popular and full of the blathering blogger scene here, you know? Which makes me worry even more for my friends. It's just that they are in an um... industry that brings them a lot of notoriety and attention? And I don't need to tell you how creepy and relentless the non-famous caste, I mean, zombies, I mean normal people can be to people more successful than them? Especially when the successful people are going through a hard time.

I don't think it's anything big though. It's just that inevitable rough patch that happens to couples after a child comes into the relationship. The elation of caring for a new life wears off, and you have to contend with stomach viruses and earaches and lack of sleep, and your relationship begins to suffer. I mean I saw this happening with Paul and Jennifer after Stellan was born, and Maggie and Peter when they had their beautiful daughter Ramona, and Emily and Allessandro when Sam came.

Codependent? Oh right, your whole childless-by-choice soapbox. Actually no, it's not like that at all.

It's sort of a problem that happens when you are actually successful and fulfilled. For normal, non-noticed people it's hard to understand.

Like, I know you are still single, and, you know, you have your good life and graphic design job and hobbies and a Nerve.com profile and dreams.

But let me try to help you understand: Say you fell in love, finally, with someone who was your soulmate, and you both happened to be beautiful, had tons of money, and were having your ambitions realized.

I'll just pause for a moment so you can really imagine that.

So, you have a little fight with your soulmate, and you just want to walk outside and get some air. But you can't because if you do, some dickhead with a cellphone camera will take a photo of you crying or with puffy eyes and then it will appear on TMZ or some other hateful site and be blown out of proportion and even more add fuel to your own paranoia that something is wrong.

Oh hold on, it's my phone - Ledgey? Hey buddy. Yeah. I'm about to go over there, I just ran into an old friend on the street. No it's cool. They don't have any idea. Sweetheart. No I know you didn't mean it. No I'm sure nothing happened. Those shitty gossip merchants will say any— I know that, and 'Shelly knows that too, deep down. She loves you.

Sweetheart, stop crying. Just let things cool off. You're getting back from LA tonight? No of course you can sleep over. No I don't mind at all. It'll be like our hike in Peru last summer. OK, see you later tonight HeathyWeathy. I love you too.

Ugh, poor guy. He sounds so broken up. He always comes to me when he is sad. He just needs to be held and caressed in a completely open, true, bonding way that I for some weird reason can provide. I guess its because they see that I don't really want anything from them? That I see who they really are? It's hard for them. My friends. Because they are such open channels of honesty and emotion, so unafraid of their feelings, and being successful in their industry, they are like these conduits of emotion for the desperate, American public that have become so disconnected with their true selves because they are living simulated lives perpetuated by the Entertainment Industrial Complex which keeps them from feeling anything real.

Is...is that an Us Weekly in your bag? Funny. No! I'm not judging you. I just think it's funny.

Well I gotta go. Which way am I going? Actually, sorry I'd really rather not divulge that information at this time, not to be a bitch or anything.

I'll just stand here until you walk away. Bye now.

Heath Bars Michelle On V-Day [Gatecrasher, 2nd item]
Earlier: From YouTube To Boob

[MySpace The Movie] was so slick that it helped land [David] Lehre, a college dropout who still lives with his parents, a deal with Fox to produce his own half-hour late-night television show. Still untitled, it's "an open-format sketch-variety show with music videos, short videos and comedy skits," as he put it. It is being shot here in his hometown near Detroit, and features his friends both in front of and behind the camera. Fox has given him $300,000 to make the pilot. Also part of the deal is a film project that he hopes to start this summer.

So what's your little vid, you cute uploader? Oh wow, it's a play about a relationship? Uh-huh. With public-domain blues soundtrack? Great.

Oh come on, I'm just teasing. You can still be hip and savvy. Wearing your Brooklyn Industries Hoodie or something.

Wait—it's SEVEN MINUTES?!

No, it's just—that's like very, very rare and unheard-of for a featured or top-viewed video on YouTube. But you should do what feels right, you know?

I'm just so glad I decided a long time ago that I wanted something more out of life? I don't really TRY to become successful. Frankly I just invited magic into my life. And that's basically how I found my passion projects, and my converted barn in Rhinebeck and Viggo. I just let love, my
self-sufficient entertainment career, and Real Estate happen instead of burning with ambition about it?

I mean I hope you aren't trying to get some sort of TV deal out of this YouTube thing right? It's sort of like if you aren't already successful in the entertainment industry by 30, then it's just not really going to happen. But you know that.

Oh my god I'm sorry I can't stop thinking about the seven minutes. Oh hold on a second, someone's calling on my i-phone (yes! I got an advanced prototype. Steve and the Apple guys just wanted to give it to "Early Connector Cultural Czars" to see how it holds up with our lifestyle).

Oh look it's my business partner! The results are in: we just invented the first reliable revenue model for the Web 2.0! I just made 16,000 dollars.

So yeah, the Third Screen wave is just the same as it's always been—young, sexy, straight white boys making money by farting and Mentos and whatever. But it's pretty hilarious, I have to admit, but that's just like my sense of humor. I don't like overthinking. Like Daniel Lehre for example. He is going to be the next Letterman. He's genius. He just gets it.

All I can say if you're trying to break in is don't make something polemical or complainy like you always do.

Watch these young new auteurs. It's so much fun to watch them fool someone into trusting them and then completely destroy their faith in humankind. Here's a simple example, I'm going to trick this guy walking by us on the street. Watch:

Hi there, sir? Hi! What's your name? Jim? My name is Roberta. Nice to meet you!

(Ha ha what an idiot! He thought my name was Roberta!)

You know what is really hot right now? Cyberbullies!

Those cyberbullies at North Babylon High School just cut a deal with Universal to make a full length film. Their antics are now going to become a major motion picture starring Hugh Dancy and Anna Farris! It's going to be groundbreaking. It's sort of Borat meets Jackass meets Bosnian Rape Camp. Their first gag is to go to recently jittery Boston with a dirty bomb and watch the entire city freak out!

And you know those kids who recently scalped a young violin prodigy with her own hair elastic? I'm helping them broker a deal with Bravo. It's going to be a reality-variety-gag type show. Also really groundbreaking. In the first episode they're going to pretend to infect a Sri Lankan village with the rotavirus. LOL!

Maybe you should try something like that? But yeah. You have the timing issue. Hm. Maybe you should try YouTubeSenior. It's a new site for people over the age of 30 who want to share their old, weird, long format lives with each other.

Wait what are you saying? You're speaking so slowly. I need my information sort of more quickly. Can you text it to me?

Web Auteur Takes The Leap From YouTube To Boob Tube [NYT]

For $40 a session, pint-size cooks can learn to make dim sum, sopas and baba ghanouj. On a recent weekend, Alyssa Volland, the instructor and the wife of Alex Volland, the restaurant's owner and chef, chose pizza for the day's lesson. But this wasn't a typical child-friendly pizza — frozen, on a bagel or dripping with pepperoni. Instead, Hanna Mandel, 5, set to mixing yeast pebbles, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil into an artisanal dough, which she topped with mozzarella and a nutty, slightly stinky Gruy re before choosing a vegetable topping. As she kneaded, she talked about her No. 1 food, sushi, declaring, "Seaweed is my favorite part."
Alyse Mandel, her mother, glanced over with the pride usually reserved for straight-A report cards, and said, 'She'll try anything.'

Is that Ella? Oh wow, she has grown! She is so SOLID now.

And now you're here at Whole Foods, looking for nice nutritional alternatives for her, right? That's great. That's a good project. I'm glad to hear you are finally taking nutrition seriously.

No of course you always have. With your old school Flinstones vitamin-style.

Atticus! It's impolite to just grunt and point. Ask the fishmonger nicely for your tuna steak.

Hm? Yes, we're just having a light dinner. We were out last night at Per Se enjoying their $500 prix fixe Les Enfants menu. Frankly it's not as good as Babbo's Baby Buffet. But Atticus ordered his truffle oil and snap pea puree smiley face-pizza and then suggested a nice Burgundy for us adults! Among other things, he's sort of a Sommelier-Savant.

But we're just gonna settle in at home tonight. This morning we went to Quintessence for a light breakfast of roots, brambles and artisanal prunes, and then attended Toddler Alexander Technique. Then up to the MOMA for hisYoung Directors Workshop. Then we attended a grape juice tasting at Two If By Sea, stopped by ABC Carpet And Home to buy Atticus a mini sushi knife, and a "My First Raclette" kit for him. We're just wanting to educate him more about foreign cuisine so that he is well prepared for the Kid's Davos summit meeting next week.

Aw. Look at Ella reaching for the intestinally clogging Jello Brand gelatin. Such a little American! With such a little American body. I wonder why she craves such things. Since you are a SAHM you don't have to worry if the nanny is secretly feeding her Dunkin Donuts like I do!

Well anyway, it's great that you're here. It's a good first step towards nutritional help. Why don't I walk around with you and find some items to help you make the shift for Ella?

Instead of VIP seating, they rely on techniques, some from the speak-easy era, like obscure locations, secret (and oft-changed) reservation numbers, and "soft openings" that cater to insiders, to create the perception of exclusivity ... small and quiet is back in vogue.

Oh ... that was the first time you heard about those places? Well, no that's cool. I mean in a way it's almost more hip NOT to know about them at ALL. I mean I know you haven't really been going out much lately, and I totally respect that. You know who you are. A person who can't just have one glass of wine.

But I'm not a snob, I mean it's so great that people get to feel really exclusive and special because they can go somewhere other people can't go and stand near Chloe's brother.

But once again the Times has no sense of the times. These places were old news on, like, Saturday. They mention Beatrice Inn, The Waverly Inn, and the upcoming The Inn LW12, which isn't open till February, but as you know I'm partially clairvoyant? So I've been there and let me tell you from my experience it's just like any other Inn.

Overall, you walk into these places, and there are about 40 people there, and everyone is tired and tired of each other and sick of talking to each other so you sort of sit there alone and listen to the iPod mix of some dreary guy with a beard. Sort of like that bar you basically never left in Brooklyn before this whole sober trend of yours. See? You're not missing anything!

My favorite place is right smack dab back where it all started on 42nd street. It doesn't have a name but it's a nondescript doorway in the back of the Cold Stone Creamery. You just have to push past the angry girl mopping the floor for minimum wage and walk through the kitchen.

The other day I was at a table there with Salman Rushdie, Carolina Herrera, Lou Reed, Bob Costas, and the cast of Coast of Utopia still in their period garb, and we all suddenly let out this unanimous super exclusive exhale of utter depressed defeat at our lives, our country, our souls. We realized we were so sick of these exclusive spaces so we all grabbed our jackets, cloaks and capelets and went to Astor Place and spun that big cube around.

Some other great places: Wachovia Bank Midtown. The manhole cover on 34th and 8th. Graydon Carter's warm fatty inner thighfold, and "Stomp." But now I listed them. So forget about it.

I heard about this other place that is kind of amazing and intimate apparently. I don't know the name. When you leave they beat you on the head with a blunt object so that you get amnesia and don't remember where it is. I may have been there, but I don't know. So I can't really tell you where it is. Sorry!