In Which Chaos Overwhelms Us

Chaos, Please

by Alex Carnevale

Senator McCain revealed this week that a meeting with President Bush would move from a scheduled appearance at the Phoenix convention center to a private residence. The Bush campaign presidency accommodated the request of the McCain campaign.

And so on: there is no one that McCain can talk to publicy. He has become sequestered in a retirement campaign where he eats bagged lunches with Senator Lieberman.

Such a move is blatant pandering to Jewish voters. But everyone is willing to pander to Jewish voters. A sociology professor I had once told me that. He added that the Ramones were Jewish and Perry Farrell was Jewish, presumably so is Senator McCain, and his opponent in the fall.

Danish suggested that since Obama is virtually a lock to win the presidency during an unpopular war and economic downturn, that Ms. Clinton should join the ticket to make history.

How about reaching across the aisle for Bobby Jindal? As long as you're going to win, why not tarnish the biggest rising star in Republican politics with the loser brush of the Democratic Party?

perry farrell makes us wild!

levi on myanmar

The changing spectre of race

Search for a lost B-2 bomber

Cynthia Ozick on Lionel Trilling

when Obama wins

Is Milton better than Shakespeare?

Funny newspaper headlines

Germany's best photographers

perry, you're out of control, I love it

Puff the Magic Dragon by Broken Social Scene

what the future of music will sound like

"Last Christmas" - Wham! (mp3)

WTF was Bobby Jindal wearing in Jerome AZ?

Games Magazine

allergic to wifi

walking through BK

Idea for How To Dunk Basketball Awesome

nytimes is crazee

the week in quotations

Bach:

Full recording of Glenn Gould performing Bach (mp3)

I didn't like this New Republic cover:

not enough colors

What went wrong in Hillary's campaign from inside the campaign. Michelle Cottle quotes:

"Harold Ickes's encyclopedic understanding of the proportional delegate system was never operationalized into a field plan. The campaign inexplicably wrote off many states entirely, allowing Obama to create the lead of 100+ delegates that he has today. Most notably, we claimed the race would be over by February 5, but didn't devote any resources to the smaller states that day and in the weeks that followed, allowing Obama to easily run up margins and delegate counts on the cheap--the delegate margin he will win by."

"There was financial mismanagement bordering on fraud. A candidate who raised more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the years had to pump in millions more of her own money to stave off bankruptcy."

"I don't think anybody in America doesn't think she can do the job. What they're dying for is to know a little bit more about her. And we were unable to present that side of her."

"If you look at this campaign as a 15- or 16-month gambit, the public turning point was the Philadelphia debate. Her non-answer on the driver's license issue. Again, it spoke to the character issue: The sense that she will say anything and do anything to get elected. It drove the Obama narrative of her home."

"Her dense and wonky speaking style was compounded by her speechwriting team's reporting to Policy Director Tanden rather than Communications Director Wolfson."

Other Women To Love

Radha Mitchell

lookin' good

this young woman in the NYP

Indulgences

Cameron Diaz:

Peggy Noonan on Hillary

Emily Haines = Envy Adams

Mary Rambin thinks she is Cristina Yang

god bless AmApp

HOW ME
BREAKING UP
WITH YOU IS LIKE
JON LESTER PITCHING
A NO-HITTER AGAINST
THE ROYALS.

JA and Carrie Bradshaw

The Triumph of Bullshit

musing on The Bachelorette

Dos Press chapbook series

Hugh Hefner's son Marston

Tao Lin versus Bujalski

actual cover of Esquire:

Careful what you charge online

adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

Kyle Schlesinger

Little Sparrow

WFB vs. Hitchens in '98

This dude's Alex Balk stalking is pretty funny, Balk seems to be taking it well and not well. I think he should just be flattered.

Hilar nytimes comment

Naomi Wolf is a terrible prude

judging emily harshly

miracle marine:

emily on NPR

obama's hard knock life

Speaking of Obama, the movement to convince his detractors that he is not a Muslim has approached critical mass. It is relatively clear Obama has never been a Muslim; it also seems clear that his father was once a Muslim, as was his stepfather. The problem I have with this Democratic gushing, "He's NOT a Muslim, GRRRRR" is the supposition that being a Muslim is such a terrible thing. If there was a presidential candidate devoting a page on his website to dispelling vicious rumors he was Jewish, I'd take offense pretty quickly. Of course we know why Obama supporters are doing this: they believe regular people are too dumb to not instinctively vote against a 'Muslim' candidate. That doesn't make it right.

is john mccain a muslim?

castro on obama, good lord

disposable catering

the history of food

Peter Gizzi on Barbara Guest

Of Montreal covering MIA

misceallaneous skullduggery

sarahchristine and she and him

First look at new Woody allen

old Woody allen

Postcards from Yo Momma has a sweet new site

I didn't know A-Rod wore number 13 because of Dan Marino. Yikes.

from here

took polaroid every day till died

honoring the fallen:

McGinnis was manning the turret in the last Humvee of a six-vehicle patrol in Adhamiyah in northeast Baghdad on Dec. 4, 2006, when an insurgent threw a grenade from the roof of a nearby building.

“Grenade!” yelled McGinnis, who was manning the vehicle's M2 .50-caliber machine gun.

McGinnis, facing backward because he was in the rear vehicle, tried to deflect the grenade, but it fell into the Humvee and lodged between the radios.

When he stood up to get ready to jump out of the vehicle, as he had been trained to do, McGinnis realized the other four soldiers in the Humvee did not know where the grenade had landed and did not have enough time to escape.

McGinnis, a native of Knox, Pa., threw his back against the radio mount, where the grenade was lodged, and smothered the explosive with his body. McGinnis was posthumously promoted to specialist, and he was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor, while the Medal of Honor nomination was pending. The grenade exploded, hitting McGinnis on his sides and lower back, under his vest. He was killed instantly. The other four men survived.

"Violet Hill" - Coldplay (mp3)

"Praying for Time" - George Michael (mp3)

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

We say sorry.

You magnificent bastards.

Legend of Georgia Hardstark.

In Which Chris Farley's Death Is Probably Your Fault

Who Killed Chris Farley? A Murder Mystery for the Ages

In the annals of people dying who couldn't be saved, there is Chris Farley. His appetite for drugs, drink and women was insatiable. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time, and somehow seemed determined to expedite the process.

Here now we share Playboy's excerpt from the new oral history of Chris, The Chris Farley Show. Afterwards you can decide who killed him the most.

"Postcard from Kentucky" - Rocky Votolato (mp3)

"Chasing Cars (hey team remix)" - Snow Patrol (mp3)

"Catch My Disease" - Ben Lee (mp3)

Buy The Chris Farley Show here.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

Bernadette Mayer and our double secret picture collection.

Speculating about political futures.

Possible remedies for trouble sleeping.

In Which Spring Is The Season For Crushes On Girls (And Boys)

Spring Crushes Leave The Subway And Take To The Streets

by Molly Lambert

Who wouldn't want to be the meat in this sandwich, ya know?

I'm girlcrushing hard on Julia Wertz. No homo.

"I can stick my whole fist in my mouth! Wanna see?"

Sia's video for "The Girl You Lost To Cocaine" = Girlcrush!

Maybe it's also because she looks like Amy Poehler.

If Tina Fey had starred in Shopgirl instead of Angela Chase, it might not have seemed so creepy. Might.

This is a still from the upcoming Superbad sequel, Supersad, about what happens to Seth and Evan when they graduate from college, realize they no longer have any dreams or anything in common, and settle into a deep codependent depression based around poker playing after a meth-addicted McLovin dies of AIDS.

Holy fucking shit Faye Dunaway's hand. That's totally what mine are gonna look like after a couple more decades of blogging.

Cynthia Nixon and her girlfriend are a couple of ginger mingers.

Harrison Ford in Judd Apatow's The 80 Year Old Last Action Hero

Guillermo Del Toro officially helming The Hobbit

Tina Fey and her husband. No jokes about Hobbit helming.

As long as I live, I will never stop laughing at Land Shark.

Robert De Niro and wife Grace Hightower.

NPH FTW!!! I'd like Paul Verhoeven to remake Showgirls with NPH as Nomi Malone. I love (fascist parable) Starship Troopers like Alex loves Ayn Rand.

Jason Castro from American Idol and our own Georgia Hardstark should team up for a drunken Sublime singalong.

My best friend Tesslie said "Oh! She's just being Molly!"

Santogold & M.I.A. = Double Girlcrush!

EVERYONE'S CRUSHIN ON SANTOGOLD THIS SPRING:

"L.E.S. Artistes" - Santogold

"Creator" - Santogold

"I'm A Lady" - Santogold

"Shove It" - Santogold

"You'll Find A Way" (Switch & Sinden Remix) - Santogold

Molly Lambert is the senior editor of This Recording

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING:

Alex Has A Crush On Michelle Obama

I Have A Crush On Dylan Moran

Everybody Has A Crush On Molly Young

In Which Tess Explains The Pink Rhombus of The Girl Crush

Girl Crushes: The Pink Rhombus

by Tess Lynch

A lot of yammering has gone on in the past about girl crushes, like what part of the brain starts shooting electrodes when you have one, and how to deal with a girl crush breakup.

I guess Suicide Girls are sort of great girl crushes; they do give you interesting ideas of how to wear eyeliner.

This may be kind of a stretch because, hey! It's a brain crush, not a bone crush; it's sweeter, and you don't even have to get to know the person, and then find out that you actually hate them.

becca reviewed forgetting her

"My Dearest Friend" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

To me, the qualities I look for in a girl crush are:

1. Does she look better than I look when she wakes up in the morning? The answer to this question is almost always yes.

2. Does she look like she has more fun than I've ever had, listens to better music I've never heard of, eats fattening food but always stops when she's full, and knows of secret cosmetics from off-brand companies located somewhere crazy that she buys for cheap?

3. Does she have extensive knowledge of something I find incredibly boring but wish I cared about? Examples: Russian literature, how to make Hollandaise sauce, sculpture, Vespas, and Charlie Chaplin movies.

Girlcrushin.

With the advent of Facebook and Myspace, I think girl crushing has become even more common. Sometimes you'll go to someone's page and they're looking awesome: because their picture is actually Shannyn Shmoshmamon. I don't hate. They want to be like Shannyn Shmoshmamon, and that is because Shannyn is apparently a DJ, from Hawaii, a dancer, and looks better than they do when they wake up in the morning.

The Delia*s catalog is like Girl Crush 101 for the tweenagers.

I first learned to girl crush when I was an adolescent and realized that the girls in the Delia*s catalog were actually my age, wearing the clothes I probably had under a wet towel on my floor. My taste was not refined. I was pretty impressed just that they could actually make facial expressions in front of a camera. Every girl crush has a jumping-off point: for some, this might be ranking the girls of 90210. And that's okay too.

Some of my favorite classy dames:

Tuesday Weld, just having a good time.

"The Other Woman" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

Tuesday Weld is a girl crush because she "didn't have to play Lolita, [she] was Lolita;" that is already a great reason, but there are more. Sam Shepard called her "the female Marlon Brando," she never wanted to be a huge star and turned down stuff like, oh, you know, Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde, and she was a dark free-wheeler. Free-wheeling is what she is doing in the photo above.

Sophia Loren: girl crush who eats spaghetti.

The New Zealand Herald backhands one of my personal favorite girl-crushes by calling her both old and in possession of a hot body; it's like, duh, everybody knows Sophia's got a banging body, you don't have to call her old. She looks like she spends equal parts of her time giggling, sipping wine, looking fabulous in clothes, watching great movies and eating fattening food. In the morning, that lady is still waking up looking really tremendous.

Brigitte, the world's most obvious girl crush

When you discover that Brigitte Bardot exists, and up until the point where you listen to her music, you are madly in love with her. You, I don't care if you're a girl or a boy, YOU ARE in love with Brigitte. Unless you've heard her music, you can ignore the PETA-like vibe and embrace her as she makes Contempt watchable and shows up on absolutely everyone's social networking pages.

FD and TL: both anti-bra

Faye Dunaway might be my favorite girl crush. She has like four things in production on her IMDB, which also hits you with these gems: she is for some reason nicknamed "Miss Faye," she was married to the dude from J. Geils Band, and she has an Oscar. Because she knows she's a badass, I will forgive her for pulling an Alec Baldwin.

Anne Bancroft: woman, you'll be a girl crush soon.

Anne Bancroft: Method actor, which means that she had the capacity to work hard, which I lack; she got an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony; and, something which until three seconds ago was news to me, she wrote and directed a movie called Fatso with Dom Deluise. Oh yeah, and she was married to Mel Brooks, which automatically means she was hilarious and a genius.

alex hated on jenna here

***

What I Imagine It Takes To Be A Girl Crush:

1. Have a clean bathroom filled with Kiehl's products.

2. Own adorable shoes, have ability to keep them out of puddles/melting sod: we who see, Irregular Choice, London Sole

3. Go to Russia, go to Russian school

4. When you jet-set, take Virgin America, because as my dad pointed out recently, they are F'ing Southwest in the A. Then you too will be cute when you wake up, even if it's just on planes, and it will cost you about $260 roundtrip from and back from (uh, this is the one down side) Los Angeles, NYC, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, and DC .

5. Learn how to knit and purl. The purling part I find impossible.

6. Trade in your car for a Vespa + extra life insurance.

Tess Lynch still has Kiehl's stuff that she took from a hotel once three years ago. She is the contributing editor to This Recording. She blogs it up here.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING: GIRL CRUSH EDITION

Bridget Moloney: Tell Her You Love Her

Molly Lambert: Feminism Is So Hott

Becca Weiner: Three-Ways & The FK

Jessica Grose: This Jezebel Hearts Episcopalians

"Remember" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

loren

In Which We Request That You Not Tongue Our Balls

We asked frequent TR reader Devendra Banhart to contribute his recollections of dating the one known as Natalie Portman. He sent in the following.

What and Who I Will Do For My Career

by Devendra Banhart

I woke up yesterday with a splitting headache. Too much Burgundy, too much cocaine, and too much of her.

"Devendra! Devendra!" When I open my eyes I swear that Natalie was watching herself in The Professional. Ever since my publicist hooked me up with this lew (what gentiles like me call lame jews) I have been enduring a never ending stream of this bullshit.

"How much do you want to fuck the thirteen year old me?" she said. "Tell me."

"That's gross," I said. Also, the first time we slept together, afterwards she asked me if that was how they did it in Venezuela. "Absolutely not," I told her.

jude and NP

"When did you lose your virginity?" she said, dancing on the bed. "Tell me and I'll tongue your balls."

"I'm still a virgin," I said. "I'm going to order some papayas."

"Get me the huge." 'Huge' in the Portman family parlance, she had informed me during our first meal, meant, 'the usual'. She reminded me of Anna Faris in Just Friends.

When we met, it seemed great.

We were halfway through a MOMA screening of Conrad Clark's eulogy for Beijing when Natalie whispered in my ear, "l can't tell any of these characters apart." This somehow seguewayed into a 40 minute argument about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By the time she was going down on me in the bathroom closest to the Cy Twombly mural she felt we were closer than ever. Me, I wanted to refute her supposed concessions at Gaza and lecture her parents for hours.

chan marshall & me

Also, she has a tiny vagina. So tiny. Sounds great, right? But whenever it starts getting uncomfortable at all, she lets me know. Again, not a problem in itself, but instead of being like, slow down guy, she starts yelling, "Poopsikins! Poopsikins!" The first time she said it I was looking around for the camera. At least she's a vegan.

My agent talked me down after our first MOMA fight. "Take it easy, D," he recommended. "She's a great girl, you just have to get to know her better. Also, just going out with her sold 40,000 copies of Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon."

"Fudge," I said, knowing how bad that album really was.

"Will Is My Friend" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

"Shabop Shalom" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

"Lover" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

"Bad Girl" - Devendra Banhart (mp3)

I used the money on a framed portrait of myself and gave it to her along with the feather of a peregrine falcon. I felt bad. I mean, it happens. You're interested in a girl and the newness of that, and then the eroticism fades. It doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a chance.

Yesterday started well enough. "Tao Lin makes me want to write the craziest things," she screamed in St. Mark's bookstore. At least we were agreeing on something. "Let's go see Nathan Englander read at McNally Robinson," she said excitedly, stealing a copy of a magazine with a very provocative cover.

"Nathan Englander?" I said. "I think I'm going to have to send a frothy e-mail to the Harvard english department from whence you came. Plus, he's a lew like you. I'd really rather go see Junot Diaz at NYU."

"But Nathan Englander's funny," she said. "Wes and I used to read parts of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges aloud before bedtime."

"Mention another one of your ex boyfriends and I swear I'll give you a bloody eyeball, Queen Amidala."

"Let's just go and if it's bad, I'll just soak a chamois of llama skin with my juices and weave it into your hair, poopsikins," she said. I shuddered.

She spent most of the reading finding dumb things to look at on her laptop. She found an interview I'd done:

Well, I said to myself, "What's the title?" and I heard from myself, " Look in books, think... feel words, extract the words from the songs, condense the record into a word or a couple of words, etc". Then I said to the spirit of Krishna-Murti, "Whats the title?" and i heard, "Keep looking in all those places you told yourself to look, keep looking diligently, though it will not come from there, i will bring it to you if you keep looking in all the wrong places". And as I looked I began to hear, "I Am Cripple Crow, I Am Cripple Crow", so i was gonna call it, I Am Cripple Crow, but I thought it would look like I was saying... I, Devendra, am Cripple Crow, which I am not, Cripple Crow is the album, so I got rid of the I Am.

"That's fucking retarded," she whispered, "and I'm pretty sure Krishnamurti is still alive." I stormed out of the bookstore.

The next night, my boy Cabic comes over to play some xBox and braid my hair, and NP sits in the corner reading a magazine (I believe it was Highlights) and acting like she's doing me some big favor by letting me have my bromance.

Cabic is so weirded out he leaves after only two hours of Madden and I think she can sense that I'm frustrated, because when I come into the bedroom she's wearing the blonde wig from Closer and she has her mouth duct-taped shut. You tell me if you could resist. You can't. It's impossible.

While sex isn't everything, it is something. When it's not around you look to see if maybe it's on your computer. When it's lying in your bed about to say something completely insane about the motivation of the Israeli citizens building settlements on Palestinian land, you have to ask yourself: At what cost?

I promised myself that I'd break up with her this morning. I know exactly what to say.

The best part about dating an actress is that breaking up is an orgasm straight out of the Claude Levi-Strauss handbook. You can "represent" the "break-up" without having to really say a word.

You simply set up a situation unexpectedly similar to a moment they got dumped in one of their movies. Naturally this is easier if you happen to find yourself LTRing Billy Crudup, Jennifer Aniston, or Jim Krasinski. By the way Krasinski, if I have to read another interview where you talk about how much you love David Foster Wallace, I'm going to eat your spleen.

Since NP played the feature lew in The Diary of Anne Frank, my choice is fairly obvious. Yet before I have even gotten out of bed she's asking me if I ever had banana pancakes when I was growing up in Venezuela.

I finally can't control myself: "THERE WILL BE NO FUCKING BANANA PANCAKES," I scream. "And when you're from Long Island, I don't think you can call the U.S. 'The States.' Pretty sure that's just a bullshit affectation. You went to Solomon Schechter for Christ's sake."

"That hurts me a lot, D," she says.

"That's what she said," I said. "You watch The Office? No? I'm never good at this part."

"I guess it's better," she says. "But I'll always treasure our photoset together. Do you want to get coffee?"

"Sure," I say, "but just as friends, and I should probably take off this SS uniform first."

Devendra Banhart is a musician living in Los Angeles. This is his first appearance in these pages, and most likely his last unless he starts dating Scarlett or something.

we'll be safe in this attic...NOT!

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

Jews are typically so disobedient.

Saturday links are the most fun we had laughing.

Ethan Hawke is an a-hole.