Shook the Spot

Text sent, at 12:08 a.m., from one blog to another . . .

we stoned as fuck on that weed . . . thank you!

The message, sent to a phone that she apparently left at home, was intercepted by a mother of a hot immigrant bitch, who kindly passed the sentiments along. Many thanks, grammy. In other news, the cast of SNL ate at FELIPE'S earlier today!!!

BLOGGING

A week after Shook the Spot set the Modern Love column to music, the New York Times has followed suit. It's the latest in NYTimes.com's experiment in podcasting, which began with the Op-Ed columnists last year. D52 wrote off this shit back then as the most ridiculous fucking crap ever.

[Update: Yo It's . . . just brought me a delicious, steaming cup of hot chocolate. We are listening to some dope shit. Swam to the store, trying to look for food / Corner store was kinda flooded, so I broke my way through . . . ]

Yo notice how the elipisis is so key? [All this serious shit is crazy . . . ]

So, yeah, the Times podcasts are unfuckingbelievably bad. (This is the very worst: wine commentary with Eric Asimov.) And yet, it's the funniest shit ever recorded and broadcast. I subscribe to all of them. On a cold day like today, I curl up on the couch with a bowl of tomato soup and listen to the latest Bob Herbert column, as read by Mark Moran. (Mark Moran is totally white!!) Only thing better would be Boldface Names, as read by Lil' Wayne.

I have 22 minutes left on my laptop's battery and a shaky wireless connection (stolen from my alma former), so let's keep this concise. You know what often goes overlooked? The X-Men are from WESTCHESTER. Descending the Lowerator . . .

As of Tuesday, Starbucks coffee will no longer be served as wake-up juice at Greenville's Bob Jones University.

BJU spokesman Jonathan Pait said the school's constituency began to object to Starbucks' stance on gays several months ago. More objections came lately, he said.

"They were supportive of homosexual events and causes," he said. "That would be a problem for our constituency." The issue surfaced from quotes on a coffee cup Starbucks sells from a man who supports a gay lifestyle.

What quotes? From the Seattle Times this summer . . .

Maupin's quote — one of several dozen in "The Way I See It" promotion — says his only regret about being gay is that he repressed it for so long.

"I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

How 'bout this? Starbucks is the new trendy hangout, the zocalo, in Mexico City . . .

"Here, even the employees are good-looking and cool," said Starbucks customer Sophia. "I know that the majority of them study at a private university, or at least at a good high school. They also speak perfect English and have traveled to other countries. They are 'ninos fresa' (part of the cool crowd), and some of them are really attractive as well.

Okay, "You are now running on reserve power." I am? Damn.

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

This just came across the wire . . .

Shook the Spot: how is the 914 rocking?
umm hot immigrant bitches: you bounced just in time theres a fucking COYOTE scare!
Shook the Spot: hahahahahah
Shook the Spot: SERIOUSLY???
umm hot immigrant bitches: hahah YEAH yo pamphlets are being distributed. this shit is REAL
Shook the Spot: fuck...YOU see any coyotes?
umm hot immigrant bitches: i mean not yet but my parents are gonna be in philly tonight so it would be the perfect time for them to attack

Thank god for interblog communication. As some douchebag on one of those douchbaggy New York Times commericals just said, "It's sort of a how-to, where-to, when-to . . ." Stay safe, aunty.

HOW HIGH WERE YOU THE OTHER NIGHT?

I was so high that on the drive back from Manhattan to Westchester, we went through Queens . . .

American cities have mulled many creative options in the perpetual fight against homelessness—nay, the homeless. New York City tried putting them all on a boat. Boston tried just making it illegal to not have a home. But Scarsdale has found the most effective solution yet: crush them under the weight of fallen trees . . .

SCARSDALE — The spot he picked for shelter — under a sprawling tree on the grounds of a Colonial-style mansion — was as improbable as it was ineffective.

And after winter's cold killed the 57-year-old drifter, a freak coincidence sent the 100-foot oak toppling over his body during last month's windstorm.

Inside the house at 5 Sherbrooke Road, aging philanthropists Ira and Miriam Wallach were unaware a dead man lay decomposing on their estate until a worker found the man's legs sticking out from under the tree while clearing debris Wednesday.

The man was identified yesterday as Malcolm Pyong Mu Kim . . .

What police do know about Kim isn't much: He's a 57-year-old transient from Korea who immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. His last address was a Korean church in Colorado, which provided him shelter. Before that, he stayed in California and Texas.

Scarsdale police learned he was arrested in Taylor County, Texas, on a trespass charge and used the set of fingerprints taken in that arrest to confirm his identity.

"What was he doing here?" asked Scarsdale police Lt. Bryant Clark. "I still have no idea."

Being homeless, probably. It's a horrible tale, and Scarsdale residents are understandably grieving over Kim's death . . .

"I've never seen a homeless person walking around here, not at least in Scarsdale proper," said Jamie Thaler, 38, a stay-at-home mom from Scarsdale who was shopping at Balducci's gourmet grocery store. "I'm a little disturbed now."

Me, too! (On the bright side, Balducci's is rocking the free samples hard these days. So delish.)

PERNICIOUS, SOUL-CRUSHING TREND ALERT

Comparing circumstances of chance to . . . wait for it . . . Match Point! Here is Jim Fallows, explaining the demise of Legal Affairs magazine in an interview with the Yale Daily News . . .

"It's just like the movie 'Match Point'," said Fallows, a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. "If any number of things had broken the right way rather than the wrong way, it would have worked. It was not at all a problem of how [Legal Affairs] was managed. It just ran out of time to get lucky."

So true! When the tennis ball of rising costs clipped the net of legal journalism, it could have landed on either side of the court . . . of public opinion? It's a wonder that more people haven't whipped out the Match Point analogy. 'Cause it really applies to most any situation. Which is one of the many reasons the movie blows, and why comparing a real-life situation to a tortured metaphor that is itself based on a real-life situation is the dumbest shit ever. FALLOWS! [Shotgun blast]

Is there a good Match Point analogy to be had in the Cheney shooting? "The innocent are sometime slain to make way for grander schemes. You, Whittington, were collateral damage."

[Ring ring, ring ring]

Me: Hello?

Woman on Phone: Hi, is this [horrible mangling of my dad's name]?

Me: No, this is his son. May I ask who's calling?

Woman on Phone: This is Melanie, calling on behalf of the HARVARD COLLEGE PARENTS FUND. Is your father there?

Me [flabergasted, fumbling for a good retort]: You know, hmmm, sorry. Not gonna happen.

Melanie: Okay.

[Click]

Yeah, so clearly, should have come up with something better. But what? Hit up the comments . . .

In this refulgent winter, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. Okaaaaaay, so here goes.

There's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote on one of the gates to Harvard Yard that I would recount here if I had ever bothered to read it. There is also an Emerson quote—"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you"—on the box of Twinings Early Grey tea above our refrigerator. So where does that leave Harvard? A bag of wind, a memory of words?

A hustler, who sleeps next to a latex balloon effigy of myself, passed along the pretentious, third-person wisdom of Henry Adams today . . .

Self-possession was the strongest part of Harvard College, which certainly taught men to stand alone, so that nothing seemed stranger to its graduates than the paroxysms of terror before the public which often overcame the graduates of European universities. Whether this was, or was not, education, Henry Adams never knew. He was ready to stand up before any audience in America or Europe, with nerves rather steadier for the excitement, but whether he should ever have anything to say, remained to be proved. As yet he knew nothing. Education had not begun.

This is education . . .

PENSACOLA — An Escambia County middle school gym teacher let children sit out his class if they paid a $1 bribe daily, netting him perhaps thousands of dollars, officials said Thursday.

And this is the first post on Shook the Spot, which owes its name to Mike Jones. Who? More is sure to come, but I have no idea what. Until then, hustle hard on the block (below, at right) to comment. Everything's relatively anonymous, lest the laws get hot.