Pure Twaddle

The Columbia Journalism of Review is running a great piece about the ridiculous heights network TV newsreader salaries have reached. To wit:

…Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one.

And further down, a solid point:

What’s striking is how little notice this received in the flood of coverage of Sawyer’s appointment. With the notable exception of Jack Shafer in Slate, who cheekily urged Sawyer to turn down the job “and persuade ABC News to divert the millions it ordinarily pays its anchor and spend it on 50 or 80 additional reporters to break stories,”

So perhaps it’s a myth that good journalism has to be expensive.

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It’s Friday (actually Saturday) and I’m lazy. Here are some YouTube beat boxers, from best to worst:

Gypsy Rhythm Machine Crazy Beatbox - Watch more Funny Videos

I can’t find this guy anywhere online. Is he homeless?

This guy is good, but he obviously didn’t win whatever obscure TV contest this is.

This guy’s good, but his collection of narcissistic series of videos worries me.

These are drunk Spaniards who were surprised by dawn and sangria.

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As we all know, Kanye is a self-absorbed waterhead without a thought filter on his mouth. His stupid interruption of the WMA awards revealed his coarseness. Everything that could have been said about the incident has been said (though some more insightful than others) and, barring any more ridiculous outbursts from Kanye, this matter should die a quick death.

What is noteworthy, however, is the complete inability to find the actual video on YouTube. A simple search reveals pages and pages of what seem to be the actual video, but then turn out to be vapid commentaries by anonymous people from across the blogos-net. Each one talks about how rude the interruption was and how he/she is outraged by Kanye’s actions. And yet, here we have thousands of people using this very transgression to further their own internet stardom. So much so that even the original video isn’t even readily available on the most popular video sharing site.

We’re only a few years away from Ruby Rhod, folks.

There’s only one thing that can keep growing without nourishment: the human ego.

—Marshall Lumsden

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I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it looks like the central source for hipster satire and transplant hate, diehipster.com, is dead. Is this a nefarious plan perpetrated by some hipster who has finally had it? Has Brooklyn been nuked from orbit and I’m only just finding out? What is the American Apparel connection?

Beware those who poke fun at the weak-willed and poorly dressed of Brooklyn. They, too, will come for you.

(Or perhaps their hosting company has just hit the “website off” button.)

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One of the questions that has plagued me since the advent this digital age: are there really this many screwed up people in the world, or did the internet just make them more visible?

From Craigslist.org NYC:

“young jabba the hut looking for a temporary apartment, prefers something cool and damp, like a basement, and most preferably near washer and dryer (he loves the smell!) also he is neat and tidy (get him now before he becomes a huge ball of slime) and likes to fall asleep being read love poetry, preferably in arabic though fractured french is also accepted. good cuddler, too, and just so darn cute. check out the artist’s rendering: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearandbird/3707464588/in/set-72157621227964172/“

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Sadly another month without regular internet at home. No matter. I’ve been on a book-buying binge ever since I found a Salvation Army and a used book store within walking distance of my flat; this is dangerous for a bibliophile like me. I knew I hit rock-bottom when I bought an obscure Umberto Ecco novel from a dodgy man in Union Square. Who knows what I could have caught!

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Actual Craigslist sublet title:

$550 very specious Brooklyn apt. to share

At least they’re honest, just like my previous spammer.

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The Washington Post has a front-page story complaining about the low quality of food in Paris. What are well-to-do Washington Post journalists to do? I say, let them eat cake!

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I live a monkish lifestyle. I sleep on a futon mattress in a room smaller than my dorm room back in twenty-aught-three. I have a desk but no chair. I have a window but no air. I like to pretend I’ve taken a vow of poverty to cleanse my spirit; but really my penury stems from external causes (mainly my liberal arts degree).

There is one thing I have not missed from the affluent life: television;  more specifically, cable news. Here are two examples:

CNN’s coverage of Barney Frank’s town hall meeting:

and Fox’s coverage:

Who to trust? Neither. Turn off the TV and pick up a newspaper. Then give it to me so I can use it as insulation when the winter comes.

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(Scene: Friday, 2 a.m. underground at a Brooklyn subway station. The hallway is sparsely populated by a few lone late-night revelers.)

(Enter a large, lumbering, black woman from stage right)

LLBW: (addresses Stranger 1 loudly in Carribean accent): Have you SEEN the light of Jesus Christ?!

Stranger 1: Uh, no. (Exits stage right)

LLBW: (to Stranger 2): Have YOU seen the LIGHT of Jesus Christ?!

Stranger 2: Sure… (Quickly exits stage right)

(Your Hero enters from stage left)

LLBW: (To Your Hero) HAVE you SEEN the LIGHT OF CHRIST?!

YH: Nope.

LLBW: (Enraged, screaming) I WIPE MY FILTHY HANDS ON YOU! (Wipes imaginary muck on Your Hero’s sleeve)

YH: ( Looks around to see if anyone else witnessed this. To himself) What the f…?

LLBW: (Exits stage left; To unseen stranger) Have you SEEN the light of Christ?!

Fin

——

Seriously, you can’t make up this kind of action. New York is the strangest place on earth.

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