Would like one copy of this book and one date with its author for Christmas this year OK thanks:

Stuever may have grown up in a similar Middle American milieu (Oklahoma City), but he’s now a pop culture writer for the Washington Post’s Style section and, furthermore, gay — though if he ever told any of his sources this, he doesn’t convey their response. Instead, he endeavors to insert himself gamely but unobtrusively into the action, helping Jeff with the extension cords, sniffling over a local radio station’s mawkish “Christmas Wish” segments with Tammie and tagging along to the Junior League’s ‘Neath the Wreath holiday bazaar. (Cutesy names are as common as boob jobs in this town.) He’s there when Eitan, a young Israeli working a kiosk at the mall, witnesses the mob assembled for the opening of Santa’s Village: “It’s insane. I have never seen a Santa Claus. He is like Paris Hilton here.”

…

Frisco — most of which was built in the past decade — is a similarly manufactured environment, purportedly everything its residents want in life, yet not the community they choose when it’s time to construct the perfect Christmas town out of little china knickknacks. Without belaboring any of his points, Stuever gently unveils a place where, in celebrating their most iconic holiday, people long for a past that never existed, beguile each other with bogus sentimental yarns, scare themselves with the imaginary menaces lurking “outside” their sanctuary and try to retreat further into a safety that actually bores them stiff. That’s Christmas, American style: a gingerbread house too small and sweet to move into, but we keep trying all the same.

(via and via)

ryanedwardmiller:

I know some people don’t, but I actually sort of like the idea of book trailers.

I know some people don’t, but I actually sort of like Jonathan Safran Foer.

mabelmoments:

spanghew: by Eliot Elisofon. February 1952. (via John McNab)

But, this guy will never not get me home.

ohrohin:

Well. That was wild. I’m sorry if you missed it.

Fucking subway.

Malé International Airport, Maldives

Or, I’m Feeling Lucky.

Arriving in my hands directly from the 1970s, an original piano/guitar/vocal songbook for Court and Spark that my roommate has borrowed indefinitely from his employer.  This is a real treasure.  I lost a more recent Joni Mitchell anthology songbook years ago and my ears are not as good as they used to be, so I’m pretty excited to learn some new stuff!

The whole package is terrific - a few black & whites of the lady by Norman Seeff, followed by some lovely interstitial and miscellaneous shots by someone with the remarkable name Saint-Jivago Desanges.  I guess it originally came with a fold-out poster, but this one is missing.  If it were here I’d put it up on my bedroom wall.  I’m a teenager around this music.

An “E” and “S” missing because of burned-out lights on a sign at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens left an unintended message.

Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

(via)

Happy Birthday Bjork!  Here is a horrible remix of ‘Pagan Poetry’ for you!

Paparazzi (Moto Blanco edit), Lady Gaga

YES I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS.  Twenty-seven is the new twink, right?  See you at Posh.

pleasedontsqueezetheshaman:

Looks like Tori Amos finally exploded.

James Franco’s GH debut (start at 5:45).  I’m a Days girl, but this is really delightful.

(via)

interweber:

10 Amazing Quotes From Coolio’s New Cookbook, Cookin’ with Coolio, Which, Yes, Really Exists

Pretty sure we’ll be potlucking for the Christmas party only out of this guy.

ohrohin:

via bulicks:

ohrohin:

Anyone?

(Anyone at all?)

Billymarks West, one hour.

Oh, is that a Washington Heights area favorite? (Kidding. I realize Chelsea isn’t that far north.)

Well we’d come find you in ‘North Brooklyn,’ but we don’t know where that is.

ohrohin:

Anyone?

(Anyone at all?)

Billymarks West, one hour.