Here I sit, broken hearted.

The job of America's Poet Laureate pays 35 thousand dollars per annum. Traditionally, our poets laureate are plucked from a pool of tenured English professors, to whom that stipend may seem like a stingy smidgen. But it's better than double the minimum wage, and to a whole lot of un- or under-employed citizens that might seem like pretty good pay for what you have to do, which ain't much. Sure easier than mowing lawns or cleaning hotel rooms. Why not fill the position through a nationally televised talent contest? I'll bet the winner would be a young man from Nantucket.

My money's on the blonde

I recently had occasion to do research that had me following links that led to references to a pair of late-'80s teen girl singers named Tiffany and Debbie Gibson and I was pretty sure they meant either Britney or Debbie Boone but I checked and, nope, I was wrong, these are different people altogether and while the only thing Tiffany and Debbie Gibson have in common with Britney and Debbie Boone is that I don't really know what any of them sound like, I for one would pay good money to see all four in a TV wrestling cage match.

Now Joss Whedon wants a Nobel.

I'm the kind of guy, I never win anything. I wasn't hopeful when I filled out the little slip of paper at the Nix Library with my best estimate of the number of Rice Chex in a candy jar on the desk. I won by a mile. The head librarian tells me I got it within a single Rice Check, while nobody else got even close. I got a box of Rice Krispies treats as my prize. They're all gone. I ate them up and did not share. They tasted sweet, like victory. Bet that's how David Simon feels.

pompadour & circumstance

If it hadn't been for Tony Curtis, Elvis probably would have retired from driving truck for Crown Electric in 2000, bought a little trailer on an acre or two near Tupelo. Because it was always the hair, wasn't it, the loops and whorls, the improbable glistening rivulets and distributaries, the whole gleaming artifice of pomades and waxes and perfumed unguents, the jet black shining edifice springing from the brow like some vaselined Athena, an ebon rostral projection emerging from the faultless sculpted helm. They don't have hair like that now. It can't be done ironically, nor made to look accidental.