Lancelot Links

Friday May 20, 2011

Lancelot Links

“If there�s a Jewish Miami Cuban homo out there, then that person should rule the world.” Why I love Dan Savage.
Why I love Paul Simon. During a Toronto show, a woman in the crowd asked him to play “Duncan,” from his self-titled 1971 album, adding she learned to play the guitar with that song. What does he do? Invites her on stage, talks to her over the roar of the crowd, takes off his guitar and straps it to her. And she, and the band, play the song. NPR calls it a moment of pure sobbing joy. It is.
Oliver Willis on “Why Obama Matters to Black America: High School Graduation Edition.” Great effin' picture.�
“A restaurant is like a shark, it has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we've got on our hands is ... a dead shark.” Right: No more Elaine's.
Alex Pareene, inspired by Don Trump, gives us five political books doomed before publication, but the one I want to read, for a laugh, didn't even make his top 5: “The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy.” That and $200,000 will help you break even on your underwater mortgage. That and $8 trillion will bring the national debt back to Clinton-era numbers. That and a job will help you get a job.
Back in Law & Politics days, whenever there was a disagreement over commas, apostrophes, capitalization, I'd always ask the managing editor, Mike or Jessica, “What does AKC say? Do what she says.” AKC is Anne Kelley Conklin, our copy editor back then, and the Omar Vizquel of copy editors (she made every play), who now has a must-read blog about all the many ways we're effin' up the English language. I'm anxious to read it everyday. Every day? Still waiting on that post, AKC.
Our foreign correspondent, Andy Engelson, sees where Tea Party tax-cutting measures, like those in Colorado Springs, will invariably lead us. It's the new Vietnamization.
The 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which Jon Stewart helped get passed, has a special master: Sheila Birnbaum of Skadden Arps, whom we profiled, or Phil Dray profiled, two years ago in New York Super Lawyers magazine. It's a good article. Here's a work-day post about it all.
Finally, as a run-up to bike-to-work day (today), The Seattle Times' Danny Westneat ponders the supposed cyclist/motorist contretemps in Seattle with a comical shrug. Love this quote from Tom Fucoloro, 25, of seattlebikeblog.com. “Most of us are not riding bikes to make a statement or to be negative or to wage war. We're just doing it to ride our bikes.”