Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

extremely original facebook-status updates from my network, posted during tonight's debate

In Chronological Order, from the most recent:

1. Mr. V "is mad that Joe the plumber just charged me 250,000 to unclug a drain."
    COMMENT: "I want his publicist. Dude's gonna be on Entourage next week."
2. MS. X "is watching the debate. thank you dvr. thank you."
2. MS. Y "thinks an angry old man sitting across the table from world leaders is NOT something I want."
3. MS. A "wouldn't call Palin a "role model" for this woman."
4. MR. C "is wondering if anyone knows a good plumber."
    COMMENT: "Plumbers do not pay taxes. They get paid in cash. And like waiters, they do not declare and pay taxes on a good portion of their independent income. Most plumbers make more than teachers, police, or fireman. So the candidates should have picked a teacher or lumberjack or barrista as an example"
5. MS. A "pro-choice doesn't mean pro-abortion, a-hole."
6. MS. F "thinks Obama is a class act."
7. MS. T "is thinking McCain doesn't know he's on split-screen."
8. MS. E "thinks McCain looks and sounds desperate"
9. MS. F " is amazed at Obama's restraint."
10. MS. F "wants to know what the Great Society was... I must not have been paying attention in American history."
11. MS. F "thinks McCain is really grasping..."
12. MS. G "is debate."
13. MR. V "is not going to hold back when watching the debates."
14. MS. J "knows her autistic kid is in good hands with Sarah because she 'understands special-needs children.'"

10 days since updating anything on Facebook, and I have to say, I feel such so clogged with  unexpressed emotion, I just don't know what to do...

too many connections

interlude

THE CHIPS ARE FALLING.

forget the desert: moses was all about the waterfront

"Try to see it my way" or "Welcome to LA, Rock-band mediator edition"

dfw

"There's part of me that wants to get attention and respect. It doesn't really make very much difference to me. Because I learned in my 20's that it just doesn't change anything. And that whatever you get paid attention for is never the stuff that you think is important about yourself anyway. So a lot of my problems right now is that I don't really have a brass ring. And I'm kind of open to suggestions as to what one chases. There are real abstract ideas about, you know, what art can be, the redemptive quality of art, and you know, kindness to animals. All the cliches that we can invoke. But ...the people who most interest me now are the people who are old and who have sort of been through a midlife criss. They tend to get weird, because the normal incentives for getting out of bed don't tend to apply anymore. I have not found any satisfactory new ones. But I'm also not getting ready to jump off a building or anything."

David Foster Wallace, 3/27/97

shallot origins, or old family records sometimes yield more than tales about ridiculous grudges

vintage shallot

When I was just getting started and the Atkins diet was everywhere, I did a little humor piece for McSweeney's. But in the spirit of a doctor who just told me to cut out carbs--are we really that advanced Mr. Cedars?--let's reminisce from the days of meat.

REVIEWS OF NEW FOOD
"Atkins Beanit Butter"

by Adam Baer

You're fat. You need to lose weight. You eat too much, but there's certainly got to be a way around that. At least that's what you thought when you started Atkins. But now you're finding that the mesmerizing tray of salted chicken-thighs glistening in the Ron Popeil Showtime Rotisserie isn't enough for a solo low-carb dinner. Your three-pound chuck steak family-pack, broiled to perfection, is flying right though you by the beginning of Must-See-TV. Your $9 block of Parmesan is light fare, despite your cardiologist-brother's characterization of it as "the most potent mass of cholesterol I have ever seen anyone ingest." You need something to really stick to your ribs. But you can't gorge yourself on PB&Js like you did when you ditched ninth-grade chem lab to run back to your house and binge while attacking your father's porn collection. You've made a "mature decision" about how you will "view food" and the "act of eating." And that's where Atkins Beanit Butter comes in. With less than one gram of "Net Carbs" per two-tablespoon serving, there's no stopping your nostalgia for tongue-slathering Skippy. Gorge on the nut-buttery goodness of this high-protein soy product and feel completely at ease that you haven't cheated on your new, disciplined "lifestyle choice." Spreadable on new Atkins Bran-A-Crisps, and a perfect lead-in to a bowl of Atkins Nutlettes—the "crunchy crispy" cereal-and-milk-flavored treat sweetened with the low-glycemic "Sugar Not" for those carb-controllers hankering to revisit memories of midnight dorm-room Fruit Loops.

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Also check out "Vote for me: A Commodore 64"--a humor piece back when we thought Obama was a Mac! (For the record, all forms of computers are hating me this week, and I work on PCs but hate Vista.)

why everyone loves my alma mater (at least in hollywood and baltimore)

Because it looks the part. (You know, once you make it past all the faux-yuppification into the still-rougher-than-South Bronx crimes scenes.)

yvette siegert: benching books from times square with zeal

Yvette Siegert, the young and exceedingly talented Columbia instructor, poet, and New Yorker editorial staff member, has finally been given a public forum in the form of, yes, a blog. New Yorker blogs may be obvious references, but what you should know about Siegert, the author of The Book Bench, is that she's not only a voracious and reliable book-scene correspondent; she's eminently qualified to tell us the backstories behind the books while remaining highly literate in the world literature field and so damn likable that you would never go wrong following her advice about what to read. Way to go, New Yorker! You've got a blogger who will literally change the way the magazine reaches the online book world and the readers to whom it caters. See The Book Bench as soon as possible, and watch for much, much more from Shallot friend Siegert.