Entries from October 2008 ↓

All hail the Queen: Photo by Robert Maxwell for The New York Times

Is Queen Latifah gay?

Her flattering and attentive profile in this past weekend’s Sunday New York Times Magazine detailed many aspects of her professional life and career: Over thirty films, two years as host of her own talk show, Grammy-nominated albums, an Oscar nod, her landmark endorsement with Cover Girl, a thriving management business.

But it also raised the question that has attended the Queen, aka Dana Owens, and her reign, almost as long as she’s been in the public eye: Is she a lesbian?

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Did I speak too soon when, two weeks ago, I wistfully blogged that that I wanted to live a year in Iceland, below?

It sure appears so, with the announcement yesterday that—gulp—the whole country is on the verge of “wholesale economic collapse.”

Wrote The London Times,

Queues formed at petrol stations as Icelanders rushed to fill up before reported fuel shortages, while savers who tried to withdraw money from banks or sell bank shares on the internet found websites were not working. …

Sources said that Landsbanki and the country’s third-biggest bank, Glitner, will soon be fully nationalised, while Kaupthing had been forced to take state loans.

Can you imagine?

But the man I want to talk to this morning is James Surowiecki, from The New Yorker‘s financial page. In an April 21 piece—April! Six months ago!—he wrote these words:

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The New York Times zooms in on a little-discussed mode by which people, often unconsciously, abuse senior citizens, namely elderspeak. It’s

the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people: the doctor who talks to their child rather than to them about their health; the store clerk who assumes that an older person does not know how to work a computer, or needs to be addressed slowly or in a loud voice. Then there are those who address any elderly person as “dear.”

My least favorite form of this practice is when a person refers to an obviously aged woman as “young lady.” However, overall,

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Still confused by Sarah Palin’s performance in the debate, despite Tina Fey’s clarfiying parody? Couldn’t shake the feeling she was getting her answers from a lower intelligence in an alternate dimension?

Aden Nak’s brilliant ph33r and loathing blog is about to make it all clear as the space between the Alaskan governor’s ears: From his “Moosehunter” post: Sarah Palin’s debate cheat sheet, above.

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Chances are this will never make the TV news: According to an estimate by Eric De Place of Sightline Daily, “every cent of Africa’s crushing debt” could be retired for $350 billion. (The sum was actually estimated at $320B by the U.N. in 2003, so De Place just adds another $30 billion to make a round number. It could be higher, or lower.)

Now, that would leave $350 billion. Working from this figure, De Place then states,

You could install solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion. …

We could install ground source heat pumps for 5 million American homes for $50 billion.

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As evident to anyone whose been watching Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live Sarah Palin parodies, like this weekend’s wide rip on the debate, above, the comedienne is destroying the Republican VP nominee. She does it by creating take-offs on the Alaskan governor’s goofy regular-gal-isms and studied folksiness that border on performance art. If Fey keeps it up, watch if she doesn’t get the Emmy, Twain, and Pulitzer, all in one glorious shot.

Seeing the video for Alanis Morrissette’s “Thank U,” above, released ten years ago today, is probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to a religious experience while considering a piece of popular art.

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That’s what humorist Sarah Silverman, above, says she’s going to do if Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States. It’s all caught on tape in the racially prickly, mildly NSFW political promo, The Great Schlep. Schlep is an effort by JewsVote.org, itself a project of the Jewish Council for Education & Research (JCER).

Its noble ends? “The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor.”

(Schlep, for non-Yiddish speakers, means to carry, or drag. So, the idea, as the stylish logo, right, may indicate, is that young Jews from across the nation—moving by plane, train, and automobile—congregate en masse in Florida, between now and Election Day, and persuade their oldest living ancestors to vote for Obama.)

Huh?

This is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.

I mean, first of all, why Florida, as opposed to any other state, and why does the geriatric Sephardic demographic require a special effort, of this unique kind: one made by, of all people, their own grandkids?

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I was at the book party, Tuesday, for colleagues Cey Adams’ and Bill Adler’s upcoming tome DEFinition: The Art and Design of Hip-Hop, which outlines the history of graphic art in the form. (I’d urged Cey to do a book about this topic easily a decade-and-a-half before, based on the work his company, The Drawing Board, was doing in the early ’90s for pretty much everything that left Def Jam in those years. I even strategized on how we might do it together, so I’m glad that it finally exists.)

There were many faces in the house I’d not seen in a month o’ Sundays, more I’d never met before, and hugs all around, but easily the most startling reunification was with rapper Positive K, above, who I’d not run into since, well, since I was talking to Cey about doing a book on rap music and graphic design.

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Pretty much anything Disney does in animation these days is annoying. But the trailer, above, for Bolt, out Nov. 26, is pretty good. It’s about a television superhero dog who escapes the set of his show for the real world, but doesn’t realize he’s actually an actor with no special powers. As one writer noted, think The Truman Show meets Ol’ Yeller. Plus, try and take your eyes off the skittish and impressionable hamster.