Vince Foster, phone your office. The Enron thing is about to get MUCH uglier. And CNN (among others) ought to be ashamed of themselves, leading their alleged news site with the “Hockey Dad” sentencing and not this.

Am I laughing? Am I crying? Is this child not the most self-important little schnorrer you’ve ever read? I am afraid, I am afraid, of turbo-powered egos in 17-year-olds who will not content themselves with belly shirts and world concert tours…

Speaking as a once and future zine publisher and a cynical, embittered observer of the business of journalism (heavy on the business, light on the journalism), I have to say I love this kid and would be honored to split a bottle of Maalox with him. In unfortunately related news, MIchael Wolff’s gleeful-yet-reasoned obituary for Talk punctuates the end of that sentence perfectly (I regularly referred to Talk as the magazine that you felt like you’d already read — “for hip and intelligent people” my ass, it was for the same annoying Upper West Side Manhattanites that any of these vanity-lit projects are), while Tina Herself [tm] claims that the terrorists have won, so to speak.

I’m pretty sure this is a sign of the Apocalyspe. And I beg to differ with the would-be murder victim: Madame, your grandchildren are horrible kids.

When I was a freshman in college, my roommate and I used to drive around LA until dawn. One night we went exploring the glorious ruins of the Ambassador, which are glamourous even in dereliction. We wandered all around until we got caught by an ancient, ancient guard, who upon finding that we were there to pay our respects rather than to trash the place gave us a tour of a hotel he clearly loved very much. It shimmers in its history. It is magical. Ms. Benjamin is extremely fortunate, and not just in the way that teaches one to appreciate caviar in one’s preteens. Read the story.

Ooh, one of my favorite hobby horses is in the news: American Airlines pilots may be evil (we covered this last month in the screw-with-the-Secret-Service-dude post), but they ain’t stupid: Airbus really does suck. Why, Lord, why did the French not stick to cheese and wine and sauces? Are they kidding? Won’t you say?

Umm, okay…

Because none of us can get enough of those wacky coincidences (did you miss the 4:20 discussion?) check out these Titanic-Challenger parallels. Come on, folks, I’ll bet if we all think really hard we can come up with more; three’s kind of weak…

In some deep and ineffable way, this is Seattle in a nutshell, good and bad, the whole Ivar Dog. Beyond that, of course, I’m still coping with the idea that the Harlem Globetrotters once played theoretically competitive ball.

Frankly I’m damned if I know what this is, but I suddenly have the strangest feeling I wasted my time going to college when I could have just gone online instead.