The NYSun says there’s a wacky e-mail going around suggesting that the first car of every subway train … well, read for yourself:

Thousands of New Yorkers are now forwarding an anonymous e-mail to each other informing them that from now on, every first subway car has been declared ãthe singles car.ä

(Bonus points for naming the song and artist referenced in the title, above.)

I found myself this evening standing in an around-the-block line at the New York debut of Jaguar, Mac OS X.2. Why? Just looking. And because I have a homebrew Wintel computer that I built to record music, but which I’ve spent two orders of magnitude more time fixing than doing music. That’s time not doing music, not editing video, not duplicating discs. When I hit the power switch, I never know if the damn thing is going to boot. That’s just unacceptable.

Today, it didn’t. Again.

And boy, them Macs sure look purty.

 

Meg Hourihan has an excellent piece on the O’Reilly Network about another way to use weblogs to make money: use them as a promotional tool. Meg oughta know — she’s one of the founders of the company that came up with the popular Blogger software.

Practiced PR pros know, of course, that sponsored content is hardly new. But Meg expands on the concept in some valuable and interesting ways.

Rep. Bob Barr, the Republican congressman who led the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, lost his primary today. It wasn’t even close. Because of redistricting, Barr was up against Rep. John Linder, whose style is somewhat more sedate. From a late Tuesday/early Wednesday NYTimes piece:

Mr. Linder, 59, a former dentist and business executive whose phlegmatic style was a sharp contrast to Mr. Barr’s sizzle, had, at times, made his steady demeanor an issue in the campaign. During one debate, Mr. Linder said to his opponent, “I will remind you that I am the one who has been married for 39 years to the same woman,” a subtle criticism of Mr. Barr, 53, who is in his third marriage.

 

NASA says it can’t read minds after all, though I frankly find this denial less than fully convincing.

 

From Ernie the Attorney:

Law Firm pays $3,000/month for associates to not work – I’m not making this up.  Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison is offering to pay some first-year associates as much as $3,000 per month not to show up for work until January 2004.

I like it!

If law schools are turning out too many qualified students, maybe I could get someone to pay me to not go to law school in the first place. And lord knows journalism schools and music academies are turning out more students than there are jobs; maybe I can get some of their money to stay away, too…

 

Journalists spend a ton of time bitching about PR reps; some of it is even justified. So it’s always encouraging to find a successful attempt at PR cluefulness, like this dispatch from the Public Relations Society of America about how to pitch to weblogs and their authors.

 

The other day, Olivia, the twins, and I were making an expedition to the marvelous Fairway up in Harlem. While she was attending to a call of nature, I was charged with keeping an eye on our two carts, each containing an 8-month-old boy strapped into a car seat.

Those of you who have met them are aware that the twins are adorable young men, even on their infrequent bad days. This particular day was not one of those bad ones, and they were being especially engaging and charming. As we waited, by the coffee kiosk at the west end of the Goya aisle, a procession of five extraordinarly attractive young women passed by, stopping to ogle and coo at the kids, who were more than happy to ogle and coo right back. (The women spared a smile for their dad, too — who also was more than happy to ogle and coo right back.)

Observing this thoughtfully from a few feet away was a 30-ish Fairway employee, his white smock  covering his jeans to mid-calf. “Hmmm,” he said, not quite to himself, after the crowd had moved on. “So that‘s what they’re into these days…”

 

 “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
                                         — P. J. O’Rourke

This may be true, but it’s pretty clear that legislators — on the national level, anyway — are being bought and sold anyway.

 

Bell-ringer of a piece by Todd Purdum in today’s NYTimes. Nominally, it’s about a master class given by Broadway legend Barbara Cook. More deeply, it’s about what means to stand on stage and sing — and it’s a complete bullseye.

Best graf is the last, which I need to post on every surface that I ever look at:

“To be as authentic as we know how to be at the moment, so that we can be more and more present in what we do.” she said in the interview. “The more we can do that, the safer we are. The problem is it feels most dangerous, because what I ask people to do is in effect undress emotionally, so that’s very frightening and new. But this very thing that seems most dangerous is where safety lies.”