Via New York Shitty:

check it out, whynot? www.timdonnelly.com. It just screams “hire me for your special projects investigations desk/hip young sarcastic magazine” doesn’t it?

Walk Around the Blog: Brokelyn.com: Want to find a great freebie on craigslist, or the perfect way to shop and save? Brokelyn bloggers can hook you up! The online magazine's mission is to celebrate Brooklyn, no matter how crummy the economy gets. We take a look at how they uncover the hidden deals on this Walk around the Blog. From Brooklyn Independent Television's Brooklyn Review, episode 37. Original a … Read More

via BRIC Community Media

See also: Hipster Gandalf. And

If modern comedy has a movement against the oppression of staid and soul-crushing pop comedy, CDR is its Radio Free Europe.

If you aren’t listening to it, your life is probably more unpleasant and unfunny than you realize. The free-wheeling improv conversations and character bits are whimsical catnip for the brain, and the guest stars (from Weird Al and Patton Oswalt to Garfunkle & Oates and Aziz Ansari) all sound like old friends just making funny in someone’s living room. But the real highlight is the characters: keep your ears out for Bill Cosby Bukowski (creator of jello-etry), El Chupacabra and Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

For more, check out splitsiders Seriously Comprehensive Guide to Comedy Podcasts.

(thx to Conal for turning me on to this last year)

But here’s one no one explicitly tells you in J school: become an expert at charming secretaries.

I don’t mean you should do this disingenuously: in addition to being the gatekeepers to the town managers, representatives, lawyers or other decision makers, secretaries are often the friendliest people you’ll meet while navigating the commonly cantankerous quarters of city hall. They’re most likely not directly engaged in the actual decision making so your probing won’t threaten to thrust them into the spotlight. But they know where to find things and how to get people on the phone and  — most importantly — they’re the only one standing between your message and the desk of the person you’re trying to reach.

They’re also often stressed and under-appreciated, with no one stopping to ask about their day. Just little touches of friendliness will win them over to your side.

Secretaries: the key to any scrappy young reporter’s heart.

This also ensure you’re doing the other key lesson you should have learned in J school: getting off your ass, get out of the office and go report.

Just a thought.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

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3. New Chipotle burrito and where to get it
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5. blog piracy? [Jaws music]
6. On the 6 train, they came to snuff the rooster
7. BK TORNADO ATTACKS EVERYONE, UNLEASHES BILL PAXTON NOSTALGIA
8. ValenTimes Day Happy: ‘Let’s do it AP Style’
9. VIDEO: Tim Gunn and Charlie Beckerman make Hulk feel angry, démodé
10. A decade without meat

In pop music, you have this rarefied echelon of songs that start with the artists’ loyal following, slip into mainstream play and suddenly become ubiquitous at sporting events, BBQs, bar jukeboxes, and even the iPod nano your mother takes to the gym. See: Outkast’s “Hey Ya,” Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle,” Feist’s “1234.” Contrast this to any song from the Black Eyed Peas or Smashmouth, which seem to be constructed solely with the intent of seeing how many commercials and between-inning stadium pumping-up they could profit from.

Even rarer is the strata that “Hey Ya” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” occupy which, despite an unrelenting assault of repetitiveness after hitting the mainstream, are strong enough to hold against the wear and tear of overplay. Even on the 100th listen at University of Maryland basketball games in 2004, “Hey Ya” still got people out of their seats and singing along. It was just that good.

Cee-Lo’s new song, the title of which instructs you to forcibly have sex with yourself, may have brilliantly built in an automatic defense against overplay. Simply put: you’re not going to find many sports events, TV commercials or mainstream top-40 radio stations that are going to let Mr. Green tell his ex and her new beau to get effed at the top of his lungs. The artistry of the song is just as good as “Crazy,” and it’s possibly even more catchy. And the profanity is so integral to the song’s success that a watered down edited version would be a moot point to the millions of people who lost their mind about it on the internet in just the first week of its release.

The genius may go even deeper. Billboard reports today that an edited version of the song will be making its way to radio soon. It’s called “Forget You,” and you can hear it here from the BBC’s Trevor Nelson show (skip ahead to the 52-minute mark). Compared to the original, it sucks. The whole crux of the song is the wining soul of a scorned lover. The way he drops the F bomb isn’t casual; it’s a remote-guided patriot missile using the latest navigation technology.

So even if the watered down version gets an intense amount of radio play (how could it not? What else is out there, anyway?), “Fuck You” will still be the true song, and it won’t be forced down our throats at every turn. Gaining this kind of instant following and broad penetration would be impossible in the days when artists relied on radio and album sales to spread their music. F You would be buried on the album somewhere, enjoyed mostly by devoted fans who bought the full release.

I like to think Cee Lo did this on purpose. Overplay ruins a song faster than anything else. I was amazed this week while taking a road trip in a rental car with no audio choice but to turn on the radio, that Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” was still in heavy rotation. STILL. I was already sick of hearing this song before Beavis and Butthead even premiered. And yet stations think people still want to hear this, at least a few times a day?

Cee-Lo might be throwing a bone to economics by releasing a radio-friendly version. But the fact that the original he put online last week was such an instant success is kind of a jab at the mainstream music ecosystem, especially since he did it through a text-only video that maximizes the impact of the words. Sure, he said, I’ll make money off hearing this song on CSI’s credits or on Starbucks radio. But for the way I really feel, you’ll have to listen to this one on your own terms.

I might be able to still handle hearing “Jeremy” if we had this option 18 years ago.

From a rather bland story called “Grounded” in Superman #700, in which a woman pushes through a crowd to slap Supes in the face for (seriously) being off-planet and not knowing that he should have saved her husband’s inoperable brain tumor with his x-ray vision and heat vision.

Then he like stops flying and starts walking, or something.

happy wedding Lisa

TOO Day in once upon a Simpsons timeline, Lisa was supposed to have aged enough to be married to a Hugh Grant clone. Think about that, and now you feel 157 years old. A sunday wedding!

From season 6, episode 19, 1995.

Other things that were supposed to have occurred by Simpsons 2010:

Bart married and divorced three times

World War III

Scientists discovering a cure for 15 stab wounds in the back (but not quite 17)

Lisa and Millhouse did it

Things that actually have happened:

Video phones

Holographic trees