Saturday, in Wisconsin.

"In what will surely go down in history as one the greatest architectural blunders..."

"... the town of Benidorm in Alicante, Spain, had almost completed its 47-story skyscraper when it realized it excluded plans for elevator shafts."

And I thought the blunder was that the building looks like a giant pair of pants. No elevators, eh?

ADDED: Apparently, the blunder is only looking like a giant pair of pants.

CNN's Hillary Clinton documentary is making "life more difficult" for Candy Crowley, who's keen on maintaining the separation between journalism and partisan politics.

"You can say all you want, this is a commissioned documentary from people who are not in the employ of CNN. It’s not me. It’s not Wolf Blitzer. It’s not John King. It’s an outside documentary group. But we’re with CNN and so this is not a story where the nuances are well-received, particularly by Republicans."

She ought to know about nuances that Republicans don't receive well, like that nuanced occasion when she was supposed to be moderating a debate between 2 presidential candidates and the Democrat was getting cornered so she fought on his side.

If the NY sales tax exempts "dramatic or musical art performances," can it deny that exemption to strip club dancers?

The state, arguing that there's no "genuine choreographic dance performance," won in the state's highest court, but only by 4-3. The strip club, Nite Moves, is seeking U.S. Supreme Court review, saying government shouldn't be the judge of the "relative 'value' of the speech."

Once dancing counts as speech within the meaning of freedom of speech, what sense does it make to speak of a "genuine choreographic dance performance"? What is "genuineness" in dance? What does "choregraphic" mean other than "dance"? The (unlinkable) OED defines "choreography" to mean "The art of dancing." The oldest use of the word in English is:

1782   C. Burney Gen. Hist. Music II. 50   In Choregraphy, an art invented about two hundred years ago to delineate the figures and steps of dances.

Would a strip club with a more rigorously planned set of dance moves — less spontaneity — get an exemption?

Pictures from the first walk on the new floor.

After 8 hours of drying time, I put on socks and walked out onto the new floor:

"It's just nuts. It's crazy." Why are you texting and driving?

Please watch this half-hour documentary. Made by the great film director Werner Herzog:

The floor project, Day 5, continued.

It's like watching paint dry...



... but more intensely fragrant.

"Eight staffers at Cory Booker's tech start-up have started looking for new jobs as the company is expected to shutter."

"The video aggregation company is said to be losing cash quickly and it is supposedly being kept alive through early November so that it's closure doesn't hurt Booker's chances at winning the New Jersey Senate race."

(We were talking about Booker and his company Waywire yesterday, here.)

Chicago Public Schools provides "safe passage" maps for school kids...

... to help them deal with new school assignments after the closing of 47 schools and to soothe parental worries about children crossing rival gang territories and vacant buildings and lots.

Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said... “This is nothing new.... Kids have been crossing gang lines for years to go to school. We have a program in place that’s very clearly worked. We’re doing more of it this year based upon the school closings."...

Because so many schools closed this year, CPS added nearly $8 million to the program and is hiring an additional 600 people to escort students along designated safety routes....

The floor project, Day 5.

It's all over but the drying.



It will be ready to walk on in 8 hours, and we've got an 8 day break before we move the furniture back. So... ideas for things to do on a big, empty, shiny new floor. Don't say bowling!

"We are fuming - this person acted terribly wrong. We are sorry this happened to @oprah!."

So tweets the Swiss Tourism office after Oprah cries racism when a shopgirl deems a $38,000 handbag "too expensive" and steers her toward other merchandise. Racism has many manifestations, some terribly subtle. Who can tell the difference between a rich lady in don't-you-know-who-I-am mode crushing a humble retail employee and a woman imbued with racial memory vindicating centuries of suffering by perceiving the last nuance of insult?

"I may yet get married — statistically 90% of people get married at some point."

"But I would say that love and craziness has overwhelmed my life, and I am trying to write about it, and at the same time tell the story of New York City from 1609 to the present."

So writes Elizabeth Wurtzel, as quoted and diminished by Amanda Hess. Wurtzel writes about herself — and whatever else goes into the old talking-about-me grinder, like, apparently, the history of NYC — and Hess asserts "Wurtzel’s work has veered, Cat Marnell style, into the realm of self-help," then critiques Wurtzel for not giving good self-help. Is that fair? Maybe I haven't read enough Wurzel — here's here Reddit "Ask Me Anything" — but what I hear her saying is: I'm the wild bohemian, this is something I am deep in my soul and you are not and can never be, and therefore I am the writer and you are the ones who must read me, read me, read me.

Speaking of self-help, I wish I could help myself not to Google "Cat Marnell."

How big law firms entertain summer associates.

They really do try, apparently, even during these troubled times. Above the Law nominates 6 law firm entertainment events for the best of the summer of '13, and you can vote for the best. I voted.

"Feminism, in short, doesn't just empower women. It empowers me."

"It allows me to take on roles that have traditionally been associated with women. It gives me more flexibility in my career. As a man, feminism has had a huge positive effect on my life. It seems like the least I can do in return is own it."

Writes Noah Berlatsky under the heading "All the Selfish Reasons to Be a Male Feminist," posted at Slate's XXfactor. He's certainly not telling us all the selfish reasons, since I can think of at least one additional reason: You can get your free-lance writing published at Slate's XXfactor.

Berlatsky talks about having a wife with a full-time job and health insurance benefits and his own role as primary caregiver for their child while he does his writing, and that catches my eye, because it's the family life I had from 1981 to 1987. He says:

There was a time not so long ago where doing any of those things would have made me the object of ridicule, and quite possibly self-loathing as well. Today, though, it's no big deal — and the reason for that is feminism.

Well, there was feminism back then too, but it didn't save men from the inner turmoil of switching traditional gender roles. We thought we were really sophisticated, advanced, hip, and evolved in the early 1980s. Does that come as a surprise to you, Noah? You say, "it's no big deal," but you're writing at XXfactor, where it's in your interest — you have a selfish reason — to say that. But these things work until they don't work, so don't be smug, and good luck. Have you really thought deeply about your masculine self-esteem? Because, to my ear, your thanks feminism sounds shallow.

"We see the writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now."

"We knew USG would come after us," says CEO Michael Janke.

It hadn’t been told to provide data to the government, but after Lavabit shut down today rather than be “complicit” with NSA spying, Silent Circle told customers it has killed off Silent Mail rather than risk their privacy....

Silent Circle reportedly had revenue increase 400% month-over-month in July after corporate enterprise customers switched to its services in hopes of avoiding surveillance. The company giddily told Forbes it planned to nearly double staff and significantly increase revenue this year in part thanks to the NSA’s practices coming to light.

I'm sure there's lots of money that could be collected for providing services that are impossible to provide, but that's the catch: The service is impossible to provide.

Goodbye to Karen Black.

A montage:



Remember when she was in everything?

She was 74.