Woman with a dog in a bag.

(Photo by John.)

Frank. Headache. Eleven.

Because you don't want evasive painting.



Now, I know where to go to get my headaches.



Eleven. We just loved this sign — especially the way they used an "11" to make the "l" in "Eleven."

"You know what he wants... you don't show any response."

I know I've been spending too much time at Starbucks. Here's something Melvin Jules Bukiet says in that anti-Brooklyn thing I just linked to:

Brooklyn’s always been the overlooked sibling among the boroughs. Founded several years before New York, it was swiftly relegated to a role as Manhattan’s unglamorous adjunct. First farms and then factories provided its economic basis. Now back-office space does the same. Until recently, Brooklyn was strictly second choice for residence. Beatniks who couldn’t afford Greenwich Village crossed the river in the ’60s, and yuppies who couldn’t afford Soho moved to Park Slope in the ’80s. Now hipsters who can’t afford the East Village have filled every cranny between soon-to-be evicted bodegas and auto-repair shops with cafés sporting lava lamps on the tables and old record albums tacked to the walls. Inside, a horde of latte-swilling sensitives sit in mismatched chairs and tap at laptops and can’t imagine why they’d ever want to cross the river again. They interpret their migration born of economic necessity as a hegira of moral virtue. Self-righteous sour grapes define their attitude to Gotham.

In short, they’re young.

I'm not young, but I was one of those yuppies who couldn’t afford Soho and moved to Park Slope in the ’80s. I'm back in Brooklyn, now, unyoung yet in need of coffee and WiFi. This Bukiet character has apparently never been to Madison. I'm starved here in Brooklyn for the indie cafés I live at back home. I'm forced to patronize Starbucks and I had to shell out for the T-Mobile connection. It's irksome.

These days, I mark my time at Starbucks by the inevitable reappearance in the music rotation of the Bob Dylan song "Jokerman." Why "Jokerman"? I've never much thought about "Jokerman," but really, look at the lyrics: "Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune. Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman." Is it possible to sing that line a few more times? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, it's getting painful.

Liberty toxifier.

Last night, we were asking the waitress about the dandelion salad. The music was loud.

"It's a liver detoxifier."

"What?"

"A liver detoxifier."

"Oh. I thought you said a liberty toxifier. I wouldn't want that. I'm trying to keep my liberty pure."

And, frankly, I don't want my waitpersons mentioning my internal organs.

Remember "The State"?

"A guy like Giuliani is polarizing because he actively chooses to be. It's part of his persona. He wants people to hate him."

"Hillary, by contrast, is polarizing not because she wants to be, but because the right-wing attack machine made her that way. She's 'polarizing' only because a certain deranged slice of conservative nutjobs detest her."

Writes Kevin Drum — responding to Andrew Sullivan, who's putting down both Rudy and Hillary for being "polarizing." Drum thinks that Sullivan is running them down because he doesn't like either Rudy or Hillary, and Drum un-runs-down Hillary. So either Hillary is not polarizing or Kevin Drum — I'm following Drum-style analysis — like Hillary.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture."

Comparative interrogation techniques.

"Brooklyn principles can be found anywhere that young people gather to share their search for love and meaning..."

"... a search that they alone are qualified to pursue by virtue of their pristine vision of the deep oneness of things. Whereas physical danger or emotional grief leaves most people lonely or ruined or dead, they triumph over adversity."

Melvin Jules Bukiet — peering from Manhattan — looks down on the Brooklyn writers like Jonathan Safran Foer, Myla Goldberg, Nicole Krauss, and Dave Eggers -- and "everything McSweeney’s." (Via A&L Daily.)

"The rage he harbors raises questions about whether he can sit as an impartial judge in many of the cases the Supreme Court hears."

The NYT would like to say that Clarence Thomas's anger disqualifies from hearing some cases. Isn't it insanely obvious that if a liberal black judge harbored anger for the way he was treated over the years, the NYT would admire him for his passion and for the crucial perspective he brings to judging — perspective that white judges can never hope to reach through mere knowledge and empathy?

But somehow NYT editorial writers can understand that a conservative black judge's emotions are distorted, overblown, and disqualifying.

He's "dredg[ing] up" something that happened 16 years ago. Here's a new rule: The NYT should disrespect anyone who remains angry about something that happened more than a decade and a half ago.

Why couldn't Clarence Thomas write a nice, dignified book, the way these white justices did?

When Supreme Court justices write books, which is not often, they tend to write about subjects and in ways that are consistent with the dignity of the court. When he was chief justice, William Rehnquist wrote about the 1876 presidential election; Justice Stephen Breyer’s “Active Liberty” set forth a specific view of the Constitution.

Imagine that a liberal black judge had written a passionate, personal story of his life. Make that judge a man who grew up in poverty in the south in the era of segregation. Imagine a conservative newspaper editorial criticizing him for failing to write something more dignified, something more like like a history book written a white judge who was raised in middle-class, midwestern suburbia or a theoretical book written by a white man who spent his childhood in middle-class San Francisco. Don't you think the New York Times would sneer at that editorial and call it racist?

Friday evening in DUMBO.

We were down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass tonight, getting something to eat at SuperFine...



... walking on that deserted backstreet with the Twilight Zonish place where they're storing the carousel...



... then looking for the way back home...

"It is with a great amount of shame that I stand before you and tell you I have betrayed your trust."

How painful to see the destruction of a heroine. Marion Jones — winner of 3 Olympic gold medals — has pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators and admitted about taking steroids.

Duke lacrosse players bring a civil rights case against Nifong and others.

NYT reports:

In a 162-page complaint, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans sought redress for what they described as “one of the most chilling episodes of premeditated police, prosecutorial, and scientific misconduct in modern American history.”...

They “knew that these charges were completely and utterly unsupported by probable cause, and a total fabrication by a mentally troubled, drug-prone exotic dancer whose claims, time and again, were contradicted by physical evidence, documentary evidence, other witnesses, and even the accuser herself,” the complaint continued.

Mr. Nifong, who lost his public office, his license to practice law in North Carolina and his freedom during a 24-hour prison stay, used the racially-charged rape case to increase his chances in an election in which he faced “formidable competition in his own party’s primary election,” the complaint said.

Here's the complaint (PDF).

"It strikes me as a self-hurt book."

Jon Stewart assails Chris Matthews about his book that tries to get you to use political strategies to succeed in your personal life.

ADDED: Here's the video. (I took down the YouTube version that became unavailable.)

"Why do we wear pins? Because our country is under attack!"

Sean Hannity raves. And everyone's talking about the fact that Barack Obama stopped wearing his American flag lapel pin. We're hot for our symbols and we love to talk about what they mean. (It's so much easier than talking about the substantive issues. Can you compare the health care plans of the candidates?)

And speaking of symbols: This Is Your Elephant on Drugs.

Leave Larry Craig alone.

Larry Craig is not leaving the Senate. He's not gay and he's not leaving. I say good.

There are many reasons not to like Senator Larry:

1. The denial of gayness. (Even if somehow he's not gay, it's disrespectful to gay people to feel that you need to deny it.)

2. His apparent willingness to have sex in a bathroom the general public uses. (I'm strongly opposed to sex in public bathrooms, but he didn't actually do that, he only, probably, indicated his willingness to have sex, probably, right there and then.)

3. He's making life hard for his fellow Republican senators. (They're "embarrassed," and they don't want to have to go through with a lot of conspicuous procedures to oust him. Plus, he "promised" to go, so why doesn't he keep his promise? Deal with it. He was elected. Let the people of Idaho pressure him to go if they don't want him.)

4. He pleaded guilty and then refused to accept the consequences, like everyone else who pleads guilty. (Obviously, he couldn't withdraw that guilty plea, and I'd have been outraged if the judge had bent the rules and let this powerful man with his high-priced lawyers break free of the rules that apply to everyone else. But I would have loved to see the legal battle over police tactics and freedom of expression.)

5. He was convicted of a crime. (Yes, a little "disorderly conduct." Does one misdemeanor unrelated to your job mean you've got to go? Are you willing to apply that rule across the board? I think not. As a crime, it's less bad than a drunk driving conviction. How many senators have those?)

6. He's not a solid family man. (Care to apply that rule to every Senator?)

So let's leave Larry alone.

"That was how I felt, and that she had draped herself in unflattering prudery, unflattering and almost pre-modern."

Marty Peretz reminisces about how he felt on watching Anita Hill testify, back in 1991. It's his strategy for writing about the Clarence Thomas memoir without reading it. And he's got a backup anecdote to flesh out his musings about the aura around the unread book:

A large Cambridge dinner party a few years ago comes to mind. I won't say at whose house. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't seated next to Al Sharpton, an interloper. (Sharpton had arrived with someone else but uninvited. The hostess was furious.) I was seated next to Anita Hill, an attractive woman and an interesting woman. We spoke about how the loss of the King James version in our culture had degraded the writing and speaking of the English language. Then, as if our conversation lacked something, she raised the name of Clarence Thomas. Sad, no?