I created a vortex on Melrose Avenue.

ADDED:



(Big thanks to commenter Chip Ahoy!)

If you wonder what this place is, well, you can see from the sign that it's on Melrose Avenue, so go find it.

Here's what we said at the time:

This looks like what they do on "Trading Spaces" and the people come back and hate it.

The hay-on-the-wall episode!

Yeah.

There was also the moss-on-the-wall episode. This is the twigs all over the outside of your building episode.

Some things I like about Beverly Hills.

The facade!



The diagonal crossing!



The torso!



The shame ....



Just kidding! There's no shame.

Listening to presidential talk — is Barack Obama what we want to hear now?

"And the truth is that we've got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know ten times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you're trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you."

It's Barack Obama, sounding smart and sensible in a casual conversation with British Tory Leader David Cameron. Drudge says this conversation was "caught on mic" so I was hoping for something revealing, but the linked article says the 2 men were "[s]eemingly unaware of an enormous fuzzy boom," which of course, means they were completely aware of the PR they were generating together.

By the way, I'm reading David Foster Wallace's essay about following around the McCain campaign in 2000, and it includes a helpful glossary with this item:

Weasel = The weird gray fuzzy thing that sound techs put over their sticks' mikes at scrums to keep annoying wind-noise off the audio. It looks like a large floppy mouse-colored version of a certain popular kind of fuzzy bathroom slipper. (N.B.: Weasels, which are sometimes worn by sound techs as headgear during OTSs when it's really cold, are thus sometimes known as tech toupees.)

(Don't buy the linked essay if you already have "Consider the Lobster." It's the same thing as "Up, Simba.")

What's the correct spelling — "mic" or "mike"? It's mike, obviously! Do you know any guys named Michael who spell their nickname "Mic"? Imagine 2 Michaels, Mike and Mic: Which one do you want to have a beer with?

So, anyway, if you think Obama sounds clever in that quote, realize that he's mainly saying "I'm the decider" — Bush's completely pithy and oft-ridiculed summary of the presidency.

And maybe it's time for a President with more elaborate language. Maybe we've heard enough from Mike and Mic is starting to sound really refreshingly wonderful.

There's something I like about L.A.

ADDED: The commenters get the answer easily. The men are all wearing long pants. If you have trouble understanding my opposition to men in shorts, look at this photo and visualize all the males in shorts. If you don't see the problem, I hope you are not dressing yourself.

Can you see what it is?

Greetings from L.A.!

Yeah!

"End of the Affair: Barack Obama and the press break up."

Oh! Do tell!

Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama's press office. The campaign was irked by the Times' latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee's accompanying front-page piece titled "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race," which was running in the morning's paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.

What was the query? Why are you being mean to me?

Read the whole thing. I'd say more, but my delayed flight is finally boarding, so you'll have to run with it.

"And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant)..."

"... when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness. The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow...."

Read the whole thing — in the London TimesOnline — or... wait... is this humor theme played out? This is a good example of something that takes no new insight. It's got to play out. This isn't satire. There's no critique of Obama in this, just continuous ga-ga admiration. I'm getting a tummy ache from all this candy.

ADDED: Just a bit of a sledgehammer. I know this guy is making fun of the deification. I'm saying that even this as a humor theme is played out. This is candy too. "The Daily Show" runs with jokes like this every damned night. I started blogging this article because I thought the mockery of the deification tasted pretty good. But then in the middle of putting up the post, I realized it was making me sick too!

CNN's horrific Obamamania.

I'm sitting in an airport where I'm forced to listen to CNN TV constantly, and the endless enthusiasm over Barack Obama is appalling. There's no pretense of journalistic neutrality. Barack Obama is getting a rockstar welcome... blah blah blah... ugh!

Will Americans get sick of hearing "Barack Obama" cheerleading? Even if you like him — and I kind of like him — it's cloying. Too much candy.

There's a lilting cadence to CNN's pronunciation of the name: ba-ROCKO-ba-ma, with an arcing, hopeful inflection. It's most noticeable when they say "John McCain" soon after. The nonObama candidate's name is said in a leaden singsong, ending in a flat low note.

If I were at home, I'd imitate the way they say the two names, but as I said, I'm in an airport, and my little foray into YouTubing would be even more annoying than the relentless CNN feed.

UPDATE: "Barack Obama is still in Europe...." And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

IN THE COMMENTS: The Drill SGT said:

I thought you had a crush on him?

You know what it's like? To continue with the "rockstar" trope. If a rockstar you like gets too popular and everyone's squealing over him, including a lot of people who seem to be excited by the popularity itself, well, then, it's just not cool to like him anymore. He's now popular for his popularity, and it makes you want to discover something new.

Another coffeehouse.

Once again, I rely on you, my dear friends, to keep the conversation going.

I will join you later today... from the west coast.

Talk about anything you want.

Obama talks to Berlin "as a citizen — a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."

Text.

... Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen -- a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world....

[O]n the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.

And that's when the airlift began -- when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.

The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up.

I guess we're not supposed to think about how Obama wanted and still wants to give up on the Iraq war. Surely, if he'd been there in 1948, he would have said the Berlin airlift is hopeless. He thought the surge was hopeless.

I won't excerpt the rest of the speech. You can read it, but I'll summarize: Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another, right now.

"I'll probably... peel off until the cake."

Out of context Obama quote of the day.

Yesterday's was:

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives, something that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift them above the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life. They need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them -- that they are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness.

(Contextualized by me, here.)

An L.A. meetup?

I'll be blogging from L.A. soon, and as discussed here — where you gave me so many good tips — I may do a meetup with blog readers. If you think you might come, email me at my gmail address (annalthouse) so I can see if the numbers are there and, if it's going to happen, give you the time and place.

"I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do."

It's Giles Coren, getting "mightily pissed off" about copy editing — over the deletion of the word "a" — and with good reason. (Via Metafilter.) I completely understand the sentiment, and I love the thoroughly British tone of the complaint letter.

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best". Well, you fucking don't. This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.... 2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

Jesus with a bear? Some Christian iconography I haven't heard of? Or is that another one of his gay jokes, which it could be even if it is only a typo for "beard." I mean, I understand this Coren character is simultaneously fabulously subtle and crude.

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

Scansion. Railing about scansion in prose. Metre is crucial. I agree! ADDED: I've searched the internet for Jesus with a bear and found this very cool painting from Jim Woodring. (Click image to enlarge.)

You can stop envying your neighbor's granite countertops now.

Or have you already sprung for this expensive kitchen upgrade that may be the equivalent, cancer-wise, of smoking?

"Check in the hotel, Breck Girl, don't just go in there for a couple hours of quickies and leave at 2:40 in the morning."

"Check in, pal. Leave at a normal time. Not that I'm an expert, don't misunderstand."

Obama's rally in Berlin.

How strange is it for an American presidential candidate to have a big rally in a foreign country? Why is Obama doing this in Berlin?

This may be a cheap shot, but since it's also thoroughly predictable, why did Obama set it up? The main point of a rally is to generate optics. Why would it seem like a good idea for an American candidate to be seen amid thousands of cheering Germans?

Of course, some American voters long for European love and will warm to these images of German enthusiasm, but presumably these people already support Obama.

ADDED: The German perspective:

So what is motivating Berliners and Germans in general to treat a Democratic presidential hopeful to such a royal welcome?...

In comparison to US elections, German political campaigns are short, stolid and sober affairs that focus as much on party platforms as personalities. In the wake of World War II, many Germans view charismatic leadership with mistrust.

Good call!

That, however, doesn't mean that ordinary Germans or the media are immune to the aura of a politician who knows how to work a crowd.

The current edition of Germany's most serious news weekly, Der Spiegel, features Obama on its cover with the only vaguely ironic headline "Germany Meets the Superstar" -- a play on the title of the German version of the TV show "American Idol."

And many German bloggers do seem to idolize the Illinois senator.

"For me he already is the American president," wrote one user of a Website about Obama's Berlin visit. "He may not be have been elected, but he's the president in people's hearts."

Ick. But it reminds me of the famous interview with Princess Diana:

MARTIN BASHIR: Do you think you will ever be Queen?

DIANA: No, I don't, no.

BASHIR: Why do you think that?

DIANA: I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts, but I don't see myself being Queen of this country. I don't think many people will want me to be Queen.

Actually, when I say many people I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I'm a non-starter.

BASHIR: Why do you think they've decided that?

DIANA: Because I do things differently, because I don't go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that. But someone's got to go out there and love people and show it.

Ah, so there's an angle if somehow Obama doesn't make it in the end. He can always be President of our hearts.