How a spoof rap video relates to my life

So on Thursday I was finishing up work at the S. 4th Bar & Cafe as is my custom, and a dozen kids who graduated from Northwestern show up to watch this video two kids who used to be in Mee-Ow were making that they are trying to make a "viral" success. Now I'm totally not someone who hates running into people from college. But I'm like, umm, this is my coffee shop, what are you doing here? Can you please not turn this into Unicorn Cafe?

BUT, anyway, they are very nice, and the video "Olafur Eliasson: A Milli remix" was funny (and would have been finnier if I knew who this Olafur Eliasson character was before I googled him afterwards). And one of the guys in the video I've said since freshman year is going to become one of those famous Northwestern alums we always talk about. I won't say which one.

Anyway, the next day, the video was on the NYMag website, and I totally saw it randomly without looking for it. But I figure I should do my part helping it go "viral." See below.

Most interesting news of the day

Did you know Waldo, of "Where's Waldo?" is only 21 years old? That's what AM-New York, the second best newspaper in New York (and I'm totally convinced of that point) told me.

Does this surprise anyone else my age that Waldo is younger than us? Didn't you just assume that Waldo was one of those things like Winnie the Pooh or Curious George that had always been around? Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, as the article says, a PR firm was hired to market Waldo to people our age. Which I think is an idea that could work, since as I've discussed before my generation is totally into pop-nostalgia. I spent the entire subway ride thinking about how there should totally be a live-action "Where's Waldo?" movie for the 20-something hipster-set, possibly starring that guy who was Ugly Betty's accountant boyfriend. Except I wouldn't like any possible plot of the movie. It has to be about someone trying to find Waldo. Either some crook is chasing Waldo around the world. Which is annoying. Or there's some girl who's looking for him in the city and keeps missing him. And those missed connection movies are my least favorite plot device. Which is why I don't like "Serendipity" or really "Sleepless in Seattle" and I can only deal with "You've Got Mail" because they are still hanging out.

Things about the presidential election I thought of myself...

...as opposed to just stealing things I read, which is what I usually do.

-->I don't interact with any open Republicans on a regular basis. And I know I'm not the only one. There are definitely two Americas, and while I'm glad I live in mine, this is probably not healthy for our democracy. The whole Obama/Clinton fight was kind of cute because it was all about personalities and such. This is like a battle of worldviews.

-->Yes Sarah Palin and her book-banning and Jews for Jesus ways is fucking scary, but she is still a feminist, and it annoys me that people say otherwise. As far as I've heard she believes women deserve equal rights with men. She's not like a Phyllis Schlafly nutjob who argues women should be at home with the babies. While her abortion views are gross especially in light of Bristol's "decision", if you truly believe that a ball of cells is a baby then I understand that you wouldn't want to kill a baby.

-->I didn't think of this myself but Jezebel noted Cindy McCain is totally Betty Draper from Mad Men


-->All the talk about "pork-barrel spending" is so dumb. Americans might say they hate that shit, but really, they don't. The same way Americans hate Congress but heart their representatives.

My representative Nydia Velazquez sent out a mailing telling us what she'd done for us. It was a map with all her pork-barrel projects. My council woman Diana Reyna did the same thing. And when I was on a lobbying visit with work about all these different Gay Laws to Hakeem Jeffries (who mark my words is going to be a big deal some day if for no other reason than he's really cute), and this other woman in the room, this adorable black grandmother-looking lesbian told Mr. Jeffries "we'd really appreciate if you could give Gay Senior Center (or something like that) some money." He said he'd look into it.

And it's so not a big deal. Some of the appropriations actually fund good things that maybe wouldn't have been funded otherwise. As Gail Collins wrote last week re: McCain's obsession with them,"Earmarks are indeed a bad thing. If you ever become a U.S. senator, please dedicate yourself to getting rid of them. But for the chief executive of the country, they’re about as critical a problem as the overlong Christmas shopping season."

-->Voters say they want to "focus on the issues," but they really don't. For an unrandom sample when Obama talked about putting "lipstick on a pig" the NYTimes blog had 723 comments, many to say we should be "focusing on the issues." Another blog post about Bush's withdrawal of troops to Iraq only got 114 comments. While I agree that like the fact that I don't have Republican pals, this is bad for democracy, it's not that bad. Politics is just like sports or fashion or any other only marginally relevant thing to anyone's life. For most of us, it's just a hobby.