Respect Authority

–> After the two-hour premier of Jersey Shore, MTV’s show about eight Italian-Americans spending a summer together in a house in Seaside Heights, N.J. (essentially Real World Jersey), Domino’s pizza told the network to stop airing it’s ads during the show. This is the biggest misunderstanding of your core audience since Kellogg’s stopped endorsing Michael Phelps because he smoked pot. READ MORE.

–> Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that it’s been years since the government has known where Osama Bin Laden is hiding. So basically, until Osama is updating his Twitter feed with “Chillin’ in Afghanistan; opium crop looks gr8,” we’re shit out of luck. READ MORE.

–> Richard Branson unveiled today the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two, a commercial spaceship that will soon carry tourists to space for a mere $200,000 each. The spaceship, which is scheduled to begin test flights next year and start commercial routes by 2012, will carry six passengers and two pilots—which means Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger might have a shot at crash-landing on the moon. READ MORE.

–> The New York Times did a big piece Monday on how car-phone makers promoted the devices back in the 1960s, even while knowing the risks of driving with one’s hands otherwise occupied. A note to the Times: the 60’s weren’t exactly a model for best practices in advertising (See: cigarettes, Spam and anything directed at women). READ MORE.

–> Unilever is recalling some 10 million cans of its Slim-Fast ready-to-drink products in North America because of a possible bacterial contamination that makes people who drink the product throw up. …In unrelated news, sales of Slim-Fast were through the roof Monday. READ MORE.

Lots of unexpected shit happened in the news this weekend. Five escaped wolf-hybrid dogs were captured in New Jersey; no explanation as to whether a wolf-hybrid dog is simply like, you know, Balto, or rather the result of some Jersey medical experiment.

Also, police busted two brothels in the Hamptons over the weekend, which means more than a few vacationing real estate brokers are in need of a new “For a good time, call …” number. Don’t worry Lou, I already wrote yours on a select 100 bathroom stalls.

DJ AM was found dead in his apartment on Friday, and for whatever reason the media has continued to speculate on his cause of death. Let me hazard a guess here: drugs. Yes, it was definitely totally drugs. That, or some sort of Final Destination karma for not getting killed in that plane accident last year. Death always wins.

Oh, and the Times wrote about VH1 Celebreality, circa two years too late to be culturally relevant.

And some more on wolves. Shutup, I’m tired.

It seems that whenever I think, to say nothing of hope, that progress is being made on the marijuana front, that the misconceptions are being remedied and the assumptions being undone, some half-high and way-drunk woman crashes her minivan into an SUV and kills eight people. So much for that.

But if it isn’t the tragic car crashes that get us — after all, plenty of people die from alcohol-related accidents every year, with no repercussions for the substance’s legality — it’s this: the heartfelt and depressing memoirs written by parents of addicts, moms and dads who have watched their sons and daughters fight a battle against any kind of substance, whether it’s pot or heroin or online pornography. So Julie Myerson’s The Lost Child, a story about her son’s battle with marijuana addiction, is sure to set us back at least another decade.

The book comes out next week, and needless to say, I won’t be reading it, so my understanding of its plot points comes almost exclusively from the New York Times‘ review, which I found oddly confusing. Myerson’s son smokes “skunk,” a cannabis strain with a THC content of up to 22% in some cases, which makes the immediate point that at least some of the risk with marijuana is the endless potential for more potent varieties, much as beer ostensibly poses a lesser threat to well-being than Bacardi 151. According to the review, which I have to assume is taking information from the book, or WebMD, stronger varieties of weed, like skunk, have been linked to behavioral and cognitive changes reminiscent of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, biopolar disorder, major depression and anxiety disorder — which to me sounds simply like the physical manifestation of addiction. There’s no room for cognitive or rational thought when the mind is consumed with the drug. Read More ›

How quickly am I going to hell for thinking this camp is probably the most hilarious and infuriating place to work in the history of summer employment?

”I wanted to create a place where kids from all over the country and even the world can come, and know that they’re wonderful just the way they are,” said Taro Alexander, the professional actor who started the camp—which if you’re too busy to click on the link above, caters to kids with a stutter who like to act. “Just because they stutter doesn’t mean it has to stop them from doing anything in life.”

Sorry to disappoint Taro, but that’s exactly what it means. Particularly when it comes to acting. Instead of creating a fantasy land where stuttering children can escape for a few weeks at a time—thereby pretending to themselves that the world isn’t actually a cruel place full of people who couldn’t care less about the difficulty of having a speech impediment—perhaps you should create a town, nay, an urban center, where stutterers of all ilks can live together and plod their way through conversations, poetry readings and political speeches. Mayor? Jeff Goldblum.

If ever there was a place to go all Columbine, this is it.

Imagine this: you’re eighty. Why yes, those dentures do look realistic.

So you’re old, and you’re having some trouble walking and, convinced by your daughter that despite The Scooter Store’s very convincing commercials, scooters are not in fact easy to get around in, you snag yourself a walker, or cane. Safe, right?

Wrong! According to an article in the New York Times today, citing a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (who apparently are no longer particularly concerned with things like malaria, or AIDS), about 47,000 “older Americans” are treated in emergency rooms each year from “falls associated with walkers and canes.”

“It’s important to make sure people use these devices safely,” Judy Stevens, an epidemiologist (I’m not even sure what that is) at the CDC told the Times. “It gives them greater independence but, at the same time it can be a hazard if not used properly.” …Why am I reminded of kids’ first water wings? You can set those old people free, but never let them out of your sight.

The study found that 87% of fall injuries involved walkers and 12% involved canes, leading me to believe maybe 1% of old people are just tripping over their own orthopedic shoes.

It’s not like I don’t sympathize with old people — and I’m not saying, given the opportunity, I wouldn’t end up face-first on a sidewalk somewhere with my cane stuck in a street grate. Alls I’m saying is there’s only so much training one can give on “how to use” a fairly self-evident device.

Moreover, I’m tired of hearing about old people falling! You know what CDC, we all fall. I trip probably two or three times a week, sometimes in public, sometimes walking from the couch to the bathroom. It just so happens my bones are less fine than rare china and I know “shuffling” isn’t the most efficient form of transportation. Sorry old people, I’m still more worried about swine flu.

I imagine I’m fairly late in jumping on the bandwagon that is “hating MeMe Roth,” the publicist and mother of two who was profiled in the New York Times today for starting shit with her kids’ elementary school over their apparently terrorist-level distribution of junk food.

Roth, who the Times carefully avoids labeling an out-and-out crazy, has engaged in an ongoing e-mail battle with administrators at the school, over “junk food served on special occasions: the cupcakes that come out for every birthday, the doughnuts her children were once given in gym, the sugary ‘Fun-Dip’ packets that some parent provided the whole class on Valentine’s Day.” Indeed, rather than simply instruct her health-conscious children to abstain from the frivolous snacking, Roth has the kids pack up whatever non-meal food they’re given in Tupperware and bring it home to her, ostensibly so she can craft her vitriolic e-mails with more detail… and vitriol. Read More ›

Sexism aside, there are times when it’s totally okay to be a little embarrassed by your gender. The same way my dad’s high-socks-with-shorts combo used to make me cringe, there are plenty of females in the world that induce in me a longing for more masculine concerns, like obscure sports statistics, or deciding between Axe and Tag.

Today is one of those days. In a feat of “Let’s get people to make themselves look bad on the record,” the New York Times profiled a group of young women known as DABA – Dating a Bankers Anonymous – who gather in various Sex-and-the-City-esque locations to discuss Wall Street’s collapse. But not in terms of its effect on their 401Ks, job prospects or ability to pay rent; rather, how the disintegrating banking sector is taking a toll on their relationships with one-time titans of finance. Read More ›