Jon Caramanica on Kanye West:

Mr. West is no longer just concerned with being popular; he also wants to be cool. But given the double-digit decline in rap sales this year and Mr. West’s status as one of few bankable hip-hop superstars, it’s a potentially risky time to be broadening, or diluting, his palette. Rap loyalists may blanch at his new directions, but Mr. West has never been solely beholden to rap fans or to rap modes of thought. While other hip-hop stars (50 Cent, Timbaland) have been flirting lately with pop collaborations to extend their brands, Mr. West has succeeded in large part by imposing his ornate style of hip-hop onto the mainstream.

is this man sitting here weeping
in this swanky restaurant
on his sixty-first birthday, because
his fear grows stronger each year,
because he’s still the boy running
all out to first base, believing
getting there means everything,
because of the spiders climbing
the sycamore outside his house
this morning, the elegance of
a civilization free of delusion,
because of the boyish faces
of the five dead soldiers on TV,
the stoic curiosity in their eyes,
their belief in the righteousness
of sacrifice, because innocence
is the darkest place in the universe,
because of the Iraqis on their hands
and knees looking for a bloody button,
a bitten fingernail, evidence of
their stolen significance, because
of the primitive architecture
of his dreams, the brutal egoism
of his ignorance, because he believes
in deliverance, the purity of sorrow,
the sanctity of truth, because of
the original human faces of his wife
and two boys smiling at him across
this glittering table, because of
their passion for commemoration,
their certainty that goodness continues,
because of the spiders clinging to
the elegance of each moment, because
getting there still means everything?

-Philip Schultz (New Yorker)

One of the things Larry Doyle would do when he wins his Mega Millions is to upgrade his wife:

Out of my own pocket, I’m advancing Cheryl up to three hundred thousand dollars for a series of upgrades. She has all sorts of complaints about her face that, frankly, I don’t see, but, fine, we’ll fix all that stuff. We’ll also be installing state-of-the-art breasts, right above the original ones, which we’ll keep around for old times’ sake to remind us where we came from. To go with her new Mega Millions looks, Cheryl will be getting extensive training in trophy-wiving from Melania Trump, on loan from my new friend Don, at a special discounted rate.

The World of Solitaire is powered by Ajax. Sweet!

After getting busted for Internet porn, Francis McKenzie’s boyfriend defends: “the porn was a quick way to deal with being horny, and it was not anything to compare.”

Ride the escalator in Japan’s Umeda Sky Building “feels like you are floating up into the sky. This is a cheap way to see the city, less than 10 USD to go up to the observation area.”

Clean, simple with clever color-coded site.

Nate Chinen:

The fearless brilliance of the music Parker was making — at the Town Hall concert, a recording of which was issued two years ago, and contemporaneous studio sessions, especially the one that yielded “Koko,” his masterpiece elaboration on “Cherokee” — may explain why so many musicians copied his excesses, and so many loved ones put up with his manipulative abuses.

A man whose penis was set on fire by his ex-wife told Tvoi Den newspaper: “I was burning like a torch. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

The penis… the penis is on fire. We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn. Burn motherfucker… Burn…

“Jenna Jameson deflates, quits porn“