This is a really sad day.

Jonathan Franzen may finally get his wish to destroy experimental fiction fulfilled.

One can only hope this is some sort of a horrible joke, which is definitely a possibility since David Foster Wallace has been known to be quite an eccentric.

Paul F. Tompkins says so, so it must be.

Here, Ty Pennington is pushing Aspirin from Bayer Consumer Care, a unit of Bayer AG.

It appears Ty Pennington, the carpenter who has gained a C-list celebrity status recently through appearances on home improvement-themed reality shows and the male prostitute-inspired attires he dons regularly, has been quite busy recently hawking pharmaceuticals. This is quite understandable really since 1) fronting the interests of pharmaceutical giants is the most time-effective way to cash in on his quickly evaporating semi-celebrity status, and 2) people who watch his show are probably dumb enough to buy medications just because the television tells them to.

Nonetheless, I find it rather morbid that T.P. is pushing Adderall XR, a drug that can cause adverse heart events, including sudden death, while also promoting Aspirin as a “wonder drug” for heart disease risk reduction.

The worst news ever.

• “Hostile Acts” by Tad Friend. Published on newyorker.com and presumably also in print.

I was so fucking impressed with this article after I read it for the first time. Who other than a critic for a magazine as sharp as The New Yorker could observe that what Sarah Silverman really does through her offensive jokes is holding a mirror against the audience (metaphorically) and mocking their latent bigoted beliefs (also metaphorically)?

However, at another glance, the article proved to be rather disappointing. Take the last two sentences from the third paragraph counting up from the bottom:

His arrival reveals the fractures in the group—Sarah despises him, and Steve and Brian don’t even bother to be polite—and we realize that all of them are fundamentally loners who grew up in front of the TV. They enjoy bantering, as people on TV do, but they aren’t up for shouldering one another’s burdens.

The article blames the characters’ antisocial predisposition on “gr[owing] up in front of the TV” and being “loners.” This notion is not supported by the rest of the article, nor is it supported by the content of the show (as I watched it). In addition, to my knowledge, there is no scientific proof that this link exists. So in other words, what the fuck?

It’s not yet being broadcast in Canada though. The homeless man in the clip is Zach Galifianakis who I honestly don’t find funny but like anyways because he seems to know all the right people (he’s kinda like a male version of Janeane Garofalo).

One can only hope Comedy Central won’t kill this show prematurely like it did previous attempts to break away from the traditional sitcom format such as Stella and Strangers With Candy.

Hot Chip’s video for “Over & Over” comes pre-loaded with Zune. It is also prominently featured on the official press photo of the brown Zune.

Thanks to Microsoft’s let’s-attach-it-to-cool-bands-and-hope-some-of-their-coolness-will-wear-off line of wishful thinking, come November 14, the works of Cansei de Ser Sexy and Hot Chip (among those of others – the full damage list is here) will be unleashed upon the filthy, unwashed masses known as “the mainstream.”

These uncultured simpletons will most likely fall in love with the bands. Not only is their music excellent, some of the members of the two bands (Lovefoxx and the drummer in CSS; the three non-original members in Hot Chip) are very good looking. It is a matter of time before one wouldn’t be able to mention either of the two bands without being showered with gloating but annoyingly uninformed opinions about them.

As much as I hope CSS and Hot Chip be rewarded for their talents (I really wish Lovefoxx become ultra-famous and start touring the world with a children’s choir and two American homosexuals), I just can’t bear the concept of clicking their names on Facebook and being bombarded with an endless list of known campus retards.

Left: Adam Spiegel, a.k.a. Spike Jonze; Right: Sam Spiegel, a.k.a. Squeak E. Clean

Now, some questions arise:

• How in the hell is Squeak E. Clean 27 years old? He looks old enough to have two kids in college.
• How in the hell is Spike Jonze 37 years old? He looks like he just graduated from college. Is he drinking from the same super-secret Scientologist fountain of youth Beck supposedly drinks out of?
• Are they really brothers? Could any two people of the same ethnicity (Jewish) look more different?
• Why did Spike and Sofia Coppola get divorced? Was it because of Cameron Diaz? Was Giovanni Ribisi’s character in Lost in Translation based on Spike? Was Anna Faris’ based on Cameron Diaz? What about Scarlett Johansson? Was her character Sofia?
• Is Spike sore that Sofia, Charlie Kaufmann, and Michel Gondry all won an Oscar, and he has yet to?
• Are they really brothers? I mean, Jesus, look at them.