Can you feel the love tonight?

Ah, two months of thinking about blogging but rarely hitting the publish button. I wanted to , but I write as slow as I read, and I’ve had a lot to read. And I will continue to have alot to read for the forseable year ahead.

So, though I really wish I could carve up a pumpkin every night and narrate the whole thing, I can't.

My attempt at a solution is to write about what I’m reading everyday: magazines, broadsheets, local tabloids, and books.

Will it be readable? Don't know. But it will be attempted:

This has been a big week for taking cheap shots at New York in the papers and elsewhere. James Lileks, a blogger whose writing I've admired for half a decade now, spent Tuesday fantasizing about how New Yorkers would reap the whirlwind when doomsday comes, whereas the Midwest would be hunky dory with a dirty bombing. And how the difference would make for great TV.

If they were smart they would run two shows Tuesday and Wednesday night, one set in Midwestern town of medium size, the other set in New York. The latter would collapse into anarchy, I suspect, and the former would do nicely. A town like Fargo, for example, doesn’t need elevators. New York is rather dependent on them. Elevators and money. Take them away, and what do you have? More good people than bad, but guess which side has most of the guns…

The Fargo series would be different, of course. Smaller towns tend to be more socially cohesive. Plus, all that wheat and all those guns. Not many trees to chop down for heat, but you could get by for a while with Duraflame logs. You can see people coming, too.

I've never understood why people seem to envy the fact that, when the apocalypse comes, it's going to start in New York. In reality, the crazies are aiming for us: Why wank about a world where they're aiming at you? If we could give away the bullseye, we would. Really.

Same day and a bit closer to home: the front page article in the NYT--reporting how my alma mater is trying to broaden its appeal outside the south--contained this quote from an alum:

"What is the purpose of making it a more national school? Do I want kids from California, New York coming there? Not really."

Hate to tell you friend, but they're already there.

And it got worse and more personal as they week went on. Mike Harden, a Columbus columnist I read growing up, wrote about Catherine Woods, a Columbus girl who came to New York to join Broadway but instead became a stripper. She was murdered. It's a horrible story all around, more to me shocking because the girl went to my high school.

But somehow Mr. Harden takes the whole thing as an excuse to bash the media by way of
bashing New York:

Based on the Big Apple news media coverage of the slaying, it seems that Woods’ first sin was failing to fit the template of their stereotype. Could it be that New York journalists wanted her to be an apple-cheeked Midwestern milkmaid who paid the rent on her Broadway dreams by scrubbing toilets?

I have by no means read all the coverage of the murder--and seen none of the cable coverage--but it seems like it's gotten play in New York for the same reason it's gotten play in Ohio: it's horribly tragic. But Harden sees hidden slights.

New York City would have us believe that there was something obscene about the life of Catherine Woods. Here, in her hometown, we know that the only obscenity is her death.

Could be, but no New Yorker with such an opinion is ever presented to the reader of Harden's column.

To review: New York sucks because it has elevators/New Yorkers/tabloids. Barely an argument--and no real evidence--is given in any case. New York is New York, and such is just prima facie a place of simulataneous failure and arrogance.

Well, it was fun while it lasted.