"Money Pol" by Louis Menand - NewYorker.com

Politics aside, I would never ever vote for Mitt Romeny because he's never drank a beer and you can't trust a man who has never had a beer. It's completely insane that this is the best the GOP can do. Some teetotaling, dog-abusing, Mormon dork. Get a grip Republicans. Here's your second term on a platter, Mr. President.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/03/19/120319crat_atlarge_menand

"Magic Mountain" What Really Happens at Davos" by Nick Paumgarten - NewYorker.com

The New Yorker sent some correspondent to go cover Davos. I only got through the first couple of pages but it ain't bad. If you're into that Davos stuff. Kind of sounds like summer camp for rich and powerful people. I got nothing else to say about that.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/05/120305fa_fact_paumgarten

"Where's George" by Jane Mayer - NewYorker.com

Politics. Super PACs. Donations. Finance. Blah blah blah. I didn't read this but some of you cats like this politics bullshit so I'll post it.

You know it doesn't matter who you vote for though right? Might as well write in Poop Reads as your president. Your vote doesn't matter for shit and even if it did the dudes who are running are so minimally differentiated and incapable of changing anything that it doesn't mean a thing. Not a hoot. Politics is just something that exists so shifty politicians can grift money and have sex with chicks that wouldn't talk to them otherwise. The only other reason it could possibly exist is so that assholes can 'argue' about it in the hopes of making someone else look stupid because they just read something in the Economist or heard Bill O'Reilly spout out some populo-elitist bullshit and want to tell people about it. People that argue about politics should drink 10 whiskey sours and drive themselves home.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/02/george-soros-democrats.html

P.S. George Soros is one weird looking motherfucker huh?

"The Art of Fact Checking" by Hannah Goldfield - NewYorker.com

Ha! Writers are such dickheads. This article proves it. As far as dickheaded professions go it goes like this:

1. Small forwards
2. Bouncers
3. Writers
4. Cops
5. Vice Principals

Pretty cool look behind the scenes of how a magazine article gets put together here.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/02/the-art-of-fact-checking.html

"Back in Play" by David Remnick - Grantland via The New Yorker

I didn't get a chance to finish this but I'll take Grantland's word that it's an all-time classic. Remnick is obviously a heavyweight and he followed Jordan around for his return season after the foray into baseball. Has to be good right? I don't know I can't make myself care about the NBA. I'm basically in a football-related K-Hole right now.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7555753/david-remnick-classic-new-yorker-story-michael-jordan-first-return-basketball

"The Red and The White" by Calvin Trillin - NewYorker.com

Good article by Calvin Trillin who goes in depth on something he mentioned in his last Poop Reads update--wine snobs. The gist of his article is that most people, even experts, can't tell the difference between red and white wine when it's served in a blind taste test.

Wine snobs are really the pits. They're always sitting there asking for the wine to be decanted, and then showing off the sediment to people around them like "oohhh can you believe we almost just drank this? Disgusting!" And I'm sitting there like, "motherfucker, three years ago I saw you puke in your own beer and keep drinking it at some shit bar at the Jersey shore. Get over yourself."

I should note I'm talking about a specific person. Eat shit, Red!

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/08/19/020819fa_fact

P.S. I kid, Red's a good guy.

P.P.S. He's still way too gross to decant wine though.

"New York is Killing Me" by Alec Wilkinson - NewYorker.com

I didn't have a chance to read this yet because the New Yorker takes some serious time sometimes to get into and I was mad busy today. That being said it was the featured feature on their home page and it's about the dude who maybe sorta kinda invented rap. It's title, and the sharp-ass cheekbones on the dude in the picture, lead me to believe he got hooked on that china china, but like I said, that's just conjecture.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_wilkinson

"The Best Hip Hop of 2011" by Sasha Frere-Jones - TheNewYorker.com

The honorable Sasha Frere-Jones weighs in on the best hip hop of the year. Frankly, I used to love hip hop, but lately I find it boring as hell. I've blogged at length about the depths of awfulness I find within Drake and his music. But Kanye's insecure braggadocio, Jay-Z's lazy, billionaire-aspirant rhymes, and whatever the fuck Yelawolf is doing just don't speak to me anymore. Maybe I'm getting old. Or more likely, rap just sucks lately. Frere-Jones seems to think so.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2011/12/the-best-hip-hop-of-2011.html

P.S. No offense to Action Bronson. Keep doing you son! (Can't hyperlink because blogspot is fucking with me. Here's a link to a song you should listen to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNKeBoRbifw)

"This Is Your Brain on Ice" by Nick Paumgarten - Newyorker.com

Look at the high and mighty New Yorker showing up late to the Poop Reads party. On Monday I posted the following about the Times' much lauded series on Derek Boogard's death and the role fighting in hockey may have played in it:

"...you can't go around pointing fingers at sports like hockey and football and say that's why people do horrific things to themselves. Yes, there is evidence that some of the hits these guys take fuck them up later in life. But also, violent sports, by and large, attract people that are a little bit crazy, guys that "do" first and "think" second. Personalities that live life hard and take things to extremes. It's the same profile of someone who abuses their body until they die.

In short, we love to watch these guys on the ice and the field because they are crazy, and sometimes crazy people do crazy things. So while it's very easy and apparently in vogue to blame the sports for its participants' actions, I think you really need to look at the people who choose to participate in those sports, and see the larger pattern for what happens to them as their lives proceed. Just my two cents. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

And then today along comes probably the most prestigious magazine in the world saying this about the very same Times piece:

"It may be that people who have the aptitude and the appetite to play contact sports at the professional level are those who have a certain disregard for longevity. If risk-aversion, across the population, could be graphed with a bell curve, pro-hockey players, like pro-football players or motocross racers, might be found clustered at one end. The part of society that makes its living sitting at a desk and thinking about the world sometimes finds it hard to believe that there are people out there with a different set of values—people for whom, say, sacrificing their health to make millions of dollars playing the game they love makes perfect sense."

Now I'm not here to imply that maybe the editors at a second highly prestigious magazine are all over Poop Reads jock or anything. I'm just saying that Poop Reads is doling out some of the best commentary on the internet and it's doing it 48 hours before the New Yorker can digest what's really going on in these streets.

Poop Readers, you are in good company.

Oh and here is Paumgarten's piece. It's shorter and less researched than the Times' is, but I think its better too.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/12/this-is-your-brain-on-ice.html

p.s. Now seriously, somebody come up with a better name than Poop Reads for me.

"Social Animal" by David Brooks - NewYorker.com

This is one of my favorite articles in a while. A little different speed than the stuff I usually rave about: there's no man-eating tigers or break-downs of off-tackle counters here. In effect, David Brooks breaks down life. His hypothesis is that as theology and philosophy continue to let us down, more and more we can turn to science and (gulp) sociology to teach us about who we are and what we are doing here. This is a hard article to explain because basically it attempts to do the impossible: explain life.

The best way I can relay to you how much I liked this piece is to say that I read it walking from the subway to the gym today and almost got run over twice because I was so absorbed. That's good shit right there (not the almost-dying part, the writing I mean).

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks

"Van Gogh's Ear" by Adam Gopnik - Newyorker.com

This article from the New Yorker about an alternate theory of how van Gogh lost his ear (Gauguin cut off it off with his self-defense sword. Really.) Is remarkably well written. Check this out.

"If Trollope, as someone said, demonstrates that sanity need not be philistine, van Gogh demonstrates that insanity need not be insular. The stripping away of conventional decorum that van Gogh’s illness forced on him made him almost unnaturally present, alert to the world; when his mind went wrong, he became all heart.""

Good shit there.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_gopnik

"The Color of Blood" by Calvin Trillin - Newyorker.com

This story is kind of old but pretty wild, some black kid maybe kinda sorta threatened some guido dude's friend's little sister in an internet chatroom so the guidos rolled to the black dude's house and the black dude's father shot him in his gourd.

You follow that? Me neither.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_trillin

"Lifting the Veil" by Calvin Tomkins - Newyorker.com

You guys, I apologize for the lack of articles lately. I've been traveling a ton and quite frankly, the internet has been coming up short lately. Every. Single. Web. Site. Is writing about 9/11, and while I realize that's important, I just don't want to read about it and get depressed so I haven't been as fastidious with my reading habits as of late. Like, the only time I want to read about 9/11 these days is if it's about Seal Team Six double tapping some backwards ass terrorist right in his dumb ugly eyeball. That's it. Vengeance is ours.

This article is about some hotshot downtown artist who paints hardcore porno scenes in the style of the great Italian masters. Guy goes high/low like you see in the movies.

It's a long one. May be a "double tapper" itself. Oh and don't worry, the Michealangelo-esque painting in the beginning of the the two chicks fingering the other girl? That doesn't actually show up on the printed-out version.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/28/080128fa_fact_tomkins?currentPage=all

"Why Me: Alec Baldwin's Disappointment, Undimmed by Success" by Ian Parker - Newyorker.com

Fuckin' Baldwin huh? Guy basically plays himself for a living telling jokes Tina Fey wrote on 30 Rock and he's still not happy. Like bro that is the life. You are literally doing you and getting paid millions of dollars to do it. You're like the Situation or Kim Kardashian just gallivanting around the earth being yourself and having people love to watch you do it. Only difference between you and dumb-dumb sticks and ol' big butt is that you are in on the joke. You are funny, charismatic, and likable and they are complete and utter ass hats. Take joy old man, it doesn't get any better than that.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/08/080908fa_fact_parker

"Trial by Fire" by David Grann - NewYorker.com

Woops. Texas might have executed an innocent man. A 17 page article but it's pretty damn good. Sorry guys don't have much else for you. Went to a bang-up wedding last night and I am hungover as all hell. Catch you on the flip side.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

"Connecting the Dots: The Paradoxes of Intelligence Reform" by Malcolm Gladwell - Newyorker.com

Malcolm Gladwell turns the military intelligence world on its head as only he can do, trying to figure out a more effective way for the CIA and similar organizations to identify terroristic patterns and stop them before they culminate in disaster.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/10/030310crat_atlarge

"Notes on the Death of Osama Bin Laden" by Steve Coll - Newyorker.com

The New Yorker lays out exactly what happened when we split Bin Laden's wig in an insightful but easily digestible article with tidbits explaining exactly what happened, who did it, how, and what it means. If your head is kind of spinning over all the information that has come in on the Bin Laden death, this is the article for you.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/notes-on-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden.html

"Don't Let's Watch the Royal Wedding" by Leo Carey - Newyorker.com

Second post in a row about people not wanting to watch TV. Royal wedding, blah blah blah, you're not watching because it's on at like 4 in the morning or some bullshit. Don't make this a philosophical stand, bro. Also, it's a wedding of two people you don't know. You know why you're not watching, Leo? Because you're a male. Only females are excited about the wedding and that's only because they claim to like these kinds of things when in fact they just really want to talk shit about the girl and William's horse mouth. Deal with it.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/dont-lets-watch-the-royal-wedding.html

"The Possibilian" by Burkhard Bilger - Newyorker.com

This article for the New Yorker profiles a kind of young, hip scientist who is studying why time seems to slow down during moments when you might die. The article starts off with a recounting a time when the scientist, David Eagleman, a professor of neuroscience at Baylor, fell off the roof of a house as a kid. He mentions the moment when you realize you are really falling. That's a scary moment. In my experience, when you jump off anything over 20 feet high there is a moment I refer to as the "oh fffffuck" moment. The time when your body is telling you you should have landed by now, but for some reason you haven't. You don't even want to scream, you just state to yourself as a matter of fact "oh fffffuck." No matter how many times you do it, it happens. It's really a disconcerting spot to be.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/25/110425fa_fact_bilger

"The Real Dylan in China" by Sean Wilentz - Newyorker.com

Sean Wilentz weighs in on Bob Dylan's recent concert in China, where he didn't sing some of his most pointed protest songs. He has taken some criticism in the press for it (nothing new for Dylan) most notably from the Times' Maureen Dowd. Here Wilentz defends Dylan, and says that the playlist he did play, including a "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", made fools of the Chinese government, as well as Dowd.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/the-real-dylan-in-china.html