Yes, that Joel Stein, Time columnist, blowjob expert, and sworn enemy of Doree Shafrirs near and far, has had a disagreement with his wife over how best to medicate their child. See, there are people out there that think vaccinations are bad. Like Joel's wife:

Unlike Cassandra, I feel it's important to overload our child with toxic levels of chemicals, risking permanent damage to his nervous system. At least that's how she saw it.

Note the past-tense saw. Because, of course, over the course of this after-school special, Joel convinced Cassandra otherwise. Before then, unfunny Jew joke regarding trayf:

And I know almost no one who is willing to get the swine-flu shot, and not because everyone here is Jewish.

Zing! And The New Yorker!

It's freaked people out for more than a century, often for religious reasons, causing riots in England in the 1850s, a huge uprising in Brazil in 1904 and a polio-vaccine boycott in Nigeria in 2001. Such rebellions against vaccination typically lead to disease outbreaks that put unimmunized kids at elevated risk, and, unless someone does something to stop it, endless New Yorker stories.

...and then, tossing all of Cassandra's new-age-y friends under the bus, too, when Joel, the pragmatic, straight-man in this story, goes to deal with this, uh, long-haired hippie bullshit face to face:

I went to a seminar about inoculation at Cassandra's yoga center. Along with about 50 other people, we paid $30 each to listen to Dr. Lauren Feder. I was doing a pretty good job of distracting myself until Feder told us that a good case of whooping cough can protect your child from asthma, that measles cure eczema and that only 1% of the mere 15% of prevaccine kids who got polio became paralyzed. Feder really sees the good side of life-threatening diseases. I bet she believes Ebola cures wrinkles.

But Joel does get to one wonderful thing:

I asked...whether putting off the vaccine for hepatitis B until puberty was completely safe, or if a child could get the disease from being bitten by another kid. "You go with what feels right," Feder told me.

Yes: there's a doctor in L.A. telling patients—or rather, customers—to go with "what feels right" when vaccinating their kids. Not being a medical expert, I'm not entirely sure how safe or unsafe vaccinations are. But I do know: I was born, and my parents had me needled until I was everything but sterile, and I'm pretty sure I turned out fine (and probably: sterile).

Stein managed to talk his wife out of not getting the kid his shots—as long as they're low on aluminum?—so I guess we can thank him for throwing his wife under the vaccination tank and helping the Public Cause one day further. But this mostly just reminds me of what all parents say when their kids take the car out: it's not you we're worried about, it's the other drivers. Now normal parents in L.A. have legitimate reasons to be scared of the parents of non-normal, bougie parents in L.A.: not only because their children are possibly disease-carrying/spreading germ vessels that are simply mechanisms of their parents' well-intentioned destructive impulses in the name of being progressive, but because the sequel to Outbreak's been waiting to be made forever, and if there's anything more frightening than a disease-carrying monkey that could destroy civilization, it's a brat sprung from the loins of West Hollywood.

The New York Times' David Carr and The Awl's Choire Sicha went to lunch. Inevitably, this involved illicit substances.

Time's Joel Stein found something even better than Facebook.

Gawker contributor Melissa Gira Grant discovered herself at the unhappy intersection of viral marketing and an ex.

Financial writer Lyneka Little felt self-consciously stalky.

Internet music entrepreneur Ian Rogers likes it when the creator of The Wire gets a little cranky.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

He's effete. He's well-dressed. He eats arugula — which he buys at Whole Foods. He mocks those who use guns. He is, as we mentioned, quite thin. He may only be half-black, but he's three-quarters gay.

"Arugula" is a funny word in a Catskills sense, sure, but that is the gayest thing you can come up with? He shops at Whole Foods?

Also on the list, specifically from our "don'ts" column: "His name is weird."

We were going to quote the bit about his racist grandmother but it will make you feel actual physical pain.

Joel Stein, you are so original, all the time!

"I do my due diligence," she said. "What do writers do? They gather facts from a variety of sources. So what's the difference? Do I have more knowledge than any given writer or editor? Probably. Because they're just focusing on their one story."

• Subject: Hi from Gawker
  To: Joel Stein, Joel Stein's wife
  Hi Joel,

  Good talking to you last night. If you, or your wife, is interested in commenting on Gawker, sign up here:

  ==============================
  ==============
  GAWKER COMMENTS INVITATION
  Click this link (or paste into a browser) to accept the invitation:
  [redacted]
  ============================================

  Cheers,
  Doree

• From: Joel Stein's wife
  Yeah. Like I'm going to fall into that trap, so that she/they can make fun of ME as well.
• From: Joel Stein
  You couldn't lay off me for one day? I did not almost kill David Hasselhoff. I swear.
  I need to get a copy of that book.
  Nice meeting you too. I hope to meet all the people who hate me individually. It will make a fine book.
  Joel
• From: Doree
  Ah, can't wait!

  You should meet Balk. He's the one who wrote the Hasselhoff thing.

  Best,
  Doree

Joel, We Hardly Knew Yee. [Babeland]

The Art of Giving a Blowjob
Tuesday, June 26, 07:30PM, FREE!
Learn how to give great head! Join Babeland Sex Educator Kelly Arbor and LA Times columnist Joel Stein as they co-teach this incredibly fun and informative workshop. We will cover the lay of the land, favorite blow job tips and tricks, positions, deep-throating, and toys to tease and please.

Events Calendar [Babeland]

The second column, occupying the valuable back page Essay slot, chronicles Joel's examination of every presidential candidate's MySpace page! It's a terrific concept, and has been for the last six months, which is why almost every other outlet has already done it. But Joel knows that most Time readers aren't even quite sure what MySpace is, so it's news to them.
The essay itself isn't exactly terrible (we know, we're scared too), but the best part is that it leads us to Joel's own MySpace page. We don't know how you spend your free time, but we plan to invest a significant amount of our own learning more about the married Stanford grad's interests. Also, did you know Joel was a Leo? You do now! Further reports as events warrant!

Time

I started drinking again and it caught up with me. One of my cardinal rules was never to drink and drive. Then late one Saturday evening in June 2004, I wanted a hamburger. It was past midnight, it was raining, and I thought, "I can make it to McDonald's." I was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. The LAPD gave me a field sobriety test in the McDonald's parking lot on Ventura Boulevard. I was kept in the cells overnight and released in the morning after posting bail. At first, I was angry with the guy who arrested me but now I realize he was an angel. I was lucky that night - I could have hurt myself or, more importantly, I could have hurt someone else.

By the time I arrived back home from the police station, the story had gone all over the world. I got a call from Germany, "Is the tour still on?" and one from Australia, "G'day, mate - I've just been reading about you." I was embarrassed, devastated and ashamed.

How bad did things have to get? When you look into the eyes of your children and they say they got abused in school because of bad publicity about their father, it breaks your heart. Yet the problem was as perplexing to me as it was to them.

Once upstairs, and past a third red carpet—one which featured Joel Stein, grasping a Time 100 microphone, interviewing luminaries (including his boss, Time managing editor Rick Stengel, who had Cate Blanchett on his arm) for the Time website (for the young people!)—one entered the main room. Someone told a story about Matt Lauer—who was there with his once-rumored-to-be-estranged wife—making a beeline for Craigslist's Craig Newmark, who seemed confused that he was worthy of Matt Lauer's attention. Queen Rania of Jordan posed gamely for the cameras, and was saved by Mayor Bloomberg. Arianna Huffington told us that the Huffington Post's new comedy website, 23/6, was "going into beta" in the next couple of weeks.

We cornered Mr. Stengel and asked him about the quote he gave New York Magazine about Joel Stein, in which he referred to Mr. Stein as a "god to people in their 20s and 30s."

"People love him," Mr. Stengel assured us. "They search for him. He's his own brand!" Mr. Stein wrote a piece called the "Alt-Time 100" for the issue, in which he brought together Xzibit; Hugh Hefner girlfriend Bridget Marquardt; Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Eddie Sanchez; krumper Tommy the Clown; Shear Genius contestant Dr. Boogie; "spray tanner" Jimmy Jimmy Coco; and party planner Glenda Borden for a lunch, and asked them who the people that mattered over the past year were. Later, Mr. Stein told us that he had asked 60 to 70 people to lunch, and these seven were the only ones who could make it.

Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots, told us he was not granting interviews. We heard that Julia Allison approached Martha Stewart and told her, "You've always been one of my role models." Mr. Newmark's girlfriend, who works in design for Banana Republic, told us that her dress was a sample.

At dinner, we were seated way up in the third tier, at Table 35 (out of 36), along with a producer from CNN, a Canadian gossip columnist, an American gossip columnist (ah, "media reporter"), a TimeWarner lawyer, and, in perhaps the most surprising turn of events of the evening, the director Whit Stillman. We pressed him for information about what had become of the actors from his 1990 film Metropolitan. The last he had heard of one, he told us sorrowfully, was that he had ended up giving guided tours of Toronto. As we ate the lobster tail appetizer, Mr. Stillman told us about his upcoming projects: a film set in early 1960s Jamaica, and an adaptation of the Christopher Buckley novel Little Green Men.

Mr. Stengel stood up to welcome the crowd, and said, "Is there a better place to be tonight? I don't think so!" As Youssou N'Dour sang, a video of images of Africa played on the large screens set up around the room. (Africa: Still hot.) Mr. Stengel said that the magazine had many discussions about "who is going to write about who." "Whom," hissed Mr. Stillman. "Who is going to write about whom."—Doree

Time 100 Gallery

Be Joel Stein! [LAT]

A writer's transformation makes the personal public [LAT]