Nevermind the fact that it was Rosa Parks' refusal to sit in the back of the bus that made her an American civil rights icon, such historical accuracy only diverts our attention from our hero's latest efforts to become the Jesus Christ of film acting or whatever, so just pay attention, okay?!

So today, I decided to change some habits and get back to basics, and took the $15 "Bolt Bus" to NYC (Instead of the ultra luxurious Acela I usually travel in), and even got a small room at The Pod Hotel, which is an upscale version of a Hostel in Midtown NYC with Bunk-Beds and a shared bathroom so I could taste struggle and poorness again and come down to Earth. I even rode in the back of the bus to feel the symbolism of "The Journey", because I see myself as a modern day Rosa Parks making a stand for the rights of the "Modern Actor" (An actor who does it with out worrying about what people think), and stared out the window thinking about how many people are living through me, and cheering for Arthur Kade to be the greatest actor in the world.

I am so excited to be on a premiere movie set for the first time in a month, and to feel the rush of the PA's and actors looking at me, and participating with me in making something special. When I worked on AirBender, we became a family, and I miss the feeling of connecting and feeling admiration from people who understand my plight, and I can't wait to be doing what I love again, not just focusing on being famous. I also have to plan my next Kade Angeles Trip this week, because I am getting tons of audition requests there, so I am looking into getting second place there shortly so I can be Bi-coastal. I am also going to try and run back to Philly to make my commercial class tomorrow night after a 7AM Call time for the movie.

Here's Arthur on his cab ride down the West Side highway talking about his big role in Step Up, though we can't seem to find a title listing for a project going by that name currently in any stage of production anywhere in the world.

If you haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing Arthur Kade act, check out his rendition of Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction.

Arthur Kade, we are convinced now more than ever that you are a total fraud, which we guess makes you a genius, and for that reason we stand in awe of you now, always and forever.

Back of the Bus [Arthur Kade]

Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"The board decided we would reach out to Creative Steps to . . . get the kids back to the club in a safe environment," John G. Duesler Jr., president of the Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley, said late this evening.

Asked why the club was reversing course, Duesler said, "Because it's the right thing to do."

How the new overture will go over with officials and families at Creative Steps Inc. of Northeast Philadelphia was not clear.

Duesler said he had "reached out" with his conciliatory message to Creative Steps director Alethea Wright "in e-mails, phone calls, and texts. I have not heard back yet."

Yes. We're sure that the Valley Swim Club's motivations are entirely rooted in idealistic desires and have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Justice Department may come calling soon, which is exactly why it's taken them more than two weeks to do "the right thing." Please.

Swim Club in Racial Flap to Invite Camp Back [Philly.com]

Anna David and I had a reading in Philadelphia. I had read about Arthur Kade here on Gawker and thought his website was one of the funniest, most absurd, most ridiculous things I had ever seen. I sent the link to Anna and told her I thought we should try to meet him while we were down there. She looked at it and thought the whole thing was either an elaborate art project of some kind, or just some guy fucking with people for laughs. We decided to try to find out.

First Contact

I sent Arthur an email. I decided it would be best if I used Anna as bait. A legendary swordsman like Arthur Kade would be far more inclined to come see her than a bearded fool like me:

—-—- Forwarded Message
From: James Frey
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:51:00 -0400
To: arthurkade17@gmail.com
Subject: Tomorrow

Arthur -

A woman named Anna David is reading from her new book tomorrow night is Philly. She's really hot and she's a huge fan of yours and she would love to meet you. Here's the info:

Thursday, June 4, 6:00 PM
BARNES & NOBLE
1805 Walnut ST
Philadelphia, PA 19103

And here's her website if you want to see her:

http://www.annadavid.com/

James

I got a response within ten minutes, it said: "How are you associated with her?"

I responded: "I'm friends with her."

He responded: "If you want to set something up i would prefer to speak to her or her camp directly."

I immediately forwarded this to Anna, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. Neither of us have camps, though we did both attend them as children. I told Anna she should write to him directly. She did.

Anticipation Building

Anna did in fact write Arthur, and he confirmed her identity. I told him I was reading with her and that I had written books, and also written and produced films (hoping the old Hollywood connection would also be something be enticing for him). For a good part of the train ride we talked about whether he would show up, and if he did, what he would be like. I expected him to be there, Anna did not. I expected him to a preening peacock, full of the same delusional bluster he displays on his site, and expected to be able to laugh at and fuck with him. Anna said that if he did actually show, she would be scared of him. There are always quiet moments on trains, moments where you stare out the window and think deep thoughts about life and all its bullshit. Our quiet moments were filled with thoughts of the great man, the great myth, the fastest rising actor and celebrity in the world, Arthur Kade, Arthur Kade.

Contact!!!!!

We met a writer named Duane Swierczynski and his wife for a quick bite before the reading. We told them about our potential meeting with Arthur. Duane just shook his head and laughed. His wife knew nothing about the Arthur Kade legend. Barnes & Noble was two blocks away. As we neared the store, I thought I saw Arthur outside with an umbrella (I was not wearing my glasses). I got excited and nudged Anna and said, "Look, he's there, right there in front of the fucking store." She laughed at me and said I was a fool. The person I thought was Arthur turned out to be a homeless teenager.

We walked into the store and didn't see him, though we both scanned the place pretty thoroughly. Anna looked at me and I just shrugged and said, "We're not A-list, what do you expect?" We started chatting with the booksellers. A minute or so later Anna nudged me and said he's here. I turned around. Walking towards us, in form-fitting jeans and a tight T-shirt — either Affliction or Ed Hardy, I can't really tell the difference — was Arthur motherfucking Kade.

Though she denies it, I swear I heard Anna gasp and say, "He's a god." He walked up, introduced himself and asked how our trip had been. He was extremely friendly and extremely polite. He was disarmingly friendly and polite. He asked when the reading would start and if we wanted to go out to dinner with him afterwards. Much to my shock and dismay, Anna said yes.

The Reading

As we waited for it to start, we saw brief glimpses of the Arthur Kade we know online. He asked about Hollywood, talked about his desire to become an actor, talked about how much fun he was having with new-found notoriety. He was very matter-of-fact about it, not blustery or idiotic at all. When Anna stepped away for a moment, I asked him where he thought she ranked on the Kade Scale, which is his own ranking of how women look. He smiled and said he never ranked friends and associates because he thought it was disrespectful (though he obviously changed the policy after we left town) and that he now considered me and Anna part of the Arthur Kade Glalaxy. I was, again, very surprised at how nice and polite he seemed to be, and was having trouble reconciling the Arthur Kade before me with the Arthur Kade online. While Anna read he was very attentive. While I read he was very antsy and had trouble sitting or standing in one place. A normal reaction I think. I know I would much rather watch her read than I would watch me. She's cute. I am not.

Post-Reading/ Dinner

The reading went well, we had a great crowd, sold and signed a good number of books. Readings are tiring. As a writer, I like being alone all day. I get extremely nervous before readings and find them draining. I was tired. I know Anna was tired. Arthur was waiting for us.

We got up from the table. While we signed books and chatted with readers, he sat about ten feet away. We could hear him introducing himself to people, and telling them about the Arthur Kade experience, and about a recent article written about him in Philadelphia Magazine (one of the most influential magazines in the world — his words, not mine). He asked if we would shoot a video with him. Anna again blurted out yes before I could signal her to say no. He pulled out his camera, turned it on. The video was actually sort of fun, it was the first, and really only time, we saw the absurd and clownish Arthur on his website actually appear in the flesh. Anna and I both had a laugh. We finally met the man we had wanted to meet. We hoped for some kind of awesome unforgettable Arthur Kade adventure. As soon, however, as the video camera was turned off, that Arthur disappeared.

He asked where we wanted to go for dinner. He told us we could pick anywhere in Philly, and that he could get us in. I said somewhere close because I didn't feel like walking far. He immediately turned and said I have a few places in mind, and led us away. As we left the store I asked Duane, my writer pal we had been with earlier, to call me in fifteen minutes and pretend he was my wife. I would have had dinner with the clownish Arthur. It would have been interesting and ridiculous and a great story. I had no interest in the nice, polite, and seemingly genuine one because I was tired and wanted to go home.

As we walked down the street, people did recognize him. We heard a couple people call out "Arthur Kade!" and I swear I heard one yell "Yo, asshat." (Though that might have been directed at me.) Bouncers said hello to and hugged him, the hostesses at restaurants waved. We walked into a crowded place, and Arthur walked to the greeter, and asked for and actually received, a really great table.

We sat down. Anna started asking Arthur questions about "the journey." About how he holds up under the barrage of nasty comments on his site, and the derision people display towards him there. He shrugged and he said he didn't care, that everyone was just jealous, that although sometimes it might hurt a little, he knows it comes with the territory. He wasn't arrogant about it, more just sort of sheepish and confused, as if he didn't understand why people made fun of him. He then told us a story about his grandparents, who he called very endearing Russian names (he said they're Russian immigrants). He said the one thing that had really upset him was that someone had posted his grandparents' phone number online, and that people were calling them to say what an asshole their grandson is. He said they called him a fool, a clown, a fuckface, a dickhead, and a fucking idiot. He was extremely vulnerable in telling the story, and you could see that it genuinely shocked and upset him. He seemed like a hurt little kid, misunderstood and confused. It was heartbreaking in a way, and completely different from anything either Anna or I expected from him. We both felt sad for him, and I know, because we talked about it later, that we both wanted to give him a hug and tell him things would be okay. Duane's call came about thirty seconds later and we got up to leave.

Home

Arthur got us a cab and made sure we knew where we were going. We waved goodbye as we pulled away. Anna turned and looked at me and said "He was so nice and polite, a little kid, like a hurt little kid." I agreed with her. We were both kind of shocked. We had wanted an asshole, someone to laugh at and mock, and we got a real person, one that was slightly delusional about himself, but not at all resembling the buffoon on his website or in his videos. The train ride home was uneventful. There were quiet moments, moments where we stared out the window and thought deep thoughts about life and all its bullshit. We talked a little about Arthur, but not much. Having had our time with him, I think we both decided it was best to just let him go, let him take his "journey", and hope that he somehow finds his way.

Afterward

Talked to Anna this morning. Arthur asked for her number and she gave it to him. I told her she should have given him a fake one, but she said she would have felt too guilty. He texted her a around 9:00 and told her he was coming to New York and wanted to take her out to dinner. She said she's going to be out of town.

Afterward Afterward

We also saw the blog post where he stated we were "blown way with my looks and body." Motherfucker! That's the guy I wanted to see in Philadelphia.

Frey is gunning for a promotion from Gawker intern to Gawker special correspondent and will be filing his own take on the run-in. Kade, however, seems a bit more familiar with Internet speed than our intern and, has already weighed in via his blog:

I am not sure why I am surprised at these things happening anymore considering how big I am now, but it's still weird to have celebrities want to meet you. I think that when this is all said and done, and I have accomplished the level of success that I will, I believe that books will be written about me, and I will be in the pantheon of names like Bogart, DeNiro, Nicholson, etc., and I want to sit down with a great author like James and maybe write my memoirs for the world to learn from.

When I walked in the store, they recognized me immediately, and we made some small talk about "The Journey". She told me she read the Philly Mag article, which didn't surprise me because of the enormity of the story. They were both very laid back and super cool, and were probably blown way with my looks and body, although it was funny because I am such an energy ball that I felt like I was overwhelming them at points, but I stayed for the readings they did, and then we went over to Parc for dinner. I can imagine how much they respect me as an author and artist, and the way I put it out there for the world to see, and I hope they see me as a potential rising star in the literary community as well.

Can't wait to read Frey's take, but here's a preview: in the video above Kade couldn't remember Anna's last name, but that did not stop him from getting her number and asking her out for a date. Will she accept? Tune in later.

In the summer of '06, Tierney and some wealthy Philly-area investors purchased the papers from McClatchy for more than $500 million. (Fast forward through a brief early period of cautious hope, followed by a painful extended period of wring concessions and budget cuts from the newsroom).

Last weekend the papers declared bankruptcy. The day-after story, gleefully reported by the bankrupt papers themselves, among many others, was that Tierney had awarded himself more than a 30% raise last year, even as the company was bleeding money. Then yesterday Tierney was forced to give up that raise. Today, he said that, hey, you ungrateful bastards, the bankers offered him a cool million to lead the company if he'd make even worse cuts, but he was too good of a guy to do it:

"For the last several months and up until the moment we filed [for bankruptcy on Sunday], they wanted me to stay and offered me a handsome compensation plan and a piece of the company," Tierney said.

He's a prince! He also vows to "never" close the Daily News no matter what, which is more of a play for sympathy from his employees than anything else, considering the amount of debt he's up against. It's not working. If Tierney had in fact led the papers to success, he might have been popular. But his business failure just reinforces the opinion of journalists who hated him before he ever became their boss—because he was a hardcore Republican flack who enjoyed complaining to editors about their reporters' work. One reporter he clashed with bitterly said:

"Reporters, we go looking for the truth. This guy, he goes looking for a wrestling match, and the stronger advocate prevails. If he has to pop your shoulder out of its socket, so be it," Cipriano says. "He doesn't understand what we do. He doesn't respect what we do, and he doesn't think we should be doing it... I don't see how a guy like that can run a newspaper and not just turn it into another extension of the spin machine."

He's an assertive, mouthy businessman with no newspaper experience who bought big into the industry at exactly the right time, vowed to turn around a failing paper, and instead rode it into bankruptcy, earning increasing wrath from the newsroom while doing so.

So basically Brian Tierney is Sam Zell with hair. But he does smile occasionally, so cut him some slack. [Pic via]

This morning, I was late! I was gonna be on the treadmill (at the Philadelphia Sports Club on Hamilton Street) by 6. It’s more like 6:30.

I run. I’m done. I go to the shower, get all cleaned up and I’m just about to put my lotion on and I hear a rumor that someone is coming. Obama! And he’s gonna be here in 30 minutes!

Girl, I put my sweat-drenched, funky-smellin’ clothes right back on, got right back on the floor and started fakin’ a workout!

All the sudden, people are eyeballing the door. Here comes the secret service.Then here comes Barack, walking up with a baseball cap on. He stops at the front desk. All the sudden, there’s a line of people.

But here I was, sitting on a spin bike that was broken! It’s a prop. But it’s right by the door. I am faking it again, so I can have a good spot at the door!

I get off the bike. He looks me dead in the eye.

He shook my hand. I held onto it as long as I could.

HIS HANDS WERE SOFT AS BUTTER!

We already consider Obama's exercise obsession his worst quality (Bush loved working out too and he was the worst president ever guys), and when it's combined with the idolatry we basically want to retroactively vote for Ron Paul. (Which we could do if it we just brought back the gold standard.)

(Warning: I would say this story signifies Nothing, but it probably signifies Nothing-1!)

Once upon the early aughts I lived in Philadelphia with two other soon to-to-be bloggers and a sad young literary journal editor.* When we lived in Philadelphia we were gainfully employed but also bored, so we — well, chiefly Pressler, who had a "gossip" column in the local alternative newsweekly, but also the other three of us, who committed various acts of "journalism" — unconsciously went to work constructing our own memory palace of microcelebrities, proving that a microcelebrity economy can exist even in a city with a crippling five percent wage tax and a severe (SEVEEERE) case of "brain drain"! The key was simply to 1. Zero in on someone trying to get attention and 2. Write about them in such a way that captures/wryly acknowledges/satirizes the absurdity of their endeavor to get your attention. Among them were:

1. A party promoter who was sort of like our Julia Allison named Rachel Furman. Pressler liked to call her "Hotel heiress Rachel Furman" but she eventually started a business not promoting parties but just showing up to them and the business, and eventually she, were called "Rachel Inc."
2. Restaurateur Stephen Starr, who owned all the restaurants in town and dated a much younger woman named January, and another restaurateur Neil Stein, who was a huge cokehead and pillhead and owned nothing but he used to write Pressler from prison, where he had to go on charges of tax evasion and being a big pillhead I think. I believe we pretended they had a "feud" although Neil Stein was too much of a drug addict to really feud with people and Stephen Starr's actual feud was with Jeffrey Chodorow, but Chodorow did not live in Philadelphia so we acted like he did not exist, even though he was actually important.
3. A crew of ambitious publicists who traveled in packs, stole one anothers' clients and marketed themselves by dressing like Julia Allison and sending out Christmas cards with pictures of themselves in Sex & The City poses. At the time we thought they were kind of pathetically trashy but at that time The Hills did not exist, much less The Real Housewives of New York. They all feuded all the time! Then we found out one of them was bisexual and had an "open relationship" with her husband and that was fun too.
4. And speaking of Christmas cards: a prodigiously obnoxious "blueberry heir" named Anthony DiMeo who became a sort of John Fitzgerald Page-cum-Tucker Max sort of character for us. Girls in his apartment building emailed us constantly to attest to his terrible woeful obnoxiousness. Pressler scanned his Christmas card for one of her columns, and DiMeo sued her. Fun times!
5. Gervase. Of Survivor I fame. (Obviously!)
6. A state senator named Vince Fumo who supposedly bought fake tits for his bartender girlfriend and had really amazing hair transplants.
7. An assortment of deejays, because hipsters were very important back then, the most — oh who am I kidding with the "most" -0 notable of whom was Diplo.*

See, it was not too unlike Gawker! Except we sort of hated Gawker in those days, because we read it and assumed the people it covered were somehow less pathetic and more special than the people we covered, which was actually not true. (Also this guy named A.J. who was from Philly but living the awesome New York used to try and get us to move because Philly was so pathetic.) But somehow Jessica convinced everyone that Philadelphia was the "Sixth Borough" and around that time Gawker even noticed us! Then somehow Doree and I ended up working here and Jessica meanwhile got a job working with former Gawker editor Jessica Coen at New York's Daily Intel. And A.J. — following a stint back in Philadelphia! — is also working for Gawker Media. And last I heard:

1. Rachel Furman had some sort of existential crisis wherein she went off the internet and drove cross country to get a nose job.
2. Stephen Starr owns a bunch of restaurants in New York now and he no longer returns our flirtatious text messages.
3. One of those publicist girls told everyone she was a millionaire.
4. Some guys made the TV show we always wished we had made about the whole scene but, who are we kidding, we don't know how to do that.
5. Diplo stopped dating M.I.A. and is still nowhere near as annoying as any of the Misshapes!
6. Vince Fumo was charged in a 139-count, 267-page corruption indictment. (I guess we could have paid attention to that!)
7. Anthony DiMeo sued Tucker Max.***

Anyway, today the same shit keeps happening with a whole new cast of new people! Every time we sit down to devote ourselves to trying to write something a little more pointful, it's…Mary Rambin! Raffaelo Follieri! Tao Lin! Jared Paul St…ill?! See, but it never lets up! Eventually "our Gessen" — he lives here now too! — wrote a highly thoughtful think piece on the subject for the Times Magazine. Perhaps we might direct you to the line:

This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.

And trust us, "out there" does not only mean New York. It is like Staphylococcus Aureus…it's actually everywhere, but it's not going to emerge as the bombastic plague of pointlessness until you start cultivating it in the ego-advancing agar of your wholly unwarranted attention!! (It's the microbiology of microcelebrity, doncha know!) (I know! It doesn't ever stop though.) And to that end I will leave you with two quotes from a seventeenth century philosopher I learned about from this N+1 guy:

If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.

It's universal! But… this

To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established.

So what are you waiting for? Go forth and establish! Perhaps I can interest you in Tumbling your endeavors? We'll be most gracious followers.

*One was former Gawker editor Doree Shafrir, another was New York magazine Daily Intel blogger Jessica Pressler, and the literary journal editor — "our Gessen," as Doree calls him fondly — was a guy named Matt "Mattathias" Schwartz. (Everyone was intimidated/repelled by Schwartz's highminded seriousness at first! But I ended up dating him and he turned out to be high-mindedly serious in a good way.
**Philadelphia deejays have a long history of local prominence: we often found ourselves writing about the antics of this one, who is now 67 years old.
***Though alas, Tucker Max won the great douche-off.

Bonfire of Inanities [Eye Weekly]

Yes well that is how this "market" thing works, folks. Though the commenters don't have to think it's fair! It sounds like "Reaganomics," they say. ("Also known as neo-liberalism.") On the other hand, as Inquirer business reporter Joe DiStefano points out. all the money former Knight-Ridder CEO Tony Ridder made certainly makes him look a lot smarter than any of his journalists wanted to give him credit for back when they were complaining about his stupid business strategies!

Which brings up an important point: if anything good comes of the death of print journalism — no seriously, fuck trees — maybe it will be that more journalists finally grasp basic market principles.

The grad student writes:

The first problematic aspect of the public / chain ownership model? The relentless focus on the quarterly bottom-line to the exclusion of a long term plan. In October 2000 the New York Times wrote this:

“By almost any business measure, the Knight Ridder newspapers in Philadelphia would be deemed a success. Since 1995, profit margins at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News have more than doubled, reaching close to 19 percent after years of single-digit doldrums. Good? Absolutely. Good enough? Not for long. For 2001, the target margin is 21 percent. And now there is talk about 5 percent budget cuts at the papers, if not more. Anxiety is as plentiful as oxygen in The Inquirer’s newsroom.”

Because the relentless focus on quarterly results really is a bitch…for every company with a ticker symbol! Certainly, there are companies with controlling shareholders who take an interest in their long-term financial health. But they are the exceptions that prove the rule. You do not exactly get to be the controlling shareholder of a shitload of companies by being a big sap.

If you are a "sap," you tend toward silly pursuits like journalism, which invariably break your heart, at least until you learn to appreciate the absurd game of clinging to an industry that incorporates variables other than the three required to conclude a PEG ratio.

Philly Newspapers Under Knight Ridder By The Numbers via Romenesko

One of my old [Conde Nast publication redacted] interns had a nightmare herself - she moved up to Vogue and was passing Anna in the hall on her first day. Knew she wasn't supposed to look at her. As they passed, Anna tripped and fell, just bit it. Intern freaked out. she didn't know what to do. So she ran.

Oh, no! How like a poor young thing unschooled in social interactions not involving the "BRB" option! However.

Didn't help AW. got back to her desk, told her new boss what had happened, and the boss told her she did the right thing and that if she'd actually attempted to help AW, her first day would def have been her last.

Of course, there are two castes of interns at Vogue: worthless debutante billionairespawn, and meticulous and diligent pretty untouchables. Now let's contrast that with this dispatch from the Embassy of a major European country:

I've got a story of an intern here whose dad is some bigwig in the biggest [European country] union, and who has erased his title of "intern" from his sig., and instead calls himself the "acting social economic attache" or some bullshit like that just because he's commandeered in the office of the REAL social economic attache, who is on vacation. Because of this elevated, clearly non-intern status, he refuses to engage in the less-glamorous work all the other interns are required to do, namely act as hosts and hostesses at events and basically be bitches.

But! What works in Old Europe won't fly in, say, Boston.

We had 2 interns last semester who showed up at an Ashlee Simpson appearance at saint, or some other club here, and tried to bully their way in by telling the GM they worked for Boston Magazine and if he didn't let them in they'd blog mean shit about him and his club. Then they gave him the names of various Boston Magazine editors. While they were arguing they spotted one of our art department assistants, who was on a freelance photo job, and tried to pretend they were with her.

Such an uncharacteristic show of resourcefulness, right?

So the art assistant almost lost that freelance account because the GM was so pissed, and an editor here had to make some big show of apology to the GM or else it would probably end up in the Track. And then the interns first denied the whole thing. Then each blamed it on the other one.

God, are they too preoccupied with aspirational reality TV to have absorbed the single most obvious lesson of all crime television?

Then we made them write notes of apology to the club and they were filled with misspellings.

Yes.

Anyway, our last story, from a publication in Philadelphia, is a long, cautionary tale about Why You Cannot Trust Ivy Leaguers Even If They Appear To Be Hardworking And Eager To Please (And Also Attend Lesser Ivies)

Once upon a time, [website] had an intern. Let's call her Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston came into our lives around three winters ago. Our website explicity states that we do NOT consider Penn students for internships, for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who's ever lived in any kind of proximity to Penn, and Philadelphia's radical allergy to the kind of senses of entitlement for which Penn students are widely known. But when we met Jennifer Aniston, she made a good point: She had graduated from Penn, and was thus, no longer a Penn student. And she seemed nice enough, and we really needed the help, so we let her by on the technicality.
And here it must be said that Jennifer Aniston was actually a really, really great intern. She loved the [publication], did tons of grunt work with gusto, and was really just super diligent about any task with which she was charged. She ruled. But the more time we spent with her, the more we realized that Jennifer Aniston basically had no sense of self. For example, she constantly talked using "we" when discussing anything about her personal life, referencing things not simply she, but she and her boyfriend of a few months, did or enjoyed.
Q: Hey, Jennifer, what are you listening to these days?
A: Gosh, well, we really love Peter Bjorn and John and Italo disco!
It also became apparent that JA was just a really, really sheltered young adult — that she was one of these people who moved to a big city to go to school, and then proceeded to basically never leave the campus, thereby terminating more than half the value of her education.
In addition, we soon learned that she was attending this strange emo born-again Christian church that seems to prey on hipster transplants here in Philly.
We felt bad for her. And we also felt like we wouldn't be doing our duty as intern masters/psuedo mentors if we didn't expose her to the world as we knew it. So we took her on a trip that we needed to make for work. A long, long road trip.
On the trip and long conversations that ensued as we drove halfway across the country, we learned a lot of wacky stuff: That Jennifer Aniston didn't seem to know a lot about sex for a young woman approaching her mid-20s. That her boyfriend seemed to hold an almost cult-leader-like control over her. That she would pout at the slightest inconvenience. She was utterly horrified when we started listening to Howard Stern to break up the car rides.
Well, the trip was what it was. But when we got back, through the strange social mesh of Philadelphia, we found out (inadvertently) that a friend of a friend of ours had met up with Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend roughly 30 minutes after we picked her up for the trip. This friend of a friend was then reported to have holed up and fucked Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend for a week solid.
We didn't know what to do with this information.
So we just held onto it for a while. But then, things got weirder
It turned out that we started working another young woman who turned out to be Jennifer Aniston's Boyfriend's last girlfriend. We'd known this woman for a while, respected her a lot, and eventually, one day while chatting we realized that she and Jennifer Aniston shared something in common ( Jennifer Aniston's Boyfriend), and unbeknownst to Jennifer Aniston, that at least in the beginning, they were sharing this young squire concurrently.
But Jennifer did know that our new co-worker did see her boyfriend in the past. When she found out that she was on the team, Jennifer quit her internship. Immediately. Despite the fact that she'd basically never have to see her.
Meanwhile, Jennifer had been posting on her blog and talking nearly constantly about when she and her BF were going to get married, and how much in love they were, etc.
We were worried. It made us sick to think that here she was, proclaiming eternal love, when in reality her BF was basically the town pump and here she was, unwittingly making a fool of herself.
This all came to head at another employee's birthday dinner, where, unlikely as it seemed, all concerned (except the chick that Jennifer's BF screwed for a week while we were away) were present.
When Jennifer's BF showed up, our new employee asked if they could talk outside for a moment.
While we were not there, we assume and were told later that Jennifer's BF was given the dressing-down of his life.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston slowly sat at the table and slowly lost her mind. When everyone returned to the table, Aniston bragged to our new employee, as if she had been hypnotized, about how she and the BF were so in love and were going to get married and make many many Aniston babies.
Everyone at the table stared in disbelief. Silence.
When the dinner ended, we decided that this could not go on. While it was not really our place to tell Jennifer Aniston what we know, we could, we realized, pass it along to a mutual good friend and co-worker whom we did know, and at the time, was very close to her.
In short order, Jennifer Aniston reacted in the following ways:
- She pulled down her Myspace and her blog.
- Her Flickr stream as well.
- And never spoke to us again.
In the time since, it's become clear that she shot every messenger she could, and stayed with the BF. She still alludes to us on her blog from time to time as these evil, awful people from her past. It's made us sad, but it's also shown us one thing that we kind of knew already, but needed to be reminded about:
No Penn students, ever.

Philadelphia was a particularly interesting choice because it's the corporate home of Comcast. Here in San Francisco, the plan to build a citywide wireless network was initially opposed by the telco giant, along with AT&T, as the two companies feared it threatened their duopoly. Turned out they had little to be afraid of — between Comcast's influence in City Hall and villainously-coiffed God-mayor Gavin Newsom's inability to understand the political process beyond publicity, the combined powers of Google and Earthlink couldn't get anything done (and publicly mocking political opposition certainly didn't help).

Wi-Fi is simply bad technology for large-scale wireless connectivity. The microwave spectrum the technology uses can't cover large distances omni-directionally, and everything from humidity to trees interrupt the signal. And those problems are compounded by the difficulty in building a network infrastructure to feed all those access points with enough bandwidth to satsify thousands of users at any given time. Again, expanding fiber optic networks makes much more sense, because a bunch of wireless routers in a mesh network does you no good unless they can actually connect to an Internet backbone at dozens if not hundreds of points.

Having lived in the Bay Area since the turn of the century, I've actually noticed a decrease in Wi-Fi availability, mostly thanks to individuals who've started to lock down their access points and businesses that have tired of freeloaders. By the time Philadelphia and San Francisco were busy trying to build out citywide systems, the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard was already getting old, while cell network provides were introducing 3G data connections. Politics doomed such projects from the start, and now obsolescence will finish them.

What was once the technological pride of Phildelphia is now a failed dream on its last legs. Meanwhile, I can't get a fiber optic connection if I wanted one (and I do, desperately). Had we been listening to San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano instead of mayor Newsom years ago, maybe San Franciscans would be getting the true broadband speeds countries in Asia and Europe enjoy. (Photo by Bob Jagendorf)

"Chelsea Clinton stopped traffic Friday night as she wandered the streets of Philadelphia on a gay bar crawl, winning rave reviews for both her politics and her appearance.

"Led around the neighborhood by Gov. Ed Rendell, Chelsea was mobbed by local gays and lesbians, as she walked from one club to the next. They ran up to hug her, posed for pictures and certainly invaded her personal space.

“'I grabbed her ass,' one young woman exclaimed to her friends after snapping a picture with her arm around the former first daughter.

“'Chelsea, the gays love you!' one fan exclaimed, as she took the microphone at Bump, a restaurant and bar that was her first stop. 'Oh, gosh, I don’t know if everybody loves me,' she responded.

"Most of those at the bar seemed to, squeezing past one another in the cramped space to get a photo. Even some patrons, donning Obama stickers—a rally for the Illinois senator had taken place a few blocks away earlier in the evening—tried to get a snapshot as well.

"In all, she visited four bars in Center City, concluding her tour at Woody’s, the city’s most famous gay bar. Getting from one event to another proved difficult at times, as she was constantly stopped by admirers while walking down the sidewalk. She reached into car windows to shake hands and was followed by several young women who tried to pose for photos on their camera phone, but seemed incapable of properly saving the pictures." [MSNBC via Drudge]

This comes as no surprise, since we already know how much Chelsea enjoys her gay partying.

Rendell's defense was kind of half-hearted. He noted that there were six other witnesses to the incident whose stories haven't been heard yet. Perhaps one of them will finally settle the "fucking dyke" versus "dyke bitch" debate!

"Does trouble seem to find her?" he asked. "Yeah, from what little I know about her entire life, she's had some difficult times, and I can guess you can say some of them were of her own making.

"But I think she is a very decent person," he said, giving her community service and police fundraisers a plug.

CBS3 hasn't fired her yet, but their people don't sound too confident that she'll be back.

Official Will Not Confirm Lane's Return To Newscast [The Bulletin]
Rendell calls radio show about Lane [Philly.com]
Photos: Philadelphia Will Do