[via Copyranter]

For years, bloggers and other assorted morons have assumed "allegedly" is some sort of magical "get out of libel free" card, when in fact it is just an annoying affection (except when we use it, then it's a funny joke). But if "I think" is now the magical line between defamation and simple innocent speculation, well, consider us hypothetically back on the accused bandwagon!

This is the second lawsuit Condit's lost against Dunne, and Dunne just keeps accusing the never-charged man of "knowing" things about this murder, repeatedly implying that the former congressmen is—as pretty much everyone in America suspects—personally responsible.

Now we can accuse the mildly famous of anything as long as we couch it in tentativeness. We thought we heard that maybe John Mayer supports Robert Mugabe? Oh, and Paul Janka, accused rapist, can't wait to meet all of you guys!

Dominick Dunne Clear of Insinuating Gary Condit is a Creepy Maybe-Murderer [Jossip]
Condit Suit Against Dunne Tossed [Radar]
Judge Dismisses Condit Lawsuit Against Author [ModBee]

Other new entries include anti-spyware, high-definition, outsourcing, podcast, text messaging, social networking, snail mail and Wikipedia and such sports terms as minicamp and wild card.

Among the outdated words gone from the new spiral-bound Stylebook are barmaid, blue blood, malarkey, milquetoast, Photostat, riffraff and WAC, which is no longer used by the U.S. military but may describe a woman who served in what had been the Women's Army Corps.

Other changes in the A to Z update include the entry for "African-American," which previously indicated that the "preferred term is black." Now, the African-American entry states: "Acceptable for an American black person of African descent. Black is also acceptable. The terms are not necessarily interchangeable."

In another significant revision, "mentally retarded" is no longer the preferred term, replaced by "mentally disabled."

Is "wild card" really a new term? And I still say "riffraff" several times per week. Also missing: Nilla.

[AP]

I had a misconception that being 'on steroids' involved the ingestion or injection of a single substance, but that was quickly dispelled. Many steroids on their own are either singular of purpose or not terribly effective. This is where 'stacking' comes in: you can put on mass (75mg of testosterone), promote muscle hardness (50mg of Winstrol) and keep water retention to a minimum (50mg of Equipoise).

Then, one sleepless night (the steroids also triggered insomnia) my testicles shrunk. Testicular atrophy is the most well-known side-effect of steroid abuse. It's an inherent irony: here you are trying to turn yourself into an über-man while part of the most obvious manifestation of your manhood dwindles before your eyes... Basically, you pump so much testosterone into your system that you rob your gonads of purpose, they lie dormant for the duration of your steroid cycle. And while I knew this would happen, the physical sensation was beyond horrible. I felt this rude clenching inside my scrotum, like a pair of tiny hands had grasped the spermatic cords and tightened into fists. It happened that fast - like a door slammed shut. 'No more testosterone!' my gonads cried. 'Closed for business!' I sat up, gasping, clutching my testicles to make sure they were still there.

The prostate is an organ I associate with old men... Not, in any way, an organ I should be aware of. And yet I was, because the benign little organ had swollen to the point where it felt like a fist-sized balloon pressed against my testicles. This is a fairly common side-effect; some professional bodybuilders get prostatitis to such an extent they require a catheter.

From Mr. Average... to Superman [Guardian]

One strategy is to lie. Jhumpa Lahiri, whose new book was rightfully lauded twice in the Times, pretends she doesn't read the reviews. In an interview with The Atlantic, she said hasn't read anything about The Unaccustomed Earth:

I feel like I should be more hardened at this point, but in a way I feel more vulnerable. With this book I decided not to look at anything at all. Perhaps in the future I'll ask my editor or someone to show me a few that she thinks could really benefit me somehow.

Another tactic is bitterness. Romance writer DeborahAnne MacGillivray harassed an Amazon reader for giving her book three stars.

I am think (sic) you skimmed the book, sitting in an auto place, worry about big bad men sniggering, and didn't bother to see why the characters did things, just took surface reactions. You are keying into Aithinne's POV, which at many times is not accurate to what was really happening.

The most mature (or studiedly immature?) policy is the Keith Gessen method: fuck the haters. Don't write it in the letters page of the paper that dissed you, because as the Columbia Journalism Review points out, you'll only end up looking like an asshole:

But what is good for the letters page isn't necessarily good for a letter's writer. Not only does a complaint resurrect the negative review and present it sensationally to anyone who missed it the first time, but it can reek of sour grapes and suggest the author of the book lacks confidence to let the work stand for itself. To watch these letters unfold is to watch a writer step boldly out to the dueling grounds, only to shoot himself in the foot.

In this article—much like his recent diarrhea-soaked paean to Josh Brolin—Pollack manages to phone in thousands of words about spending quality time with a celebrity without even making an attempt to do anything except to confirm the most simplistic version of the conventional wisdom about said celebrity. It is also badly written. We find out, therefore, that Woody Harrelson is "a guy fully at ease with himself, but still unique, even deeply strange."

Woody's decision to "hang with the fam" was the "Best decision I ever made."

How does he like his home in Maui? "I'm sure glad I found it."

Woody greets a woman "as if he's known her his whole life."

A friend reveals that Woody is "an affable character."

The lone possibility of an intriguing passage emerges when Pollack touches on Woody's father, who was a contract killer who died in prison. Pollack kills it.

"He was asked to do some special things for the government. The wanted to know if he really wanted to serve his country," [says Harrelson].

"What are you referring to?"

"Let's leave a little ambiguity there."

This is obviously a source of deep discomfort for Woody, who is normally open to talking about anything.

So does Woody think his dad was a government assassin? We don't know. What Pollack does tell us is: Woody Harrelson is smart enough to know when he meets the cool folks. Here are the final two sentences of Pollack's story, and hopefully the last of his we will ever see:

When I get home there's a text message from Woody, my new best friend, waiting for me on my cell phone.

"Pleasure hangin' bro," it says.

Sara Gran, author of Dope and Brooklynite by birth, wrote a similar essay also for the New York Times two and a half years ago. As she put it: "There's a rumor going around that Brooklyn is some kind of heaven on earth for writers. ... I think they've been a little too optimistic."

Her essay pondered the reading material choices on the F train. Whitehouse makes an analogy between writing in Brooklyn and The Warriors.

But thank god the Times still needs to explain that whole "people live in other boroughs" thing to its target demo, 'cause outer borough hipsters gotta eat.

"I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It." [NYT]
"Call It Booklyn" [NYT]

A Face In the Crowd, 1957:

The Front, 1976

In A Lonely Place, 1950

Permanent Midnight, 1998

Barton Fink, 1991

The Dying Gaul, 2005

8 1/2, 1963

My Favorite Year, 1982

The TV Set, 2006

Adaptation, 2003

Sunset Boulevard, 1950

The 11-year-old channel, owned by Discovery Communications, is one of the best-known brands on cable, but its ratings have stagnated for several years. On Feb. 3 the channel will start programming specifically for adults, scrapping its previous “something for everyone” style. “It made us unimportant to everyone,” said Marjorie Kaplan, who became general manager of Animal Planet last year.

[T]he new Animal Planet will emphasize predation programming (a friendlier term for animal death action), pet shows and immersive storytelling. “Escape to Chimp Eden” will feature chimpanzee rescues in Africa; “Groomer Has It” will test amateur and professional animal groomers; and “Whale Wars” will cover the controversial practice of Antarctic whaling.

Interviews conducted by the Wall Street Journal with classmates suggest that Knight, like John McCain and a million other aging "successful" dudes, has an adolescent Hemingway crush. He's working on a novel that will probably be about a misunderstood, hard-charging corporate exec fighting for what he believes in against weak-willed naysayers and child-loving labor activists.

Also, he's on Facebook! "He appears in a photo posted there," according to the Wall Street Journal, his arms around two undergraduates, with a third student holding what appears to be a drained margarita." Someone want to send that in?

Ironically, Knight's financial gifts to the school are going to develop the "Knight Management Center" at Stanford's business school, where each year hundreds of fresh-faced future CEOs will be subject to the burning resentment and scorn of Knight's English student peers.

Stanford Mystery: Who's the Old Guy In the White Nikes? [WSJ]

I pondered this as I took my first mouthful of Despaña's 'El Quijote' sandwich or "bocadillo." Its name, a reference to the hero of Miguel de Cervantes's famous novel 'Don Quijote de la Mancha,' seems to indicate that this sandwich might be inclined to tilt at windmills, eg, attempt to surmount seemingly impossible challenges. While the challenge of 'being delicious' is not actually insurmountable, this sandwich might make you think otherwise.

While it may be true, as Cervantes writes, that "A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty," it's hard to imagine that even this sandwich's creator could love it. The bread is chewy, like a piece of chewing gum. This chewiness makes it tough to bite into: tough, like a tough piece of overcooked meat or a fruit leather or something else with a hard, chewy texture.

The sandwich's contents are delicious, though: salty cured pork loin and manchego cheese contrasting with sweet quince paste like light and dark, black and white, weak and strong, hot and cold, loose and tight, or peace and war. Like old and young, or men and women, or good and evil, basically. The two things played off each other well. The cheese and meat was the yin to the quince paste's yang, or possibly vice versa.

Still, overall, I thought this sandwich could've been better.

Foxy Brown won't get on bus for court [AP]

LAST night found Alex Balk, "blogger," drinking with his cock, My Cock, at Old Town, a classic tavern in the Union Square neighborhood here. Half the bar was shrouded in shadow, but Mr. Balk was illuminated by the red glow from the neon sign overhead. This seemed fitting, given that Mr. Balk had just turned red after reading a New York Times "A Night Out With" about writer Stacey Grenrock Woods, erroneously described, as the photos here show, by the paper's website as being written (in the third person) by Stacey Grenrock Woods.

The article's tone was both knowing and earnest, using standard self-deprecation in an attempt to deflect the charges of self-aggrandizement that the bizarre arrangement was sure to elicit.

"What the fuck," said Mr. Balk, an appallingly grizzled 34-year-old, as he knocked back shot after shot of Wild Turkey. "Are they fucking kidding with the shit? Is it supposed to be post-modern? Does she know someone there?"

Bitter disappointment on the agenda this evening: Mr. Balk hadn't eaten all day, and was making progressively less sense.

"I see you've got a little vomit on your shirt," said Mr. Cock, a shaggy phallus, noting his host's disheveled appearance.

"No chunks, at least," Mr. Balk said with a hiccup. He had emerged from the restroom with a familiar token of minor weekend inebriation: a large trail of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. He delicately—inasmuch as anyone with hands trembling the way his were—pulled it off and offered it to Mr. Cock.

"Here, Cock," Mr. Balk said. "Wipe yourself with it the next time you get excited." Mr. Cock recoiled as if the paper contained naked photos of Ann Coulter.

Over drinks, Mr. Cock reminded Mr. Balk of another literary annoying aspect of Grenrock Woods' self-penned PR piece: Her not-so-subtle suggestion that people might want to read the July issue of Playboy, which has some nude shots of her in it.

"Raza deal wizzat," Mr. Balk retorted. "Y'neverd see naked piczures a me." ("Who would want to?" asked Mr. Cock. The question hung in the air, until Mr. Balk's stomach materialized atop the bar.)

Afterward, the group was escorted to a street corner, where Mr. Balk found a few comrades sitting around a half pint of Georgi vodka. In an slow, deliberate attempt at sounding sober, Mr. Balk said: "Sip, please?"

A few rounds later Mr. Balk was beckoned home by another impending day at the blog office, and the emptiness of the bottle. His streetmates asked what kinds of hopeless posts he'd phone in the coming month. "Cause your whole fucking July was all Murdoch, Murdoch, Murdoch," one noted.

Mr. Balk slouched. "No fucking clue," he said. "Probably will make some crappy parody of the Stacey Grenrock Woods thing in the Times. And who knows? Maybe new job come soon." Puking copiously, he admitted, "More posts by My Cock."

"Blearrragh," he added.

Mr. Cock stood silently at attention, a single tear dripping down his cheek.

A Star Finally Gets to Shine [NYT]

[Update: No really! It's just that the website said she wrote it! The paper has the real author's byline and all, no need to crucify her. Jeez, MONDAYS.]

NON-FICTION: HUMOR
Jay Louis's HOT CHICKS WITH DOUCHEBAGS: Deconstructing the Unholy Wrongness of Hottie/Douchey Coupling and How to Recover from the Douchebag Plague, based on the website HotChickswithDouchebags.com, to Jeremie Ruby-Strauss at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, by Michael Harriot at Vigliano Associates (world).

James Beard Journalism Award Winners

Mr. Ramirez said he asked Mr. Braunstein about getting a book published. Mr. Braunstein told him that nonfiction sold better than fiction, and that The Village Voice (where Mr. Braunstein got his start) was a good place to nurture his writing career, Mr. Ramirez said.

At Trial of Suspect in Sexual Attack, Lawyers Debate Meaning of 'Normal' [NYT]

While we feel that Prof. Deresiewicz should have been more concerned with the quality of his students' writing, he was upset that we'd inadvertently caused grief for all girls on the Yale campus named Audrey, or at least one. Turns out his student had changed the girl's name and it wasn't "Audrey" at all! Since he apparently thinks in loco parentis somehow extends to adult students, he wrote to us:

I'm the teacher of the class for which the pieces you posted were written. Now I understand that a woman named Audrey in the class is being hounded by media people and others asking for her story. In fact, the writer of the piece changed the name of the woman in question; it isn't Audrey at all. In the interests of sparing this innocent young woman further trouble, could you please post a note to that effect on your site?

Earlier: Alec Baldwin's Trip to Yale
Earlier: Reading About Reading: Cockmaster D Revealed

From the first student:

As everyone knows, you never forget meeting celebrities. Encounters with the famous leave glowing fingerprints on our lives, as if we have been touched by something fiery and celestial. That's why I'll always cherish my encounter with Alec Baldwin:

Alec: Pardon me, I need to make a phone call.
Me: [Stepping out of his way] Sorry, sorry.

That day, Alec gave a talk at Yale in a lecture hall which seated 175. A hundred more people were turned away when a wrathful fire marshal arrived to crack down on those hoping to loiter in the aisles or stand in the back. One woman, claiming to be "a grad student at the med school here" and to have "a reserved seat," punched the student guarding the door, bolted past him to the lecture hall, and then, when the police came to detain her, escaped down the street. Understandable: physical assault and possible arrest are token prices to pay for a glimpse of Alec Baldwin.

The post-talk dinner with Alec was an even hotter ticket: students lobbied for days in advance to earn a seat at the table. One girl, having won her place, arrived for dinner wearing a curvy summer dress and a full complement of makeup. She immediately set her purse down in a chair at the center of the long table, across from where she anticipated Alec would be, to mark the territory. (I would be hanging in the corner, balancing my plate on my lap.) Ten minutes before eight, Alec rose from dinner with an extravagant thank-you and left to see a play, accompanied by his friend David Blank and by the girl in the summer dress. The rest of us kicked ourselves for not having thought to wear makeup.

It's a birthday party at Caf Bottega and everyone is excused in advance. The girls' tops are starting to slip as they dance in private circles, the boys in a parody of stealth sidling up behind them and arhythmically grazing against their hips and asses. Everyone's singing or screaming—it's hard to tell who's doing what.
The more forward ones are already pairing off: they're trading phone numbers and tequila shots, or they have their arms draped around each other's necks and waists, and their heads are bowed, and they dance slow.
Audrey's sitting at the bar. There's a group loosely affiliated with her standing and ordering drinks. "I just don't know how not to be single," one girl's noisily telling a boy. He seems understanding. "Now that I'm in a relationship," she says, "I just keep seeing all these people I should have fucked when I had the chance."
"I wanted him so much," Audrey says.
"Who?" I ask as I sit down.
"I'm at the dinner for Alec Baldwin. I'm wearing this low-cut dress and I'm like he's not going to talk to me but I want to look nice. And Sam, he's locked into me the entire time." She grabs my neck and pulls me towards her. "He's looking at me like this and them he says, what are you doing after this? And I say I'm going to see Lulu at the Rep—I have a friend in it—so he comes with me and he sits through this shit play for two hours and, Sam, he's got his arm around me the whole time."
"Was he sleazy?"
"No, he was charming. I've never met anyone that charming. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and I told him all about Psycho Jeff and what he did when we broke up, and he started telling me all about Kim Basinger and how she was bipolar and we connected. But he's old. He kept asking me how old I was, if I was sure I was 20."
"That's charming."
"And then he walks me back to my dorm"
"Did you sleep with him."
"No, he gave me his number. I should have. He asked me if I wanted to come to New York with him for the weekend. I said I was busy and he gavbe me his number. He told me to call him whenever I'm in New York."
"That's awesome," I say and we hug each other. "Careful Aud," I say, laughing. "I've seen how full of yourself you get when something like this happens. I won't be able to talk to you for weeks."
"I know," she says. She's smiling broadly. "All I want is to go to New York. I don't care about anybody else. Fuck you all," she shouts at the dance floor, although the music's so loud that nobody turns. "Fuck you all," she tries again, "Alec Baldwin wants me."

UPDATE: It wasn't Audrey.

I feel like there is so much skill here. They're doing the most amazing things and they're on the slippery ice doing it! It's so exciting. I can't help it, I'm hooked. It was incredible action. These giants that become so graceful on the ice, they're all pure macho grace - amazing speed, lightning turns, and their size is amazing. But if you step away from the action and look around, you really get a treat. The arena itself is so alive; every inch of the volume of the interior is full of action and sound. Whether it's the flashing lights, the horns, the giant car floats that go through the air, or the fans themselves who are all so fun and friendly, it's just a huge loud 'fun.' Every inch of that arena is a spectacle. The game brings the entire place to life. And I've lived in that {Nassau} Coliseum for a long time. I've been there for all different kinds of events, but the way hockey fills it up, there is nothing like it.

Christie Brinkley's confusing-to-navigate blog [NHL.com]

After the jump, the one-page cover note to the 29-page memo. And then the full memo — PDFed for your convenience — is here.

From:
To: newsroom@nytimes.com
Sent: Fri, 5 May 2006 17:17:20 -0400
Subject: A Note from Rick Berke

To The Staff:

We are embarking on a newsroomwide effort to make the best-written newspaper even better written.

The effort began with an exercise last November, when Bill and Jill and I asked an assortment of reporters and editors to examine the writing in every Page One article over a 10-day period and to then file a memo. (We will focus on writing throughout the paper, but figured that A-1 is a good place to start, and most of the same lessons apply.)

The results (in memos excerpted below) were loud and clear: While The Times is a daily showcase of amazing writing, we can do even better. Some of the memos are particularly short because we excised some direct critiques.

We hope that these observations will be enlightening and encourage everyone to think more about writing. From all the different perspectives, the following themes emerged from the memos:

— We have too many anecdotal leads and often don't think creatively about other approaches.

— Stories don't get to the point soon enough, and they run on too long.

— We pack too much material into ledes.

— We often don't lace breaking news stories with enough drama or sense of the moment.

As Bill Keller said of these memos: "One of the most salient points that people made was that we have this habit of saving the good writing for the features, whereas most of what we do is news stories, and people don't feel the same obligation or desire to write those stories. Those are the stories, you've got them by the throat most of the time because news happens. Something blew up, something happened. Those are the stories where we really need the writing most. I'd like a lot more unorthodox approaches to conventional news stories."

We know it's not always possible to meet these goals. First, there are deadline pressures. Second, there are the interminable demands from editors about making sure certain points are moved higher. Then there are the demands that articles be cut.

But the central point is that writing does matter. We see these memos as a starting point. We will continue this conversation during lunches we are having with editors and reporters throughout the paper.

In the meantime, take a look at these memos, which offer eye-opening insights and wise tips about framing stories.

Rick

Writing for The New York Times [PDF]

That's why two enterprising Brown undergrads are today holding a "Writing Beyond Brown" symposium on their Providence campus. The best way to learn about the "writing business," these organizers say, "is by hearing the stories of alums who found their way into the world of writing after Brown." And to that end they've corralled an impressive lineup: a Wall Street Journal columnist, the Mr. and Mrs. Smith screenwriter, a novelist, a Times stringer. But the panelist we'd be most interested in learning from is a recent grad who stuck around and made good at the local paper: "Just two years after graduating from Brown, Arthur Sulzberger '04 writes for the Providence Journal."

However did he get that great gig? If you're reading us on College Hill right now, and if you've got some time to spare, head on over to Petterutti Lounge for the symposium, which runs from 4 to 6 o'clock. We'd love to learn how someday we can get on the same career path as young Arthur Sulzberger.

(Really, we would love to know about, from someone up there. Anonymity will be protected, as always — unless you don't want it to be.)

The Write Stuff [Brown Daily Herald]