A 1939 photo of Harlem containing a man who looks strikingly like Jay-Z

That is not Jay-Z in old-timey photographer Sid Grossman’s picture of Harlem, sent to me by old-timey pornographer Ben al-Fowlkes. It sure looks like Jay-Z, though. Either I am some kind of hair-toucher who does not notice subtle facial distinctions among people of other races, or that Depression-era Harlemite looks uncannily like Hov.  The already alarmingly low level of can is reduced even further by the familiar idea of Jay-Z dressing up in old-fashioned luxury clothes to evoke a particular period in black history. Appearing in a wool suit and newsboy cap in Harlem is not something he did do, exactly, but it sure is the kind of thing he might do. Today is Friday, and the world is full of striking discrepancies. Most of it fits, and then one detail blows the whole thing into weirdo territory. Won’t you demand an impossible consistency with me?

First, the kind of striking discrepancy that is not fun: the good old Wonkblog has discovered that prices for medical procedures vary as much as 100% across hospitals in the DC area. This information is news because the prices hospitals charge for the 100 most common impatient procedures were kept secret until last week. Consider that fact, for a moment, in light of the claim that free market forces are the best way to manage health care costs. When I broke my hand, I tried for days to get someone—anyone—to tell me how much the surgery would cost. “Will it cost $5,000?” I asked. They couldn’t say. “Will it cost $100,000?” They really weren’t allowed to say. It turned out to cost $25,000, but I didn’t know that until two weeks after the procedure, after my insurance company agreed to pay. Show me one other service that is sold this way.

Or, because I was eleven years old during the baffling ascendance of Jay Leno, just show me funny newspaper layout mistakes. Props to my brother for the link. Number 7 really got me, because I am immature. I claim to love Wodehouse and Noah Baumbach movies, but what really gets me is people pooping involuntarily, or a graphic in which the G in “grapefruit” doesn’t read. It’s the incongruity theory of humor. Or maybe it’s the superiority theory—the point is that screwups in the newspaper are funny, and it’ll be a shame when newspapers are replaced by the internet, where screwups are normal.

Despite its wider distribution, the internet has lower standards. Witness this sentence from an email I received as punishment for donating $25 to Barack Obama in 2008:

House Speaker John Boehner and the chairman of the House Science Committee are both unsure whether the science behind climate change—the stuff that shows pretty clearly that carbon pollution produced by humans is damaging our environment—is real.

Beware the em-dash appositive that follows a prepositional phrase. Is climate change the stuff that shows pretty clearly et cetera etc., or is it the science behind climate change? And by the time we get to “is real,” I personally have forgotten who or what the subject of the sentence is. All political communication is propaganda, you guys, and propaganda should be easy to understand. Also, the scandalously ignorant John Boehner quote in this email is from 2009.

That’s why I don’t follow politics anymore. I only follow postmodern hipster art—subgenre kitsch, microgenre appropriation of kitsch, example adding monsters to thrift shop landscapes. That shit is awesome, and yet the only print that is not on sale is the cowboy/spaghetti monster one. Those of us who live in Montana and routinely have to eat appetizers under pictures of lonesome farmhands could really use that thing.

Attention people who went to George’s on the Sunday after Curt’s bachelor party: I have located three of the songs that mysterious weirdo played in his perfect jukebox set. My poor girlfriend has been forced to listen to them many times, and now I encourage you.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy-A5FYn27c

Did you get the Charmin Ultra-Soft commercial first? That bear’s wife shouts at him while he is in the bathroom to remind him that only needs to use a few squares of toilet paper. Anyway, an animated narrative about the home life of toilet paper-using bears is what comes before 1950s Dizzy Gillespie now. Good luck negotiating contemporary American culture, you guys.

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