An Iowa-based philanthropist and architecture aficionado has offered a $300 million reward to any city anywhere in the world that dares to hire someone other than Frank Gehry to design its gleaming new art museum.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like iconoclastic, swoopy structures that look like bashed-in sardine cans as much as the next guy,” says the philanthropist, who wishes to remain nameless for fear of enraging close friends in the art world. “I like Czech dance halls that look like a 747 plowed right into the façade as much as anybody. I bow to no man in my admiration for an architect who can design an art museum that looks like a intergalactic recycling center. I just thought it would be nice to give the second-most-famous architect in the world a shot at a payday. Whoever he is. I know I’ve got his name here somewhere.”

I am dying of laughter over here.

(P.S. Lest you think this might be a reality-based article, please look up Joe Queenan’s CV.)

(Hat tip: Dan Lyke.)

Alyssa Rosenberg on just exactly how out-of-touch with reality the royals are, and why everyone should read Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles.

Reading the book, the thing that struck me most was that between their first social meeting with her as prospective bride for him and their wedding, Diana and Charles got together thirteen times. [Emphasis mine. -v]

The royals are so far behind ordinary society that it’s considered progress that William met Kate at university, rather than through the social whirl she’d have gone through as a debutante a generation ago, or through machinations that pushed them together because she checked the virgin box on the “qualifications for potential bride of the future king” list.

Meanwhile: Kate Middleton FTW.

I do not have words for how much I dislike Jeff Koons.

The game is set in a large museum during a Jeff Koons retrospective. The viewer is given a rocket launcher and the choice to destroy any of the work displayed in the gallery. If nothing is destroyed the player is allowed to look around for a couple of minutes and then the game ends. However, if one or more pieces are destroyed, an animated model of Jeff Koons walks out and chastises the viewer for annihilating his art. He then sends guards to kill the player. If the player survives this round then he or she is afforded the ability to enter a room where waves of curators, lawyers, assistants, and guards spawn until the player is dead. In the end, the game is unwinnable, and acts as a comment on the fine art studio system, museum culture, art and commerce, hierarchical power structures, and the destructive tendencies of gallery goers, to name a few.

(Hat tip: Dan Lyke.)

Meta intro: One of the reasons I’m working in this short format lately is that I find I simply don’t have the energy to spell out any sort of long discussion. Not long ago, my thoughts on this matter might well have turned into 2000 words of journal entry. Now, I might want to HAVE the discussion, but I no longer want to WRITE about it.

So, here you go, and you can read both of these and write/have your own discussion.

I Will Check My Phone At Dinner and You Will Deal With It:

Is part of it antisocial? Sure. Can it lead to distractions if you read a work-related email that you need to respond to? Of course. But this is the way the world works now. We’re always connected and always on call. And some of us prefer it that way.

What’s annoying to me isn’t someone using their phone at the table, it’s the people who really believe I shouldn’t be allowed to use my phone. Why? So I can repress the desire I have to check the phone while failing to engage in a conversation so I can be able to quickly excuse myself to go to the bathroom to check the phone?

Look At Me When I’m Talking To You:

I understand the desire to check your email, stocks, Facebook wall, OKCupid or Grindr message in those moments when you simply have to walk or sit on a train or scarf some lunchtime Chipotle. But when you are actually among people you know, the act of glancing down at your mobile device is simply bad manners. It states absolutely that your current interaction is not as important or as interesting as any number of online connections. It’s rude. And it misses the point.

My personal reaction is that while the author of the first piece makes some good points, he is basically an asshole, who is rude to his mother and who shows signs of compulsive phone/gadget behavior (really, you are so unable to go ten minutes without consulting your toy that you have to do it under the table)?

Meanwhile, Sullivan makes most of the same good points, but is far more sane about it.

You may choose to disagree. The discussion is now yours to have. I pass it to you.

I don’t normally link dlisted, because I find their tone even more annoying than the annoying people they talk about, but I couldn’t resist this quote about Lady Gaga:

She should really have a safe word people can say when they can’t take her performance art act anymore and their nerves are about to rip out of their skin to wrap around their necks. (And by “safe word” I mean a slap to the mouth).

The AP reports (and thus you can choose to read about it at the outlet of your choice, of which one example is above) that instead of depicting the real Statue of Liberty on its new stamp as planned, the USPS has accidentally used a picture of the fake statue from the New York New York casino in Las Vegas.

The USPS is not recalling the stamp. Seems appropriate to me: it strikes me that we have long since passed the point were, as citizens, we prefer Disney-style mockups of our history and heritage to the real things. Why not be frank about it?

I will spare you my usual David Foster Wallace screed and simply quote Chris Braiotta’s wholly accurate observation on Infinite Jest (see source link):

“It was this combination of overbaked slop and Gen-X anomie, way after anybody should care about Gen-X anomie,” he says. “It’s the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of people with vanity master’s degrees… . It has nothing new to say. ‘Advertising’s taken over everything!’ Well, how about that. I think Saturday Night Live covered that in 1983. We can move on from that accurate and stinging critique of our society.”

Today appears to be the 50th anniversary of the day the son of collectivist farmers completed a space orbit of the earth and sent a certain superpower into a tizzy, leading to a decade or so in which space exploration was actually Important, until the day we realized there wasn’t anyone left to outdo and went back to contemplating our navels.

Sorry about that, Yuri. But who knows, maybe one day some bored millionaire with a modest amount of vision will realize that space continues to be Important, even if very few people in America seem to think so.

This has been making the rounds, and you may have already seen it. If not, now you have.

You’re doing it wrong.