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Goldberg and Orlean

Slate turns 10 this week, and we're publishing The Best of Slate: A 10^th Anniversary Anthology. In celebration of the book and the anniversary, we're publishing (or, rather, re-publishing) a selection of pieces from the anthology, including this article. This article was originally published Jan. 25, 1999. You can see a list of all the republished pieces, as well as everything else we are publishing in honor of the anniversary, here.

Dear Susan --

Get more aspirin! Your head is going to explode! Better yet, eat something. First of all, Offspring is not my favorite band. Rancid is my favorite band. Of the moment. My favorite band of all time is the E-Street Band, and their frontman, whatever his name is. Then Celine Dion. She's so, I don't know, soulful?

I guess it's true--Upper West Side etiquette dictates that you can't complain about your neighbor pumping NPR from his boombox, no matter how loud. I just hate it when those gangbangers go blasting "All Things Considered" down the street like they own it. But have you ever tried telling a stone-crazy Latin King to turn off Nina Totenberg? Danger City, USA.

We definitely are on some kind of crazy mind-meld, buster (may I call you buster in return?), because I had a dream involving water and Venezuela last night. Alright, not Venezuela, but water.

Did you really kill your roommate? Is this going to be one of those things where I can't tell the authorities because we're buddies in cyberspace, and we have our own moral code, etc. etc.?

I am a football fan, in theory, but who has the time? As for going down to Miami, I would never pay to go to a Superbowl, and since I can't take bribes and such on account of journalistic ethics blah blah blah, I don't see myself ever going. I have this friend, a highpowered flack--that's his official title, "highpowered flack"--who's going, all-expenses paid, including dinner at Joe's Stone Crab and hot-and-cold running prostitutes (just kidding, ha ha ha) and he promised to call me from the stadium to give me his location so I can watch him and be jealous. In reference to your Superbowl bookie, I have much to say on the subject of illegal gambling and gangsters etc, but I have a story coming out on Sunday (Incipient Shameless Auto-Flackery Alert) on this general topic, and I can't give away too much yet.

What is it with these House "managers" and "looking them in their eyes?" Also, "watching their body language?" When I was in Liberia, I participated in this deeply weird ritual--an ordeal by fire--in which an "ordeal player," a state-sanctioned witch doctor, places a red-hot poker on a criminal suspect's leg. If the leg burns, he's guilty, if not, innocent. Why doesn't Henry Hyde just bring in an ordeal player--it's about as scientific as "looking them in their eyes."

Oh, one more thing, I'm down with you calling me Ol' Dirty Bastard, but, since I feel that we're getting to know each other and all, I think it's time you call me what all my close friends call me, which is Big Daddy Love Machine.

Love,

BDLM

P.S. Is Two Jews and A Person of Color out on video yet?

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