Apparently Jesse Lacey urged the audience to go see Explosions In The Sky instead of Brand New at a recent festival concert.  When no one left he called those in attendance “a bunch of fools.”  The next song he threw his guitar into the air, nearly hitting Brand New’s drummer before storming off stage.

Jesse Lacey is either insane or super hip… you decide.

The more I thought about it, however, the more the fact that TM is basically lying in his stories began to bother me. His whole hook is that these stories are “true.” Anyone could just make this shit up and pass it off as fiction, it would get e-mailed around a few times and be forgotten. But Tucker presents it as true, that it actually happened to him, and it didn’t, he’s lying and that’s unacceptable. What gets Tucker his attention is people going “Man, I can’t believe that this actually happened to someone, that shit is so crazy!! I wish I were him.” In short, he was interesting because he represented something that many people wish they were but don’t really have the balls to be. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really that person, Tucker is more a persona than anything else.

The people I know who worship TM, do so because he’s “living proof” that a man need not be perfect to score. I’m not a frequent Tucker Max reader (to date, I’ve read but half of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell) but I’ve always defended my fascination by arguing that reading his misogynistic stories allowed me to make important sociological-cum-psychological observations about male behavior. But what if his various books, blogs, stories–his entire mythology–were nothing more than a great big fiction?

More importantly, I wonder how many men have dicked their way to success using TM as a placebo?

If you’re reading this, odds are against your attendance at the Beijing Olympic Games, but we wanted to make sure that you knew about the Freedom Stick just in case—a USB dongle preloaded with all of the traffic routing software you’ll need to browse the internet unencumbered (specifically, The Onion Router). It’s available now until the end of the Olympics for $30, and please don’t send us tips about the freaky shit you’re using it for

Willie, let me down!

There’s been a lot of hubbub over Toby Keith’s country dumbness, but I thought I’d do my part to help set the record straight on Beer for my Horses:

Blumenthal never mentions that Keith sings “Beer For My Horses” with Willie Nelson, and it’s actually Nelson who sings the supposedly incriminating lyrics (as you can see at about the 1:43 mark of the music video).

Now Willie Nelson’s been called a lot of things—a pot head, a tax cheat, etc—but I don’t think anyone’s ever called Willie Nelson (who just recorded an album with Wynton Marsalis) a racist. So if Blumenthal wants to argue that Keith is pro-lynching, he needs to argue that Nelson is, too—which is something he doesn’t do.

Hat tip to Jesse Walker (one of my bosses at Reason).

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will spend the night in jail after a judge ruled he violated the terms of his bond in his perjury case by making a business trip to Canada and not informing the court.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick apologized, but a federal judge ordered him jailed for violating terms of his bond.

Judge Ronald Giles ordered Kilpatrick to jail Thursday, a decision the judge said he would have made for any “John Six-Pack” defendant before him.

The mayor made an unauthorized trip to Canada last month, leading the county prosecutor’s office to request Kilpatrick be punished and triggering the judge’s ruling.

Only minutes earlier, the mayor offered an apology to the court, telling Giles that for seven months, “I’ve been living in an incredible state of pressure and scrutiny.”

But Giles sent the mayor to jail anyway, telling him he would have given any defendant the same treatment.

“What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in that seat, what would I do? And that answer is simple,” he said.

The Detroit News has a great Kwame archive here.

Weight itself is not a health problem, except in the most extreme cases (i.e., being underweight or so fat you’re immobilized). In fact, fat people live longer than thin people and are more likely to survive cardiac events, and some studies have shown that fat can protect against “infections, cancer, lung disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes.” Yeah, you read that right: even the goddamned diabetes. Now, I’m not saying we should all go out and get fat for our health (which we wouldn’t be able to do anyway, because no one knows how to make a naturally thin person fat any more than they know how to make a naturally fat person thin; see point 4), but I’m definitely saying obesity research is turning up surprising information all the time — much of which goes ignored by the media — and people who give a damn about critical thinking would be foolish to accept the party line on fat. Just because you’ve heard over and over and over that fat! kills! doesn’t mean it’s true. It just means that people in this culture really love saying it.

Happy birthday...from the grave

VH1′s blog Scandalist posted a tacky/darkly funny photoshopped pic of Jon Benet Ramsey wearing a birthday hat, to commemorate what would today be her 18th b-day. (She would also be, as one of my meatspace colleagues pointed out to me, a hottie.)

Gawker, among other places, threw a goddamn hissy fit. Which is ironic, considering Gawker is a nexus for shit-talk, rumors, and week-ruining pseudo-journalism. From Wikipedia:

On March 14, 2006, Gawker.com launched Gawker Stalker Maps, a mashup of the site’s Gawker Stalker feature and Google Maps.^[5] Gawker Stalker, originally a weekly roundup of celebrity sightings in New York City submitted by Gawker readers, first posted on April 21, 2003, is now frequently updated, and the sightings are displayed on a map.

The feature has drawn criticism from celebrities and publicists for encouraging stalking, and George Clooney rep Stan Rosenfeld called Gawker Stalker “a dangerous thing.” Jessica Coen has said that the map is harmless, that Gawker readers are “for the most part, a very educated, well-meaning bunch,” and that “if there is someone really intending to do a celebrity harm, there are much better ways to go about doing that than looking at the Gawker Stalker.”^[3][6]

Read Emily Gould’s “Exposed” for more insight on just how shitty a place Gawker is. And thank you, Scandalist, for giving me something to laugh at and feel bad about at the same time.