Abe knows how to keep it real through the ages sporting his classic limestone look

If you are leafing through the New York Times Travel Mag today, you might notice the long article on Washington, DC. You might also wonder why the pages are stuck together - we certainly do. Let’s discuss.

After a sentence or two regarding the political barriers being broken by women in minorities in Washington (inept house Speaker Pelosi, Dynasty heiress Clinton, Barrack Obama) and then:

Similarly, after waiting decades for some of its blighted neighborhoods to amount to something other than block after block of boarded-up abandonment, Washington is buzzing with energy. The H Street corridor is starting to hum, with cafes and bars including the Rock and Roll Hotel, a new music club that hosts bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Solillaquists of Sound.

We’ll leave out the obvious point that most thing’s are over by the time the Times gets around to writing about them to discuss the more elusive aspect of this article: what the fuck are they talking about?

The boxes from CW’s Big Move from DC to NY aren’t quite unpacked yet, so we feel as though we have some insight into the goings-on in the nation’s capital. Is Washington a more interesting place than when we got there four long years ago? With more bars and things, it certainly is. But despite the recent proliferation of venues, galleries and the blogs like BYT and Panda Head to keep track of it all, we still feel that such things a hotbed of style does not make.

We don’t mean to be a downer and we definitely don’t want to sound bitter. It’s just that, you know, if you go to DC looking for Williamsburg, you’re not going to find it. You’re just going to pay too much for a PBR at a place Dave Grohl owns and talk to a lot of kids who have lived their entire lives in Silver Spring.

Maybe we’re being unfair. We have a whole host of pretty rad friends from our time there that we hop to keep track of for as long as we can and there’s no better place on earth to radicalize a person’s politics than Washington, where crazy policy manifests itself in a very tangible way. But still, are we wrong about this? Are we denying our roots are giving in to self-loathing?

We love DC, just not because of it’s pulsing cultural community. Comment away.

There is a story at the top of the main page of the New York Times right now about how oil prices are going up after the nation’s oil refineries have suffered a record number of problems and setbacks like, you know, fires and explosions and stuff. I didn’t read the article, but allow me to direct your attention to this photograph, its caption reading “A battery of tanks at an oil refinery in Wynnewood, Okla., burned in April after it was struck by lightning.”

The thing I can’t help but notice is that it’s a beautiful day. The kids in the foreground are out with their bikes having a great old time! How could there have been lightening? There is only one explanation for this: oil companies have been granted access to a secret government weapon that creates weather events and they are using it to drive up gas prices. Obviously.

Note how this subtle outfit is enhanced by small touches of neon

We’ve seen it coming for months. From the wacky kids at Misshapes to, well, the wacky kids at The Cobrasnake, it’s been creeping out of our vivid, party-oriented imaginations and onto our clothing. And finally, the New York Times is jumping on the neon bandwagon with this amusing, but thankfully educational, story:

Neon is a chemical element that produces a bright reddish-orange light when charged in a vacuum tube. But in fashion the term encompasses a family of fluorescent colors — basically anything bright enough to have once encouraged the wearing of sunglasses at night.

Thank you New York Times, for this explanation.

Also, just as a little bonus, you may read our full coverage of the Lamé Suspender Swimsuit that is pictured above here. May American Apparel continue to integrate nipples into more and more of its designs.

Finally, the New York Times magazine is covering something I care about: internet porn.

In this hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism, the New York Times blows the lid off chearleading, a brutal business that claims the lives of million every year. Or maybe it’s more. I haven’t read the article. But apparently girls are breaking their necks and shit. That’s pretty serious.

Some articles are about issues. The best are about moments. This article from the New York Times Magazine breathlessly documents one of those split second actions that change life completely. And it’s about baseball, which as we know is about as exciting as unsharpened pencils. “Head Trip” defines schmaltzy and glorious cheese. Read it.

So remember “Can’t Buy Me Love,” the 80’s teen flick starring Patrick Dempsey as a hopeless nerd who buys his way into popularity and romance? Of course you do. So then you remember how the most popular girl in school falls in love with this nerd, teaching us that we can, in fact, buy love? Well, according to this article, the same is true with higher education – except the nerd is thousands of American college students, and the popular girl is the highly selective colleges, and love is education.

As though a myriad of other factors didn’t drive up tuition costs enough, some colleges apparently increase their costs to entice students to apply and to stay competitive. Both Ursinus College and Harvard University now charge students over $33,000 a year. Ursinus’ president is banking on these tuition hikes to attract students to the tiny Pennsylvanian college. Kind of like how buying a popular girl for $1,000 can endear an entire high school – nay, an entire generation – to Patrick Dempsey.