Watching People Watching People: Notes On Reading The Internet

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PHASE 3: I Don’t Know What I’m Doing With Myself Today etc…

This consists of all the websites I like to go to but not necessarily on a routine basis, more like once a week, or twice a month, or in some cases thirty to forty times a day.

Wallstreetjournal: If I’m really feeling the news bug or if some gargantuan event took place I’ll go to the wsj.com because, really, that’s the best newspaper, right?

Youtube: I can either youtube all day or I can go weeks without thinking about it. My favorite website. Recently, I went on a Frank Sinatra jag that included the Sinatra orchestrated mid-seventies Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis reunion, live from Jerry’s telethon, (probably one of the great TV moments and a clip that I’d love to write about), and a 1976 appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show performing “I Am Music.” In the post-song interview, Sinatra comes across a little like Marlon Brando in Apocolypse Now – a slightly insane demi-God who might have everyone in the room killed for no reason.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Aq_WewKtrg&w=416&h=337]

Facebook: Already mentioned them. It’s not that I’m not crazy about Facebook (it’s great if you want to turn your friends and acquaintances into consumers of You), I just never liked social networking sites, in general. Friendster. Myspace. Facebook. I feel the same way about all of them. Hey Facebook, thanks for turning adults everywhere into drooling seventh-graders desperate for peer attention! In addition to a near-crisis recession, historic unemployment, and a plunging real estate market…we totally needed that!

Amazon: I order books from them and think about ordering books from them, and create shopping bags filled with books even if I don’t buy them just because it feels good.

LLbean: Same thing. Also, I’m secretly in love with the L.L. Bean female models. So matronly yet so hot.

Gamespy: Great videogame website.

Wikipedia: Looked up Guillotine the other day. That column’s coming soon.

Parisreview: All of a sudden (thanks to new editor Lorin Stein) this is one of, if not the best, literary websites. They’ve got a great blog and the entire back catalogue of author interviews has been digitized and made free to the internetting public. Enjoy.

Charlierose: Ah, to be unemployed, trolling around Charlierose.com. Does it get any better?

Which leads me to…