BlackBook

For most people, simply having a copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest—once a cult doorstop of a novel, now a point of honor/contention among readers—on the bookshelf or coffee table is enough to impress. I’ve got two worn copies, just to be on the safe side. That way, when someone asks if I’ve actually read it, trying to get one over on me, I can say: “Yeah, but forever ago. Why, did you just finish?”

If there’s one thing the world loves perhaps far more than it should, it is Internet-famous cats with distinctive faces. There was the tongue-lolling Lil Bub, who did the talk show circuit, had a bourbon cocktail named after her and even became the subject of a documentary, Lil Bub & Friendz, which premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

Most of us - upon being proved a laughable plagiarist/journalistic fabricator and fired from our staff writer position at the New Yorker - would go ahead and disappear from public life for maybe more than a year. But disgraced hack Jonah Lehrer has bounced back already, it seems, signing a deal with Simon & Schuster to write a book about—I don’t think I can say this with a straight face— the "power of love.” 

We’ve all seen some pretty impressive things done with LEGO® bricks, but New York artist Nathan Sawaya keeps setting the bar higher and higher. He’s done a giant red-tailed hawk, commissioned by skateboarder Tony Hawk. He’s done incredible, sculptural, life-size human figures—one of which is tearing open his own chest, spilling yet more yellow bricks. He’s even done a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.  

Interesting bit of news from Chinese researchers: they just unearthed the oldest well-preserved fossilized primate, altering the timeline of human evolution and adding support to the idea that primates originated in Asia, not Africa. Also, it would have been awesome to have one around the house.

Certain scents—even unpleasant ones—evoke powerful emotions and memories. The first few days of spring weather in New York, when the streets smell like trash, remind me that my birthday is coming up. Walking into the BlackBook editorial offices somehow transports me to my childhood dentist’s office, an odd mix of antiseptic and fluoride. Turns out I’m not the only one affected this way.

For whatever reason, probably because it’s the Internet and that’s what you do, people are always looking for ways to simultaneously get attention and publicly embarrass their poor, defenseless cats. First came the trend of ‘breading’ cats, putting their little faces through pieces of bread like a head through one of those kitschy county fair/Oktoberfest photo cutouts. Then came ‘bearding’ cats, bribing them to look up with a treat or whatever while you snapped a picture of them looking like a beard on your face. This was also kind of dumb.

Antony Hegarty is best known for—well, hold on a second. There’s his flat-out incredible and hauntingly fragile falsetto, deployed to great effect on albums like I Am a Bird Now andThe Crying Light. Then there’s his transgender identity, plus other attachments to a faded, androgynous and gritty version of the Lower East Side (Lou Reed guest spots, those stylized cover photos, etc.). So perhaps its not surprising that last year, he crashed the visual art world with a solo show at UCLA’s Hammer Museum. Now he’s bringing work to New York, at Sikkema Jenkins in Chelsea.