BlackBook

My kid had a fever the other day so I took him to a doctor's office. We go to Tribeca Pediatrics, where every child is named Jackson or Calypso. In the reading rack were three magazines: Self, Departures, and Highlights. I chose HIghlights, a magazine for children. I used to love Highlights and 3,2,1 Contact, the magazine. I remember reading Goofus and Gallant. Goofus and Gallant, for those of you who are inhuman, are two little boys. One is a real selfish piece of shit; the other is nice. Guess who is who?

There's something poetic about the perfect bound magazine. There's also something paper about it. Some people hate paper—the paper-haters!—and so we've unveiled our iPad edition of BlackBook magazine. 

Los Angeles is a city of easily filled openings. But Blok, the latest addition to the red-hot SBE empire (remember, we co-hosted a pretty sweet pre-opening party there a few weeks back), is perhaps the one that has burned the brightest in recent memory. The ode to ostalgie (though I don't remember Solzhenitsyn writing about bottle service and beautiful women) took a lot of work. In this exclusive video, see the armies of hostesses and servers assemble before opening the doors. Then witness the fashionable barbarians at the gate as they storm the banquettes and dance floor to party like a nuclear apocalypse looms. 

Remember when Stephen Malkmus, man from Pavement, wasn't middle-aged? We don't because at that time, in the mid-1990s, we were still listening to Ugly Kid Joe and Mr. Big. But he was once young. And in this video, a teaser for the upcoming The Silver Jews' release Early Years, you can see that youth captured on VHS. IN addition, the youths of David Berman — The Silver Jews ringleader and a guy who got my name wrong, hilariously, in an interview — and Bob Nastanovich, percussionist to the stars. Watch this video, remember fondly youth. 

Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who was one of the world's greatest basketball stars and also happens to be CEO of our parent company, just launched his newest project, a television network called Aspire. The network is aimed at providing positive influences for urban audiences and will be carried by Comcast, FAVE TV and Time Warner. Check out the video below to get a taste of the network and the ethos behind it. 

With one of the most stunning cinematic debuts in recent history, director Behn Zeitlin captures the tragic beauty of New Orleans in 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'.

I'm usually that guy at the gym who is recklessly attacking his skin with a cheap razor blade as if it were some sort of sworn enemy. I shave up. I shave down. Motherfucker, I shave sideways. So it was nice when I discovered there's actually a class of professionals who will do this to your face in a much kinder way. Justin Virgil, the master barber at the Kiehl's 1851 spa on the second floor of the uptown Kiehl's boutique, is a depilator non-pareil. I visited him, after a week of neglecting hygeine, to see what it feels like to be shaved in the hands of a professional and to have gallons of Kiehl's and no small amount of hot towels wrapped about my face. How does it feel? It feels damn good. 

Paloma Faith played Le Baron last night. She's an English chanteuse—chant-OOZE, the intern who studied French corrects me—who is being positioned as the new Lady Gaga. Yesterday afternoon, since I don't do anything after 7:30pm, I went to see Ms. Faith perform at the Soho House. There were a bunch of music editors there and we were served chicken and salmon beforehand. Then we were led into a screening room and shown the music video below on a big screen: 

Who the fuck knows where Keith Olbermann will be when the Aaron Sorkin drama The Newsroom debuts on HBO on June 24. The ill-tempered leftist demagogue may yet find another sucker network from which he can become spectacularly estranged. Most likely he’ll smolder until, bereft of a public outlet for his anger, his wrath turns to garden-variety bitterness. There’s no doubt, however, that he’ll enjoy his Sunday nights, when he can see himself immortalized by the doughy Jeff Daniels in Aaron Sorkin’s newest show, The Newsroom: a paean to broadcast news. Daniels plays Will McAvoy, an anchor who begins the series known as “the Jay Leno of news anchors” for his anodyne views. That quickly changes and the Olbermannization begins.

Tomorrow, the Silver Jews will release Early Times (Drag City), a compilation of rare and early tracks recorded between 1990 and 1991. I emailed David Berman, the band’s lead singer, some questions about it. He answered.