angela valdez

Oh god. I just had to preserve these. But it’s really...

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:58:29 -0400

Oh god. I just had to preserve these. But it’s really horrifying ….

It was the 90s. Um, and yeah. The little key on my zipper...

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:57:00 -0400

It was the 90s.

Um, and yeah. The little key on my zipper unlocked a chain with a pad lock that I considered “jewelry.”

Also, found a place! In Bloomingdale. Woop!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:27:51 -0500

Also, found a place! In Bloomingdale. Woop!

Wish I could find the rest of this. A-Rod could probably learn...

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:27:18 -0500

Wish I could find the rest of this. A-Rod could probably learn something from Arnold.

Help! Need a place to live!

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:23:21 -0500

Hook me up so I don’t have to live here.

Nara Leão, bossa nova muse. Can’t get enough for some...

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:08:38 -0500

Nara Leão, bossa nova muse. Can’t get enough for some reason. Found her on Pandora, which drives me nuts when I try to listen to curent music. But it worked much nicer when I put in Caetano Veloso.

High Crimes

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:46:27 -0500

Ex boyfriend finally moved out. And took with him ALL OF MY RECORDS. I caught him in the act and he grudgingly offered to bring them back, still denying that he’d actually taken ALL OF THEM. Of course, he did not bring any of them back. I know this is over-sharing but it is just too evil.

They just made a joke about Big Bama’s House on the Daily Show … Urm. Are race jokes...

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:24:44 -0500

They just made a joke about Big Bama’s House on the Daily Show … Urm. Are race jokes going to become more acceptable now that we have a black president. That could be good, and bad. Might expose the accidental drunk racism of a few liberals.

WTF Forbes?

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:51:00 -0500

According to Forbes, of the 25 most influential liberals in the media, just four are women. The whole list leaves me baffled. A few people with big smart ideas, several people with a big zero ideas. Many lacking in actual reporting skills… The women they choose are especially frustrating. Huffington, Oprah, Dowd and Maddow. Huffington makes sense, though her site occasionally freaks me out. Maddow is cool but also totally pop. Oprah and Dowd? I’m sure they could have found a smart woman or two in the media with more intellectual juice. They just might not show up on the mastheads as often. Too mad to continue thinking about this.

Bonobo porn and plethysmographs???

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:24:00 -0500

Bonobo porn and plethysmographs???:

Ok… I’m glad the NYT is writing about female arousal etc. But my first question, which I’ve wondered before when reading about the weird science of sex, is what effect a plethysmograph — a wire in your vagina measuring blood flow — would have on the whole situation. It’s like saying, “Hey. We’re gonna wait and see if you get turned on by putting a weird electrical device in your hooha. So.. ya know, dont’ try to think about SEX or anything.” Meanwhile, they could play videos of mailboxes and I’d think about SEX.

Tom Waits Wrote Me a Poem

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:51:00 -0500

Sorta. I had to ask these terrible questions for Us Weekly. One was: What’s your advice for romance on a budget. I corned Waits at a Jay-Z reception. (Not sure why he was there. He looked grumpy, especially after I introduced myself as a representative of Us Weekly.)

Anyway, after a little pleading he said: “Ok. I got one. Romance, without finance is a nuisANCE.” Swoon.

Update: Turns out he cribbed it.

Dorky History Stuff

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:48:00 -0500

Digging through the historical archive of the NYT I found some pretty scary parallels to the recent banking shenanigans.

On June 11, 1907, a pompous banker name Charles W. Morse, head of the National Bank of North America, received a letter a colleague admonishing him over diminishing cash reserves and the resulting limits on lending. “I have worried considerably over the situation and fully realize that the bank’s position is anything but a safe one,” his pal wrote, adding. “Very shortly we will have the Bank Examiner with us, and you know he has been none too friendly in the past.”

Morse had used his influence at the bank to drive up speculation in copper securities. Sound familiar? He ignored his friend’s warning and left for a European vacation, which left the bank without the quorum it needed to change things. Four months later, after the copper market crashed and nervous depositors demanded their cash, the bank collapsed. Morse was sentenced to 15 years in prison for violating national banking laws. (He later faked his own illness, by eating soap, to get a pardon from Taft, and went on to become a war profiteer during WWI.)

Except for the weird soap-eating, it sounds a lot like Lehman’s Dick Fuld. Like Morse, he received, and ignored, advice about how crappy his bank was doing. One email from a friend at a hedge fund: “some senior managers have to be much less arrogant and internally admit that some major mistakes have been made. Can’t continue to say “we are great and the market doesn’t understand”… People … WILL not understand that nobody pays for that mess and that it is “business as usual.””

Fuld’s copper was just complex derivatives.

TNR: Legal Advice for the Bankers Who Screwed Our Economy

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:50:01 -0500

TNR: Legal Advice for the Bankers Who Screwed Our Economy:

My first story for the New Republic is up. I talked to white collar criminal defense attorneys about the best strategies for confronting the expected wave of prosecutions linked to the financial crisis. Main lesson: don’t say anything and, for God’s sake, say something!

John McCain Still Wants Your Money

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:17:00 -0500

John McCain Still Wants Your Money:

I’m still getting emails from Obama asking for cash. Now McCain is back with his hands out. He’s starting a PAC called Country First. Ughhh. Will this be the election cycle that never ends? McCain has a strange video here but there’s little other content on the site, other than the donation page. Maybe he’s gonna start a new party?

Newsday dumps Les Payne

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:48:04 -0500

Newsday dumps Les Payne :

Newspapers are hemoraging journalists of color. Sort of a non issue for magazines, I guess. But I have to say it sucks. I interned at Newsday’s Queen’s bureau in the late 1990s and it was pretty much the thing that made me decide to stay in journalism. I got ruthless and supportive editing and mentorship from a very diverse cast of old fashioned news-people. Les Payne was right up there with Jimmy Breslin.

Michael Wolff is sort of funny and sort of doesn't make sense

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:33:17 -0500

His little chat with Jon Stewart just now about his Murdoch book was manic. Turns out Murdoch is totally un-rosebud. Bor-ring. I went hunting around for Wolff’s stuff and found this funny little graph in a hit piece he wrote on Slate, for Slate. I like Jack Shaffer (a real reporter), but I do find site’s rigid counter-intuitiveness a bit annoying. Perhaps because I’ve tried and failed forever to pitch them. Which is also why I probably wouldn’t espouse what Wolff boils it down to:

Slate, in other words, is by and for smart boys trying strenuously to be ever smarter than anyone they perceive as threatening their smartest status—all with the hope of ending up at some more or less horrible job at the New York Times.

But, I mean … isn’t that all journalism?

Watch out for Washington Sports Clubs

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:30:58 -0500

I just found out that after I canceled my account with Washington Sports Clubs last year, they created a new account and continued to deduct hundreds of dollars from my account. More than $700, actually. I should have noticed this, but the charges varied each month and didn’t say “Washington Sports Club” anywhere — so I missed it. After more than a week of phone haggling and bringing in documents, the club is refunding my money. I would also like them to grovel and send me on a trip to Paris.

Just listened to myself on below clip and am thinking maybe my lisp is gone? Some people still claim...

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:33:26 -0500

Just listened to myself on below clip and am thinking maybe my lisp is gone? Some people still claim to here it but I think maybe it’s over. Someday must write tragic poem about the horrors of speech therapy in grade school. That nasty women making me talk with crackers in my mouth then telling me I don’t talk right. May be the source of all my problems with authority. (Which I’ve totally gotten over, of course.)

I'm on NPR. Eek

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:39:54 -0500

I'm on NPR. Eek

On NPR tomorrow

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:47:47 -0500

I have an insanely early taping scheduled tomorrow morning for a short segment on my Aguirre Baca story in the Post. It’ll be on Tell Me More with Michelle Martin at 2 p.m. on 88.5 WAMU.