THE DAY THE EBILLS DIED: New York Press announced Friday that they have discontinued the Daily Billboard, the NYC alt-weekly's irreverent, sometimes brilliant group blog that I've had the opportunity to contribute to for the last six months.
I've always been one to make lemonade out of lemons, so rather than mope about over the loss of one of my few paying gigs, I thought I'd share a sort of best-of of the late Billboard. Here, without further ado, are the Best E-Bills Ever:
1. "Toodle-oo, Lou" (3/25/'02): Former Press editor John Strausbaugh with an unforgettable smackdown of aged Wall Street commentator Louis Rukeyser, on occasion of Lou's firing from PBS.
2. "Wackers" (10/3/'02): William S. Repsher's shot at "wackers"- urban white people pretending to be crackers.
3. "Tomei in '04" (4/17/'03): Reihan Salam, arguing that the best thing America could do would be to elect a beautiful woman as president of the United States. He also suggests an alternate plan, in which "We could have the United States become a constitutional monarchy, with Kobe Bryant, representing black Americans, the West Coast, our nation’s vigor and physical prowess, etc., as king and Natalie Portman, representing American Jewry, the East Coast, our nation’s sophistication and sartorial flair, as queen." Yea, not sure Kobe is King is such a good idea anymore...
4. "Down With American Cultural Imperialism" (9/11/'02): On the first anniversary of September 11, 2001, Bill Repsher gives us a master list of "various items from our American culture that the rest of the world should feel free in excising from their own."
5. "Big Pussy" (9/30/'02): C.J. Sullivan rightly derides Randy Moss as a "hateful little brat."
6. "Feel-Goodism in the Fog of War" (4/1/'03): Reihan again, this time arguing (quite convincingly, I may add) that "Pootie Tang" is the greatest film of the Millennium. I'm a sine yo piddy on da runny kine...
7. "The Yodeling to Come" (7/11/'02): Jim Knipfel, shitting on Michael Jackson, likening his behavior to a "meltdown on a scale unseen since Caligula’s final days."
8. "Audie Murphy Machine-Guns Deepok Chopra" (10/16/'01): Repsher again, this time making fun of a silly New York Times piece about "voices of the past." By the end he's referred to an 82-year-old woman quoted in the article as "a smug old bitch," and recommended that she check out a Tristan Taormino column with the headline "Ass Licker."
9. "All My Nutty Uncles Write For the New York Post" (6/22/'02): Sullivan, making the apt comparison of the Post to a "crazy uncle."
10. "Four Things Poetry Can Do With $100 Million" (11/19/'02): Tim Hall, making fun of the stupid idea of federal poetry grants.
Posted by Stephen Silver at August 11, 2003 05:41 AM