Will Layman & Ed Fischer

Things You Can Accomplish Should Have Accomplished Before Conan Takes Over The Tonight Show in 2009 Five long years ago, Y.P.R.'s cultural critics extraordinaire Will Layman & Ed Fischer analyzed some "Things You Can Accomplish Before Conan Takes Over The Tonight Show in 2009."

Encouraging Modern Trends: At Long Last Edition The At-Long-Last Triumph of Katie Couric as a Network Anchor . . . The Maybe Coincidental, Maybe Not, But Still At-Long-Last Emergence of Female Journalists in Prominent Places and in Mushroom-like Quantities . . . The At-Long-Last Payoff of Youth in Politics

Disquieting Modern Trends: Dessert Edition Wither Sugar? | Cannol | Flan | Breyers All Natural Ice Cream (Is Not All Natural) | Death by Shmocolate | Fondly Recallng Candy at the High's

Disquieting Modern Trends: Post–Super Bowl 2008 Edition The Failure of Pre-Game Hype to Capture the Imagination of a Public Oversaturated with Every Other Kind of Hype ... The Continued Decision to Play the Game Ridiculously Late in the Day Just So We'll Be Forced to Watch a Damned Episode of House ... Tom Petty as Half-Time Attraction as Last Gasp of an Ever-More-Obviously Exhausted and Desperate Baby Boom Generation

Disquieting Modern Trends: Animation Edition The Creepy Endlessness and Ultimate Enshrinement of The Simpsons, Fine and Brilliant as It Plainly Is ... The Preponderance of Psuedo-Simpsonian, Semi-Subversive Cartoons, Not Half as Clever as They Pretend to Be, by a Certain Ubiquitous Animator Whose Stuff Actually Stinks and Is Tiredly Predictable

Disquieting Modern Trends: The Leviathan Stirs in Defense of All That Is Holy Edition Your humble arbiters of disquietude return ... thanks to the separation of a pop star and her children.

Disquieting Modern Trends: Not So Super Bowl Edition 2007 First, a wildly temperate winter in which it felt like Al Gore was lecturing all of North America about carbon emissions. Now: the frozen tundra. Frozen tundra? Are we ready for some football?

Disquieting Modern Trends: Meta-Holiday Edition The Growing Preponderance of Gift Cards | The Increasing Mainstreaming of the Golden Globe Award | The Frightening Collision of Rival New Year's Eve Shows Now That THE BIG DOG's New Year's Rockin' Eve Is Very Nearly (Merely) Mortal | People Talking About How College Football Bowl System Should Be Different

Disquieting Modern Trends: Our Languor Is Broken by the Crumbling of Society (Cha-Cha) Edition We have been rather moribund lately. Languorous and lazy, we--like food-addled Thanksgivers on the couch watching football, counting our blessings rather than our calories. Like a great dirigible lazing in its mooring above the Illinois countryside, it seems the updraft of cultural excess and folderol was just sufficient to buffet us slightly, make us tug gently against the lines, but never really break free.

Disquieting Modern Trends: Our Prescience Frightens Us Edition Little did we know, friends, that when we dropped goofy little Footnote #2 in our most recent missive, we were setting off a series of events that would shake up the world of what still passes for entertainment these days. We feel compelled to review the bidding and offer you--our ever-salivating-for-more public--a response commensurate to our position as cultural provocateurs à la mode.

Disquieting Modern Trends: Things That Should Work Better in an Age of Unprecedented Technological Mastery and Yet, Maddeningly, Do Not Edition Nail Clippers | Solvents | Cellphones, Cellphone VoiceMail, Basically the Entire Telecom Promise of Constant and Immediate Connection | The Fact That You No Longer Have to Sign Your Credit Card Slips Which Suggests That, in Fact, You Never Really Had to Sign the Damned Things at All Even Though, for Years, They Made It Seem Like You Absolutely DID | Microwave Ovens

Disquieting Modern Trends: We Do More Than Watch Nip/Tuck till 3 a.m. (Seriously, We Do) Edition If you've been following this column with any regularity at all, then we imagine you can picture us pretty accurately: two bald yet notably virile men glistening with up-to-date cultural consciousness, simultaneously watching four video screens that are tapped into a satellite network of both mainstream and marginal entertainment, listening to obscure podcasts, perusing the hottest "blogs" and YouTubing in a smaller corner window -- all while reflexively turning away the namby-pamby advice of our pollsters and media consultants and being served Dim Sum on the naked bellies of our harem of no-longer virginal Indonesian female mathematicians.
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Disquieting Modern Trends: The "Branding" Edition The lounge and waiting room here at D.M.T. Plaza has a 72-inch plasma screen that runs nothing but our favorite ads¹, night and day, so rich is the American imagination for the finest sorts of hucksterism and extreme con-jobbery.

Disquieting Modern Trends: Things We No Longer Think Are Disquieting, "Maybe It Doesn't All Suck" Edition Have we become so absorbed with declaiming That Which Is Not Right that we can no longer celebrate That Which Most Definitely IS Right or, dare we say, That We Which We Once Thought Disquieting, But Now Realize Is Not?

Disquieting Modern Trends: Post-Super Bowl Death Knell of Advertising as We Know It and Desperate Call for Return to Core Values Edition The GoDaddy.com Girl | The Giant-Headed and Core-Level-Disquieting Burger "King"

Disquieting Modern Trends: Navel-Gazing Edition In the year that we have been training our eyes on the outside world--on the ephemera, media, culture, and general goings-on of those whose very being is our U.S. zeitgeist at large--we have surely made out the prima facie case for becoming a hermit.

Disquieting Modern Trends: Back to Basics Edition Harry Potter--Just Not Getting Any? | Frat Boys Who Wear Backwards Baseball Caps | "Bands" That Are Really Just One Guy Who Gave Himself a Band Name | When the Little Light inside the Car Doesn't Turn Off as Soon as the Door Is Closed but Instead Fades Dramatically after Eight Seconds | Music on the Radio, Generally | Eva Longoria, Overexposed

The Recently Discovered "Erotick Poetry" of Daniel Chelly-Ladbourne Scholars at Kent College Pembury, an all-girls preparatory school in England, recently unearthed an astonishing discovery in the rectory directly below the women's faculty quarters: a dusty trunk filled with the long-lost journals of the mildly retarded Lord Daniel Chelly-Ladbourne....

Disquieting Modern Trends: Interacting with the Smarty-Pants yet Ultimately Insufferable Public Edition Hidey-hidey-ho, friends, and welcome to the end of the world.

Disquieting Modern Trends: White-Hot Legal-Eagle Point/Counterpoint Edition Consider if you, will, Disquieting Modern Trends' first ever bone of contention: The Use of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in the Target TV Spot

Disquieting Modern Trends: Summertime (and the Living Is Uneasy) Edition The Singing of "God Bless America" During the Seventh Inning Stretch | The Overwhelming Preponderance of Central A.C. Even in Cities That Are Not Really That Hot in the Summer, Leading to General Decline in Moral Fortitude of Today's Youth | Impossibility of Purchasing High-Powered Explosive Fireworks at Any Cost Even in Redneck States | M.G.D. Still Packaged in Solar-Contraindicated Black Can Thereby Ensuring Warm Beer in Approximately 30 Seconds | Everybody Wearing Hawaiian Shirts Instead of Just (A) Hawaiians, (B) Robin Williams, and (C) The Guy on the Corner in Your Town Who Has No Job and Nobody Knows Why | Bomb Pops Any Color but Red-White-and-Blue | No One Drinks Fucking Kool-Aid Anymore | Too Many Kids on "Swim Teams" and "Dive Teams" Instead of Doing Cannonballs with Their Friends

Disquieting Modern Trends: People Ruining America Edition People Who Take Classes in Improv Comedy | Bloggers | People Who Still Wear Birkenstocks When They Could Be Wearing Tevas | People Who Shop at Costco | People of the Bottled Water Industry | People Not in the Military Using the Abbreviation "Gitmo" | Whoever Thought of Cross-Breeding the Cocker Spaniel and the Poodle | Californians--The Whole Lot of Them | The Producers of NBC's Today Show | Whoever Is Stealing Our Scissors | The Current Inhabitants of the White House

Disquieting Modern Trends: The City So Nice We Complain about It Twice Edition "Family Values" in Times Square | The Relative Paucity of Large-Scale Civic Arts Projects by People from Europe with One Name | Those Little Blue-on-White Greek Diner Coffee Cups | The General Failure of Present-Day N.Y.C. to Be Like Taxi Driver | The Proliferation of Au Bon Pain like the Manhattan McDonald's It's Become

Disquieting Modern Trends: Big Apple Edition Photographs in The New Yorker | Broadway Musicals That Are Just a Bunch of Pop Songs Grafted onto a Completely Bogus Plot | "Hands-Free" Devices That Make It Increasingly Difficult to Tell the Difference between People Who Are Merely Annoyingly Busy and People Raving Like Madmen at Themselves in the Street | The Proliferation of "I ♥ NY" Rip-offs

Disquieting Modern Trends: William Safire Edition The Word "Conflicted," as in "To Feel Conflict" | People Who Say "Often" by Pronouncing the "T" | The Word "Liaise," as in "He Will Liaise with Marketing." | Spelling "Theater" Like This: "Theatre" | Goyim Who Use Yiddish Too Much |

Disquieting Modern Trends: Cry in Your Beer for the Lost Promise of Your Youth or the Impending Irrelevance of Your Dotage Edition We embrace the early stages of curmudgeonliness. We eye the ratty old coat of doubt and slip it on like Bacall getting into a mink.

Disquieting Modern Trends: "Guaranteed 100% Funnier!" Edition Hi-ho, fellow travelers. We come to you this week with one simple thought: Wouldn't it be GREAT if things were better than they really are? Not so quick.

Disquieting Modern Trends: Offspring Edition The Failure to Name Children "Mick" or "Mickey" | The Proliferation of Child Protection Devices in Otherwise Convenient and R-Rated Homes | Lunchables | Holiday Cards Featuring Your Teenage Daughters at the Beach | Kanye West

Disquieting Modern Trends: iPod Edition Music Too Hot for Work | People with Jobs That Make No Sense | Concern Over “The Obesity Epidemic” | Ringtones That Sound Either Like (A) Actual Songs, Not Cheesy Casio Synth-Songs or (B) Like Actual 1930s Telephones | “G-d”

Disquieting Modern Trends Return: Hollywood Edition Fairly-Priced, No Haggle Car Dealerships | Holiday Music Performed in Cool, Cutting-Edge Styles | The Passing of Téa Leoni from National-Level Consciousness | The Bill Murray-ization of Adam Sandler

Five Disquieting Modern Trends Look, we don’t want to be whiners or hopeless Luddites, but the modern world is clearly headed in the wrong direction. We’re not talking about hip-hop, computers, or reality TV, all of which we endorse with the zeal of a cocker spaniel at a ha’ smoke1 cook-off on the first day of spring.

Things You Can Accomplish before Conan Takes Over The Tonight Show in 2009 Long-term life projects while you wait to catch the talk-show host one hour earlier.