Times were different, I guess, but still, that leaves little excuse for the rest of us.

“….Here’s the super secret plan for Thursday night’s LeBronference Call.”
– Mr. James will appear to the music of the Miami Sound Machine while eating a Chicago pan pizza and wearing Drew Carey’s glasses, an I LOVE NY hat and a FREE LINDSAY T-shirt. Interpret that however you want.
– Each prospective team will have a representative on hand, except for the L.A. Clippers, who will send a 17-year-old carrier pigeon named Bonkers McCaskill.
– The Knicks haven’t decided if they will send Walt Frazier, the Naked Cowboy, or best of all, Walt Frazier as the Naked Cowboy.
– Mr. James will only take questions from a preselected group of local children, and kittens.
– All proceeds from the telecast will go to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. All proceeds thereafter will go to build an insanely good Jet Ski ramp at Mr. James’s mansion.

–From “Ready for the LeBronference Call,” July 8, 2010

    It was too fucking hot to take the subway home so when I ran into Rand at the corner of West 4th and West 10th and he invited me back to his hotel I said yes immediately, pretty much for the air conditioning. I must have given him the wrong idea. He’d just flown back from Monterrey after a monthlong shoot about the Mexican drug wars and was between apartments, or at least that’s what he said. He also said he was staying at The Standard and would I like to cab there with him for a drink. So I told him yes, probably too quickly.
    It’s just that everything was so fucking hot. You can’t hardly hold a person responsible when it’s that hot. I mean just take a look at the streets. There’s no one out there. Yes, I know it’s after midnight. Well when have you seen the Meatpacking District deserted after midnight? 1979? Look, Sophie, it’s after midnight and it’s still 85 degrees and New Yorkers just aren’t conditioned to take this kind of abuse. Did you see some of the outfits on the street today? I swear I saw some shiny muscle guy in cut-off jean shorts rollerskating down Ninth Avenue like something out of Can’t Stop the Music and what’s more, I honestly thought he was straight, so maybe the heat’s crossed my wires or maybe I just don’t understand anything anymore. I don’t give a shit either way. It’s too hot.
    We get to the restaurant downstairs and it’s packed so he invites me up to raid his minibar. It’s not really that nice, this hotel. I don’t know what the fuss is all about. I mean it’s nicer than the one in L.A., the one in West Hollywood, but it’s still just The Standard. Plastic, you know. This time colored to look like wood. But Rand was impressed with himself for staying there. I’ve never spent a month shooting Mexican gang members so I wouldn’t really know where he was coming from, actually. But he said he did mention he’d stayed at the Hotel Habita down there in Monterrey, and Rick Owens did their furniture, so if Rand gives you the impression he was sleeping roadside in a ditch with a Taser for company, you know he’s full of it.
    He poured me a gin and tonic and started in on how good it was to see me, how much better I look than he remembers, all that shit. He really laid it on thick. He told me about the trip, too, how the cartels down there have killed more than a dozen cops, that it’s out of control. That they’re training teachers what to do if dealers start gunfights near schools. That the whole time he was down there he was thinking about me.
    Pretty sad I know. He’s got it bad. But I didn’t sleep with him, so I’m one up there. Don’t sound so fucking surprised. I’m not a whore, Sophie. No he drank a bourbon and asked if I wanted try someplace else for a drink since he hadn’t had a drink in public without wearing a bulletproof vest in a month. I said okay and it did cross my mind that he was going to try to kiss me, but who cares. Then he told me he wanted to shower because he’d been out editing the story all day so I flipped on the TV and watch the last 15 minutes of Oprah and then the first 15 of something on Bravo before I got worried enough to check on him. You know what? He fell asleep. He fell asleep in the shower.
    No, that’s the crazy part. He’s still sleeping now. Yes I’m still at The Standard. Where did you think I was? I haven’t been able to get him up but I haven’t tried very hard. I’m sure he’s fine. He’s getting fat, though. You can tell. He ought to lay off the drinks. Do you want to come over?

8. Your $5 umbrella will never explode walking down Fifth Avenue.
17. Each night at 7 p.m., Katie Couric will come by and read you the news.
23. That knock on the door? Amy Sedaris, with cupcakes.
15. Any time you want, you can walk into Soho House, point at any member, and laugh.
16. Thom Browne will make it in your size, always.

—From “OK LeBron, Here It Is: Our Last and Best Offer,” July 2, 2010

“The ponies had begun to veer off from the herd and the drovers were beating their way toward this armed company met with on the plain. Already you could see through the dust on the ponies’ hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes made from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fever dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
    Oh my god, said the sergeant.”

–From Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

– Good lessons learned
– Core competency
– Cost to outsource
– Development resources
– Let’s perform a deeper dive

2. LeBron, Quiet Friday Night. We Just Netflixed ‘27 Dresses’ And Ordered Thai Food. You In?
5. LeBron, No Pressure, But Can You Dog Sit This Weekend?
7. LeBron, We Fell Asleep on the Couch. Did You Decide Anything?
12. LeBron, Wanna Go to Balthazar….With Our Grandparents?
16. Oh LeBron—Sorry, But Can You Take Your Shoes Off? This is One of Those Apartments.

—From “Finding a Slogan That’ll Snag LeBron,” June 10, 2010