Anyone There?

One of the unanticipated mysteries of our society’s switch to online communications is the unanswered e-mail.  While many people would say that we’ve always had unanswered communications–be they smoke signals or letters or telegrams or faxes–I think the remove of the internet, compounded by how its instaneousness breeds impatience in us all, makes the ethersphere an even more likely breeding grounds for communications-based sloth. It’s easy not to respond to a friend or colleague’s e-mail because I get so much practice not responding to spam.

Yesterday the Times ran my article about the phenomenon (it is here), along with illustrations by the great Ross MacDonald, and comments from John Leguizamo, Erin McKean, PM Forni and others.

 How has having published this article yesterday changed my life? By making all my communications today seem very, very fraught.

Poke to the Future

Have you wowed any fellow party goers recently with your ability to converse about something other than your thoughts on the crudité? Been taken on a tour of your friend’s newly installed wine cellar and been able to offer a non-menacing response rather than drop-kick a bottle of Brunello? According to Henry, you owe Facebook a big “Thank You.”

In a special supplement in the August issue of Vanity Fair, Henry celebrates the societal gains the oft-criticized social networking site has already produced and predicts what future fruits we are still to harvest. Here’s hoping that someday we’ll live in a world where we are free to yell out in a crowded place how many episodes of True Blood we watched in bed that day.

And if you need any further proof of Henry’s Facebook acuity, you can review his analysis of The Six Most Common Personality Types on Facebook on VanityFair.com.

Headline To Give Pause

It’s entirely possible that I will never again be the cause of a headline quite as grabby as the one that ran atop Charlotte Cowles’s article on New York magazine’s blog recently: “Henry Alford Wore ‘Very Exciting Underpants,’ Wound Up With A Court Summons.” No, I imagine that from here on in, it’ll be a lot of weak tea and digestive biscuits for me. I’ll be in the nursery, folks, cross-indexing my Victorian etiquette guides and petting a small dog into submission…

(Oh, and: the incident in question.)

The Imagination Diet

If my writing seems a little different in this post, it’s because I recently lost 10.2 pounds. I’m writing thinner, my friends. Like this sentence right here: just a wisp of a thing! A recent study by scientists at Carnegie Mellon helped me lose the weight: the repeated imagining of a certain kind of food can quash cravings for that food. Goodbye, cheesecake. I test-drove the study in yesterday’s New York Times–join the abstinence party here.

Tina Fey’s “Velvet Glove”

Henry makes spanikopita with 30 Rock creator, producer, writer, star and soon-to-be-memoirist Tina Fey in the April issue of InStyle, on newsstands now.

In between all the spinach-sautee-ing and dough brushing, the Bossypants author talks about what she does to stay in control of a career moving at break-neck speeds, while her friends Rachel Dratch (SNL) and Jack McBrayer (30 Rock) explain the “velvet glove” that is Tina’s managerial style.

Both CNN.com and People.com have now mentioned the InStyle interview as evidence that Tina “feels Gwyneth Paltrow’s pain.” I won’t give anything away, but here’s a hint: it has nothing to do with post-Glee dance number soreness.

Still Hungry

What are independent-minded older folk eating these days? My article, “My Unhealthy Diet? It Got Me This Far,” from yesterday’s New York Times.

UPDATE: The reviews are in:

“Tongue-in-cheek” (Boston Globe)

“Thoroughly delightful” (Epicurious)

“Filthy” (Slate)

How Is My Mother?

Welcome, Krysti

I have a new column in Vanity Fair: I’ll be writing the campaign diaries of one Krysti McCandless, a supposed superstar of the Tea Party. Here is the first one. Lock ‘n load, people!

Oscars Ho

Here I am talking to the Hollywood Reporter about Oscars campaigning. (The writer included my favorite Oscars fun fact: that when Miramax Films held screenings for Academy members to promote “My Left Foot” in 1989, Miramax’s marketing department handed out chocolate feet.)

This Week in Old

- God *does* play favorites: Pope John Paul II put on the fast-track to sainthood. (Los Angeles Times)

- Rudy Giuliani is gearing up for another run at the presidency. (New York Post)

- And now meet Herman Cain, the first official presidential contender for 2012. (National Journal)

- Hugh Hefner takes Playboy private. (The Wall Street Journal)

- Congress’s 20 biggest gun enthusiasts. (The Daily Beast)

- The Pecan Braids were totally worth it: Laptop containing critical prostate cancer research stolen from a Panera bakery parking lot. (News 9)