Save the receiptSpring has sprung:
- The New York Times has two (and probably more) worthwhile pieces today: a profile of the Princeton Record Exchange and an examination of Juergen Teller's engaging, perplexing ads for Marc Jacobs.
- Hendrik Hertzberg discusses Vermont Governor Jim Douglas's veto of a bill that would institute instant runoff voting for that state's congressional elections. I want to have a problem with I.R.V. - seems like giving the other candidates a second bite of the apple - but I have to admit that my objections are rooted in professional prejudices that are forced to bow before superior logic; in a Democracy, it's bad when the candidate most people want to lose ends up winning.
- Elvis Costello's new record, the abstrusely-named Momofuku (dude likes noodles?), will not be vinyl-only, as was originally reported; though the record will initially be released as a vinyl record with a download certificate on April 22, Lost Highway will drop a CD version on May 6. In the interim, listen to 1986's brilliant Blood and Chocolate, fill up with bile, and anticipate. Additionally, Costello will be hosting a variety/talk show on CTV in Canada and Sundance in the U.S. to be produced by none other than Elton John; the project was evidently inspired by E.C.'s stint as a fill-in for David Letterman a few years back.
- Robert Kagan posits the retrenchment of autocracy as an ideological mode over at The New Republic, in an essay whose title, "The End of the End of History" mocks penitent neocon Francis Fukuyama, who famously predicted that after the fall of the communism, we would see "the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
