Shocker: AOL Hometown Folds

I was never really an AOL nut, so I can say that I know what their Hometown Service is, but I ran across a message announcing that today - Oct. 31, 2008 - their operations would be shutting down. I'm mostly just frustrated because I can't get the result for my google image search of "Monica Lewinsky Cigar Aficionado Cover," but for any of you still living in the AOLUniverse perhaps this is a sad day.

But hey, at least the site with the announcement has a nice Halloweeny color scheme:

Name Dropping

A few days ago, a post popped up on everyone's (and by this I mean my) favorite femiladyism site Jezebel about Juicy Campus. Jezebel blogger Dodai faulted the Gossip-Girl-gone-horribly-wrong, rumor-mongering site for a business model which essentially "involves humiliating women". To a large extent, I think this is well merited criticism, but to be fair, this is exactly the sort of reaction you would expect Jezebel to have, both on behalf of and as a function of their readership. Juicy Campus is gross, but its equally gross for men and women pilloried on the site. To be frank though, sticking up for the guys trashed on Juicy Campus was only my second instinct. My first went a bit more like this: "Georgetown!!!"

I love it when Georgetown gets name-dropped in the pop-culture world. I loved going to a midnight showing of Syriana at the Georgetown AMC and cheering along with everyone else when the Saudi prince talked about his degree. I loved it when the Gossip Girls debated about the Duke's alma mater. I feel like place-pride is pretty important to me, in general. A survey of some sort claimed that Chicagoans love Chicago more than any other city's residents love theirs. This certainly seemed to be evident in Grant Park last night with the crowd's deep feeling that Barack Obama was their man, and I think i take that with me too.