Collective, Unconscious: The Rise of the Idiot Savant.

I sometimes think that this blog could write itself if all MD and I did was just hold up the NY Times' Thursday or Sunday Styles section and say, "See?!" The Times' notion of trendspotting, or rather trend-reporting, isn't so much late or er, behind the times, as it is just kind of misguided. They're reporting trends which need to be stopped. Now. Case in point: I was all set today to wax annoyed at what I regard as the slow-building, but now surely at its apex, flowering of the trope of the wide-eyed, so-damaged-that-i-can-now-only-be-in-a-state-of-constant-naivete, prescient-but-inarticulate idiot savant. And then I wandered over to the Times' Sunday Styles section, to have a jolly laugh at whomever they've decided to have "A Night Out With," and discovered, to my (dis)pleasure, that it was Becky Stark, Ms. Lavender Diamond herself. Adding to the madness was the accompanying photograph, which featured Stark and none other than (the retreating back of) Miranda July; the two were part of a recent New York Public Library event, and in the article, July demonstrates to Stark how to rip off part of her slip and fashion it into a headband. I'm not kidding. I believe the article uses the word madcap to describe the general hilarity of it all. Madcap. And so you could stop reading right now, because anything else I would have to say -- well, the Times piece just unfolds (unravels?) it so much more adeptly, without even trying. Without even knowing. To be sure, upon my return to New York, I'm going to sit down and write my originally-planned post. But I'll just let you all sit with this one for a little while, to give you a little peak into the multi-part series that's going to unfold shortly. And also to give myself a little time to down that glass of airport chardonnay.