Maybe we’re just lazy

By Media Farm

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THE GLOBE'S DEEP OBSESSION over the travails of dumb kids' feelings got a little deeper last week. This latest take was a drastic improvement.

The paper that previously brought us the harrowing tale of how red ink scares the piss out of illiterate little shits ("'If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening,' said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. 'Purple stands out, but it doesn't look as scary as red'") recently reported that state education officials are "now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure" to better "soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools."

Wait! Don't stab yourself in the face or leap into the Charles just yet. This is normally the type of story the paper plays straight, lending full credence to whatever sniveling whatevers are being spewed up onto the printed page by some awful Cambridge cat lady. But, in a sign that somebody on Morrissey Boulevard might actually have a pulse, the paper writes this one with just a hint of a wink in its eye. Imagine—having fun with the news!

After admitting that "the school system is literally going to collapse upon itself," Larry Azer, chairman of the Randolph School Committee, pleaded with the board not to stigmatize the district.

"When schools are labeled as underachieving, I don't see what it serves other than just to call them out," he said. "And it creates this antagonistic nature of, 'Well, you did something bad, and we're going to punish you for it.' ... When the town hears underperforming, the average person thinks these students are underperforming."

But the reality is that Randolph students are underperforming, according to state benchmarks. More than half of third-graders are not proficient in math and reading. More than 40 percent of 10th-graders don't perform at grade level in English and math.

Congratulations, Tracy Jan, on proving yourself to be a sentient human being. We never would've guessed.

FINALISTS for the 2008 National Magazine Awards were announced last week. The New Yorker cleaned up again this year, while Cat Fancy was shut out. Again. Lord only knows the state of those shattered egos.

WE WISH we could make this shit up. But we can't. An actual teaser from the table of contents from the March issue of Lola: "True Story: Maybe it's Multiple Sclerosis; Maybe I'm just lazy."

A question for you crazy gals: Are my eyes just lazy, or am I actually blind? Am I ticklish, or is there a bullet in my spine? Just wondering.

JASON BINN'S LUXURY PORN mag Boston Common is putting Texas native Lance Armstrong on its cover. Great move. Why bother pretending to about Boston anymore? Or even, you know, a real magazine? Here's an idea for your next issue—you could totally save a ton of money by not even hiring a photographer to shoot your next cover, and just scrawl "4 Sale" on it in crayon instead.

MEDIA FARM WOULD LIKE to anoint Brian McNally, a divorced, middle-aged, bored-with-life restaurateur from New York, as our new favorite writer ever. McNally writes about ditching the States for Saigon in this month's Vanity Fair. Or at least that's what he says it's about. In reality, the piece is a platform to brag about getting plenty of, uh, attention from pretty young Vietnamese girls, as well as a vehicle for a series of devastating one-liners. Great, great stuff, and well worth reading in full.

Some tourists I met complained that an annoying amount of one's time in Phnom Penh is spent kicking small homeless orphans and horribly disfigured beggars back into the gutter while at the same time beating overly insistent tuk-tuk drivers with one's riding crop. They claim that it may appear cruel, but it's for the driver's own good. This seems a little harsh to me, but I can see that if foreigners stop coming because they can't enjoy a hard-earned martini in a promenade café without having to be harassed by starving street urchins and the twisted and gnarled bodies of Agent Orange victims, then the tourist industry will simply dry up—with devastating consequences for some rather remarkable and resourceful young people with whom it was my privilege to become acquainted. Go back and forth on this one.

Don't get the irony there? Maybe it's attention deficit disorder; maybe you're just lazy.