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A leaked Sony email reveals part of the decision-making process that led Sony executives to hire Kristine Belson as the head of their animation division.

What do you get when you cross a British reality TV show host, the studio that made "Happy Feet," and an 84-year-old cartoon sex symbol? You may not have to wait long to find out.

WOW. And make sure you stick around for her interview after the performance. What a woman.

What matters most to young people in the 2012 election? (Facebook is calculating this in its new campaign “What Matters Most” where users rank the top three issues that are most important to them and their picture and thoughts can be featured on... Read the rest of this post

Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" (is halted as the superintendent of the LA School District shuts down filming of the second season because he insists the schools be portrayed in a positive light. Oliver may be let back into schools if he hands over... Read the rest of this post

Sometimes (it's intermittent), American Idol is on in this house; a few weeks ago, while photographing that precarious icicle, I walked by the screen and snapped this photo. It's Simon, obviously, disagreeing with Ellen, while a singer who has just left her heart on the stage awaits some kind of verdict: Is she good? Does she have a future as an artist? Should she defer her dream, or hold on?

Who is the expert? Whose voice matters? To whom do we-who-are-striving listen to? These are age-old questions, and every artist faces them; each of us, no matter how experienced, wonders. Because while, in some ways, artists are defined by the work they've already done, most artists I know hold that the work they're doing now is the work that counts the most.

And yet: Artists are not going to please everyone. Artists don't have that power. Gangbusters action or poetry. Conservative or risky. Over-the-top hysterical or rather straight-up. The occult or contemporary realism. Life issues or gossip. Right now or in the future. Easy reading or a deliberate tangle. You can have some, but I can't think of a single book that contains them all, and because this is so, it is a tricky business to calculate: What counts the most, and will my work be among the counted?

I wouldn't want to live in a world in which every opinion is the same. I wouldn't want to be operating inside a single standard. I doubt that you would, either. So that what I've learned, in my dozen years of publishing books, is that knowing who you are, as an artist, counts for a whole lot, and locating those voices who can help you do better work—who ask questions you respect, who judge a book not by a pre-established coda but by its own ambitions, who care about artistry, if you, too, care about artistry, or who are experts at action, if that's your thing—counts for a whole lot, too.

You can't please the world. You can always get better.

If you’re having trouble finding a girlfriend, it might be because you’re going after the wrong sort of girl. You may be aiming too high, or too low. Probably too high. You might be hitting on lesbians. And while I have nothing against lesbians, they’re not the first place I look when I’m in the market for a girlfriend. They’re probably the third place I look, right after prostitutes, and right before robots.

So here are some rough guidelines to help you seek out the right kind of woman. That is, the kind of woman who wouldn’t laugh at the idea of being sought out by a guy like you. 

Find a Woman Who is Used to Disappointment

Because let’s face it, you’re probably going to disappoint the hell out of her—sexually, financially, philosophically. (She won’t understand why you read all that nineteenth-century Continental philosophy, and she never will. At one point she will threaten to kill herself if you don’t put down the Hegel and come to the goddamn dinner table.)  

Try to find a woman who lived during the Great Depression, if you can. These beautiful creatures have seen the absolute bottom, so any meager thing you can offer them will seem attractive. Now they may not have the tightest little bodies anymore—in fact, they may be downright disgusting, physically—but don’t let that stop you. Being superficial is a privilege available only to those capable of getting with a woman whose outsides are attractive.

If you can’t find any single pre-war babes—because they do get snapped up really quickly, let me tell you—then you might want to seek out a girl who was eliminated from one of the early rounds of American Idol. She will have absolutely no self-esteem and a pure, hopeful heart. After being called a “fat slutty talentless train wreck” by Simon Cowell, she will just want someone to tell her she’s pretty. And you can lie just as well as the next guy.   

Find a Woman Who Makes Terrible Decisions

Because she might just think it’s a smart idea to date you. 

It’s easiest to find such women, I think, at places of commerce, where a woman’s decision-making ability is perhaps most prominently displayed. So if you see a woman buying a VCR, for instance, you should follow her out of the store to her car and ask her out immediately. If she opts for the $90 three-year warranty on the $20 toaster she’s buying, tell her you think she’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, at least in a Walmart. If she buys the first season of Skating with Celebrities on DVD, then you should propose to her on the spot. Because that show is just awful. And if she likes that, how could she not like you?

Of course, her poor decisions will probably come back to bite you in the ass at some point down the line. One day, she’ll excitedly tell you she just invested all your retirement savings in prime Florida swampland. “Oh, honey,” she’ll say, holding you tight, “we’re gonna be so rich!” But you can tolerate this. Because after all, she’s tolerating you.

Where To Look

Certain places will be more likely to have the type of down-on-her-luck, ill-deciding woman you’re looking for.

One place is the arcade. If there’s a woman over eighteen hanging out in an arcade who’s not just there with her son or little brother, she might as well be yours. Or dead. So march right into the arcade, tear her away from the first-person shooter she’s playing—on which she undoubtedly has the high score—and plant a kiss on her miserable lips. She’ll probably start to cry, out of joy, but don’t get scared. Take her right to the arcade counter, where she can redeem the thousands of tickets she’s accumulated over the years for an oversized pencil, three marbles, and a whoopee cushion—and to think, it only cost her six-hundred dollars worth of quarters to get all that cool stuff. Lead her out of the arcade, forever, and say hello to your future wife, and eventually ex-wife.

Abandoned warehouses are also great places to look for the type of girl you should be pursuing. You’ll often find her passed out in a corner, a needle in her arm, a delirious smile on her sallow face. Just yank the syringe from her arm, splash some cold water on her—room-temperature water will do, I guess, though you really should try to use cold—and take her in your arms. Tell her she doesn’t have to do this anymore, she doesn’t have to run anymore, because big boy’s here to save her. (You’re big boy.) She’ll be so out of her mind on drugs she’ll probably just start licking your face and neck, which will feel pretty good. Or if you’ve awakened her from a bad trip, she might start clawing at your eyes and genitals. But either way, she’ll eventually thank you for rescuing her from a sinful life of which she is now oppressively ashamed, at which point you two may begin a subdued, loveless relationship.

Another easy spot is the outpatient wing of a hospital. The women here will be in poor spirits and, more importantly, they will often be light-headed and not thinking clearly. So you can probably score a much better-looking woman in an outpatient area than anywhere else. One time I met this beautiful blonde in a hospital who was very light-headed from giving a ton of blood. I convinced her to go home with me, where we had what was probably the best sex of my life, and the worst sex of hers. The next day, the results of her blood tests came back. She was positive for syphilis and lupus. And as it turns out, she was autistic, as well. So hospitals are a gamble, I’m not denying that. But if you never step up to the plate and swing, you’re never going to hit a home run.

Other obvious hotspots for finding your target woman are liquor stores and the internet. If you see a woman buying a plastic handle of booze in a liquor store, then you know she’s depressed, and if you see her also buying lotto tickets, then you know she’s lost hope in her own ability to find happiness and has passed on that responsibility to the indifferent workings of fate. So swoop in for the kill—she’s ready and waiting. And the internet is positively chock full of sad women who have made terrible decisions in their lives. So tell one of these women, “What more could one bad decision do? Date me!”

You wouldn’t just blindly pick out a shirt from a store—no, you’d think about what size fits your slender build, what colors suit your wan complexion, what price goes well with your depressing salary. So why would you pick out a girl without considering these same things? Focusing your search—saying “I’m looking for a shirt that costs no more than eleven dollars,” or “I’m looking for a girl who weighs no less than two-hundred pounds and has suffered a personal tragedy within the last four months”—will improve your results tenfold, trust me.

So don’t be stupid and go looking for the girl of your dreams. Be sensible, and look for the girl of your carefully calculated and depressingly reasonable hopes.