This week, the website I write for hired a new editorial intern named Conor McKeon. This excites me not only because it means I’ll no longer be the only one removing everyone’s yogurt lids at lunch, but also because Conor has been one of the most consistently clever contributers to “105%,” a column of short humor I edit.

Here are some of McKeon’s Greatest Hits (available on 2 compact discs!):

-I figured I had failed my company’s drug test because I put “C” for every answer. Turns it they just wanted a urine sample. I was really high that day.

-I ran into a friend yesterday and he asked me to help him move, but I didn’t feel like it so I said I had other plans. I just hope for his sake someone said yes and he isn’t still in the middle of road, sitting in his wheelchair.

-I was in the hospital and I heard from one of the rooms, “Don’t worry everyone, I’m gonna beat this thing.” Which I thought was a really positive thing to say, until I realized it came from the maternity ward.

“Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe — every woman is one of them.”

                                                              —Paul Kinsey, Mad Men

One of the best recurring scenes from one of the best current TV shows, Mad Men, is the moment, present in almost every episode, when Don Draper says to his staff or clients an advertising fact that inadvertently encapsulates some tremendous truth about America, or about humanity in general. Like his American Airlines pitch from a recent episode: “There is no American ‘history.’ There is only a frontier.” Or his teary-eyed Kodak pitch from last year’s season finale.

This week, however, it was copywriter/aspiring poet Paul Kinsey who had the rare privilege of stealing the Draperism from Don: “Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe — every woman is one of them.”

Of course, it’s is a horribly misogynistic and narrow-minded observation, but haven’t most of Mad Men’s best lines always been? (Remember when Roger Sterling called female psychiatry “this year’s candy-pink stove?”) Besides, when your last name is Kinsey and it’s the early-’60s, you’re pretty-much required to make controversial observations about women.

P.S. In other incredibly urgent Mad Men fan news, I finally found a copy of one of Season 1’s best closing songs online: A creepy version of the hymn “By the Waters of Babylon,” specially recorded for the show (which may explain the difficulty in finding an mp3 without buying the soundtrack).

P.P.S. I’m pretty sure the screen-cap above was the reason desktop wallpapers were invented.

Building ownership is something I’m not generally familiar with, much for the same reason I don’t know the slope difficulty at Gstaad: I’m numerous financial brackets and two giant student loans away from such knowledge ever being relevant to me. On the rare occasion when I do successfully identify a building’s owner, the place usually has a helpful name like Trump Plaza, or Vanderbilt Mansion, or Kennedy’s Chicken.

Earlier this afternoon, however, my co-workers and I conducted a minor end-of-summer cleaning around our corner of the office, which got me thinking about our workplace in a more physical sense than I normally do, which in turn got me thinking about the 19-story Manhattan high-rise on which our office sits.

What a Google-level archival search revealed about my office and William H. Wood, the textile tycoon who built it, was far more fascinating — and depressing — than I could have ever imagined. (Be warned: this story includes both a handgun and lots and lots of bombs.)

According to an online review of Edward G. Roddy’s biography Mills, Mansions and Mergers: The Life of William Wood, the American Woolen Building was commissioned in 1909 by Wood, an ambitious and brilliant businessman. Unfortunately, “ambitious businessman” is 1900’s slang for “worked his underpaid employees like broken mules.” Just look how Wood handled the mill-worker union’s demand for a shorter workweek:

“He did cut the work week from fifty-six hours to fifty-four hours, but he also increased the speed at which the looms ran in order to keep from losing profits. The workers were angry that they were working just as hard and producing just as much as they would in a fifty-six hour week, but only getting paid for fifty-four hours. During the strike, the police found explosives in three different places along the mills.”

Wood’s history ends on an equally intriguing (though far more depressing) note…

“On February 2, 1926 William Wood had his chauffeur take him for a drive. Once they were on a deserted road, he got out of the car, walked out of his driver’s sight, pulled out his revolver, placed it in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and ended his own life.”

Before taking his own life, I wonder if Mr. Wood imagined that the New York headquarters of his 40,000-employee textile empire would someday be populated by (among others) the individuals responsible for this.

P.S. It occurs to me that my office is also home to a website that designs and sells funny T-shirts. So, in a way, BustedTees.com is carrying on the legacy of a suicidal, turn-of-the-century cotton-mill owner.

P.P.S. The building also has a carving of a sheep’s head above the main entrance. If any experts on sculpture or gargoyles can shed light on what (if any) the significance of this is, please let me know. Otherwise I’ll go on convinced I’m working in a building full of Pagans.

In the past two weeks, I’ve seen two films featuring British comedian Steve Coogan: Ben Stiller’s action-comedy Tropic Thunder and Hamlet 2. Sadly, this amounts to half the Steve Coogan performances I’ve experienced in my entire life (unless you count his single scene as Larry’s therapist in the most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm).

More importantly, however, it occurred to me that in both of his recent films Mr. Coogan plays the very specific character of a delusional director frustrated by the craft of acting – either his own (Hamlet 2) or his performers’ (Thunder). (To go further, Mr. Coogan played an equally clueless filmmaker – himself – in the 2005 meta-comedy Tristam Shandy.)

What does this mean? My theory regarding America’s tendency to cast Mr. Coogan as a director or performer in two movies released in two consecutive weeks is that, since the stereotype of the melodramatic actor who takes him or herself too seriously is almost always imagined as British (think Laurence Olivier, or any A-list cameo on Ricky Gervais’s Extras), UK comedians are the most obvious choice to lampoon artists. Or he’s just a very, very funny dude.

jeffrubinjeffrubin:

…Next two paragraphs for The Wire fans only, especially those who have seen the new Hulk…

I’ve discovered a great new hobby: Taking lines from my editor Jeff’s wonderfully bizarre pop-cultural ramblings and placing them completely out of context.

If you know Jeff, than the idea of him discussing something that only fans of both a moderately successful HBO crime drama AND a movie about a radioactive giant could make sense of is actually understandable. If you don’t, his words can sound like something you’d hear a homeless TV critic shout on the subway.

Check out this video of Jeff Googling for more out-of-context Rubin.

Recently, my co-worker Sarah — apropo of nothing, mind you — wrote passionately about “the illustrious career of Tim Curry.” Not surprisingly, her words wound up renewing my own curiosity about Mr. Curry.

I’ve never quite understood the cultish fandom of Curry’s most famous film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which seems to me nothing more than a 2-hour version of Meat Loaf’s “I Would Do Anything For Love” music video), but the actor will always hold a special place in my heart for two reasons: (1) For his role as the de facto star of Clue, which is probably the funniest film based on a board game ever produced (unless you count the unintentionally funny Dungeons & Dragons), and perhaps more importantly (2) for making Home Alone 2: Lost In New York fun to watch past the age of 14.

In the sequel to Home Alone, Mr. Curry plays a snooty doorman at the Plaza Hotel where Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) sneaks his way in. In the process, Curry, along with Rob Schneider and Dana Ivey, as a trio of bumbling snobs, deliver one of the funniest comedic threesomes of the 1990s. (Yes, even funnier than Tim Taylor’s three sons on Home Improvement.)

It pains me say now, but Culkin’s kid-on-the-loose antics in the film lose a bit of their luster each and every Christmas I dutifully watch Home Alone 2 on Fox. Curry, Schneider & Ivey’s scenes, however, grow only more entertaining to witness. Their undisputed climax in the film occurs as the three are convinced they’re being held at gunpoint by a vicious guest (in reality the audio from a gangster film) in Kevin’s suite.

You can view the scene in all its zany wonder at YouTube (jump to 1:50).

(Site Note: A brief glance at Ms. Ivey’s IMDb page reveals the woman was a queen of big-budget comedies in the late ’80s and early ’90s — with LOL-worthy performances in not only Home Alone 2, but also Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the Sabrina re-make, Sleepless in Seattle, and both Adams Family movies!)