Now this is the kind of story I like to read:

Doug Jefferies

As he watched the death toll rise from the Southeast Asian tsunami, Doug Jefferies felt that a simple donation wasn’t going to cut it. “They had plenty of money coming in—what they needed was the hands-on assistance,” he says. As the owner of the popular Results the Gym in Washington, D.C., Jefferies tapped into one of his greatest resources: his membership. He posted signs in his gyms’ two locations, and immediately 21 people (most of them gay and lesbian) signed on to put their well-honed muscles to truly good use, working in Sri Lanka with Habitat for Humanity.

Jefferies, 38, and his fellow volunteers spent the sweltering month of August rebuilding houses in places where the infrastructure includes no electricity or running water. “I’m not naive—I know we’re living in the richest country and that when you travel in the Third World you’re usually in this sort of bubble,” he says. “But when you live and work and eat with the people, you realize how people are really living. We consume way too much as a culture and a society.”

Next, Jefferies plans to draw even more volunteers from his 10,000-strong membership to build houses for Hurricane Katrina survivors. “It’s affected my life forever,” he says. “I’m so much more grateful for what I have, and I’m not going to take for granted the endless possibilities to better your life and the life of people around you.” Chelsey Johnson

That’s from the Out 100, which is just…out. I often think about kicking the pumped boys in my neighborhood who sprint up the long, steep stairs to the J train, oblivious to the smallish mother carrying a baby, hoisting a stroller, pulling a conscientious-objector toddler, and trying to avoid losing both her bag and her mind. Guys: Muscles are (to a point) cute. It’s nice to be strong. Using your biceps and divine six-pack only to make your t-shirts look good and ease the introductions at clubs, however, is not not nice, not neighborly, and really sad. While you’re at it, could you stop spitting all the time? Do you think we don’t see that? Do you think it makes us think, “God, why can’t I sleep with someone who spits on the sidewalk in front [yes] of him like that?” It doesn’t.

From Kurt Andersen’s New York magazine piece on Lewis Lapham’s retirement:

The frothiest magazine he reads regularly is The New Yorker. He reads nothing at all online.
…
I ask [moneybags publisher Rick] MacArthur how his readers differ from those of The Atlantic and The New Yorker, expecting an answer involving geography, demography, psychography. “Harper’s readers are less interested in conventional wisdom.” Meaning? “[David] Remnick was pro-invasion, The Atlantic was very pro-war.” I ask how the magazine will change post-Lapham. “I’m more of an investigative reporter than Lewis. He’s more interested in turns of phrase and insight. There was a real bias against doing journalism. I’ve changed that mentality.”

Editorial positions on Iraq aside for the moment, aren’t New Yorker readers and Harper’s readers more or less the same people? The Atlantic, too, although maybe slightly less so. I just read the complete current issue of The Atlantic as I was traveling last weekend, because I’m deciding whether to subscribe and it’d been a long time. I was completely captivated by Paul Bloom’s winsomely evenhanded “Is God an Accident?” and, predictably, enjoyed Christopher Hitchens on Lolita, but was repelled by Mark Steyn’s tin-eared, bitchy obituary of Sidney Luft, some of whose facts looked fishy to me. I’ll keep buying the magazine till I make up my mind.

Update: Have now subscribed. Also just re-ordered the daily NYT after a multi-year break. I’ll have to buy some Grist environmental indulgences for all those pretty, doomed trees.

I’ve mentioned this before (thanks to Greg.org), but I only just put it into my own Gmail web clips. Here’s a source for all your New Yorker RSS feed needs. In the small Vermont town—really, minuscule village—where my mother lives, the richest man in town is John Brown, who owns the feed store. For real. I’ve seen him at the supermarket, in person, and he even said hello to us. Like a regular guy! Not like the richest man in town! Although I guess that honorific should really be reserved for George Bailey.

Here’s an ‘I Don’t Believe it’ Item

Everybody agrees that Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” was one of the brightest spots in the 2005 literary world.

But how in tarnation do they plan to make a movie from it?

In November, Gladwell optioned the film rights to Universal Pictures.

According to Publishers Weekly, Stephen Gaghan, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “Traffic” has been retained to write and direct, as well as co-produce, the film.

Leonardo deCaprio is another co-producer.

Book Briefs [Santa Cruz Sentinel]