Who knew the September issue of In Style would feature the interview of the century. I am talking about the special “Top Secrets” section in which celebrities “fess up to all sorts of naughtiness.” The historic interview I am referring to involves a Galley favorite, Ms. Jessica Alba:

Sexiest Moment: “When a man looks at you like he can’t get enough of you. When you can tell he wants to take a bite out of you because you’re so yummy. When he kisses you and you know what it feels like to be desired. When no one else matters.”

(I need to catch my breath between typing.)

Boxers or Buff? “In the buff. There’s no such thing as an ideal body; that’s just silliness. It just has to be a body I want. I’ve never been into guys who work out three hours a day. It looks ridiculous, and they’re usually lacking upstairs.”

I limit my workout routine to 40 minutes.

First thing in the morning or last thing at night? “First thing in the morning, which for me is around 11. There’s something nice about starting the day with a little loving from your man. And I especially love Asian men in their 30s who write for conservative magazines.”

(Okay, I made up that last line.)

Some parting thoughts on Vienna.

If you are interested in “relics,” this place has a few. Inside Peterskirche are the remains of one martyr I believe to be St. Benedict the Martyr (R.C. Galley readers may know better). He is encased in glass on a side altar wearing his vestments but you can see through the gaps his rib cage and his leg bones. His face is covered by a mask, which I am not certain helps his appearance as you are now looking at a skeleton with a face (and eyes looking right back at you). Inside Mariahülf, right on Mariahilferstraße, lies the body of a female martyr bearing no name. She is actually sitting upright behind the glass altar, wearing a crown that sits atop a wig of long, dark, brown, curly hair. She has on a white mask and is clad in robes. Again, was this to make her look better or creep out parishioners (if there were any parishioners)? Meanwhile, in a side chapel inside Karlskirche dangles a finger in glass. I assume this too belongs to a saint or martyr but alas there is no indication whose finger it was. Besides the relics (speaking of which, an excellent site clarifying what defines a relic can be found here), over at St. Augustine’s Loreto chapel you will find more than 50 urns containing the hearts of Habsburgs long gone. (Near the entrance are amazing sculptures of mourners on their way to the vault.)

On a much lighter note, we went to a trendy restaurant, Fabios, around the corner from Stephansdom. On the chalkboard behind the bar are printed all the drinks they serve, including Caipirinhas and Mojitos. They also make Cosmopolitans–I asked the bartender who drinks them: “Mostly married women,” he told me. “Ever since that show Sex in the City came here, that’s all they want to drink.”

Uncle Grambo returns from the dead to give us this link to C-Net’s best dot.com disasters.

I’m particularly fond of Boo.com, the creators of which were even more obnoxious than the geniuses who thought up Inside.com (which clearly should have made the list).

This is why baseball is the greatest sport on earth.

Continuing yesterday’s discussion of the housing bubble, Galley Reader and Redskins Super-Fan P.G. writes:

Ok, so Vegas leads the list and it’s got nothing but space to build on. But you’ve missed one component: zoning restrictions. Take CA for example, quite a few cities on your list are in CA, but do you realize how hard it is to build a development in CA? I don’t know what the rules in NV are, but I’m guessing they probably aren’t developer-friendly. Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US, so there is a huge demand for housing and probably a supply that doesn’t match that demand. I live in Loudoun County, VA, and if you drive through it you’d think that there was nothing but space to build. But zoning restrictions limit land use to one home for every 7-10 acres in western Loudoun. Kinda hard to build homes to meet the demand of America’s fastest growing county when you’re limited to building a home on 10 acres. . . . the market is overpriced in many areas around the country. Where wage increases cannot sustain increased home costs you’ll see a correction. But the doom and gloom housing bubble collapse that we’ve been told to expect hasn’t happened and probably won’t happen. Mind you, 2 years ago we were told the rate of increase in home values could not continue and yet in continued for 2 years.

As for Greenspan’s prediction of a bubble burst, he warned of a stock market collapse in 1996, a full 4 years before it actually happened. In economic terms a prediction that comes 4 years early is not excellent foresight, it’s just plain dumb.

The dot-com bubble may have burst later than expected, but the point is, it still popped. We did not have Dow 36,000, as some very smart people predicted. We did not have unlimited growth in the stock market because a new economy changed the principles of market physics. And I suspect (hope/dream/etc.) that this housing market is a bubble that must burst, too.

Yes, there is growth in demand and surely in some places prices may be upped by zoning problems, but there are too many non-dense, non-populous, non-“hot” markets that are out of control for zoning regulations to account for everything.

Today I point to posts from suburban Minneapolis and Boise (Boise!) about sky-rocketing house prices. What is at work here is tulip-mania, fueled by low interest rates, lending malpractice, a weak stock market, and a national psychosis about home ownership.

My favorite blogger, Brendon Donnelly has a post which is totally pointless except that it furthers a personal feud between him and his former partner at The Superficial. Since I regard Brendon as a genius and The Superficial as a collective of hacks who coasted for too long on Donnelly’s accomplishments, I present the following.

From Donnelly, on August 26:

“where ladies are tied to train tracks by guys in tophats with monocles and handlebar mustaches as they cackle manically”

From The Superficial, on August 29:

“your next step in life is to tie somebody to some train tracks and laugh maniacally as you twirl your mustache”

Update, 10:52 a.m.: An alert commenter notes that “Jenny” wrote that post, not Brendon. I don’t know who “Jenny” is, and I refuse to answer.

Two companies in the same business with similarly terrible stock prices–Design Within Reach and Pier One Imports. One stock is a dog, the other might have growth potential. The Wershovenist Pig has the answers.

Bonus: Why ATI’s misfortune could be your gain.

Double Bonus: Just a thought, but as the real estate bubble bursts, won’t some of that money flow back into the stock market, making this a good time to look seriously at stocks?

(More on that housing bubble later.)

Despite the cataclysm about to befall Fat City, allow me to add a few more thoughts on my now not-so-recent trip to Vienna:

Here’s one European innovation that Americans can use: Traffic signals that turn yellow before turning green. How often have we sat in traffic, three or four cars behind the slow driver who, when the light turns green, sits there for a good five seconds before sliding his foot from the brake pedal to the gas, then slowly steps on the gas, which means by the time you move, the light has probably switched to red again? The preemptive yellow light, I am betting, would do much to reduce congestion.

Of course this assumes cars in the other direction will not ever run reds. If they did…

Vienna now has its own “walk of fame,” consisting of stars along the sidewalks with names of famous composers, conductors, and the like. There’s Franz Schubert and Frederic Chopin and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. (It is interesting and quaint, but why must the Japanese tourist contribute to the stereotype and take a photo of the star belonging Yehudi Menuhin? It sadly brought to mind the words of the great Al Czervik who once said: “Wang, it’s a parking lot!”)

Not everyone can get a star on streets like Kärnter and am Graben. Some end up near the subway. I remember spotting the stars for Debussy and Saint-Saëns in the Karlsplatz station. Not too far from them someone (most likely in a drunken stupor) left a … present. It is an image I will not soon forget. I call it the Karlsplatz Schokorolle.