The best thing about Observer profiles (well, aside from the way that they allow their subjects to absurdly skewer themselves) is that they don't have to have any sense of timeliness. Like, if there's a nutty character who should be held up for ridicule, it doesn't matter if he or she has an album or a movie or a book coming out: They just profile away. Such is the case with Spencer Morgan's article today on Liam McMullan, the son of nightlife photographer Patrick. Spencer starts his story with a puff:

“I’ve been too high lately to be terrified of anything,” Liam McMullan said as he loped down Broadway on a recent afternoon to audition for a remake of the movie Fame. Twenty years old, he wore jeans, a purple T-shirt, beat-up Chuck Taylors and a Batman fanny pack containing a jar of marijuana, a bottle of Excedrin for the migraines he been getting lately, and a cell phone and iPod.

Quite frankly, the story could have ended there, as we learn little more about the kid than what we could deduce from that one paragraph. But later on, McMullan does give us one of our favorite sex anecdotes of the week.

"I have these migraines now that do really hurt like balls when I’m having sex. I start being a dick then. I’m like, ‘Um you can move around a little bit — I don’t have to do all the work.’”

By the end of the article, he and his girlfriend had broken up. We're hoping the girlfriend realized what kind of guy she was dating before the Observer fact-checker called her up to inform her.

Liam McMullan, Purple Prince of the City [NYO]