November 2011
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The New York Times' Ongoing Series On How To...
Hah, that’s right. After making this post this morning about spending top dollar on narrative, I remembered this other piece I read last week. It’s so great.
nytimes:
As the economy limps along and more attention is paid to the so-called 1 percent, some of the richest New Yorkers have taken to driving around in vehicles that ooze neither wealth nor privilege. But on the inside,...
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“Part of the anxiety of gift-giving in New York at this moment in history arises...”
– What the hell does this piece, from the Grey Paper Of Frivolity, even mean? It’s the Franzening of hipsterdom? The gentrification of the gentrification? Modern day fisco-consumer black face? It makes me sick.
FauxSweney's: "Colonial Social Media Guru Says"
Tumblring only results in getting more followers. Twittering only results in getting fewer followers. You are fain to Twitter, nonetheless. ‘Tis the definition of insanity.
FauxSweeney's: "The Easy Way"
How can you tell if you’re gay? Your hand is bigger than your face (smoosh). And you’re a man who likes having sex with men.
What’s your porn star name? Take your first pet’s name, add the street you grew up on, and then discard both and use your moniker from Anal Explosion LVII.
You can find your personality type by completing this handy ten page test a few minutes...
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“The gap between first class and coach has never been so wide.”
– The Rich Person’s Paper Of Choice does not bury the lede.
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Tim Tebow: Magical White Person
classicaldotorg:
By Mobutu Sese Seko Even if one wants to feel a genial non-interfering positivity or salutary indifference toward Tim Tebow and his “testimony,” the frequency and intensity with which it’s invoked by NFL Network and ESPN makes it intolerable. By week 14, Skip Bayless will be berating some poor Archbishop about their “beatification bias.” This really isn’t Tebow’s fault. He’s...
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The One Where I Like Drake
I started out thinking that I like Drake so much because he doesn’t really fit in. He’s too soft. He’s too much of a whiner. He’s too philandering. Whatever — so is everyone else. Who am I to be the actuary of every rapper’s real-life actions?
The reason I like Drake is that he pulls off this middle-of-the-road everyman routine while still being exceptional,...
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prrr
agrammar:
last night i went to a party for “The World’s Perfect Zine,” which is a zine that was just put out by a guy called “David Shapiro,” but who is actually named something else. a zine is like a self-made magazine. the party was at a downtown record store called Other Music, and it was sponsored by Tumblr, because David Shapiro writes a well-known Tumblr called “pitchfork reviews...
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To Rawkblog, on Either-Or
This is pretty good! I think the point of not having listened to this before, it’s really interesting. It’s because there’s way too much music. Like, it reinforces your point in a way. I’ve never shunned Smith, and I do have his mp3s in my iTunes. But the scant I’d heard of his didn’t make me want to listen to it over All Hail West Texas, you know? Because...
Rawktumblr: bmichael: I’ve listened to MBDTF more... →
rawkblog:
This is a classic case of Internet blogger/commenter myopia, attacking the details instead of the point. Roderick picked two albums arbitrarily, a new one and an old one — picking Kanye was probably a bad idea give that that album’s totally great, but his point is that regular human beings don’t just put their favorite albums in the closet on January 1 every year and forget about them....
“I’d be willing to bet that most music writers listened to Elliott...”
– John Roderick, via The Rich Girls Are Sweeping
Even though this was published last year, it seems pretty apt. Plus, last year I didn’t know John Roderick from a hole in the ground. (Now he’s on a podcast with Merlin Mann, so ofc. I know him as the persnickety guy in that duo of...
Fifa President Blatter: "There is no racism" →
tomewing:
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if the most popular and widely-played sport on the planet was not run by a world-class dick.
Is this what’s called ‘British dry humor’:
Blatter’s insistence that there is no racism on the field of play is bound to prove controversial – as well as his suggested solution.
And people think that Berkeley’s idealism...
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“The bad news: You’re not special and unfortunately you’re just now beginning to...”
– An open letter (and invitation) to the so-called 99% from people of color (AKA the 99th percentile)
This is a good read, and one of the best summaries, I think, of one prevalent lines of thought re: #OWS. It’s very good. You should read it.
The One Where I Break My Longstanding Silence On...
I sort of thought A$AP Rocky was lazy, over-hyped, boring, and un-talented. Until I gave his mixtape about five good listens. Now I see him as the unlikely center of the whole indie/lo-fi-/bedroom rap movement that I love so much. (Main Attrakionz forever.) The thing about the Clams style (which is going to be the predominant style soon, I think) is, well, I don’t know, more emotive. It...
“You were supposed to have educated mid-sixties Helvetica feelings and I resented...”
– Eileen Myles just gets me.
I sort of wish, as a Derrida man myself, that the sixties academe would come back into vogue. But this ancient love for Helvetica is something I’d like to never think about again.
A Non-Technical Guide To 'Fuck The New York Times'
NPR’s “Planet Money“‘s Adam Davidson:
Businesses are easy targets, but taxing them — or not taxing them — isn’t the answer. If you can ignore the politics and look at our country’s fiscal picture as a math problem, the situation is fairly grim, but it’s also fairly clear.
I seem to recall some coked up math-econ students cornering me at a party one time trying to...
The End
I’m afraid I’ve read all of tumblr. It’s just re-peats, quotations, and recapitulations now.
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“dear everyone,
please stop reblogging that...”
– Art Yucko:
Don Draper embodies reticence, sexual assault, and preserving institutional values…
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Running Chicken: Scandal, Celebrity, and Morality →
kohenari:
But this isn’t really a football or sports story; it’s a story about rape, abuse, cover-up, and criminal justice. Strangely, with the firing of Paterno, it’s become a sports story that — somewhat predictably — now also includes college students behaving very badly as a result of their love of college sports. But Paterno and football aren’t really at the heart of this story; that seems...
“A$AP Rocky embodies the sweat-free cool of someone who has stolen the test and...”
– Jeff Weiss nails (in a generally positive review) my primary reservations about Rocky: even if he’s just expressing his and his group’s interests and major cultural signifiers, his music is like a cached version of the recent browser history of a savvy rap blogger (like a Jeff Weiss,...
Penn State And More
I kind of wanted to, but I doubt I’ll get around to putting together a few thousand word on this. I’m too angry to think straight. But, honestly, if you’ve ever figured that frat rape dances, lacrosse hooker scandals, college qb rape accusations, or any others of a myriad of sexual assault stories over the years were just, you know, not worth attnetion, then I feel like you have...
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“Heterosexual male identity… I don’t want to get too pointy-headed about it, but...”
– Dan Savage on why he maintains that the toughest sexual identity is straight male (in an interview by yours truly)
I awno. I’ve had a pretty easy time of it. You know who’s got a lot of skin in the game with regard to being perceived as “faggoty” or “feminine”?...
“So, feminist bloggers don’t like being called names but then brand people they...”
– Patrick Hayes, a journalist who writes for Huffington post, on his Twitter, regarding this article from the Guardian.
**Trigger warning for rape, violence**
Just to rehash the article on the Guardian, women bloggers and journalists are complaining about the fact that so many of the responses...
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"I got a girl on my arm, dude. Show respect. /...
Yeah. This song at about 24 minutes in on Camp has me turning it off. I’m done with Donald Glover and his pseudo-Odd Future rap. (The same song has a line about fucking a rhinoceros, which, come on. At least Tyler’s stupidity is somewhat original.)
Elsewhere, I think he threatens to rape the listener:
‘I wrote on rape culture my junior year at Brown,
So I’m allowed...
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Baseball's white rabbit
classicaldotorg:
illustration: Paul Windle
By Paul Flannery
Bill Lee is late. There are sixteen kids, their parents, and a man named Miro who is running for mayor waiting for him on a Little League baseball field in Burlington, Vermont. The weather is unusually cold for October, and now it’s starting to rain.
Lee’s baseball life is equal parts inspiration and cautionary tale. During his...
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“The week’s events have been extremely upsetting and culminated with an email...”
– Amy Harris, photographer pressing charges against OFWGKTA’s Left Brain for a physical altercation.
I have just a few thoughts on this, which is of course a really up in the air, facts unknown type of thing. But, dating and living with someone who gets death threats, and threats of violence... 