March 2011
"A Poem About Baseballs" by Denis Johnson
for years the scenes bustled
through him as he dreamed he was
alive. then he felt real, and slammed
awake in the wet sheets screaming
too fast, everything moves
too fast, and the edges of things
are gone. four blocks away
a baseball was a dot against
the sky, and he thought, my
glove is too big, i will
drop the ball and it will be
a home run. the snow falls
too fast from the clouds,...
Opening Day Tip
If you own an iPad, you can buy the MLB for iPad application. It costs $15, but it comes with the first month of ballgames for free, sponsored by Volvo. So that seems like a good deal. It’s way cheaper than a cable bill for a month.
Trademarking "App Store" →
There’s actually a pretty interesting thing going on, for you language nerds, where Microsoft and Apple are fighting over trademarking “app store.” I’m not really sure about this 100%, but it seems like a very Tractarian (Wittgenstein, not the Oxford Movement) sort of reasoning going on, where names are assumed to have an ontological status. However, the sheer existence of...
I’m not really sure what the difference is (though the differences in their reception is interesting) between most of Odd Future’s stuff and Emma Donoghue’s Room.
People are aware that there was a critically-acclaimed, twice-reviewed [quite positively] in the New York Times novel based around a kidnap/rape fantasy, right? And that, according to its Wikipedia page,
The novel...
1 tag
"Not Another Odd Future Piece" →
My first piece for No Jumper, which all of it—the site, new rap music, everything—I’m quite excited about.
I basically tried to write an anti-think think piece on Odd Future. You can tell me if it works… Here’s a list of names mentioned in it, so you can tell right away if you want to read it or not (and to set off more Google Alerts):
Paul Murphy
Nitsuh Abebe
...
No Jumper: Return of Mr Zone 6 Review →
This is by far the most comprehensive (and dare I say, best) review of Gucci’s latest mixtape.
The Return of Mr. Zone 6, by name, is a sequel to 2010′s Mr. Zone 6; however, it’s nothing alike in spirit, aside from sharing a similar production aesthetic. Like Mr. Zone 6, the soundtrack to Return is very dark; Hitchcockian crows caw loudly on both What It Do and Pancakes, which may have...
“One of the interesting things about Led Zeppelin (and if you believe the...”
– Dominique Leone
Just spitballing a bit here from various IMs, encomia, and excoriations, but it seems that the most probably True Thing about Odd Future is that they’re a hardline, defiantly rockist rap act.
Poscast →
A podcast with Joe Posnaski and Michael “Ken Tremendous/Parks and Recreation” Schur. (According to the Poscast page, he was also a bit player on the O.C.)
I just discovered this song “Bruises.” Here’s something. Apple’s marketing crew and the post-punk band Wire can teach a similar lesson to burgeoning earworm indie pop bands: Sometimes fifteen or twenty seconds is perfectly long enough to get your point across. Sometimes that brief of a song is better than the length that has that guy singing on it.
You Were There: The Complete LCD Soundsystem →
A Brief History →
sadydoyle
I think there still might be some disagreement on; the question of “intent” was raised a lot. I don’t think it’s true that “intent” solves everything, and people doubtless hurt others regardless of their intent. But I think the other point is that call-outs that focus, not on what someone did, but on what they are (again, NOT ALL CALL-OUTS; this sort, specifically) often ascribe...
“Have an underwhelming Internet presence. “Like” things on Facebook like Minute...”
– Ryan O’Connell, ‘How To Be Boring’
How to be interesting:
Complain about the NYT paywall; refuse to pay for anything online.
Go to the computer lab and print blog comments. Staple them to a telephone pole.
“Like” things on Facebook ironically.
“Like”...
Quadfurcated Laserbeams →
There are four versions of Lasers. There’s the album Lupe Fiasco thought he made, the one his label thought he made; and there’s the album the critics heard, and the one fans heard. It turns out the record label and the fans have a better idea of Lupe Fiasco’s Lasers than the artist and critics.
Atlantic’s version of Lasers is the latest shuffle step toward major label...
1 tag
The NFL: Where People Continue To Rape People And... →
So… like everywhere else in America.
“I don’t like people’s art losing authenticity because of how many...”
– Heems of Das Racist
phiLOLZophy: I'm Not Racist, I Only Stereotype... →
philolzophy:
They get away with it because it’s harmless and funny and no one cares.
This, as you know, is called begging the question. What Das Racist is doing here, I think, is that thing people do where they are making a joke about race rather than a racist joke. Because it otherwise would be racist. They’re pointing out that it’s a ridiculous and kind of funny thing for them to...
1 tag
Douglas Martin's Dirty Shoes: Angles and the... →
douglasmartini:
No introduction necessary. An excerpt:
The aforementioned “Under Cover” finds the band using a trick they must have learned from Interpol in the Radio City Music Hall green room: rewriting that one song that most people liked, only WITH A BIGGER CHORUS. Unlike Interpol, this look usually works for The Strokes, because it doesn’t involve single-note strumming, robot voices with...
“It has been argued that a monkey banging away randomly at a typewriter long...”
– Jennifer Schuessler: Aping His Inferiors via Lady Journos!
Whoa. This opening just fucked my head. Because: It’s much more likely an assortment of monkeys banging on an assortment of typewriters would end up writing variations on the monkeys banging on typewriters thought experiment (perhaps...
1 tag
“The management chain in a publicly traded corporation is necessarily geared for...”
– Somehow pursing a profit is unethical while a non-profit group pursing revenue is not critiqued equally. Many non-profits recklessly gain revenue via many unethical means.
Liberal America’s social vitriol is misguided if profit is the only problem. In fact, profit is only one aspect of the income...
“Christ, how marvelous this was, or rather Christ, how he wanted to be deceived...”
– Malcolm Lowry, Under The Volcano
I just opened the book up to an arbitrary page and found a good quote for today. I want a drink, thirty drinks.
Exclusive to The Millions: The first lines of... →
WWWWOOOOOORRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!
And an allusion to one of my favorite lines: “On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.”
(Via thefeeling)
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Timing Is... →
So yesterday when everyone was being outraged/annoyed with Gwyneth Paltrow, I kept waiting for this thing I wrote about her (last week) to go up. It didn’t go up until much later. So now you “all” can mock it and tell it how it’s wrong and stuff today if you want more things to do that about.
Note: I was browsing the dash and wondered to myself, literally, “I should...
spiers:
Belatedly, @mbrookstaylor ‘s STFU SXSW rant: http://bit.ly/hljmEl
I don’t have any strong opinions on SXSW, but this person does.
Musical Jurassic Park
Posit: My music taste is “as a mosquito trapped in amber.”
Therefore: To reconstitute it, DNA-wise, would result in,
Finally: Pavement’s “Frontwards” played on a loop, forever.
Amy Andronicus: Raped in the U.S.A. →
I can’t stop reading the coverage of the new gang rape case, even though it makes me sick to my stomach to keep on reading. It’s not just the crime that makes me feel physically ill when I think about it. It’s the coverage of the crime by nearly every major media outlet, from The New York Times to the Houston Chronicle to NBC.
In the past week, these news sources have perpetuated the myth that...
