New Sulky Notes

"He does a great downward dog"

2008-05-15T16:09:00.002-12:00

(12:08:30 AM) Ben Kawaller: oh yeah. well you can't be trusted to describe a dog tho
(12:08:37 AM) Ben Kawaller: you think they're all delightful

####

Taxes joke

2008-04-15T10:49:00.002-12:00

There is something funny about the idea of using a paid envelope stolen from your office to mail your tax forms, right?

"...if growing up / means being like you..."

2008-04-15T10:39:00.003-12:00

"I'm a new waver
My girlfriend's a surfer
I'm no more a trendy than you are
And she's not going to fuck you anyways
Eh, it doesn't matter, you all suck
You don't know shit about punk rock
You're just a bunch of drug addicts
Screwing up what we call fun"

Good question

2008-04-13T07:21:00.002-12:00

(3:19:42 PM) zenilman.avi@xxx.com: Are lux and jon editors?

Here's a trifle

2008-03-31T11:48:00.003-12:00

It's weird how often the Energizer Bunny is invoked to describe someone energetic, restless, etc. What did people do before this ad campaign started? Is there really not another thing in the world?

"Who said the game ain't fair? A goddam loser"

2008-03-27T04:47:00.004-12:00

En-Dasher strikes a blow in the name of rigor at NYO.

Indeed, to read The Complex is to see, writ small, the very moral and intellectual turpitude that’s delivered us headlong into our recent geopolitical disasters. It’s a document directed at an audience hungry for easy, comfortable dissent. What a morbid joke that its true allegiance is to the Rumsfeldian heresy, the Cheney canard, that a fact is simply something that sounds like a fact, that caring about distinctions in scale and kind is the pastime of the weak, that evidence should be regarded less as genuine appeals to truth than munitions to be indiscriminately lobbed at the recalcitrant until one explodes with enough damage that there becomes no choice but to submit to the “conclusion” that was your starting point.

Quick takes

2008-03-26T07:50:00.006-12:00

--Horrible thing that happens sometimes: forgetting to put on deoderant after you've showered in the morning and only remembering when you're already dressed and have your coat on. Especially if you wear shirts with buttons. Then you have to reach in through a hole in between the buttons with the deoderant and contort yourself every which way.

--Horrible thing in general: the idea of deoderant.

--Am I wrong to think that people who let their dogs run around without leashes when they're walking them feel superior to everyone else? It's a total macho move-- basically, "Oh, my dog doesn't need a leash." Doing this also implies you're a really great, kind owner, because you give your dog this freedom and you let it express its nature. Leashes for everyone all the time.

--Really intense DJ Drama drop at the beginning of Lil' Wayne and Juelz Santana's "No Other" from the Dedication 2 mixtape: "I’ma tell you all like this – I learn something new everyday. More money, more problems. I always knew I was gonna make it. But you never know what you’re gonna go through. I’m glad to be here. But sometimes you wonder. Is it worth it? Boy, I done dedicated my life to this shit. There’s nowhere to turn. So I’m in it for life."

--What came first, the chicken or the egg?

--Some things I wrote in the Observer. This one is just inexplicable.

Good instinct

2008-03-23T13:29:00.001-12:00

(9:29:29 PM) zenilman.xxx@gmail.com: i'd kind of want to interrogate him
(9:29:32 PM) zenilman.xxx@gmail.com: his delusions fascinate me

If you see something say something

2008-03-23T12:51:00.001-12:00

From WJBC in Bloomington, Illinois:

There was one arrest at the latest Soulja Boy concert at U.S. Cellular Coliseum. A 12 year-old boy was taken into custody Wednesday night for throwing a rock through the windshield of Soulja Boy's bus. Why? The kid told arresting officers, "I hate Soulja Boy."

"..."

2008-03-23T04:03:00.006-12:00

Werner Herzog and Errol Morris in this month's Believer:

WH: Whatever it is, it makes people talk, and they say things that they would never say to any one of you here in the audience. They wouldn’t say it to me either, but Errol makes it by dint of his face.

EM: It becomes a documentary, whatever that is, by the element of the unpredictable. Now Werner goes to Antarctica. He has a limited amount of time and a limited amount of materials. He has no way of doing any kind of prep. And so the movie emerges. It’s emergent, if you like, from just what happens there. I feel that the element of spontaneity—and there’s a strong element of spontaneity, of the uncontrolled, of the unrehearsed, the unplanned, in every single film he’s made.

WH: Yeah, that’s where real life enters.

EM: I feel that element of spontaneity because so much of what I do is controlled. The element of spontaneity is not knowing what someone is going to say to me in front of the camera, having really no idea, of being surprised. I know that there’s this moment in all of the interviews that I’ve loved where something happens. I had this three-minute rule that if you just shut up and let someone talk, within three minutes they will show you how crazy they really are. And it has happened time and time and time again.

WH: And you have a great sense for the afterthought. The interview is finished, it’s over, and Errol is still sitting and expecting something. Then all of a sudden there comes an afterthought, and that’s the best of all.

This is a big foul ball in a lot of ways but

2008-03-22T07:15:00.003-12:00

OneVanBeethoven: hahaha i sent such a mean email about dan
OneVanBeethoven: i am so happy with myself
jessem3217: wait, what?
OneVanBeethoven: to the list
OneVanBeethoven: in response to shane's
jessem3217: oh!!
jessem3217: there it is!
jessem3217: why so mean?
OneVanBeethoven: hahaha i don't know
OneVanBeethoven: it just came to me
OneVanBeethoven: i thought it'd be funny to propose to vote someone off
OneVanBeethoven: and he's the only one it made sense to use
jessem3217: hahah
OneVanBeethoven: this reminds me of our old currierwire days
OneVanBeethoven: i love how this feels
OneVanBeethoven: it's a rush unlike any other
OneVanBeethoven: i feel like i just got my old favorite gun back
jessem3217: hahah
OneVanBeethoven: and it just like feels so right
OneVanBeethoven: let it ring out, younguns
OneVanBeethoven: tell em neyfakh's back
jessem3217: shane is losing his shit
OneVanBeethoven: omg so happy with myself
OneVanBeethoven: from happiness??!
jessem3217: and laughter!
OneVanBeethoven: hahaha
OneVanBeethoven: come on send a response
OneVanBeethoven: gimme another crack at it
OneVanBeethoven: lemme just do one more
jessem3217: haha, you know that ain't my scene!
OneVanBeethoven: have shane do it
OneVanBeethoven: set me up, cuz
OneVanBeethoven: lemme hit one outta the park
OneVanBeethoven: for old time's sake
OneVanBeethoven: let an old dug run
jessem3217: he is worried and sad because he can't think of a joke

So anyway I was listening to The Wall last night and...

2008-03-22T06:52:00.003-12:00

Weird thing about me is that when I was in fourth grade I was a huge Pink Floyd fan. Like, the hugest! I had all their CDs, and I'd always be trying to get more. My sister turned me on to them I guess? The phase didn't last more than a year before I started listening only to Nirvana. And since then I haven't really come back to Pink Floyd. Except last night as I was going to sleep I listened to the whole first disk of The Wall and marveled at the fact that this band ever existed at all. The Wall sold millions and millions of copies! Honestly a lot of it sounds like opera, I now realize. And the rest of it sounds like Leonard Cohen or The Eagles covering show tunes maybe? How did this music become so popular?? Where did the audience for this come from?

A lot of it is really good BTW.

What's your fantasy?

2008-03-21T08:44:00.005-12:00

For years now I've really loved this Mountain Goats b-side that appeared on the "demo" version of The Sunset Tree, a song called "The Day the Aliens Came." The melody is pretty bold and riveting, and Darnielle's singing makes him sound wounded but fearless, resilient, proud, etc. Some of the lines in particular always really got me: "I will find my way to the front door like a soldier crawling through the smoking carnage / smoldering bodies at my feet / I'd love to stick around but I've got someone to meet / And I will put my best foot forward / And I'll thank God I made it out of there." Later: "There's gonna be a redefining of some borders / And I will receive my orders."

Taken together, I always thought, the song is a rallying cry and a tale of redemption, full of purpose and resolve and confidence.

Except that last night I actually listened to all the words and realized it's about a crazy person who burns his family's house down because he thinks that aliens are coming for him and that they want him to kill everyone.

That bit about the smoldering bodies -- just what it sounds like! Also, second verse:

I will present myself in my nice white tuxedo jacket.
and I will look out at the day through my dark sunglasses,
and take in the scene.
the house behind me and the people in it
will all go up like steam in just a minute.
there's gonna be a redefining of some borders,
and I will receive my orders
on the day when my new friends come.

And third:

The rooftops and the sidewalks
will all melt like plastic.
and oh friends, old friends, dear friends,
I'm gonna look fantastic.
There won't be any reason left to cry
'cause there won't be any people left to cry for.
my memory's gonna vaporize itself,
and my italian shoes, well, they will be to die for.
I believe I can fly.
Might you look up at me and wave goodbye,
on the day when my new friends come?

I guess the aliens are his new friends, and he thinks they're going to take him under their wing and tell him what to do. What does it mean that I found myself pretty inspired when I listened to this song before I realized what it was about?

"Thematically," it actually reminds me of another song, "Phasers on Kill," by Screeching Weasel, in which aliens come and crash on the singer's couch and in exchange he wants them to go kill his ex-girlfriend:

What to do a spaceship crew came
Crashing through my house
Captain Kirk the stupid jerk
Punched me in the mouth.
Why'd you pick this place?
You came from outer space
If you're sleeping on my couch then
You'll do what I say
Go! Set the phasers on kill
Go! Set the phasers on kill
Go! Set the phasers on kill
'Cause I don't love her anymore.

It seems pretty clear, assuming it's true what Keyhole says about the way things are, that the Mountain Goats song is about grey aliens and the Screeching Weasel one is about green ones.

Quick takes

2008-03-20T01:55:00.003-12:00

--In Clipse's "Grindin'" Pusha T says a funny thing at the end of the first verse, right before the chorus kicks in: "Platinum on the block with consistent hits / while Pharrell keep talking this music shit..." This is a hilarious way to characterize what is happening in the song.

--On the way to the subway this morning, I walked by a pile of shattered glass that had been swept to the side of the street, right up against the sidewalk. There were four sparrows jumping around on it and picking up pieces of glass with their beaks!

--Old ladies strike! Via Jess.

--I went to a party last night at Housing Works and wrote a thing.

"If my Walkman fades / I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame"

2008-03-19T09:20:00.005-12:00

Sorry to do a weird thing with my blog, but I stepped on my headphones a few nights ago and broke them, and am wondering whether anyone "out there" could tell me what kind I should buy now. I don't want to spend more than 100 dollars on them, and I don't want them to be so big that my head weighs a million pounds when I'm wearing them. I understand there are websites that talk about this kind of thing but I've been hurt before.

Don't it make you sad to know that life is more than who we are

2008-03-19T07:00:00.003-12:00

How is it possible/OK that Julie and Julia are two different names when Robert and Bob are the same name? I swear I've met Julias and Julies who get mad/fake mad when you call them by the wrong thing, as though the difference is enormous.

Also, good two-word derby: cat person.

Corporate magazines still suck

2008-03-18T17:41:00.006-12:00

I went to a Mountain Goats concert tonight, maybe my sixth or seventh (not doing a thing, promise), and as he has in the past, John Darnielle refused to perform anything anyone in the crowd asked for and instead played almost exclusively songs from his newest record. He does this on every tour, regardless of how good or bad his latest stuff is, and he does it defiantly, with some obvious contempt for the people who are yelling things out. "We have a setlist." He either implies this with his looks or says it straight out, with scorn and impatience. Tonight someone asked for "Golden Boy," which I think is from one of his first albums, and Darnielle said something about how in the afterlife that person would be able to hear "Golden Boy" all the time, but that right now we weren't there yet and there was no way he could hear it. Every year someone in the audience yells out for "Going to Georgia" and "No Children," and neither is ever, ever performed. Darnielle seems to take satisfaction in withholding these songs. Because they're fan favorites I guess? How could he justify this to himself?

One way is that he believes that if he didn''t play only his newest stuff, he'd be admitting that his old stuff was better. And I could see him not wanting to admit that.

Then again, shouldn't he force himself to? Like, wouldn't it be good if people who were past their prime could just own up to it and act accordingly? Do we not believe that a person could ever be past their prime? I feel like it's an American idea, maybe, that there's no such thing. You're supposed to always believe that you can do better than you're doing -- that you can't ever peak. Obviously that's not true though! People peak. People start getting worse at whatever it is they do. It's quite possible that John Darnielle will never write a song as good as "No Children" or "Going to Georgia" ever again.

This is explained, I think, by how we think about geniuses who died young. Because we want to believe that something big was lost when they died, we want to believe that their masterpiece or whatever was still in their future when they were taken from us. It is hard to admit, but it's quite possible that if Kurt Cobain had lived, he would have, at some point, become less relevant/good than he was the last time he made a record. Same with Tupac, Biggie, etc. Different but similar: Salinger's latest books, the ones about the Glass family he's been secretly writing or whatever, are maybe not as good as his first ones. John Lennon is a weird one, because his music had already gotten very bad by the time he died, and it seemed pretty likely that he would never be as good as he once had been. And so his death left a weird taste in people's mouths, I think. The same way Paul McCartney's survival does. Also Dylan's.

Anyway, Eminem's apaprently working on a new album, to be called-- according to a very extensive Wikipedia page-- "King Marshall." I think of this, from "Til I Collapse," 2003:

Till I collapse I’m spilling these raps long as you feel 'em
Till the day that I drop you'll never say that I'm not killing 'em
'Cause when I am not then Ima stop pinning 'em
And then I am not hip-hop, and I’m just not Eminem.

Also "Soldier," same year:

Listen to the sound of me spillin' my heart through this pen,
You motherfuckers know that I'll never be Marshall again
Full of controversy until I retire my jersey,
till the fire inside dies and expires at thirty

I can't tell if I want "King Marshall" to happen, or if I'd rather it lived alongside "Chinese Democracy" and "Detox" in purgatory.

One other thing about the Mountain Goats show: every year everyone's sad that Darnielle doesn't play their favorite old songs, and everyone mostly just stands there patiently while he's indulging himself and playing the new album. Whenever he plays an old one though, the place comes alive, everyone sings along, etc. And every year, the songs that inspire this reaction grow more numerous. Which is to say, anything that came out before the most recent album is sure to make people happy -- the songs that we don't like this year will be the songs we love when we see them again on their next tour.

Everybody let's watch our heads.

Only kind of related to thing from before about jokes and being ladylike

2008-03-16T13:08:00.002-12:00

FancyLad: you know who has become my favorite troll disguised as media commentator?
FancyLad: chrsitopher hitchens
FancyLad: his stuff on atheism is a snooze and I could give two shits about his opinions about iraq
FancyLad: but i loved how he wrote that dumb article about how women aren't funny
OneVanBeethoven: haha yeah
FancyLad: then vanity fair has the cover story WOMEN ARE FUNNY that is waaay more sexist than his column was
FancyLad: then his response was all "the author wants some half erect hitchens dick!"
OneVanBeethoven: haha
FancyLad: then the editor of jezebel cried and ripped her hair out while listening to cat power
OneVanBeethoven: hahaha
FancyLad: *swish*

Pretty good link

2008-03-16T12:30:00.001-12:00

From Romenesko b-roll:

The Fox News of gay journalism?
Third item.
(Washington Blade)

"First it feels like a prick and then it hits you like a jumbo jet"

2008-03-10T10:54:00.003-12:00

Couple things about "Hovi Baby" from Blueprint 2.

First:

I got the whole rap world on my shoulder, they trying to see
further than I am
And I have been trying to be patient with they preoccupation
with David and Goliath.
But sooner or later, that patience gonna run it's course
and I'll be forced to be a tyrant.

What he's saying basically is that he's Goliath and he's still going to win. Like, yes, he's saying, there is the counterintuitive little myth that people like to talk about where the little guy stuns the giant, where the turtle beats the hare, etc., but that's not what's going to happen here. Goliath is going to win; this time, the counterintuitive conventional wisdom is wrong.

This seems pretty clearly related to the factoid problem, wherein the unexpected becomes the expected because people latch on to it for its narrative "isn't it pretty to think so" elegance.

Weird related couplet on Lil' Wayne's Jay-Z diss, "I Know the Future," where Mack Mane says: "That's a hint to you Davids / throwing shots at Goliath / This the new testament / where the victor is the giant."

Second thing re: "Hovi Baby":

I'm so far ahead of my time, I'm about to start another life
Look behind you, I'm about to pass you twice
Back to the future and gotta slow up for the present
I'm fast, niggas can't get past my past
How they propose to deal with my perfect present?

This has to be a grammar joke on "past perfect" but in a pretty rare display of leaving out/holding back, Jay never spells it out.

UPDATE: Keyhole notes in an e-mail that "present perfect" is a thing. Which means that the joke here is pretty much completely spelled out. I should have kept this thing dark is the point, obviously I wasn't really ready to get back on the horse. :-(

"It's not a game, it's just called a game"

2008-03-09T16:56:00.007-12:00

Speaking of good yarns can we stop for a second and remember how incredible it was when Dr. Dre had to choose between 50 Cent and The Game after the two of them had their fight and Game was kicked out of G-Unit? Like, Dre had to have known that Game was the more honorable of the two, that 50 might make him more money but that Game was the one with the real promise and heart. And yet he sided with 50 and refused to contribute any beats when Game started working on Doctor's Advocate. Spoke out against him in interviews, even, if I recall, and generally disowned him even though a year before he had heralded him as his own second coming.

Doctor's Advocate is an album I love because Game is not just plainly and unabashedly heartbroken throughout the whole thing about Dre abandoning him, but confident and sober-minded and conflicted too. "I done been to hell and back," he says on the first song, "left for dead, you know who to thank for that / finished my second LP without a Dr. Dre track / You can take my soul but can't take my plaques."

He is defiant and yet, later, totally honest about the fact that a wound has been inflicted: "Everybody wanna know what the fuck is going on -- am I signed to Aftermath? Interscope? What's up with Geffen? I'ma just say it like this: one day I walked in the motherfucking house, and all my shit was gone."

Later still, on the impossibly sad, teary title track, in which the man's voice can actually be heard cracking: "Now it's my turn to carry the torch / And I still got the chain that you wore on the cover of The Source / Remember when we got drunk to do "Start From Scratch"? / I told you you was like a father to me, I meant that! / Now I'm sitting here looking at my platinum plaques, thinking 'what the fuck am I without a Dr. Dre track?'"

He mentions Dre on literally every song, and never once does he sound vengeful or petulant. Dignity in the aftermath of betrayal: not a single 'fuck you too' or 'who needs you anyway' to be found in a single line. Game stands alone, forsaken and disowned, and yet:

I still think about my nigga from time to time,
Makes me wanna call 50 and let him know what's on my mind,
But I just hold back 'cuz we ain't beefin' like that,
He ain't Big, and I ain't Pac, and we just eatin' off rap.

Which is up there, I think, with that verse Keyhole and I like from "I'm Not You" by the Clipse, in its earnest self-deprecation and its economy of words.

Which is all to say, this was a remarkable thing that happened in rap and I don't think people paid enough attention to it when this album came out. I mean, sure, everyone were excited when the beef first ignited and Game was kicked out of G-Unit, but did anyone follow up post-Doctor's Advocate and like, really get into it? In any case, now would be a good time to interview Dre about it, especially considering how embarrassing it probably is right now to be the guy who brought 50 Cent into the world.

"The exception that proves the rule"

2008-03-09T16:39:00.005-12:00

This is not really a thing. Nothing could ever "prove" a rule by virtue of not following it. I don't want to list examples but I will anyway: in this book I'm reading about the NYRB the author talks about how the editors of that publication never discovered any young talent or launched anyone's career. He then lists two people whose careers the NYRB did launch, and refers to them subsequently as "rule-proving exceptions."

This is not how data works, and I say that with some confidence even though I do not know that much about how data works. These two guys are outliers, sure, and you can know that if you know that all the other people who contributed to the NYRB were old and established by the time they started publishing there, but you can't just look at them and extrapolate the "rule" he's insisting they prove. In fact, these two guys don't really make any difference whatsoever, because if you believe the rule is true, the fact that in these two instances it didn't hold teaches you nothing new, and in identifying them as outliers you haven't come upon anything that would/should strengthen your faith in the pattern from which you think they are deviating.

UPDATE: Turns out this is an old, fossilized factoid, not a new thing at all. It has a Wikipedia entry and everything. So humiliating!! Sorry readers, this was some straight to video shit.

"She did a movie called 'Revenge of the Pervs' / there were screams and jeans and curves and nerves"

2008-03-06T16:21:00.003-12:00

1. This morning I had really long fingernails so I decided that I needed to cut them before I found myself anywhere important. So I brought a pair of clippers with me with the intention of using them at some point during work, in the bathroom. On the subway platform though at Dekalb I saw a guy standing over the tracks, and he was cutting his nails. It would have been pretty good if I'd come up right alongside him and started doing the same thing. Would he have said something?

2. I did an item for NYO last night that went up around six this morning re Bob Barker's memoirs, which he's writing now that he's been off The Price is Right for a year. When I woke up this morning at 8:30 or whatever, there were already two comments. The first one:

Bob Barker is immensely talented and charismatic. Hosting a game show is not as easy as it looks and there's only a select few who master the craft year-after-year. Decades is extremely rare. Bill Cullen was in a league by himself and so is Bob Barker. Wink Martindale is down the list a bit. Way down!

From what I've read, Bob Barker has a dark side. A very dark side. I used to watch The Price Is Right years ago, and there were hints of this dark side with the contestants in the form of putdowns and ridicule. It was all in the name of fun, but nonetheless it was putdowns.

A number of former employees of the show have filed lawsuits and I think most of them, if not all of them, are women. I'm only familar with two women: Parkinson and Hallstrom. One lawsuit was of a sexual nature and the other lawsuit was due to a firing. Several months ago. I read another lawsuit has been filed which has racial overtones. There was a fairly recent mass firing on one day, and Barker's explanation for this mass firing was economics.

I hope Bob Barker will address these issues in the book, and I'm sure his version of what happened will be quite different. I'm of the opinion Bob Barker has a dark side, because there's been too many lawsuits. As I said previously, you saw little hints of this dark side on the show. If the contestant didn't do the right thing, he was impatient. Something along the lines: "You're not yelling loud enough. Louder. I mean louder. What's wrong with you. Do you want this car. You can putt better than that. Audience, let's here a boo. Spin the wheel, NOW. NOW. That's not how you spin it."

I'd post the second one but the guy just responds pretty much and it's not terribly compelling. They go on for six more posts, but man, can you imagine writing that first thing? Thinking those thoughts/ideas about Bob Barker? "There were hints of this dark side with the contestants in the form of putdowns and ridicule. It was all in the name of fun, but nonetheless it was putdowns." This is a crazy thing to think.

3. Problem in "Certain Songs" by Hold Steady, which is that Craig Finn identifies a bunch of jukebox selections during the climactic bridge or whatever, but he only gives the coordinates of the disk, not the song. You need both to make a selection on a jukebox; if you punch in just the first letter and number you will not get any result. The lyrics go: "B-1 is for the good girls / it's, 'Only the Good Die Young.' / C-9 is for the makin' eyes, it's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light.' / D-4 is for the lovers / B-12 is for the speeders / and the hard drugs are for the bartenders and the kitchen workers and the bartender's friends." In other words these are songs he's listing. But there's no way it's true that you could press "B-1" and hear that song. You'd have to provide the jukebox with more information. It's a fucking lie is what it is.

4. Standing on the elevator the other day at work, waiting for it to leave the lobby which it always takes a few seconds too many to do. While it sits there, on the first floor, a woman comes aboard and asks me, "Going up?" Yes obviously going up.

Actually whatever

2008-03-05T11:39:00.003-12:00

Infinite lives etc. Back to the gats.

If it's too loud you're too old

2008-03-02T05:55:00.007-12:00

A couple songs recorded about a year ago by my friend Willy that would, in any reasonable universe, set the world on fire. The first is "Bullets" and the other is "Car." It is safe to say no one has heard songs like these before.

"I'm sorry grandmama for mistakes I have made / When I aired family business, how you put me in my place"

2008-02-29T03:29:00.003-12:00

From: [my mom]
Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:44 PM
Subject: Buckley
To: Leon

The only thing i did not realize from your article is that he was a Conservative icon...

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5htj3BNDPQZfgo1Sjus7DBavzhHjQD8V32E000

All in the game

2008-02-28T10:15:00.001-12:00

En Dasher carries the latest missive from Peter Ekman of Queens.

What joke is this

2008-02-18T16:15:00.003-12:00

There are these couple of jokes people like on the internet that are all alike in a weirdly narrow but elusive way. The prototype as I understand it is the string of "Chuck Norris" jokes; these are just sentences about the outrageous and superhuman things Chuck Norris can do. A more recent incarnation of that same thing is the "www.barackobamaismybicycle" thing which is just sentences about the saintly and thoughtful things Barack Obama does for people. And then in the middle there was this video, which I never really understood, which I think is the same thing.

Somehow I think this is the same joke as the "ninjas" website from long ago. "Fun facts about ninjas" or whatever, and the guy just listed all these ways in which ninjas were "totally fucking sweet" etc.

Part of what people find amusing I guess is the enthusiasm of the declarations. And their absurdity/clicheness maybe? Alternately clicheness and absurdity, and part of the joke is in the bumpy transition from one to the other. Also it has something to do with the historical figures -- these are guys about whom it is funny to be excited /"really pumped" about. What does it take to become one of those guys? What kind of reputation is that?

Everybody in my crew stands on their own two

2008-02-18T10:47:00.006-12:00

D. Luxemburg here and B. Kawaller here.

"We make a lot of noise / when we come through the club"

2008-02-18T08:24:00.003-12:00

En Dash goes viral.

"Actually, they didn't print the letter with en dashes. This has to be taken down; it's unintelligible in this format."

Update: Gawker post amended. "Following a gently critical email from Mr. Ekman, we have attempted to recreate his proper use of em and en dashes."

Cafe culture

2008-02-14T15:52:00.006-12:00

Was reading my book about Nim Chimpsky at Tillie's tonight and they did an open mic. First though the cafe people played a bunch of songs on the stereo from 69 Love Songs. Because of Valentine's Day I guess? In which case, a loaded choice. Because, I mean, for these people, really? I don't think I'm just thinking like a sitcom when I say that I could imagine one of the guys in there -- maybe the one who was reading The Fountainhead -- realizing that he just couldn't take it, getting up very reluctantly, and saying to the guy, "Come on -- change it, man."

I am treading lightly because there's a very nasty, as-seen-on-TV tone/attitude that tends to be taken towards Valentine's Day. It is a dull, cynical stance -- banal because it is predictable, calculated, formulaic... a sort of defiant expression of rebellion that is actually not rebellion at all but rather quite transparently defeat... "I don't care about this holiday, anyway!" The people who say this, or anything like it, are still buying into whatever they are declaring themselves to be beyond; the only difference is they're buying into it for the purpose of denouncing it. No more interesting a maneuver at this point than smashing your guitar on the stage at the end of your band's performance. Canned fury; marching to the beat of a drum you want people to think is your own.

All that said, I still think: playing 69 Love Songs at Tillie's on Valentine's Day? Jesus. Maybe burn the place down too.

The sign-up sheet for the open mic was put out on the counter around 7:30; by 8pm only one act had signed up, and that was a pair of 10-year-old girls named (I think) Kina and Tika. They sat down afterwards and stayed in the cafe for like 30 minutes, waiting at one of the tables for enough other people to sign up so that they could go on. At 8:30 an emcee took the stage and introduced them. They sang "I Remember" by Keyshia Cole, which I'd never heard before and thought they'd written, which made me remember how the song lyrics I wrote when I was 10, 11, 12 sounded like The Offspring and Stone Temple Pilots. Snotty, confrontational, oblique. "WHAT THE HELL DOES 'DIY' MEAN? AND HOW ABOUT A ZINE? THIS FUCKING PUNK MENTALITY / ALL THE WORDS I'VE SEEN / I WANT AN EXPLANATION / IT'S ALL A LOAD OF SHIT." That was written in 5th grade, for the band Section 69 (first EP: "Laudanum"). I had just started using mailorder to get ska CDs from Asian Man Records and taping "Everything Off Beat Radio" on Sunday nights. I was forthcoming about my status as a newcomer but... I'd started a band in spite of it and if I do say so myself there is something to admire in that.

After the girls got done a rapper went on and as the beat dropped one of his friends in the audience yelled out "YO IT'S NOT A CAFE ANYMORE!!" (It was still a cafe, and not just because the guy rapped about fucking Obama.) That guy served as hypeman the rest of the time, yelling from the audience words of encouragement ("Handle your business!" "That's it") whenever the guy hit his stride in a way that reminded me of the dudes in On the Road who shouted "blow, man, blow!" when they got to jazz clubs. I could never quite get on board with that, not even when I read that book at 15, and when that guy yelled out I felt pretty much the same way about it. Maybe it's my fault that I can't fathom enthusiasm so uncontrollable/rapturous without suspecting that it is being forced; people tell me I have a fine enough time being "earnest" myself (hey ladies) but it's possible that I can't tolerate it in others.

During the next guy's set, which was quieter and closer to spoken word than rap, this same hypeman kept making that sound people make in fake life when they take a sip of something cold. After that it was his turn to go up on stage, and he was really pumped to do it. Except the CD he gave the cafe guys didn't work so he had no beat. He rapped some things without accompaniment, really dirty things by a cafe open mic standard but pretty typical if you're used to Dipset/Lil Wayne/etc. He kept stopping every 8 bars or so to say, "you guys don't wanna hear that, do you?" Finally he walked off shaking his head, very obviously bummed that his stupid CD didn't burn right and that he didn't get to perform. After him three little fucks in sweaters and suspenders came up and did the Moldy Peaches thing where they don't try to be good as a joke. "Isn't it funny that we thought this was worth performing," basically. It felt like a matter of great injustice that these idiots got their satisfaction and the hypeman, who had obviously looked forward to this a lot, didn't get to do what he came to do. I'm sure someone out there will say that is a "problematic" feeling... why do I assume the rapper's motivations were any more pure/authentic than the little indie kids who followed him, etc; fair point I guess BUT I promise this is just real talk, not an illustration, at least not an intentional one, for why I think there should be a class war.

After the trio a high school kid in a Mets hat played a cover of some country song, or maybe he wrote it himself ("Walking the low road / Drunk on rye"). He was asked to do a second, and he introduced it as a Valentine's Day song. Then he played "Last Caress" by The Misfits. Which was obviously hilarious because that song has lyrics like "I raped your mother today" etc. -- sorta like when Eminem introduces "Drug Ballad" by saying "This is my love song!" except not a real joke. I guess people have always found this kind of thing funny -- it is not that different from Dynamite Hack covering "Boyz N Da Hood" or Mountain Goats covering "Ignition (Remix)" or even Weird Al doing anything -- but while the kid played I couldn't help but feel like I was watching a YouTube video. What's worse is the little jester didn't even do a good job with the song -- where the original sounds alternately sinister and silly, this sounded more like someone gloating.

That was the end of it. I don't know but I think it was a pretty good open mic? Sitting here now I can hear a mouse in the pantry, otherwise all quiet. "For God is not a secret, and this also is a song."

"Yeah, but he's so cute though"

2008-02-12T17:26:00.004-12:00

As much as I complain about how reporters write about the campaign, I’ve read enough of the coverage recently to tell the good from the bad. Which is to say there are a lot of really incredible articles being written, and while I take them with a grain of salt a/f/a expecting their predictions to come true, their narratives to actually unfold as described, and their speculation re momentum and electability to be substantiated, I see very clearly that there is something artful in the way some of these things are conceptualized and composed. The best of them have elegance; they are simple chains of ideas based on sophisticated observations. What it takes to write one of those is the ability to come up with creative ways of reading an exit poll, to see something crucial or indicative that others miss, to visualize a coherent, compelling arrangement of facts, to come up with the right turn of phrase.

I guess I am talking about imagination again. Also discipline and craft, as per that John Darnielle quote.

The shoe bomber story

2008-02-12T16:54:00.004-12:00

...is an emblem of everything that is bad about how people think and make decisions. What basically happened was some guy came up with an idea but was thwarted when he tried to carry it out. The response was: "no one will ever try this again on our watch!" So they started taking people's shoes. And they made sure that no one would ever try to put explosive materials in there ever again: fool me once, etc.

This was an idiotic, unimaginative response. I guess, fine, you start doing shoe-checks and you probably won't get anyone trying that particular thing again. But how shabby, to come up with this new, absurdly narrow procedure in response to one guy giving it a shot? If a dude packs heat in his bellybutton next time, are they going to start requiring the day after he's locked up that everyone flash their navels as they walk through the x-ray machine?

It's worse even, maybe. Because the shoe-check decree is targeted squarely at those people who lack imagination in the same exact way as the legislators/whatever who came up with it. The only people who stand to be comforted by it are the ones who can't picture a thing happening that they haven't already seen, that hasn't yet been explained to them. These people didn't know to look out for shoe-bombers before, but once Richard Reid did his thing, it's all they could think about. A mind that can only wrap itself around that with which it is already familiar.

This came up because we were talking about T-Pain, and how it's dumb that after he got some singles onto the charts music producers thought they could just make more songs using that vocal effect and expect the same success.

"Yo Slim, you gon' let him get away with that? / He tried to play you, you can't let him skate with that"

2008-02-12T06:06:00.000-12:00

The Eminem Show came out in May 2002, more than six months after 9/11. And so it's pretty safely a post-9/11 album if you think about things that way. But! There's a Chandra Levy reference ("Who knew shit could be so easy? / How could one Chandra be so Levy?"). This is important because that was a thing everyone was supposed to forget once the business happened. If I remember right, a lot of smug long-view fetishists made a big deal out of how Gary Condit got away with his dirt thanks to tragedy. Which is true I guess since the media stopped covering the story immediately. But Eminem remembered, is my point.

"Passion is a virtue, but so is proficiency"

2008-02-12T06:00:00.000-12:00

John Darnielle, writing on Last Plane to Jakarta:

If I say a band is "dedicated to their craft," that sounds boring and staid, right? Well, fuck you, then, Jack, with your antiquated half-recycled notions of how craft and intensity are somehow at odds. Craft is the path to the damn palace, and the palace's windows are all ablaze with the fire that's constantly raging in all the rooms, and it's not even uncomfortable for the people who live there, because they have become accustomed to the heat.

Weird discrepancy

2008-02-11T20:09:00.000-12:00

How come it is "considered" ladylike to laugh at all jokes made by men but distinctly "unladylike," in the same universe, to vocalize your appreciation for a point someone has made?

Both guidelines as far as I can tell are supposed to make a girl seem passive. And yet, they are fundamentally opposite reactions. Why is giggling at a joke -- a way of flattering the person who uttered it: "you're funny!" -- such a girl thing while saying someone's made a good point -- clearly the same thing except: "well said!" -- is only something men are supposed to dare say?

One possible reason is that if a girl giggles at every joke like she's supposed to, it means she's not really getting the punchlines but doing something to please the man who is entertaining her. Which, yes, does signal passivity.

I should mention that I'm not endorsing this universe.

This is quickly becoming the new pop versus soda

2008-02-11T19:57:00.000-12:00

I had a good post all written about the argument people have where one side says you should say "I'm good" and the other says "I'm well" but it disappeared because my computer froze. The basic point was that both positions are kind of politically loaded and reprehensible because people who say "I'm well" are smug philistines and people who insist on "I'm good," if they actually volunteer to defend the usage actively, only do it because they want to stand up for the masses in a way that's more acutely expressed in things like ironic PBR-drinking and Che shirts.

(The reason these people usually give for why "I'm good" is right after all is that "I'm well" means "I am good at being" rather than "The things that are happening in my life are good and I am enjoying them OK.")

The reason I was bringing up this fight -- an important one because its many manifestations basically make it impossible to live in good faith or be a not horrible person -- was that I think I have an easy answer: "I'm good" is right because you'd never say "I'm badly." Not even "well" people say "I'm badly." In other words the PBR-drinking Che cabal is right-- you actually need an adjective, not an adverb, after "to be".

BTW when my computer froze it gave me the blue screen of death. Who knew that was still around??

Strong words

2008-02-11T19:20:00.000-12:00

While writing another thing I used the word 'invariably,' which made me think: there are a couple of words that mean kind of the same thing, except they describe it in slightly different terms. I can think of three-- 'uncompromisingly,' 'unequivocally,' and 'unambiguously'-- though I'm sure there are more. If 'invariably' refers to the frequency with which a thing happens (100%), then

--'uncompromisingly' refers to the conviction with which the person who causes that thing to happen does so,
--'unequivocally' refers to the passion/resolve with which that person talks about it (a lot),
-- and 'unambiguously' refers to the way it appears to other people (they think it is the real thing).

Pretty much ten toes all the way down, as my friend Saskrotch likes to say: "no half steppin', just ten fuckin' toes, all the way down."

Credit in the straight world

2008-02-11T19:13:00.001-12:00

The pizza guy came earlier tonight and some funny things happened. First, when I gave him three 20 dollar bills for a 50 dollar purchase he claimed not to have any change, and instead offered me a copy of his 10-dollar CD. The title of the CD was a rape pun. I agreed to this deal because I felt guilty turning him down. Then, later on when I was sitting down at the kitchen table to eat some pizza, I saw the three twenty dollar bills sitting right there. I had to think for a second about whether I had a responsibility to do something about this, and decided finally that I should be honest.

"And that's how I know / that I ain't shit"

2008-02-11T15:21:00.000-12:00

From "We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3: The Spirit of Competition (We Just Think We're Better)":

Ignore the lies that they tell
Under my cuticles proof the powder that I sell
So I guess life in jail is just a manicure away
Well, I don't feel like getting my nails done today.

"O I've lied to you so much I can no longer trust you"

2008-02-10T17:04:00.000-12:00

It occurred to me the other night that the sound of a person trying and failing to fall asleep in the same room as you is a sound I recognize. There is a lot in that sound; "turtles are screwed in the snow." One of those things worth finding words for.

You're at your best when you've got the gun pointed 180 degrees

2008-02-04T17:35:00.000-12:00

(12:29:38 AM) Me: it's embarrassing what things we used to find amusing
(12:29:48 AM) Me: or like, intriguing
(12:30:08 AM) Me: like remember when we talked about starbucks aesthetics a lot
(12:31:42 AM) Lux: i mean
(12:31:52 AM) Lux: i regret almost everything ive ever said
(12:32:01 AM) Me: yeah
(12:32:19 AM) Me: i wish i could erase all the publicly accessible symptoms of who i am
(12:32:33 AM) Lux: that sentiment is going to become a thing
(12:32:39 AM) Me: it's a thing

More on the same

2008-02-02T14:34:00.000-12:00

"Speaking in the broad thematic strokes that more voters (and reporters) expect from Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton invoked Robert F. Kennedy by name as she said she was running to strengthen the United States for “the next generation” of Americans." # Emphasis mine.

Re: "I'm Not There"

2008-01-28T17:21:00.000-12:00

(12:17:43 AM) Kibblesmith: a movie like that really needs to be a masterpiece to work
(12:17:48 AM) Kibblesmith: or else it just feels like homework
(12:17:55 AM) Me: yeah
(12:18:04 AM) Me: you can see them eating the sandwiches
(12:18:10 AM) Kibblesmith: haha, total fan film
(12:18:12 AM) Kibblesmith: "HEY REMEMBER THIS"
(12:18:15 AM) Kibblesmith: "WHAT IF THEY SAID THIS LYRIC"

Aiming for the stars 2

2008-01-28T17:07:00.000-12:00

(11:46:26 PM) Gabe: watching a true instant message junky slut in action is incredible
(11:46:43 PM) Gabe: someone maintaining 13 conversations at once
(11:47:10 PM) Me: yeah and then 6 more on gchat
(11:47:18 PM) Gabe: it's like hard core bingo players who simultaneously work 10 bingo cards
(11:47:26 PM) Me: hahah yeah
(11:47:37 PM) Gabe: and if you read the "conversations"
(11:47:40 PM) Gabe: the person is just
(11:47:42 PM) Gabe: "meh."
(11:47:44 PM) Gabe: "lol"
(11:47:46 PM) Me: hahah
(11:47:48 PM) Gabe: "whatabitch"
(11:48:02 PM) Me: haha
(11:48:17 PM) Me: communicating but just barely
(11:48:22 PM) Me: like really non specifically
(11:48:30 PM) Me: and not timely in any way
(11:51:14 PM) Gabe: yeah, like the bare minimum to ward off lonelyness

"You'll come up with something"

2008-01-28T17:05:00.000-12:00

Not always true turns out!

Comments

2008-01-28T16:42:00.000-12:00

Could they install a comments engine on the whole internet? Like not one particular blog or page but the whole thing, so that you could post comments about the internet in general. It would be sort of the "General Interest" board; there wouldn't be one particular topic you could discuss.

Could the company that made the mash-up/tube that lets you have comments on Tumblr maybe fix up something like this?

"Shattering fast / I'm Glass / I'm Glass"

2008-01-27T17:53:00.000-12:00

Towards the end of Franny and Zooey, Zooey Glass is talking to his sister on the phone and he tells her she looks "shattered." What is this if not an easter egg? You read this, you either pick up on the joke or you don't. If you do what've you got except a broken toy?

Do you kill a thing when you outsmart it?

"And Wink did fuck my girl / I'm still standing here screaming 'fuck the Free World'"

2008-01-27T15:55:00.000-12:00

This happened a while ago, but: Politico editors apologize for imposing/advancing fake narratives onto the race. I can't tell if this is a power move like the kind I describe below, since they do implicate themselves along with all the other journalists on the campaign beat -- in fact it might be the opposite.

Still, it strikes me as kind of knee-jerk, since, why exactly did New Hampshire provoke such clarity? Surely they knew about these systemic problems before. It is like when the government decided to start checking everyone's shoes in the airport after they caught Richard Reid.

Also this relates to Doree's point about how people can just say things about themselves now and expect others to accept their flaws because they are up front about them.

One better than usual

2008-01-27T15:27:00.000-12:00

Niall Stanage, New York Observer: "Such a poor performance by Clinton is bound to be seen as evidence that the aggressive strategy her campaign pursued in this state backfired."

I guess this is just the same dull point about how "electability" is a fake thing, but this still seems significant to me. Usually campaign analysis is about how certain maneuvers will be seen by the electorate -- how this or that phrase as uttered by this or that candidate will appeal to this or that kind of voter, etc. Which is a weird enough stance because it implicitly signals to the reader that they are not the ones being manipulated. "All these other people, the voters, are the ones whose minds are changing based on what words the candidates say -- you guys reading this, you know better." It is implied, in other words, that whoever it is reading the analysis is not susceptible to the candidates' tricks/manipulations.

What Stanage is doing here is pretty different: the people he's talking about, the ones who would see Clinton's poor performance in S.C. "as evidence that the aggressive strategy her campaign pursued in this state backfired" are not those dummy "voters." They're pundits! Other journalists. Stanage is warning the readers about what all the other newspapers are going to extrapolate from these results: "they're going to say Obama is on a roll."

I guess this is like when New York Magazine decides to write an article about Gawker, a power move basically whereby whoever's writing the thing implicitly elevates him/herself above the subject. The subject is the specimen; the reporter is the scientist.

To be covered is to be taken down a notch: so you keep fighting, staving off competitors by treating them like they're part of an ecosystem over which you preside. Maintain position by being quicker, more independent, always more broad in the scope of your analysis than the other guys. Stay behind the mule, ahead of the pack; let everyone around you get tired and then report on them like they're yours to play with.

Racial?

2008-01-27T15:25:00.000-12:00

From Obama's victory speech after South Carolina: "...the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina..."

Songs About Songs

2008-01-27T14:41:00.000-12:00

Songs about listening to songs, remembering songs, etc. Suggestions for more welcome, in keeping with blogs 2.0. "Smack That" doesn't count, despite circumstances.

--"Grapefruit Moon," Tom Waits
--"Certain Songs," Hold Steady
--"Fairytale in New York," Pogues
--"Playing Your Song," Hole

"Honor Thy Talese"

2008-01-27T14:28:00.000-12:00

Gay Talese likes to tell a story, I think he probably wrote about it in A Writer's Life, about how he takes notes on those pieces of cardboard you get when you buy a new button-down shirt. As I heard it, and as it's recounted here, he'd cut the cardboard up into pieces so that they would all fit into the breast pocket of his blazer/coat. And then when got down to writing a piece or a book based on the reporting he'd hang them all up on pieces of string stretched across his office.

Franny and Zooey, p. 181:

With his face in his hands and his handkerchief headgear dropping low over his brow, Zooey sat at Seymour's old desk, inert, but not asleep, for a good twenty minutes. Then, almost in one movement, he removed the support for his face, picked up his cigar, stowed it in his mouth, opened the left-hand bottom drawer of the desk, and took out, using both hands, a seven-or eight-inch-thick stack of what appeared to be-- and were-- shirt cardboards. He placed the stack before him on the desk and began to turn the cards over, two or three at a time. His hand stayed only once, really, and then quite briefly... The cardboard that he stopped at had been written on in February, 1998. The handwriting, in blue-lead pencil, was his brother Seymour's...

Life imitates art! I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

"And I know it must be fucking with you emotionally...."

2008-01-27T14:05:00.000-12:00

Franny and Zooey, p. 175:

"This was the first time in almost seven years that Zooey had, in the ready-made dramatic idiom, 'set foot' in Seymour's and Buddy's old room."

p. 180:

"There was little space left for walking, and none whatever for pacing. A stranger with a flair for cocktail-party descriptive prose might have commented that the room, at a quick glance, looked as if it had once been tenanted by two struggling twelve-year-old lawyers or researchers."

My mother used to tell me that a truly cultivated person does not only live virtuously, but is tactful and kind when confronted with those who don't. You're not supposed to humiliate a person, in other words, if they're not behaving right or they demonstrate that they don't know something they maybe should. You're not supposed to call them out; if you do, you are acting selfishly, in bad faith.

That's basically what Salinger is doing here. "If I was one of those crummy authors who used cliches and favored 'cocktail-party descriptive prose,' here's how I'd describe this."

Related, on p. 199, in which Zooey is telling Franny she can't just give up on acting because she despises everyone who comes to watch her perform:

You raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right--God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?

Wolf on a leash

2008-01-19T18:32:00.000-12:00

Public advocate Betsy Gotbaum's press secretary quit because he is a "campaign junkie" and she wasn't letting him see enough combat. In this item at least he comes off as an ambitious, sly, competitive obsessive who can't stand sitting on the bench. The whole time he worked for Gotbaum he was frustrated by her reluctance to engage with the press and let him do his thing, and as soon as he found out that she wasn't going to run for reelection -- that there was no campaign to look forward to if he stayed with her -- he immediately quit. I thought guys like this were imaginary, or extinct.

I'm only a little mad about Cloverfield

2008-01-19T16:28:00.001-12:00

Spoilers ahead, I guess, but actually my complaint is that there is nothing to spoil. The trailers for this movie made you think there would be some big revelatory explanation at the end of the rainbow. Like, "the Statue of Liberty got blown up -- don't you want to know why! Also what is Cloverfield -- don't you want to know why it's called that?" If I remember correctly the big teaser for the movie actually was, "What is Cloverfield?" That is probably easy enough to check but I'm not going to. The point is they lured you in by making you think there'd be some big sexy Shyamalan-style payoff. When in fact you get nothing of the sort; you find out right away that there is just some big squishy monster stomping around who sweats murderous spiders. You never find out where it came from or what it wants or why it's doing all these mean things. I guess maybe they will make a sequel or something where they show the whole event from someone else's perspective (weirdly I have to credit the kids sitting behind me in the movie theater with that idea; they were talking about sequel possibilities as we shuffled out) and reveal more information, but that'll only make a difference when it happens.

Everyone keeps talking about how this movie was so 9/11y but 9/11 was infinitely scarier not just because it was real (moot because as everybody knows it felt like a movie) but because as the plans were hitting one by one you got the sense there was a scheme unfolding, and you had no idea how elaborate it was. The whole day you wondered whether there were more planes in the air that had been hijacked, whether the shit was just beginning. In Cloverfield you knew the whole time that there was just this monster running around. It obviously didn't have a plan and it showed no signs of having any compelling motive for doing what it was doing.

Via Kibblesmith:

Someone is picky

2008-01-19T16:22:00.000-12:00

Sarah: i dont think i can date someone who does not begrudgingly believe in truth

Things that work the same way, pt. 2

2008-01-19T16:13:00.000-12:00

--"For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn"
--The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday
--Dismemberment Plan, "Ellen and Ben."

Restraint; leaving out.

Pillow Talk

2008-01-19T16:08:00.000-12:00

74. Things That Lose by Being Painted
Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful.

75. Things That Gain by Being Painted
Pines. Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene.

Like most of the best entries in Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, these are effective because they spark that epiphany of recognition I was on about earlier. Like, they work because you read them and think, "That is totally true! An unspeakably hot summer scene really is more appealing when you look at a picture of it than when you're actually in it." At the same time, there's an element of surprise with these. I for one had never thought of things in terms of these two categories before, but now that I've been prompted to, the examples the author is offering really ring true. My list of things that gain by being painted, if I had thought to make one, would have looked a lot like Shonagon's. So in other words what she's doing is articulating, with great precision, something that has been on the tip of my tongue forever. Or at least that's how it feels; these are not revelations, they are reminders.

One unrelated thing to point out is that the first list is kind of seriously flawed. Specifically the last entry: "Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful." Problematic because she talking about representations, not actual things in the world, and representations can't really be painted. I guess you could argue that they can, but either way, it's fundamentally unlike the other things on the list.

I like this one:

101. Squalid Things
The back of a piece of embroidery.
The inside of a cat's ear.
A swarm of mice, who still have no fur, when they come wriggling out of their nest.
The seams of a fur robe that has not yet been lined.
Darkness in a place that does not give the impression of being very clean.
A rather unattractive woman who looks after a large brood of children.

Especially the second to last one.

Taking a page from the Doree Chronicles

2008-01-18T10:16:00.000-12:00

Things I just bought at the deli as a "snack."

--V8 vegetable juice
--Pop tarts

I am changing. So is this blog.

A haunting story!

2008-01-16T05:41:00.000-12:00

A lady from Brighton Beach who works in the courthouse as a translator disappeared and the police think it might be because she worked on some mob cases. This is one of those things that Errol Morris or Truman Capote or whatever would have cut out of the newspaper and "pursued." Why is that a narrative we have?

Is it okay to just post things?

2008-01-16T04:44:00.000-12:00

From Franny and Zooey: Zooey is in the tub and his mother is hovering around. She comes across a manuscript he's been reading and says it's an unusual title. Zooey laughs at her and she gets defensive.

"What's the matter with that title? It is very unusual. You! You don't think anything's unusual or beautiful! I've never once heard you--"

"What? Who's doesn't? Exactly what don't I think isn't beautiful?" A minor groundswell soudned behind the shower curtain, as though a rather delinquent porpoise were suddenly at play. "Listen, I don't care what you say about my race, creed, or religion, Fatty, but don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' Heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I'm limp, by God. Anything. 'Peter Pan.' Even before the curtain goes up at 'Peter Pan.' I'm a goddam puddle of tears. And you ahve the gall to try to tell me that--"

I guess there are kind of ways to be sarcastic in a way that's not totally stale/generic, is what this means.

Slice of life

2008-01-15T15:29:00.001-12:00

Zaki Palod (Boston, MA) wrote
at 12:50pm on December 10th, 2007
RICH-MAN...wtf is going on...nice chopper...and you look wayy thinner than before...stopped eating those domino's family meals alone??? haha remember those days...how's Phoenix...

Aiming for the stars

2008-01-15T15:24:00.000-12:00

(9:56:06 PM) Gabe: have you been following the whole series or just picked that one up?
(9:56:25 PM) Me: hmm i read 7, 10, 11
(9:56:27 PM) Gabe: cause love and rockets is like the wire, its soo fucking good
(9:56:40 PM) Me: the wire is really very good!
(9:56:42 PM) Gabe: and people will be all "yeah i saw an episode/issue...not so impressed"
(9:56:55 PM) Gabe: as a wire fan
(9:57:04 PM) Gabe: i covet our best insult to wire haters
(9:57:30 PM) Gabe: "oh its cool, i understand why you couldn't relate to a show with predominately black characters"
(9:57:36 PM) Gabe: "also, you can only get laid on warcraft"

This is reprehensible

2008-01-15T14:20:00.000-12:00

I am snarling over here, I hate these people so much.

Thank god, someone finally says it. I'm fuckin' sick of the social stigmas that society places on gamers. We will never be taken seriously until we stop catering to lonely, awkward, out of touch teenage boys and start taking steps to seriously overhaul the way we present and make video games. We can be artistic, analytical, mature, and intelligent, so why do we dumb ourselves down to such low levels? If we start talking about this and start telling people that this isn't the way we want to be perceived maybe we'll finally be able to elevate ourselves past the basement dwelling, porn addicted, ultra-violent monsters the media makes us out to be.

But it isn't merely the journalists at fault here either. The entire industry is completely obsessed with this kind of objectification. And I think it really comes down to a lack of real artists working in the field, a lack of talented and dedicated writers, and the over hollywoodization of the gaming industry. But this is far too much ground to cover in a single comment. I wish there were more stories about this kind of thing, however, because this is something that needs to be talked about.

Ugh, the whole thing is just insanely macho and reeks of that I'm-a-college-freshman-visiting-my-hometown-for-the-first-time-and-feeling-pretty-
good-about-it thing. "I'm bored by sexism." NO YOU'RE NOT. "Far too much ground to cover in a single comment." WHAT THE FUCK WHO THINKS THOUGHTS LIKE THESE.

Gabe: LETS HAVE SOME WRITING FOR GUYS WHO CAN GET LAID OUTSIDE OF WARCRAFT,FELLAS
Gabe: its not misogynistic to to be a fucking embarassing horndog

Daniel: the cuckolded "guy best friend" is the only person who would ever use the phrase "treat women like meat"
Daniel: Not even women say that
Daniel: what he's really attacking is the video game facet of "Guy Culture"
Daniel: that boring fucking religion that idle upper-middle class males and white trash kids subscribe to
Daniel: that idle class mindlessness
Daniel: Where you might buy a cd by a hot pop star
Daniel: and develop a taste for that music
Daniel: instead of buying music you like
Me: well it's like when you own 10 cd's
Me: and one of em is like, throwing copper by Live
Me: and the other one is sugar ray
Daniel: God I want to dethrone what poses for masculinity so badly

Why Omar from the Wire gets progressive gayer as a character

2008-01-12T08:53:00.000-12:00

Omar from the Wire becomes less and less compelling as you get further into the show. Reasons why to follow, but spoiler alert for anyone who doesn't want to be exposed to little details you don't know about yet.

Basically Omar starts falling off around the time Tasha gets killed in the gunfight at the beginning of season three and really hits the ground after Bunk talks to him in that little garden and makes him feel ashamed about what he's doing with his life.

Why is that? Because he reveals that he is aware of his own complexity and troubled by it. Like, he knows there are problems with the life he's leading and he is visibly grappling with the contradictions. As we see him doing this more and more, he becomes increasingly less (decreasingly?) mysterious, less larger- (smaller-?) than-life.

Ideelz and I talked about it and I'm pretty sure this is right: we are more fascinated by a guy who just keeps the shit out of his head and soldiers on as though he didn't know right from wrong. He lives by some private rules, and this is what makes him so singularly ruthless, brave, unstoppable.

When he starts to get all sad and self-conscious we can relate to him a lot more, but it feels banal and conventional compared to what he meant to us before. It's like when you turn the water up in the shower as hot as it can go and then turn it down a couple notches. Just feels lukewarm, if more comfortable.

This is related to NBS on Young Jeezy's "Bury Me a G" in which Jeezy raps about getting shot and a fake newscaster reporting live from the scene of the crime says over his dead body, "it was unclear whether he was the suspect or the victim." To articulate that so nakedly, NBS says, is a boring way to cheat, like turning on no clipping in Quake:

It's like, the suspect/victim thing is the only reason anything remotely morally difficult in rap is compelling at all to me. It's just too big--too big and banal and clumsy a thing to just, like, say, "It's unclear whether he was the suspect or the victim." I mean really now.

Weird fact though I guess not that surprising, NBS connects the issues raised by this song to the Wire in his thing too. He brings up Ziggy from Season 2, a guy whose enchanting, captivating ambiguity melts away not unlike Omar's as soon as he's in the cell with his father and he's telling him that the reason he did what he did was that he was tired of being the punchline to every joke.

Choire on the Times piece

2008-01-12T07:41:00.000-12:00

Re: "Has Gawker Jumped the Snark?"

From the comments that follow this post:

Really: If the headline on the piece couldn't tolerate standing without the question mark, can it stand with it?

I'M NOT YOU, WEBSITE

2008-01-11T20:32:00.001-12:00

The Politico's Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhei wrote a thing about how Obama and Clinton are both urgently trying to figure out strategy, demeanor, deployment of funds, etc. as they continue their campaigns. They note that Obama raised a bunch of money in the first eight days of the year and leaked the figures to Drudge, because "The site is very well read, especially by the news media, and it's a good way to generate buzz and drive the political conversation."

What if the campaign had leaked the figure to The Politico, instead? Obviously The Politico is not as influential as Drudge, but what if it was? Would The Politico report it the same way? Or would there just be an article being like, "Obama made this much money in the first days of the campaign, sources within the campaign say"? If that were the case, would other papers, like the Observer, then take on the burden of deducing and interpreting the back story to that article's apperance in the Politico?

My favorite thing about Beethoven is his beats

2008-01-11T19:37:00.000-12:00

There’s an article in Styles this weekend about Gawker and how it’s not good anymore. To show that media insiders haven’t read the site since Choire left, they quote ~~Rachel Sklar~~ Elizabeth Spiers, who complains that “‘current Gawker’ is committing the Journalism 101 sin of doing too much telling and not enough showing.” Saying something is awful, she says, “is a poor substitute for an actual argument.”

This is the equivalent of saying you like Lolita because it has such an important message. Like, honestly? The thing Choire did, the thing he could do that no one else can, was precisely the opposite of “actual argument.” Spiers is right, he showed things, but the fact that he always stopped short of making an argument was what gave his posts such weight and such grace.

On vanity

2008-01-11T19:10:00.000-12:00

Louis Menand’s article about diaries from the December 10th New Yorker is bad like the movie Transformers was bad. Do not be fooled by the whimsy with which he playfully wonders, “what’s up with diaries!” He doesn't mean it.

He starts the thing off by saying, “Hi, there are a couple of ways to explain why people might feel compelled to keep diaries but never succeed in doing so: the first one’s the id theory, the second one’s the ego theory, and the third one’s the superego theory.” Then he explains what each one of those actually means. So for instance: if you accept the “id theory,” it means you think that people want an outlet for their secret desires and secret shames but quickly realize that they actually want to forget all those things, rather than record them for posterity.

OK, a fine theory, whatever -– it is reasonably inventive and elegant. But why does Menand call it the “id theory”? What’s motivating him to give it this label? Wouldn’t it make just as much sense/offer as much insight if he didn’t?

You could say, well, the label clarifies it –- we have all these thoughts and know all these things already about the id, and when something less familiar (more specific) expresses itself as a function of it, we stand a better chance of understanding. This might be true, but it’s not good for Menand’s idea.

Which is to say, Menand had these three pretty good thoughts about why we do this weird thing with diaries, but by presenting them as mere expressions of these other, much bigger narratives, he’s forfeiting what was useful about them. Like, it actually cheapens what were initially precise ideas, by placing them in the context of very general ones and thus robbing them of their specificity. As a result of Menand’s invocation of “id,” in other words, we have learned less about why people do this weird thing with diaries.

I think this is why some people, like Nabokov, find Freudianism so distasteful –- because as a “system of thought,” it’s like a heap of blocks, this set of very big, unwieldy slabs of thought. And it plays to our worst instincts, gratifying our inclination to notice the ways in which things are the same instead of the ways in which they are different.

There's another reason why providing the labels is bad, this one less to do with its reception and more to do with Menand's motivation behind doing it. Which is that, he had these thoughts but he wasn't sure people were going to take them seriously, so he invoked the authority of Freud, whose ideas are taken for granted by so many people. I realize that Freudian psychiatry -– like, the stuff Freud actually believed about how the brain works -- has been pretty roundly discredited, but the tradition does live on in literary criticism and philosophy, and actually, when it’s applied to that stuff the dull compartmentalization by which it functions is particularly damaging.

I don't think I’m just ascribing motives to him randomly -- you can tell this is what Menand is doing and why. How can you tell? Because after he’s done enumerating the three theories (“id,” “ego,” “supergo”) he writes, “These are powerful, possibly brilliant theories, and they account for much.” Two things: 1) he’s referring to the theories as though they’re not his own –- I really can't see him being that horribly self-congratulatory. 2) the word “accounts.” These theories ACCOUNT for something, rather than explain it. ‘Account’ because these theories are already out there, they’re implicitly true, they exist and they can just explain stuff, the same way the law of gravity explains why things falls. Hate to say it but it’s a defensive mechanism, a measure to ensure that his new ideas fly by making it look like these far more established ones that Freud made up are vouching for their credibility.

This is only one reason why Menand’s article about people who keep diaries is bad. The other is that he employs cosmetic, misleading methods to trick his readers into thinking that two essentially unrelated inquiries belong in the same piece.

Because, let’s pretend for a sec that the Freudian thing doesn’t matter one way or another: he has still made a pretty respectable point, which is that the vast majority of people are at some point possessed by the impulse to keep a diary and that the vast majority of these people fail to maintain the habit. And he’s also set up a very intriguing question, which is: what allows the tiny population of people who actually succeed in keeping a diary to do that? How are they different from the people who fail? Does it take a certain kind of personality?

Instead of actually thinking about those questions though, Menand just poses them and then, by way of a slick turn of phrase, transitions into something totally different. How does he do this? By saying that these three theories he’s just described are nice and all, but that they fail to explain why we want to READ diaries. That is true, they don’t explain that. That’s because they are theories about something else: sure, he’s right that none of them explain this one thing, but that’s because all of them were designed to explain a different one.

If you read the sentence quickly enough though it gets the job done, effectively informing us that we’re about to start reading some stuff about why people feel compelled to read diaries, and convincing us that this is a perfectly logical direction for the stuff he’s been talking about so far to lead. One is reminded of a spy walking into a room of baddies and throwing a smoke bomb, or a magician doing a trick involving some sleight of hand.

I guess it’s okay that Menand wants to talk about this question and not the other, but it also means he shouldn't be allowed to get as much mileage as he does out of pretending that this is an article about “the urge to keep” diaries. Like, it’s actually how the piece is billed on the cover, and it’s also the excuse Menand uses to open with a cute “thought experiment” where the human race dies out, leaves all these diaries behind, and then another species takes over the world and can’t for the life of them figure why so many of their predecessors did this bizarre thing. That thought experiment is about why we write diaries, not how we read them. It is diametrically off-topic and thus its inclusion (along with the three or so paragraphs that come after it, up until the part where he so deftly “switches gears”) is sort of cynical.

OK, so why would Menand do this? What is he trying to get away with? I think it has to do with that same defensiveness that led him to invoke the Freud stuff.

The reason is simple: he’s writing a book review of two diaries -- one by Arthur Schlesinger and the other by Leo Lerman -- not an essay about the nature of diaries in general. And because he’s just writing a book review, he has to write about why a person would want to read diaries, and whether these two in particular have whatever that is -– not why the two men who wrote them felt compelled to do so and what in their singular characters predisposed them to maintaining it.

Menand doesn’t want us to know he’s writing a book review. That whole thing about “why the human race wants to –- but cannot force itself to—write down its own history” (not a real quote) was just something Menand wanted to say. It was his little idea, included so as to rescue his article from being just a buyer’s guide, and turn it rather into an "intellectual contribution." And you know that’s what he’s going for –- that’s why they slug it like a real article on the cover flap (“This is your life! Louis Menand on diaries and the urge to keep them”) instead of just calling it more honestly, “Louis Menand on Leo Lerman and Arthur Schlesinger’s Recently Published Diary Collections” a.k.a. a review of a couple of books.

It’s too bad because ultimately, his analysis of the two books is pretty sound and quite convincing: first he says that the diaries we like the most are the ones where the author writes about other people, because we think it gives us insight into how those people really were; then he says Arthur Schlesinger’s are consequently boring because his descriptions of people perfectly cohere with their public image, such that we don't get that tingle of insider revelation we feel when we think we're getting a private, and thus uncensored, look at someone with a big reputation or personal mythology. In the end he says basically that Lerman’s diaries are good because he was very interested in other people and described them vividly, and that Schlesinger’s are bad because they don’t give us that thing that draws us to the form.

That would have all been just fine if it wasn’t for the deceitful way in which it was presented. Like, ugh: at the end he pretends to bring it all full circle (that is, back to the id/ego/superego theories) by reiterating basically that the stuff that’s in these diaries we read is often quite unremarkable and mundane: that that’s what gives them their power, that everyone, not just the singular people who become famous or important, is capable of making observations like these, but that not everyone –- very few people, in fact -– entertain the illusion that all these observations are worth writing down. Which, yes, “brings us back” to the “beginning of the discussion.” But it’s fake and lazy; the facade of coherence only, not the real thing.

It reminds me of section, honestly. Which kinda makes sense!

P.S. For old times sake: he says near the end that the annotations in the Lerman book are so good and helpful that they are like “keyoles onto [a] vanished life, almost like miniature movie treatments.” Wamp wamp!

Department of Corrections and Amplifications

2008-01-05T10:39:00.000-12:00

This is the chorus from "Plateau," a song written by the Meat Puppets but known to most because Nirvana covered it on Unplugged in New York:

Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop
and an illustrated book about birds
You see a lot up there, but don't be scared
who needs actions when you've got words?

"Words" should be "verbs." That would be much funnier!

More on description

2008-01-05T10:27:00.000-12:00

Again from Sun Also Rises, p. 201:

Back in the town I went to the cafe to have a second coffee and some buttered toast. The waiters were sweeping out the cafe and mopping off the tables. One came over and took my order ... He went away and came back with the long-handled coffee and milk pots.

"Long-handled: you know exactly what I'm talking about, ladies and gentlemen, you know you've all thought it! Am I right or am I right?"

"I Know (The Future)" / Mr. Me Too

2008-01-05T10:19:00.000-12:00

Since my last post I have decided to reposition this space as a message board / social networking site. Please talk amongst yourselves.

Emerging media

2008-01-03T17:58:00.000-12:00

The thing about what’s happening here is that Denton is actually changing Gawker from the ground up. Unless I'm imagining it, he has said in the past that he wants it to operate more like a social networking site. And like, he’s done it. He has decided that content -– the stuff written by the people he pays -- is no more important to the site than the commenters and what they say underneath each post. And it appears that the experiment is working!!

Just look at his “Ask Julia Allison” thing from last night – all he did was tell everyone who reads Gawker that Julia would be answering readers’ questions in the comments field of an “article” posted early in the day about the special event. The thing got over 70,000 pageviews – why? Because people kept refreshing the thread while Julia was doing it, hoping someone has said something funny or that Julia has made an appearance. It doesn’t matter why they did this –- they were captivated, and their captivation made them do something that translates into money for whomever runs the website that has succeeded in making them feel this way.

Taken together, the comments threads on Gawker are no less active than what I was used to when I posted on message boards back in high school. And it was the same thing –- if there was an exciting thread, especially if I was involved in it, I’d refresh it a million times, just like I check my email over and over again when I’m expecting something. In other words Denton has turned what used to be a news site into a social networking site. These are no longer just discrete articles meant to be read/appreciated on their own, but rather strategically conceived catalysts for discussion.

Some people don’t even read the “content” anymore. Tonight, one commenter wrote in a thread about 200 deep as of midnight that featured a lot of regulars taking shots at the new guy in charge: “I've been reading this site for about 2 years, not for the articles or the stunts, I come for the commenter's great responses. Denton you better not scare them away or you will have one less reader.”

Yes, all this means Gawker does not resemble a magazine or a newspaper as much as it used to, but so what? It is neither of those things and its ambition is not to recreate their model on the web. In fact, Denton’s Gawker is not even really a “blog” as we’ve come to understand them so far. In a way it’s a new form altogether, what he’s going for, since it’s not a combination of any two preexisting ones.

This is why I don’t think it’s so bad what he’s doing. Because everything is still up in the air w/r/t whatever this new form is: we haven’t quite articulated what its purpose is, what it means to do it well, what it means to do it with integrity, etc. With newspapers and magazines, we know pretty much reflexively that certain things are corruptions/compromises. Like, we believe that when a magazine cuts articles so that there’s more room for ads, something is being lost -– the point of a magazine is to have articles in it, and if you’re replacing them with ads, you’ve taken the first steps toward betraying/abandoning the heart of the project.

That is a familiar narrative to us –- we are told that everything in the world is being gradually corrupted in this way -- but maybe it doesn’t apply to whatever Denton is building. Since we don’t know yet what the point of it is, it is not really sacrilege at all for him to say “page views are the most important thing and the content doesn’t matter as long as people are clicking and discussing.” If the purpose of the content has nothing to do with “quality” as we understand it but its ability to spark discussion/activity on the site, then increasing page views by any means necessary should be your main objective when you’re writing posts.

Not saying that I think it would be fun or rewarding or fulfilling to write for such a venue. In fact I think there would inevitably be something masochistic about it, since all your decisions as a writer would be informed/guided by the conceit that you are essentially unimportant. Or at the very least not as important as other writers who work for traditional outlets, whose work exists in a vacuum, for its own sake. It would be hard to shake the feeling that you are nothing but a host designed only to attract parasites.

See also QuarterLife, a show/social networking site.

These two things work the same way

2008-01-03T17:37:00.000-12:00

This one and this one.

Future life

2008-01-03T17:32:00.000-12:00

I forget what night this was, but I was at Ben's recently, watching TV with Jeremy in the living room. I don’t know where Ben was, but he wasn’t with us because at some point he came into the room and said, "Daniel wants to video chat us in a minute, can you guys pause this?” Jeremy and I both thought about how this was probably the first time we had found ourselves in such a situation but that soon it would probably happen all the time.

"Phillipe is standing on it" basically

2008-01-03T17:28:00.000-12:00

Someone said to me the other day that she could not post to her old blog, because it was “broken.” She said she had hired someone who was supposed to “fix it.” I asked her how this could possibly be true, what it could possibly mean. She explained that she used to be able to post to the blog, and then one day it stopped letting her. As in, she can still log in and use the software or whatever, but when she hits the post button nothing happens. In retrospect how else would a blog break.

In kind of a perfect way this is the opposite of the thing I like where world things describe themselves as though they were on the internet (see ClermontGreene.com, Garbage's Version 2.0, Lifehacker, Sprite Remix, etc.).

Why descriptiveness is a fake idea

2008-01-03T16:35:00.000-12:00

Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, p. 138:

He was pulling his cheek before the glass, looking to see if there were unshaven patches under the line of the jaw.

This is a good example of the problem I have with matters related to detail/evocativeness in literature. Like, why do we think this description is good when we read it? Because we -– well at least us boys! -– recognize it from our daily lives, and we’re impressed that Hemingway managed to describe it so accurately, to notice it with such precision and to translate so seamlessly into actual words what doing that thing feels like / how it registers in our heads when we’re doing it. The resonance is what makes it so satisfying.

This is troubling because it means we just like it when writers can articulate an experience that we've had -- or worse, when writers can believably render palpable/concrete something that we know of only in abstract or very general terms. This applies to descriptions of all kinds -- metaphors, similes, sensory details, etc.: the ones we think are good feel true either because we like the way it feels when we are reminded of something, or, worse, because it makes us feel good about ourselves to recognize something that this author we're reading evidently thought was singular/important enough to include in his/her book. When a description resonates, we feel like we're being congratulated for having noticed something really special. It proves that we are sensitive and observant.

Both of these are very tacky reasons to think a thing is good.

I want to quote from a book I have in galley but I don't want to say what it is because it might be against the rules or something. Suffice it to say this is a prominent literary critic. In his new book he writes that literature is different from life because in life no one is directing us toward detail; the details are just sort of all around us and it's up to us to notice them. In literature we have someone pointing a finger at specific things and forcing us to pay attention to the way they look/feel/taste/are. He writes that some details seem true and others don't. The ones that do achieve their success by drawing "abstraction toward itself" and killing it with "a puff of palpability." A great detail "centers our attention with its concretion."

He lists some examples. They include: "the way old leather jackets have white lines in them like the strations of fat in pieces of meat" and "the way fresh snow 'creaks' underfoot."

Am I wrong to think both of these are implicitly supposed to remind you of whatever they're describing? It seems to me that that's precisely how they function -- hence the construction "the way..." I guess that is the nature of realism? It seems so primitive a mechanism -- it kind of compromises the aura/mystery of "great writing."

I guess one thing to note is that truly great metaphors/similes are thought to be the ones that illuminate a relationship you hadn’t thought of before -- ones that not only affirm the common ground two things share, but show you common ground that you didn’t realize existed and thus enrich/alter your conception of those two things. This is how we learn about the world, maybe! As that same critic puts it, "Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature."

And yet most metaphors aren’t like that –- most of them are just counting on the same reaction most mash-ups seem to be going for: "Oh hey, I recognize that!" That idea via NBS, who wrote about it in a Stylus article:

...the thing about genuine, good-natured people is that a lot of them clearly don’t give a ratty fuck what they’re listening to, as long as they know what they’re listening to, feel it at 130bpm, and can download it off Discobelle. In 2006, did “liking music” really just mean “identifying samples”?

A Pretty Good Paragraph

2007-07-11T15:02:00.000-12:00

"There's an art to being a good wingman. We here at "Entourage, the blog" will attempt to put forth a few good rules to help you perfect your skills at helping your friend get the girl." #

I Wrote a Thing

2007-07-11T03:46:00.000-12:00

Following up on my exploratory but slightly inaccurate Vonnegut post from a few weeks ago, which I have conveniently deleted even though it was probably the wrong thing to do.

"Blue and Red, Like I Don't Know What the Big Deal Is..."

2007-07-11T02:36:00.000-12:00

A few excerpts from an incredible article on the drug trade in South Africa (subscription only), written by WSJ reporter Mark Schoofs, whom I had the honor of serving as translator and library scout a few years ago:

Welcoming a visitor to his apartment on the outskirts of this city, Igshaan "Sanie" Davids wore only silky maroon boxer shorts festooned with brightly colored ducks and the slogan "Totally Quackers," his ample belly sloping out far beyond the waistband. Tattoos of the Statue of Liberty, the American flag and the U.S. dollar adorned his arms and back. Knife and bullet scars pitted his body.

Mr. Davids is a leader of a Cape Town street gang called the Americans, South African law-enforcement officials say. The gang initiates its members with rites that twist the meaning of U.S. symbols. Its motto is, "In God we trust, and die we must," members say. Their handshake ends by placing the right fist over the heart, in what they describe as a variation on U.S. citizens reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

"We're businessmen, always rolling," Mr. Davids said. These days, he said, about the best business going is tik, South African slang for methamphetamine. Gangs can obtain the drug or its ingredients from Chinese sources in exchange for abalone poached from South African waters, say South African officials and Mr. Davids.

More on the Americans, who are, I remind you, real:

Law-enforcement officials describe the "Americans" as the largest of the Cape Flats street gangs and Mr. Davids, who is colored, as a powerful gang lord. He regularly appears in gang stories in the local tabloids, often on the cover. Headlines or photo captions frequently refer to him simply as "Sanie" or "Sanie American." In interviews, Mr. Davids at times declared he has abandoned all illegal activity and now earns his living through a construction business. But at other times he described in detail how he trafficked in methamphetamine, and when pressed on his largest current source of income, he said, "tik is bigger than everything."

The Americans gang has its own interpretation of the American flag. According to Mr. Davids and other gang members, the red stripes on the flag stand for blood and killing, whereas the white stripes symbolize the clean work of making money. The stars stand for the gang's "senators," leaders in the Cape Flats' many neighborhoods.

Naturally, they are not the only ones:

"Abalone is quick money -- I like it more than anything else," says Mujahid Daniels. He and his brother-in-law, Raqeeb "Ricky" Oaker, are reputed leaders of Junior Mafia, another gang in the Cape Town area, but they couldn't be more different from Mr. Davids. Also in their mid-30s, Messrs. Daniels and Oaker dress like models. They operate a trendy nightclub, Barmooda, where they say they don't allow any illegal drugs. In an upstairs office, they monitor patrons on sleek computers hooked up to surveillance cameras. When they see someone suspicious -- or an attractive woman -- they click on the image to magnify it.

In conclusion:

xxmidnightxx: So, American iconography is officially just trappings of a dead god, like Christmas stuff
xxmidnightxx: how the snowmen all have little feet now

The Wisdom of Crowds: Pulling the Long Tail?

2007-07-09T16:59:00.001-12:00

One thing I don't get about the Long Tail theory: in his book, Anderson writes that the Tail continues to grow fatter (that is, each niche product is being consumed by more and more people) because 1) distribution costs have sunk to nothing online, allowing individual merchants (people selling obscure things on eBay) to reach an audience no smaller than Wal-Mart's, and 2) various technologies are driving people to these niches more effectively than ever before, exposing consumers to tons of new, obscure stuff.

Anderson writes: "This can take the form of anything from Google's wisdom-of-crowds search to iTunes' recommendations, along with word-of-mouth, from blogs to customer reviews."

Now, I am okay with most of that. Yes, the proliferation of super-specialized blogs means there are that many more platforms from which people can find new things to be interested in. And yes, you can get iTunes to give you recommendations in the narrowest of sub-genres with ever increasing precision thanks to the streams of user input that continuously shape their catalog.

Generally speaking, I agree that niches are easier to reach than they used to be, and it makes sense that their increased visibility makes for a more substantial population of consumers gnawing on the end of the Tail.

However: it seems somewhat unfair to say that Google's search technology—which encourages users to visit the ten websites most frequently visited by other users in search of the same thing—unequivocally nurtures the Long Tail in this way. Certainly, Google makes niches easier to explore by providing newbies with tons of information—i.e., it used to be really hard to orient oneself within a tiny, unfamiliar subculture, but now we can just ask Google and get a pretty accurate/informative understanding of any culture system regardless of its size—but doesn't the "wisdom-of-crowds" thing also have the effect of making the popular more popular and leave the unknown unknown?

That is to say: sure, a search for "third wave ska" will pretty reliably guide you towards Less Than Jake, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, etc., but what about all the bands on page 10 of the results? Won't they continue to languish in obscurity, since no one ever gets that far when they're searching? I'm not actually so worried about ska, but it seems to me that at a certain level, the wisdom-of-crowds technology quite systematically hides prevents users from seeing certain niches, rather than helping them get exposed to things they would never have heard of or had access to 20 years ago.

A non-ska-related example of what I mean: imagine a person who is looking to buy some car insurance. He/she searches for "car insurance," and Google spits out a list of 10 companies: Geico, Progressive, State Farm, a couple other big ones. But what if there were a million other car insurance companies, among them one that would serve this particular individual better than any of the others? Isn't the whole principle of the Long Tail that all of us now gets exactly what we want instead of conforming to a narrow handful of available options?

I understand that people who know exactly what they want—and know the search terms they must type in order to properly describe it&dasmh; can use Google to find what they're looking for. But the wisdom-of-crowds algorithm (the thing that made Google so revolutionary) does not serve the people who don't know those things. In other words, it doesn't help drive demand down the Tail at all. That seems important, since one of the foundational observations Anderson makes about the Tail is that it gives everyone access to niches, instead of just the specialists who have the resources and expertise to pursue them.

...Keyhole, thoughts?

"He Had a Painter's Cap / It Had Flaps On the Back"

2007-07-09T12:25:00.000-12:00

The Crimson has a long-standing tradition whereby everyone who serves as president gets his or her portrait drawn by this old caricature artist named David Royce. Royce was a member of the staff in the 1950s and from what I hear he is a pretty cranky dude. He makes everyone wear a hat in their portrait, and he apparently corresponds with whoever he's drawing for weeks in advance trying to decide what kind of hat best represents their personality. (WCM '07, a dedicated patriot, chose a three-corner cap in the style of Paul Revere, etc., and Royce almost didn't let him do it because he didn't think it was a vivid enough encapsulation of his personality.)

All of which makes me wonder: who will be the first Crimson president to wear a trucker hat in their portrait? I hope alumni are informed.

Parallel Structure

2007-07-09T12:13:00.000-12:00

Craig Finn from the Hold Steady has a lot of lyrical ticks, that is, he often repeats little jokes, images, and ideas song after song.

One of these is the phrase "almost killed me," as in "The eighties almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly" from "Positive Jam," and "Killer parties almost killed me," from "Killer Parties." The phrase describes things we've lived through, in other words—things we've lived through but just barely.

There's nostalgia in this phrase, as well as wisdom and not a little bitterness. As it happens, it also shows up in the title of the band's first album, The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me. Why? Because one day we'll look back at that album and realize that along with all the other stuff, we lived through the Hold Steady. It's a prediction of sorts. I for one would bet on it.

Update From Yan-ski

2007-07-09T08:58:00.000-12:00

xxSTxx: i cant figure out where this kibbutz is
xxSTxx: i guess ill have to come home
xxVanBeethxx: haha seriously?
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: um excuse me

She Shoots, She Scores

2007-07-09T05:51:00.000-12:00

Sarah: fyi my friend went to middle and high school w/ lil wayne
me: whoa cool!!
Sarah: yeah
he was real little then

A Disturbance in the Force

2007-07-09T01:49:00.000-12:00

I woke up this morning feeling unmistakably disappointed. I don't know why—probably a dream or something, who knows. But there it is. I spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what caused it, and though I couldn't scratch the itch that started it, I did think of like six things worth being disappointed about. :'(

"Call Me Out On Cowardice But I Guess That's Your Business..."

2007-07-08T15:19:00.000-12:00

Jessica Hopper on R. Kelly and The Game:

Maybe you’re like me and you have a long-running internal dialogue about whether it’s OK to like R. Kelly. From all available evidence, he seems to be a real-deal sketchball. But then lots of male celebrities are probably bad people—he just got caught. And when a song like “The Zoo” comes on WGCI, you turn it up, thinking, This song is so funny! R. Kelly is singing about being a sex dinosaur! If it’s a joke, then he’s a joke, and if he’s a joke, then I don’t have to feel super awful about enjoying his product. Here’s my solution: a penance system. Every time you willfully partake of R. Kelly, you have to listen to the Game’s “Wouldn’t Get Far” twice in a row. Don’t bother with the vague radio edit, which could be confused for a song about video vixens and the high price of trying to love a rap star. Listen to the dirty version, where he checks women by first and last name and implies that they’re whores, and see if your humanity doesn’t shrivel a bit. Lines like “If you could keep your legs closed, girl” are the sort of thing some scenery-chewing stepdad says in a Lifetime movie of the week before he backhands the teenage girl.

Obviously, the Game is a no-talent knuckle-dragger who’s probably mad that the dancers in Busta Rhymes videos have more of a career than he does. Thinking that way, you could argue that he’s not even worth taking seriously. But I don’t think you can excuse pop music by prefacing it with a “just,” whether it’s about sex dinosaurs or hating women

I liked this riff better when it was on her blog two weeks earlier, but "w/e," as they say. Good blog, btw! My favorite post is the recent one about dignity:

I was walking to my car and some pricks in their office clothes were eating outdoors at revolting Dunlays, and they took a break from their chewing to make some kiss-kiss noises at me and look me up and down and I was on the phone with Matt and told him. He was about to drive up to where they were. So he did. He got out of his car and went and stood by their table and stood there making kissy noises at them while they stared at the ground and then yelled at them a little while the other diners watched on. I dunno why I didn't walk back and do it myself. Sometimes it's nice to see someone else defend your honor.

Jessica Hopper hates women, pass it on!

This Guy Right Here

2007-07-08T05:52:00.000-12:00

This guy's got it.

Ground Zero

2007-07-07T11:53:00.000-12:00

For anyone interested in this Transformers business, the guy who wrote the original script has a blog over here where he talks a little bit about the process that led to the finished version. He seems to be happy with it, strangely. Stranger still, considering the science issues, he holds an advanced degree in physics.

Watch that space, though! In his latest post, he promises that "Once the weekend is over, we can have a nice general chat -- without going into contract-breaking details -- about what some of the differences in the story are, and how they were executed, and put this process in context for the spec monkeys."

Lights out

2007-07-05T19:12:00.001-12:00

It's weird: yesterday evening there were hundreds of fireflies in my backyard, flying around and flashing their tale feathers and energetically lighting up the air. Just now I went out and there are none. I saw a couple on the porch though, crawling slowly around, in darkness. I wonder if that is their equivalent of like, getting ready for bed. Or maybe something happened...? The electricity on our block went out earlier tonight—I wonder if that is related.

Yan, direct from Paris, assures me that they are still there. "You can find them in the day," he says.

I'M TRANSFORMING!

2007-07-05T18:05:00.000-12:00

Keyhole wrote extensively about the Transformers movie a few days ago, saying some things that ended up sparking a pretty bloody AIM fight between me and a dear friend of mine from Oak Park. After that I felt obligated to actually see the thing, so tonight I did. Now some notes:

Going that extra mile. Shane's main complaint about this movie was that whoever wrote it refused to put any effort into fitting the story with any rich or even vaguely coherent science. "Quantum mechanics" somehow is asked to stand in for incomprehensibly advanced technology, references to DNA are thrown around carelessly, etc. The typical response to this sort of beef is "Who cares about that, it is just a cartoon movie," but Shane believes pretty fiercely that if it wasn't for this kind of complacency—if people didn't look the other way when they encountered such brazen lapses in effort, the world would be a much better place. I agree with him. That said, sloppy science was not the biggest problem in Transformers—not just because there were much, much bigger ones, but because it just didn't take up a lot of screen time. Apart from the one brief conversation about quantum mechanics and DNA, there were only a few instances of the sort of empty/showy/rotten gesturing that Shane is talking about: one at the very beginning, when Air Force command tries to ground an unidentified aircraft and addresses it over the radio as "unidentified aircraft," and again during most of the computer hacking scenes, when you see lights flashing and things like "VIRUS UPLOADING" and "HACK IN PROGRESS" displayed on the monitors. Those aren't exact quotes, but it should be familiar to most people because that's what computer hacking always looks like in movies (see the new Die Hard, for instance, which was terrific). Besides those, I dunno! The whole third of the movie about trying to figure out what the robots are and how they work took up like 20 minutes total, and I actually thought the bit about how all modern technology had been derived from Megatron was pretty neat. It should also be noted that Shane was wrong to say that the "secret files" that were podslurped from the government computer on Air Force One were just New York Times articles. Most of them were classified papers about the discovery of Megatron; while there was one newspaper in the file, it was the New York Record or something, not the Times.

Everything happens for a reason. One of the "much bigger problems" I mentioned above has to do with the fact that there are whole stretches when the plot is advanced by way of characters making piles and piles of decisions without any apparent motivation. Why, for instance, do Sam and the girl try so hard to hide the robots from Sam's parents while they're looking for the magic glasses? Why is this an important thing to do? Why is Sam so mad at the girl when the mean Sector Nine guy reveals that factoid about her father's criminal record? Why would he possibly hold that against her?

The fourth wall. There are two movie references in Transformers: one to the 40-Year-Old Virgin, and one to Armageddon. I guess fundamentally this is just the "Smack That" issue—"he's the one singing the song that's playing!"—but I wonder how far movies/books should go toward convincing their audiences that they are occupying the same world as the characters. In Transformers it actually worked really well, since the ending is supposed to give us the impression that maybe, you know, THEY ARE LIVING AMONG US AND WE WILL SEE THEM WHEN WE LEAVE THE THEATER, but what about like, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud or The Third Brother by Nick McDonnell, both works of fiction that force their characters to grapple with September 11th. I wonder: is that really any different than throwing in a reference to the 40-Year-Old-Virgin, or loading your prose with references to actual brand names like they do in most chick-lit? I say no, which is what I was trying to get at when I asked Messud at an Advocate reading last semester why she felt so compelled to incorporate real history into her plot. She said something about how it was a really important event, and well, OK, I guess. But to me there is a qualitative difference between a work that situates itself in real history and one that ignores it or makes up its own. I won't use the word "topical" but let it be known that I'm thinking it.

"I know a guy who can help us." What does it say about the old zeitgeist that both Transformers and Die Hard featured a wise man-type figure in the form of a legendary master hacker who lives with his mom/grandma? In Die Hard this figure is portrayed by a curmudgeonly Kevin Smith who keeps a command center in his basement; in Transformers he is a young black boy who likes to play Dance Dance Revolution with his cousin.

White noise. By far the worst thing about the movie were the oppressive, hollow "glimpses of humanity" that were peppered throughout the carnage. You know: robots are stomping around killing stuff, explosions are exploding, then... cut to a little girl in her bed checking under her pillow for the tooth fairy. Or a boy turning to his mom and exclaiming, "Cool, mom!" as robots do battle in front of their car. After a while these interruptions start to feel like some version of a laugh track. There were tons of these little shots, and taken together they evoke a deep, cynical blandness, one that makes you wonder whether the world being portrayed is even worth saving.

It is funny when. It is funny when the girl refers to aliens as "an urban legend" when the secret police are asking her questions and she's trying to pretend like she doesn't know anything about the Transformers.

My World is Different

2007-07-05T04:28:00.000-12:00

When I got out of bed this morning, there was a man working on the roof, reinforcing the wood, stripping the old tiles, and hammering industriously. My grandmother, meanwhile, was in the basement darning a pair of jeans on the sewing machine.

When I got out of bed this morning, I found my home transformed into a bustling workshop from the 19th century!

I Am a Proponent of the "Many Words" Theory

2007-07-04T18:22:00.000-12:00

There are many words...

Related: according to an n+1 obit for Richard Rorty, a 1989 conference on epistemology and objective truth at Rutgers drew some people wearing shirts that said “No Reality Without Representation” and others wearing ones that said “Get Real.”

Inventing Traditions

2007-07-04T17:44:00.000-12:00

I was talking to Lisa tonight, live via satellite from Barcelona, and thought of a funny thing: what if every Fourth of July American families got together and watched Independence Day, like they watch It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas? That would be funny!

Nice

2007-07-01T19:12:00.000-12:00

When I was in sixth grade our classroom library included a thick book on Hitler, in which the teacher had carefully Scotch-taped two pages together so that none of us kids would know what was written on them. Somehow or other the rumor got out that these pages described Hitler's genital deformity. Something about "one nut."

I heard this story again several times over the years and the other day it came up in Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler, a great book so far that examines all the different ways scholars and history buffs have tried to make sense of the Fuhrer's evil deeds. According to Rosenbaum, "one nut" originated with a German private named Eugen Wasner, who was in Hitler's class when the two of them were in grade school. During a 1943 "bull session" in the barracks Wasner told his buddies that the reason Hitler was such a psycho was that, as a kid, he had tried to pee in a billy goat's mouth on a dare and gotten his penis chomped in the process.

To the people who believe this story, Rosenbaum says the billy goat's fateful chomp was like "the single bite of the apple in Genesis--an act of appetite from which whole histories of sorrow and tragedy would ensue."

An Unenviable Fork In the Road

2007-07-01T11:54:00.000-12:00

Reading Nick McDonell's The Third Brother and actually enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. I haven't figured out quite what I think about it yet--the only word that comes to mind is "draining," and that can be good and bad. For all I know by the end of this I might agree with En-dasher.

One thing has jumped out at me so far, on page 197:

Mike's father carried a silver flask and Mike grew up thinking it was not an outlandish thing to do... Lyle, oddly, had the flask on him when he ran out of the burning house. It traveled to Pine Hill as his sole personal effect. Mike was surprised when Lyle took it out of the bedside table in the hospital.

[...]

"This is half full," said Mike, opening the flask. "Have you been drinking this stuff?" he said, smelling it.

"Yeah. It was full when he gave it to me. No one emptied it..."

The line that sticks out is "This is half full." Why? Because in order to write it McDonnell had to make a certain choice, and that is a very funny choice to have to make.

If it had been me, I would have just rephrased it and tried to forget the decision had ever confronted me.

Mack Maine Has Read the Story

2007-07-01T10:16:00.000-12:00

From "I Know the Future": "That's a hint to you Davids / throwing shots at Goliath / This the new testament / where the victor is the giant."

He knew he had to qualify it, is my point.

Lil' Wayne Hasn't Read the Story

2007-06-30T11:17:00.000-12:00

"I'm feeling like I'm racing a bunch of little turtles." (from the Carter 3 leak)

He makes a couple more turtle jokes in the next few bars. Also there's a funny thing if you follow that link, posted by Matlock on June 16th, 2007:

There has been a mistake!!!on the mixtape “The Empire & Lil’ Wayne - Tha Carter 3 Sessions a song labeled produced by timberland “I know the Future” f/lil wayne and mack maine.
Timberland did not produce that song…I did …My name is Matlock.. I dont know how it was leaked but it cost me a lot of money…i cannot do anything about it now…but promote my song… i have the original song and it is on my myspace now… if its possible for you to correct this mistake i highly appreciate it…

myspace.com/hungrymusicrecords

The News!

2007-06-30T09:37:00.001-12:00

Ideelz just informed me via AIM that terrorists drove an SUV into the Glasgow Airport. Ever since, I've been trying to sell him on the notion that there is some vague poetry in this. 2001 we get a plane flown into a building; this year ambitions run low and we get a car driven into an airport.

Hey Ideelz, I know I talk a little fast, but maybe if you listened a little faster I wouldn't have to slow down for you to catch up.