January 2010
“It was like a fucking Real Housewives episode!”
– Kathy Griffin, on Obama’s televised exchange with the House Republicans.
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You see, this is why I didn't want to talk about...
agrammar:
In the world of Hopper’s writing, this is the great sin: somehow, these guys missed the memo about how to play The Game correctly.*** Mike Barthel, over here, interprets their dealing with class as a kind of baiting or trolling, but even that subscribes to the rules of The Game: it works from the presumption that acknowledging these issues can only be an act of deliberate nose-tweaking....
Agh you guys you guys
V*****e W*****d’s whole “appropriation” thing is a marketing technique. They are deliberately baiting you. If what you want is for them to not be successful, you should stop talking about them. I mean, good lord, they started their second album with a couplet rhyming “horchata” with “balaclava.” When Nirvana did it they called it “Serve the...
Everybody Was In The French... →
For those of you, like me, anticipating the release of the Eddie Argos & Dyan Valdés album, here is a mix of all the songs they are responding to. Enjoy!
1. The Mamas and the Papas - Creeque Alley 2. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend 3. The Archies - Waldo P. Emerson Jones 4. Simon and Garfunkel - Scarborough Fair 5. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean 6. Bob Dylan - Don’t Think Twice, It’s...
Subject of an e-mail from Rachel
“New Mussolini quote for our wedding invites”
“Had he sent his 13 million-strong list after one thing—it could be just about...”
– Email from New York - emptyage
The SXSW attendee survey asked if I felt the Obama administration had made good use of social media. I said no.
Where are our tea parties and town hall disruptions? I want to do what liberals used to do: I want to make a public show of support. Hell, just get me to...
WatchEverybody Was In the French Resistance…Now!: “G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. (You Know I’ve Got A)”
The first songs from Eddie Argos’ “Fixing the Charts” side project is a response song to Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend.” It is sung from the perspective of the man being targeted, who it turns out is very happy with his current girlfriend, and...
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The response
“The state of the Confederacy speech,” quipped Mark Shields, and he was not wrong. It is held in the Virginia statehouse and it is super creepy. The audience looks like they rehearsed their clapping.
SOTU #1
Obama is so clutch in these situations. He’s using the ridulous clapping bullshit to make a powerful visual point - Republicans not clapping, not approving, literally doing nothing, even when he mentions tax cuts. It really drives home the differance between the two parties right now in a way that’s easy to grasp.
Manoucheka Celeste: Disturbing media images of... →
My colleague and fellow media scholar Manoucheka has an op-ed in the Seattle Times today that is well worth your attention. (Especially if you are abbyjean or bonesarecoralmade.)
WatchI was not aware that there was a new Kids in the Hall series, but as I am now back where I feel most comfortable, geographically (i.e. basically in Canada, but in America), I get the CBC again! And so I happened across this new series, called Death Comes to Town, this very evening. It is…quite good, actually! They are very, very good at establishing characters, and here they have created...
WatchI had mostly stopped watching The Daily Show, because watching Jon Stewart give advice about political strategy was like watching a puppy try to play a clarinet, but then last night it was 11, and I had nothing else to do, so I turned it on. And I saw Jon Stewart making exactly the same jokes Fox News does. “Teleprompters lol.” Stick to the media, Jon.
“Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat and one of the House’s more liberal...”
– Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Draws Fire From Left
For god’s sake don’t fire the American Malcolm Tucker! I will die of heartbreak.
(via meaverly)
The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides....
The new metrics
Since he posted it on the Internet earlier this month, Mr. Caruana said that “Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers” has been downloaded more than 27,000 times from his Web site, teasearecords.net. The project has also received widespread attention in publications from The Fader to GQ, and even got a shout-out from the Wu-Tang rapper Raekwon, who described it as “ill” on his Twitter account.
What...
Talk to Tyra →
I included this as an explanatory link on my previous post, but it’s a pretty great read, as it turns out. Teenage girls thinking they are writing directly to Tyra! Does it get heartbreaking? Yes, it gets a little heartbreaking.
No, we can't
marco:
We wanted universal health care, and nearly all of us took that to mean a tax-funded, single-payer system like nearly every other advanced country in the world. I don’t think many “young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots” pre-election-Obama fans would recognize the current effort, renamed from “universal health care” to “health care reform”, as remotely accomplishing what we had in mind....
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On "Snooki"
Me: So…I’d kinda hit that. Rachel: Do you mind if I ask why? Me: Maybe because she kinda looks like Amy Winehouse. I mean, obviously they’re doing different things. Snooki and Amy Winehouse face each other across a great cultural divide. But it’s like they’re so far at the opposite ends of the spectrum that they circle around and touch each other. Rachel: Oh my...
Paging Mike Barthel.
maura:
So, is Justin Timberlake’s “Hallelujah” going to sell enough buck-twenty-nine copies to make a big Hot 100 splash?
And if that happens, HOW BROKEN WILL YOUR BRAIN BE?
Related, obv. And also.
I was honestly just thinking yesterday that, wow, it seemed like “Hallelujah” was on the rise for a while, but it’s really dropped off. Surely it will never get any bigger than...
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Hope for Haiti now
Why do we turn to music in sad times? Why do we react to sad events by listening to sad music? The top-selling single of all time, after all, is a commemoration of death. The uncharitable explanation is that consuming sad pop music somehow legitimates sadness and grief. By listening to the same thing others are listening to, our grieving is equalized, smoothing out differentials between those...
It's the little things
I was having somewhat of a down day yesterday, so I decided to go for a walk around campus to get some sunshine. My walk took me by the music building, which is right next to the comm building and on the corner of the big quad. There seems to be a rehearsal room facing the alley I walk through, because you can always hear something going on, but usually it’s a voice major warming up. ...
The critic's credo
Writing well is the best revenge.
Massholes
One of the many funny things about the way we talk about politics is that we want to tell stories, even when those stories don’t reflect reality. For instance, a single statewide election somehow becomes a referendum on national parties; the vote in a state already with universal health care is somehow a vote against universal health care; and, to sum it all up, everything matters to me.
...
natepatrin:
Still plowing through Pazz & Jop whatnot — my ballot’s right here (it should be noted that my preferred version of “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” is the Wallpaper remix), and once again I ride for some pretty underrepresented stuff as well as some popular favorites. But aside from Maura Johnston’s typically on-point observations, this might be the most intriguing quote of...
“Let me see if I have this straight. You have to replace one of the most beloved...”
– Jon Stewart (via soupsoup) (via ericmortensen) (via mikehudack)
Argh. Look, I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it until people get the picture: George W. Bush got very, very little done through Congress. Mainly it was No Child Left Behind, the PATRIOT Act, the 2 (extremely vague)...
WatchDrones (2009)
Tara and Warren from Buffy direct a film with Neal from Freaks and Geeks and James Urbaniak. If that sounded meaningful to you, then you are probably in the target audience for this film.
“If you are not a devotee of the cult of contemporary art, especially its...”
– Arthur Lubow, “Making Art Out of an Encounter,” NYT
I would phrase it as “anything can be art if somebody says it is,” but the point at the end is the important thing.
It's the "What would Van Gogh have been like if...
Inspired by this: what would Emily Dickinson have been like if the Internet existed when she was alive? Would she still have written all those poems? Or would she be obsessively posting LiveJournal updates about how she was having a panic attack because people were being “sooooo mean” to Pete Wentz? Or both? What if she had crowdsourced punctuation? Would she have made viral...
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Don't cry for me, Sarah Palin
If you are the kind of person who thinks Sarah Palin is horrible, you should be happy about her Fox News gig. This is like when your friend keeps trying to get a job they are clearly unqualified for, and you are worried about them, but finally they realize they need to get a more stable but less prestigious job and settle down. Two reasons that this is where Palin will settle:
1) Despite it...
Game criticism
Assassin’s Creed II is not a funny game. It is very serious: conspiracies, existential crises, death, time, etc. But there is one hilarious moment early in the game, which takes place in 15th-century Italy. The main character, Ezio, has been running around Italy for a while, being Italian, and his family has been killed. He flees the city and meets up with his uncle, who is named Mario,...
Here is my life right now
Buying a small package of ground beef and a single roll in the express lane at the supermarket
Ordering half a cheese pizza by cell phone on the bus
Being recognized by the cashier at the liquor store
Turning on a college football game for the sound of other human voices
Going bowling by myself during discount bowling hours
Drinking a bourbon on the rocks on my couch on a Friday night...
Important morning show update
The guest co-host on Regis and Kelly this morning is…Nick Jonas? I like this on a conceptual level because it makes me think about teenage girls holding up giant cardboard cutouts of Regis Philbin and screaming, and also Nick Jonas just straight pretending to be Regis for the full hour and doing the voice and telling lengthy stories about his prostate surgeries and why he doesn’t...
“We’re the ones seeing the real results, and until doctors start listening...”
– Jenny McCarthy, responding to a report that autism has nothing to do with diet. Did you know that anecdotal evidence is the best kind of evidence? You would if you had hosted a dating show on MTV, smarty pants!
Vogue
iconography:
Her artistic response, however, varied - though Spanish Eyes was a poignant, sympathetic prayer for the suffering, Vogue urges the listener not to dwell on it. LGBT magazine Advocate may have deemed “Madonna’s dance tracks… a necessary escape that was nearly transcendental during an era when our community was seeing more than its share of heartbreak and horror”, but while the...
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The tweens
What to call this decade? Oh sure, we could go the easy route and call it “the tens.” But I much prefer the suggestion of my host last night: the tweens. Let’s make this happen, everyone.
