January 2012
14 posts
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Geeks →
theremixbaby:
occupythedisco:
I think the reason I find geek culture so obnoxious at times to engage in is because the people are for the most part the same privileged dips that inhabit mainstream culture, but with the added detriment of a victim complex. They’re still largely white and center their race, they’re still largely straight and center their sexuality, they’re still largely cis...
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Tucker Max Is Tucker Max No More →
tylercoates:
Can tigers change their stripes, drivers their engines, playboys their condoms?
JEREMY GORDON! I love this post.
Aw, well (blushes, falls down a flight of stairs)
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jakec asked: What the hell is a Rock 'n' Roll McDonalds? I'm imagining Hamburglar dressed up like Nikki Sixx and instead of sundaes they've got Billy Holidaes and so on.
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The Classical: Wrestling Is A Vampire →
Remember that Smashing Pumpkins question I asked forever ago? (Of course you don’t.) It was for this piece I wrote for The Classical about attending the first show for Billy Corgan’s wrestling promotion, Resistance Pro, which got put up a few minutes ago — a long time coming, but a worthwhile wait after getting such a deep, awesome edit by Mr. David Roth. I talk about the...
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“In 2009, twenty years later, her daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) and her...”
– Wikipedia: The Devil Inside (film)
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Willis Thoughtz
One of the things I really like about the Ellen Willis collection is how openly personal the reviews are. There’s a calmness of personality running in between the peremptory analysis, individuality behind the mechanical analysis. She’s a great critic, but what completes the essays for me are sentences as simple as “I enjoyed the show a lot” (“Believing Bette Midler,...
December 2011
20 posts
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I got a Kindle.
While I’m feeling fantastic and spend-free and not at all thinking about the deadline, what are some affordable/hard-to-find/really just better in an electronic format things I should pick up from yonder Amazon Store, or elsewhere?
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“The Velvets do not deal in abstractions but in states of mind. Their songs are...”
– Ellen Willis, “The Velvet Underground” (from Out of the Vinyl Deeps)
If you are a “music critic” person then you were probably told a hundred times to get this and Simon Reynolds’ Retromania, but honestly, I’m enjoying the Willis collection a lot more; it’s...
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“In reading the stories in this volume you should bear in mind that most were...”
– Philip K. Dick, 1980
I know, a little over the top and I’m certainly not empathizing, but this fear colors and enhances a lot of Dick’s best work, or at least what I’ve read so far. “Often it is a justified fear” rings sad in a distant way; again, like a lot of his...
Rawktumblr: "Important" records vs. "good" ones →
rawkblog:
There seems to be some confusion about this A.V. Club piece. Here’s how I see it: certain records are able to make a broad splash on mass culture in terms of sonic influence, politics, style, etc., albums like Sgt. Pepper’s or Nevermind or OK Computer. Albums that try to push things forward….
Man, I am really not trying to fuck with a long Tumblr post, but a few things: I...
jakec replied to your quote: What’s an Important Album? It’s an album that is…
I don’t know man, that seems like a pretty legit observation to me. Arguably Watch the Throne fulfilled the ‘highly visible’ criteria but that’s about it. Do you think there’s an album that WAS, by this definition, Important?
Oh, I just find the whole line of thinking incredibly narrow-minded, based in some...
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“What’s an Important Album? It’s an album that is perceived to be a momentous...”
– What the hell is this garbage?
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“Gold bottlesmfmfWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”
– Quote of the year (0:45)
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“Hard like geometry / and trignometry / This is craaaaaazy! / Psychology”
– Sir Mick Jagger
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“The horrifying (to a writer) meme ‘tl dr’ (too long, didn’t read) has yet to be...”
– Simon Reynolds, Retromania (via airgordon)
Is this a meme, though? “Too long, didn’t watch” has been the philosophy for producing broadcast and online journalism for years, and the same goes for “tl;dr” with newspapers and magazines.
(I’m not to this point in Retromania unless my memory’s failed...
“The horrifying (to a writer) meme ‘tl dr’ (too long, didn’t...”
– Simon Reynolds, Retromania
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Some Of My Favorite Songs Of 2011, Accompanied By...
Destroyer - Kaputt (“Oh cool, dance music for boring people.”)
JoJo - Marvin’s Room (“I suspect there is something wrong with literally everyone who enjoys this song.”)
Coldplay - Hurts Like Heaven (“I honestly thought this was the Nyan Cat music when it started playing.”)
Dum Dum Girls - Bedroom Eyes (“This sounds like everything else I’ve...
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All the Sad Young Literally Something Something Or...
Matthew: "This is not to say that the generational angst fueling The New Inquiry is likely to vanish soon. At the most recent salon two weeks ago, Will Canine, the operations director, showed up with 5 o’clock shadow after spending 35 hours in jail following his arrest at the Occupy Wall Street protests."
these literally sound like they might be the worst people
November 2011
22 posts
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“And not just, say, Pavement— ‘You hurt me deeply in my heart,’...”
– Best New Music: Gish/Siamese Dream
(By the way, you should read the article this is referring to — it’s really all so, so good, Kim Thayil quotes for days.)
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“The compact disc. It doesn’t wear out, even if you use it. Terrifying. It’s as...”
– Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories II, 1987-1990, trans. Chris Turner (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1996), 32-33
(via commnplace)
CDs do wear out over time, but I get it.
Crowd-sourcing for a thing I’m working on: What songs do you most associate with the Smashing Pumpkins, and why?
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breaking: panel overwhelmingly made up of white... →
maura:
I laugh because it’s easier than crying.What a day.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY
Robert Johnson fell 66 positions from his #5 spot on the 2003 list — that’s killing me, for some reason. “What has that guy even DONE in the last eight years?” - some assistant editor
(EDIT) Haha, even funnier, Jack White tumbled from #17 to #70. “Whoops, we fucked up on...
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“We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful...”
– Matt Taibbi (via drinkyourjuice)
This feels like it’s 1999 and I’m watching American Beauty. Yes, please, make things less boring and safe and happy! Make politics exciting! That’s gone AWESOME! (Also, you realize how calling for things to be less boring and corporate is part and parcel of things...
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warm & punchy: my friend jackson's phone... →
so back in the day my former bandmate matt was going to college at cal arts and his roomate was salvador santana, carlos’s son. one long weekend i decided to go out and visit
i’m hanging out, sal’s off doing something and matt was around the corner picking up some food while i’m sitting in the apartment playing soul calibur or something. phone rings, i pick up ‘cause my momma raised me to think...
bmichael asked: What did Nash have to do with stillness is the move?
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Radio Killin' with Terius Nash →
Did you know that Terius Nash, alias The-Dream, has written all of the good songs from 2003-present? Single Ladies, Baby, Stillness Is The Move, Wake Up, anything that’s ever shown up on a Pitchfork year-end list. It’s true! It’s hard to keep tabs on everything — his style, all handclaps and ehs and slow drums to get you pregnant, is easy to pick out but even easier to rip...
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May 1980
Alastair Reid: You once said in London -- and I was sitting beside you on the occasion in 1970 -- that all great literature eventually became children's literature and you hoped in the long run your work would be read by children. Would you like to amplify that?
Jorge Luis Borges: Yes. I think that that statement is true, though I said it. For example, the works of Edgar Allan Poe are read by children. I read them when I was a child. The Arabian Nights are read by children. But maybe that's all to the good, since, after all, children read as we should read. They are simply enjoying what they read. And that is the only kind of reading that I permit. One should think of reading as a form of happiness, as a form of joy, and I think that compulsory reading is wrong. You might as well talk of compulsory love or compulsory happiness. One should be reading for the pleasure of the book. I was a teacher of English literature for some twenty years and I always said to my students: if a book bores you, lay it aside. It hasn't been written for you. But if you read and feel passion, then go on reading. Compulsory reading is a superstition.