May 2010
107 posts
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“Lying is universal—we all do it; we all must do it. Therefore, the wise...”
– Mark Twain (the decay of the art of lying)
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Everyone's favorite review of Sex & The City2 →
what? it’s not yours? well, silly, that’s only because you haven’t read it yet (or maybe worked on SATC2). dahhling, the review reads like a dirty martini practically spilling over with prankishness (i don’t actually drink those, but sounds apt). i think i lol’d most at this lil pimiento, “It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the ...
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Oh wow, if "Just Wright" was pitched as an urban... →
some of the details make me think Alex Carnevale’s version of Just Wright just sounds a lot more intriguing than it actually is. i mean if Queen and Common could do a dark Neil Labute style dramedy, then Gary Coleman (RIP) would probably still be alive (and at the movies!) today.
but in general two black women ruthlessly toying with a male victim, with no let-up start-to-finish, is...
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On Houdini
life is somewhat like a Harry Houdini act. what with the being born in a bag of darkness, or if you prefer, submerged in water, and needing to find and unlock the various chains to free yourself before time runs out…
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Daydreamin'
[AUDIO HERE]
*snoring*
gimme two Prince Pauls some dilla and rhymes got myself in a pickle need a whopper with lies think i fell asleep that’s why i’m speaking in fries tan so high-, def best to listen with eyes see, my brain makes the bacon it’s kinda a pigstye cleanin’ up my act yeah, happens when pigs fly and u spill a ton of milk not even a baby cries me and my lady...
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Children more likely to own a phone than a book →
Of course mobile phones now often contain libraries, or at least access to the biggest library. literacy and education will always be important, but traditionalists need to come around to it not being about books, but the information in them.
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On Poorness
Poor wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t people getting rich off your poverty. That might be rustic or simple. Old school. So the issue isn’t money; it’s about justice, morality, ethics.
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“I tried to be modest on Blueprint 2, but y’all don’t respect modest,...”
– Jay-Z (If I Can’t, S. Carter Collection)
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With the exception of a few people - Madlib, Jake... →
reblogged reflections on the state of “diggin’ in the crates” - aesthetics, economics, history.
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I was so shocked I nearly spilled my Pokemon Cards... →
nice little chuckle from Adrian Chen there. click-through for the full post and tweet-sources
the various ‘BlackPeople’ hashtags — thingsBlackPeopledo, as an example — almost make me want to play on twitter. it’s like racist tic tacs! 1 1/2 calories! won’t make you fat, or an a-hole or anything.
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Been listening to a lot of “Live”...
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On 50 Centism
mulling on why most rappers can’t act, it occurs that the sensibility of Get Rich or Die Trying capitalism may also be why the free-for-all democratized internet seems to break down along familiar socioeconomic lines.
it’s the relation of the ego to authority, vs. the relation of the ego to empathy.
50 Cent (and most rappers) sell authority. they know what the f is up. if you...
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From an early age, along the way to pleasing white... →
Oprah might be our most singular human example of Nietzsche’s will to power in action. This is virtue of not only her self-evident power monopoly, crossing lines of economics, culture, and media/information; a perfect storm of three “isms”: capitalism, racism, narcissism.
But Freud once said that Nietzsche “had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than anyone who ever...
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On couch cushions
I see someone turning up all the cushions on a couch. They’re looking under pieces of paper, opening folded umbrellas, inside pockets and the battery hatch of your remote controls. is it in the bathroom? the basement? have you checked your sneakers? WHERE IS THE CONSCIOUSNESS, INTELLIGENCE IN HIP HOP? is this it? [points to Mos Def] looks familiar, is it going in the bag?
someone points to...
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"We don't start with a blank slate," he said. "In... →
the quote and article is about composers, but the way we process information dna these days — whatever your passion you can consume the human history of it fairly quickly — i don’t see how any artform escapes. Writers, moviemakers, journalists, anyone. piano-notes themselves are under attack.
seems we are separating humans from machines. the writers, creatives who operated as...
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“it just means we like to avoid cliché; it’s a mood killer for us, whereas...”
– Sloane Crosley (essay, this month’s GQ)
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the white people-zombies (as opposed to the... →
a nice bit of public service journalism over at The Awl.
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Grandpa Media, Grandpa Values (part 3)
PART 1 HERE PART 2 HERE
It need not be reported to the folks who follow the ‘media narrative’, or maybe it does, but the Gawker Media brand exists as a truth to power. Nothing’s popular if it has no good in it. Whether it’s your kind of good or not. But hateful websites, for example, don’t get popular no matter how well they’re written, or how much money you...
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In Baltimore, some teenagers already have: their... →
Psycholinguist Jessica Love, phenomenally waxes profound on pronominal information. Yes, she does. Quite lovely.
I also like her vat-of-fish metaphor for the information in your brain; we’re going to be seeing a lot of writers using metaphors that render the information in your brain as individually specialize units of [whatever the metaphor is]. my crutch term is DNA. but fish is...
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“One of my favorite things is that, for a moment after you dip your toe in, you...”
– Jason Kottke
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WatchSometimes I wonder if we realize how fast we’re going. So much happens in a year. Bros become foes, and vice versa. Last year, around this time, I was helping hunt for The Hipster Grifter. Some months and jail time(?) later, she’s now a pinup girl and columnist for AnimalNY. Huzzah.
Some things never change, however. I still walk around with a pack of hot dogs throwing them into...
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You Might Be A Rapper: Franz Kafka
F to the would have had platinum potential as a dark-emo emcee. His profile projects the reserved effeminate-existential style of a Kid Cudi. But Kafka would have brought more technical skills to the table. He’d be Eminem with less snark and more humility. A Def Jux crew member in spirit, their smarty-arty tones with more pop and accessibility.
This may be a stretch. The Franz has nuance...
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WatchA Bronx Tale: In Search of Sonia Sotomayor, which ran on Gawker during Supreme Court Justice internet sweeps week.
I guess since New York City now runs this Court (stand up, justice is in the building!) this little video can be a template for soliciting feedback form the streets. My boy got this spot in the Bx right next to the arroz-con-pollo place, since we got mad ears on the bench we could...
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“It’s heavy ‘jo, learning what we already know”
– Common (The Sun God)
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What's Missing from "How To Make It In America":...
I’m on the fence with all the “Lifestyle Porn” programming. (y’know, Sex & The City was like “Blondes”, Entourage was like “Babes” or “Celebrities”, How to Make it in America is “Interracial”) Like porn, there’s a whiff of something cheap and pungent about it. Then again, it’s porn. Anyone you interact with has...
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“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
– Samuel Johnson
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On Hip Hop Bibles
Y’know, I’m not all about the bible in any way shape or form.But it does have a lot of ideas and words and intent. And if you gave me a some generic blog post, or a shitty book and claimed it was almost like the bible. I’d be pissed. Like, wtf.
Jeff Chang preaches hardcore hip hop gospel. You might call me a d-rider for such language, but i don’t think Moses or The...
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On Perspective
Some people see rapping like this [holds fingers to indicate tiny]; but it’s really like this [looks up at the sky]. I’m happy to be in the position to show people the sky, but in some respect it feels like, oh, …nice timing in this life.
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Grandpa Media, Grandpa Values (part 2)
[PART 1 HERE]
Now when I turned on the computer in 2005 and got assimilated into gawker/new media circles, I never fully understood the Old vs. New media banter. Much like a hip hop head might bewilder folks with intimate analysis of the aesthetic fallout from LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee. Or Juice Crew vs Boogie Down Productions. But these were cultural epoch-level events for those who choose to...
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Grandpa Media, Grandpa Values (part 1)
Essays!
They are fucking awesome!
After this rapper-journalist wrote one, all the smart blogs in the crowd were like, oooh. Oh snap, oh snap!
I was like, yo, I wanna do that. I wanna spit some smart hot fire.
So I wrote one!
It’s about some recent news events I saw at the Village Voice: a newly deputized blogger named Foster Kamer who lost a big bag of money, and his boss Sheriff EIC...
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You Might Be A Rapper: Dr. Seuss
I don’t even need to really argue this one do I?
What’s funny is back when hip hop was more small-minded, Dr. Seuss would sometimes be referenced as an example of a simple or bad emcee. This is back when the evolution of lyricism in hip hop was simple +1 math. More rhymes, more syllables, more and more in the bars. You wouldn’t want to be the clown kicking those Dr. Seuss...
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On six year old economics
A child 5, 6, 7, years of age, just entering the job market via the realm of chores and domestic internships, learns economics in a very clean simple way. They do something, and they are rewarded for their effort. Ideally financially. Now it may behoove a toddler to know their parents are slaughtering parakeets to pay that child’s allowance. But would he really care? Should he? Through this...
