TAN

100interviews:

Beat-era author Jack Kerouac, legend has it, was an effortless genius.

Kerouac, it seems, wrote some of literature’s most well-crafted works while drunk and high, up all night, in between good-times adventures with his friends. Kerouac, too, kept up the persona that his work was done in one night while he was on copious substances, that perfect sentences spewed onto his typewriter like magical destiny.

After he died, historians discovered at least ten different drafts of ‘On The Road.’

Kerouac had worked hard.

This is a story that hip-hop expert and author Adam Mansbach told last night at a panel at New York University called ‘Politics, Lyricism, Literature.’ Adam clearly knows a lot about music. He also in all seriousness uses slang like “fresh” and humblebrags like crazy: “I actually just met up with [another author] when I was in Rome for my book tour.” It’s pretty funny.

But Adam wasn’t the reason I went to the panel, alone, at a school I never attended.

I went to see Pharoahe Monch.

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Lupe Fiasco: Friend of the the People

B.O.B: EPIC (Every Play Is Crucial)

haven’t peeped yet. but reports from the hip-hop blog commenter trenches are positive. 

(also, posts say it’s Howard Zinn audio in Lupe’s intro, but it sounds like a George Carlin bit to me.)

Excerpted from Grantland’s “THE NBA IS BACK” barnstorming. (which, btw, holy Grantland has put the smackdown on lockout and now post-lockout coverage. I guess self/associated-promo lacks tact, and tact is my farté, but sorry, I’m impressed.)

but really had to steal this opportunity to say…

KATIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE COOOOMMMMEEEEEEEBAAAAAAAACCCCKKKKKK

The Knicks Revival: Part One 
I have a confession to make, and you’re not gonna like it: I got a little bit sad when I woke up to find out that the NBA lockout was over. Not because I enjoyed watching my Twitter feed flooded with the bored and borderline delirious dispatches from NBA writers staked out in hotel lobbies, and not because I’m covering hockey and know that now SportsCenter will show the sport even less. No, it’s because I moved cross-country this summer and the return of basketball will be the first thing to truly make me long for New York. While the pizza and cab situations out here in SF pale in comparison to the city (and there is only one “the city”) I can deal with those things: I ride my bike a lot more, and we have better burritos. But out here we don’t have the New York Post and the Daily News competing to see who can be more cutting the day after a loss. We don’t have the mania of Penn Station on the day of a game, with folks pausing amidst the frenzy to offer an appreciative head nod to someone wearing Mason or Oakley. We don’t have the circus of will-we-get-Carmelo or the upcoming will-we-get-CP3. After being so bad for so long, the Knicks were and are just on the brink to returning to being the kind of team that’s the toast of the town, that has cab drivers honking and floor traders complaining and bartenders forgetting to pour. It’s self-centered, New York and the Knicks, and it’s probably super annoying to everyone else. But really, that’s why it’s so great. I missed the NBA this fall, sure, but that was basically nothing. The real missing is only about to begin. — Katie Baker

The Knicks Revival: Part Two 
GO NEW YORK GO NEW YORK GO NEW YORK GO! Too much? Too soon? Coming off the newly minted CBA, and Knicks fans are the biggest winners here. Chris Paul. It will be abbreviated, but this is the first full season of Melo and Amare decadence and boy are we Chris Paul about it!! This is a franchise full of intrigue whether you’re interested in the major market business economics angle (c.f. Chris Paulonomics), a coaching theorist curious to see if D’Antoni’s selling snake oil with no medicinal Chris Paul value, or just want to watch a couple of the NBA-elites do their thing, maybe RedRum the Heat locker room (All Melo and no Paul make Amare a dull boy).

Questions abound of course: Can we find a center? What does Billups have left in the tank? Landry? Iman Shumpert? Defense? And, oh yeah, will we name an official replacement for Donnie Walsh. But there’s one question with one answer that will start the apocalypse and render everything else irrelevant. Still, whether we get Chris Paul or not (haha), with the Knicks officially out of the dark ages, along with the up-and-coming Rangers, the clock has started on the Occupy Wall Street movement relocating to Madison Square Garden permanently. With a pit stop in New Orleans first. — Patrice Evans