This right here is exactly how you deal with an InfoWars conspiracy theory shit head. First time I've felt #BOSTONSTRONG pride in a while. (via DeadState)
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Amanda Palmer’s Awful Poem Is No Worse Than Your Tragedy-Proximity Drama
Amanda Palmer wrote a very bad poem. “A Poem for Dzhokhar” was posted to her blog over the weekend, and the world is infuriated. This is, in part, because, as mentioned previously, it is a very bad poem. The worst poem ever, perhaps, some literary critics are pointing out.
Amanda Palmer Stoops to New Low With Exploitative Boston Bomber Poem, writes in what has been a common reaction. But why such hyperbole? People don’t tend to get up in arms about poems too often these days outside of study hall and faculty mixers.
The aggressively negative reaction is also largely because Amanda Palmer can’t walk out her front door without it feeling like she’s trumpeting her presence to the firmament.
So be it, she’s a compelling, often infuriating presence on the cultural radar, and provocation has long been her game. There’s also still a lot of leftover animosity to the songwriter and performance artist over her Kickstarter success, and subsequent PR fumblings from last year.
READ THE REST OF THE THING>>
Recruiting Models Outside the Eating Disorder Clinic in Sweden
It’s no secret that there’s a dark side to the world of fashion and modeling that we pay close attention to around here. Young women, girls, really, are recruited from impoverished areas around the world to sign on for the glamorous life of runways and parties, and 17-to-a-studio walk-ups in Chelsea. Remember that documentary Girl Model from a few months back? Pretty grim stuff, right? Welp, it gets uglier than that.
Read the rest at Bullett.
Jimmy Kimmel Embarrasses Coachella Noobs in Inadvertently Poignant Video
Jimmy Kimmel sent out his Lie Witness News team to Coachella over the weekend to poseur-doxx festival-goers by asking them if they’re into made up bands, and it’s funny because people are stupid and this is exactly the type of person I was talking about in that piece the other week that I’m already sick of looking at so stop telling me how funny it was. On the other hand, one thing that’s really hard to do, and you sort of have to give Kimmel’s team credit for this, is intimidating media civilians without any on-air training by pushing a news camera into their tits. You don’t often see that. Regular people saying literally whatever comes to mind because they’re nervous being interviewed and they don’t want to seem disagreeable to the seemingly knowledgeable person interviewing them.
Read the rest at Bullett.
Was Jesus the Original Hipster?
I’ve heard plenty of earnest arguments from people with Glenn Greenwald in their RSS feeds that Jesus would’ve been a liberal if he were alive today, what with that whole not being a giant piece of shit hatemonger thing he had going on. But what about another subspecies of liberal? Was old son the original hipster?
Read the rest at Bullett.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
What it was like to live in Watertown last night—and to be there today.
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| Photo by Aram Boghosian/The Boston Globe/Getty Images via Slate |
Despite what I wrote the other day, all I really want right now is to be able to go to Dunkin Donuts. Unfortunately, here in Watertown, where I live, we're being told to stay in our homes and off the streets. Businesses have been instructed not to open. Late last night, the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects switched to this suburb of Boston, which is adjacent to Cambridge, where an MIT officer was shot by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Many of the metro area's busier neighborhoods look eerily empty today, and this heavily Armenian community of about 30,000 is no different—it has turned into a ghost town. That is, if you don't count the roughly 10,000 law enforcement officials, and the constant stream of helicopters overhead. It's a cliché to say this isn't the type of place where something like this happens—such an intense show of force would be out of place anywhere—but it does feel especially bizarre in this usually quiet town.
Earlier this morning, a perfect, glorious spring day on my quiet side street just off of School Street and Mt. Auburn, where much of last night's drama unfolded, SWAT teams patrolled from house to house searching yards and trash barrels—in an unfortunate twist, today is trash day here. An extraordinary overabundance of chirping birds seem unaware of the most chaotic scene in the town's history. An SUV happening down the street just now was immediately stopped and searched as I watched from my stoop, unsure whether raising a camera phone to record the situation would be a wise move or not. I may be a reporter, but it's not every day I talk with a man outside my home with a machine gun slung over his shoulder; more likely a mother pushing a stroller.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
When disaster and tragedy used to strike, most of us turned on the network news. Now, many of us turn to social media. So it was for me after Hurricane Sandy and Sandy Hook, when Twitter was a vital stream of information, a way of partitioning suffering into more easily digestible updates. And so it began again on Monday, after the bombing of the Boston Marathon. In the initial aftermath of the attack, I was glued to Twitter. And yet, as details of the carnage emerged, I found myself logging on to Facebook instead. This was not the newshound in me, but the lifelong Bostonian who didn't care in this case about a national perspective on the events, but rather the personal specifics. When tragedy strikes elsewhere in the world, we sign onto Twitter. When it hits home, we sign onto Facebook.
Please stop talking about how flinty and resilient Boston is.
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| Photo by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images |
No one can quibble with the celebration of the heroes who emerge from an event like this. People who ran into the chaos, risking their own lives in the confusion, are rightfully portrayed as symbols of all that is good in the world. We saw such celebration in Patton Oswalt's reminder that there are more good people than bad ones, and in stories about Carlos Arredondo, the cowboy-hatted hero. So far so good. But soon thereafter the coverage of the tragedy took on a stranger tone, as if this was first and foremost an opportunity to champion the flinty New England spirit.
Read the rest at Slate.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Rock and Roll Alive and Well, Lawyers Say
So-called mainstream rock and roll has been buried and gone for so long it's hard to remember what the official cause of death was. After a run of so many diseases—illegal downloads, the inexplicable popularity of televised singing pageants, the Doritos-Cheese-Blasted Stage branded experience model, bourgeois festival vacation packaging, the protracted Bieberfication of youth culture—the idiom ended up looking every bit as animated as one of the storied rock star corpses so often found peppered throughout its sordid history.
Or so we thought. A new lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles by a security guard once employed at Universal Music Publishing Group's offices and studios in Santa Monica has unveiled some shocking news, suggesting that the reports of rock and roll's demise may have been at least somewhat partially exaggerated.
Conservatives Lost the Cultural Wars, But At Least They Saw It Coming!
For years liberals have dismissed the chicken-little slippery-slope whining of the right—who’ve been saying we’re becoming a nation of id-driven heathens—as hysterical scare-tactics. But after decades of being wrong about absolutely every single thing, it looks like the conservatives were finally right about something! Congratulations are in order then, because the hour of the rough beast’s slouching birth has come at last; and our transformation into Gomorrah is nearly complete. I’d thank, and capitalize for that matter, god, but like the rest of the media I don’t recognize its existence any more. Spot on with that prediction. Hate to say you told us so, but you guys totally saw this one coming, and that has to feel pretty good, right? Even if nothing else does. Except for all this drugged-up sex we’re having out here.
READ THE REST OF THE THING>>
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Most Amazing Decontextualized Sentence Fragments from the New York Mag Buzzfeed Feature (No Photos)
On Monday New York Magazine published a #longform feature on internet papilloma virus Buzzfeed dot com, that dug into the rapidly-growing meme-factory’s history, and its founder Jonah Peretti’s scientific approach to virality. Apparently Peretti got his start in the meme-generating game while at M.I.T., where he was the guy who pulled off a proto-internet gag you may remember:
In 2001, Peretti, then 27, was supposed to be writing his master’s thesis but instead diverted himself by goofing off online. Nike was promoting a new customizable sneaker; Peretti ordered a pair imprinted with the word sweatshop, prompting an amusing exchange of e-mails with a customer-service representative. Peretti forwarded the chain to ten friends. It went forth and multiplied, taking on irresistible momentum as it was forwarded from in-box to in-box. Six weeks later, Peretti found himself on the Today show, debating a Nike spokesman about its labor practices.
You know what else happened in 2001? 9/11. OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE.
Read he rest at Bullett
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Note to criminals: stop talking about your crimes online
While we all had a good chuckle at the Boston Police Department's expense last week over their efforts to infiltrate the city's underground rock scene online, the indictments of 63 members of three rival gangs in New York City a few days later illustrated just why the monitoring of social media use has actually become such an effective law enforcement tool. In this case, the crimes were a bit more serious than hosting illegal rock shows, including such decidedly non-hilarious crimes as murder, attempted murder, attempted gang assault, and others resulting in 3 deaths, and over 30 shootings. But that doesn't mean this story doesn't have its own set of buffoons; this time it was the suspected criminals themselves doing the goofy impression, except what they were impersonating were people who want to be in jail.
11 Reasons Your Yelp Reviews Suck, and 11 Things You Can Do About It
It's no secret that we're not exactly big fans of Yelp around here at PTSOTL (see here, and here, and here). There's a right way and a wrong way to go about Yelping, however, if you insist. Restaurant critic, and my erstwhile Boston Phoenix colleague, MC Slim JB has compiled a good list of 11 things amateur reviewers do wrong, and 11 things they can do to make their reviews better. Some excerpts below, read the rest at his blog.
I recently appeared on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Daily Current” program in a segment entitled, “Everyone's a critic: Yelp reviews hold great power”, which examines the growing impact of amateur restaurant reviews posted to sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Chowhound. In preparation for this interview, I gathered some thoughts about the flaws in many amateur reviews, the concerns I have with anonymous reviews, and some tips for amateurs on writing fair and useful restaurant reviews.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Going to Coachella? You’re a Loser and Part of the Problem and Probably Fat
The first installment of the two weekend-long Coachella music-related-music-brand-music-festival-product is approaching, and everyone basic that you know is excited. Did you book your tickets yet? Plan your outfit? Find a place to stay? That’s all super interesting, but here’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you: Why did you do any of those things? Every single person going to Coachella is a fucking loser, and part of the problem, and probably fat, too. Ok, I know there’s lots of skinny bbs in skimpy outfits there, based on the stream of constipated gif listicles that coil out of the content turd-cutter around this time every year, but those are just young people; young people are simply ret-conned prequels to Fat and Boring: The Life.
Speaking of young people, were any of them consulted in the booking process this year? Wu-Tang Clan, Violent Femmes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Postal Service, The Faint, The Stone Roses, Spiritualized, The Make-Up, Social Distortion, Sigur Ros, Phoenix, Paul Oakenfold, New Order, Jurassic 5, Franz Ferdinand, Dinosaur Jr.? Is this a concert in 2013 or one of my high school cum-socks from the ’90s?
Read the rest
Friday, April 5, 2013
100% Guaranteed Locks For Who Will Win the Boston Rock & Roll Rumble
The Boston Rock & Roll Rumble begins this Sunday. It's a venerable old institution that has launched the careers of many of our favorite Boston bands over the last couple decades, and, more importanly, shattered the dreams of many of our worst ones. This year is no different in its mix of cool new finds, potential national contenders, and horse shit. Who will win? Hard to say. I haven't seen all of these bands, but I did just spend the last hour or so listening to all the ones I am unfamiliar with and now I'm an expert on them all because that's how music writing works. Here are my picks for who has a shot at the title this year based in part on quality, and in part on what I am assuming the judges will be looking for (via being generally old). Follow the links (via the Rumble page here) to check them out yourself. SUPPORT THE SCENE and everyone is a winner. The only guaranteed losers are people who had to look at the horrible layout of this post but I'm done fighting with it after an hour. I lose the blogger Rumble DGAF.
Why did Kurt Cobain really kill himself? (re-post)
This is the most American thing I have ever seen.
Kurt Cobain died 19 years ago today. To celebrate let's take a look back at why he killed himself.
For almost two decades now music fans have been trying to figure out exactly why Kurt Cobain killed himself. Was the pressure of Nirvana's success too much to handle? Was it his crippling stomach pain or subsequent heroin addiction that did him in? We thought we'd never know.
For almost two decades now music fans have been trying to figure out exactly why Kurt Cobain killed himself. Was the pressure of Nirvana's success too much to handle? Was it his crippling stomach pain or subsequent heroin addiction that did him in? We thought we'd never know.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Suggestions For How to Kill Off Charlie On ‘Girls’ Now That He’s Quit the Show
Christopher Abbott, who plays Charlie on HBO’s Girls, aka the most mysteriously and improbably successful app entrepreneur/recipient of the most-improved cunnilingus-giver award, has abruptly quit the show, the New York Post (via ) reports. Sources told the Post that Abbott and Lena Dunham had begun butting heads.
“They’ve just started work on Season 3, and Chris is at odds with Lena,” they write. “He didn’t like the direction things are going in, which seems a bit odd since the show put him on the map.”
His rep confirmed the rumors:
“[Chris] is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd [Apatow], and the entire ‘Girls’ cast and crew, but right now he’s working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show.”
We’ll miss you Charlie. You’ll be remembered as having been a mostly good dude, but more importantly, really, really fucking cute.
*writes ten thousand words on what this means for women in entertainment*
That said, it’s going to be hard for Dunham and company to figure out how to write a graceful exit for the character, who we last saw rekindling his love for Marnie, and at the top of the development game, which, as everyone knows, is the golden ticket to that good app money everyone is throwing around nowadays, so here are a few suggestions for how they might kill him off:
Read the rest
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Remember When Remembering the #9tz Wasn’t a Monetized Brand? Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms to Tour
This is such bullshit. I remember when remembering the #9tz wasn’t a monetized brand. It used be a much purer expression of a contemporary cultural landscape bereft of creativity, and an outsider’s cry for fleeting attention/approval on the internet via borrowed nostalgia. Remembering the #9tz used to mean something. It used to be about a small group of dedicated temporal curators with access to the internet and a working memory of the past twenty years of the same pop products as everyone else at their disposal, not just a joke that corporate America could sell back to us in a package deal. I don’t even know what it means to remember the #9tz anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really remembered the #9tz in the first place.
Read the rest
Behold the Greatest NYT Fashion & Style Quote Ever
Hermès threw a party to celebrate the release of its new watch the Dressage Chrono, as the New York Times Fashion & Style section reports today in this delightful slideshow. It’s full of all manner of maybe-dryly-observed-but-maybe-totally-serious captions like “For some reason, there’s an unwritten rule in fashion that all perfume ads and watch campaigns must be very serious and very philosophical…Instead of a straightforward party, the company commissioned a dance piece called ‘Time In Motion,’ which seemed to have something to do with the cycle of life and death,” and “Olivia Chantecaille, a party page fixture in WWD and Vogue, loved the piece, although she chose to ignore some of the undertones about the inevitability of death. ‘That doesn’t seem very Hermes to me,’ she said.”
Read the rest
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Emily Ratajkowski Dances Naked in Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ Video (NSFW)
A better description might be Robin Thicke wrote a soundtrack to this video of Emily Ratajkowski dancing naked actually, but you get the idea. Who is Robin Thicke, exactly, and what does the song sound like? Hard to say, for sure. Pharrell and T.I. show up at one point or another. There’s a hashtag thing flashing on the screen, but mostly the song sounds a lot like Emily Ratajkowski dancing naked. Is it necessary for the artistic merit of the video? Probably not. Is it exploitative? I don’t know, what am I, an art detective, investigating internet-based creativity crimes? No, sir, I am not. I am simply a man, a man at home, on his laptop, declaring his love for a video of Emily Ratajkowski dancing naked, and if that’s wrong, then I don’t want to be right. Good day.
Read the rest.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Maybe This WSJ Editorial-Writing High School Student Didn't Get Into College Because She's a Little Shit?
In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, a Pennsylvania high school student named Suzy lee Weiss addresses her misgivings at having been rejected from most of the elite universities of her choice. This will be a delightful little read, I thought. A lot of us can relate to that feeling. But then the piece took a turn into the worst sort of "conservative humor" stereotyping imaginable, all couched in a phoney sense of self-deprecation.
Weiss alludes to her own shortcomings with tongue in cheek, but that's not really what did her in in the end, she suggests. Much like with Abigail Fisher, the plaintiff in the Fisher v. University of Texas Supreme Court case over affirmative action, it wasn't the fact that she was too dumb to actually be accepted, it was other people's fault. More specifically "Other" people's fault.
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