Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

I write my last post for True/Slant a bit worn out from a full day of kayaking yesterday. It was easy river kayaking, mainly, with just one madly technical section of Class 2 stuff, but a full day of paddling and some porting in the sun saps you a bit.

The sights and experiences were very nice: Osprey and kingfishers working the water. The boughs of huge sycamores whispering in the breeze. A shore nap of 15 minutes that felt like an hour full of dreams. A dash of adrenaline while being spun in the rapids.

Thanks for reading the Beaufinn blog. It was fun. If you would like to continue along, this blog will migrate to www.beaufinn.com/blog (or some iteration of that; Google the name) by mid-August. Web designers really slow down in the heat, don’t they?

What’s next for me? Working two contract writing jobs (corporate stuff), teaching at The College of New Jersey this fall, and staying on the ever-present quest, along with my agent, to sell one or all of the novels. Beyond that, I’d like to finally put some serious effort into the kind of mountain climbing/trekking I’d like to do. I might start in the Shawangunks, in the Catskills. I should, however, set some summiting goals for the next decade.

I have two requests of you, Beaufinn reader:

1. (Re)Read Deliverance: Yeah, yeah — macho white guys in canoes, etc. etc. Having studied with the man who write this magnificently original American narrative, I was always galled by the fact that in popular memory the story boiled down to Ned Beatty and some banjo playing (popular memory = didn’t read the novel and can’t remember much about the film).

This story is powerfully sublime; what lurks under the obvious physical action is moving and troubling, and stays in the mind for weeks after reading. Dickey wrote a very straight story in a time of postmodern literary experimentation, but the story is anything but easy. It is one of those novels you must read to understand a bit about America, particularly at a certain time (the early 1970s).

Also, read it for the wonderful owl scene, which occurs early in the action. This scene is not in the film version, but it is the strongest symbolic connector to Dickey’s poetry in the whole novel.

After that, if you can tackle the novel Dickey wrote after Deliverance, a tome called Alnilam, you’re ready for your PhD.

2. Once a week, disappear for half an hour: That’s a tough one for parents and people with demanding jobs. Maybe cut that to 15 minutes, but for that 15 minutes, belong to your own country — a one-person country located in a wholly unspecified place. Maybe you already do this, and can swing it for an hour. That’s good — now try for two hours.

Get free of the beeps, bings, pings, bongs, shouts, and the “Hey, where are you?” Leave the cell phone or PDA in the car or under a rock, give away your GPS unit, and go someplace that only you know, and only you know where you are.

Go off the grid, just for a short time. Clear your mind of the digital flotsam. You’ll be back “in network” soon enough.

You won’t need a map. Good luck.

# # #

Emily. Image via Wikipedia

My old man taught me to say “so long” whenever we parted because he contended “goodbye” should be reserved for permanent occasions, like the one Emily Dickinson refers to here:

Good-by to the life I used to live,

And the world I used to know;

And kiss the hills for me, just once;

Now I am ready to go!

Goodbye seems especially ill suited for this occasion: while True/Slant writers and readers will scatter to diverse corners of cyberspace, that universe is nothing if not a network, and we will never be more than keystrokes apart.

It’s up to us to keep it going.

Nonetheless there is a passing to note here, an achievement to acknowledge, many thanks to be given.

My colleagues have written more ably and eloquently than I can of the community that thrived here, the conversations started, the friendships forged (I won’t name names, for fear of leaving one out–you know who you are).

I’ll focus on one particular accomplishment that still surprises me, happily, every time I log in.

When True/Slant came along the world needed (in addition to love) an economically viable way for readers and journalists to find one another and converse in civility.

In the end Forbes would testify to True/Slant’s economic viability, but right from the beginning True/Slant attained civility. For the most part, people here disagreed, as the saying goes, with all due respect. And without, as my colleague Caitlin Kelly said, trolls and flames.

In a comment on his own farewell post, my colleague Michael Humphrey says, “Perhaps civility will be the great legacy of T/S.”

But I believe True/Slant surpassed civility and attained a unique style of conversation better described as “collegiality.”

The difference is that we don’t just get along–that’s civility–but we trust one another. We have mutual respect and confidence in our ability and our intent.

That came to be the case not just among those who occupy True/Slant’s Mountain Lair, not just among the site’s 300 contributors, but most remarkably, among the million-plus readers who visited us each month and those who chose to return and comment.

This was a place where we knew one another to be in pursuit of the good, no matter how we might differ on the best way to get there. That’s why trolls and flames found neither purchase nor harbor here.

And this is no small achievement on my beat, which is harassed everywhere else by half-cocked skeptics. Skeptics brought their doubts to True/Slant, sure, but found they had to back them up. They had to be fully-cocked.

True/Slant’s community spanned the world, but was so coherent in its collegiality, it got so you could spot a newbie by his inappropriate bluster. It’s not hard to imagine a hypothetical True/Slanter, either commenter or contributor, who stumbles into town all roughed up by the wild ways of the world wide web, spewing sarcasm and snark and superiority, and finds that here it gets him nowhere.

He leaves in a cloud of frustration. But something draws him back, almost against his will, some scarcely definable allure in content and platform, and gradually he learns, as we all did, to disagree with all due respect.

Thank you colleagues, commenters, readers for the collegial conversation we have enjoyed. Let’s take it everywhere.

How was it achieved?

Collegiality took root in the technologies developed by Andrea Spiegel and Steve McNally and Roger Theriault, blossomed in the professionals selected by Coates Bateman and Lewis DVorkin, flourished under the hands-off leadership and hands-on assistance provided by all those people, plus editorial Jedi Master Michael Roston and our sherpas, Kashmir Hill and Katie Drummond.

Thank you, denizens of the Lair, for making this collegial conversation possible.

As many other writers before me have noted, here we were free to write. In freedom we turned to one another for examples, and we found some of the very best. They did what Emily Dickinson had long ago advised:

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant—”

So long, for now.

It’s just after 1pm in Budapest, which I suppose means around 7am in New York city, and another 18 hours before… what? I’m not really sure. Does the site just disappear offline with a trace? It seems hard to believe.

Curmudgeonly old bastard that I am and so rusty in these forms of expression, I would still like to say thank you to Lewis, Coates, Andrea and Michael and of course to all the other contributors, for making this site a great temporary home for my twisted rantings and ravings.

They’re all such smart and capable people and it’s probably not that often such a disreputable, flotsam and jetsam bar-fly hack like me comes into their orbit. I’ve tried not to be too much of a pain in the arse. I suppose it is possible that my repeated demands to have my name at the top of the masthead in neon, and my weekly letters demanding a dramatic increase in salary, backdated to my first post may have got on their assembled nerves just occasionally.

Thank you for putting up with me guys, and for giving a voice in the wilderness a chance to gain an audience. Not quite sure I’ll be blogging anywhere near as regularly at this site, but I guess occasionally, and the archives will be there in all their obscure glory.

So that’s it, I may even add a few bits and pieces to the site, but this not that, is the last time I’ll say an actual goodbye. Bon voyage everyone.

And to leave you, hopefully, with a twisted smile on your face, I present an episode from my 26 episode series, Space Cadets. It’s one in a series of what were wordless French animations jazzed up with some comedic after-narration. All things being equal, they should be coming soon to a late night cable television station near you.

So one way or another, I hope we’ll meet again. If not, we’ll always have True/Slant.

And in addition to audio, we’re now doing two live video shows every Thursday night at 7 p.m. ET on the CBS Digital Radio ChatAboutIt.com network!

You can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or the Stitcher mobile app for iPhone, Palm Pre, Android and Blackberry.

So fare thee well and thanks for the memories, T/S!

Mr. Media Radio Links:

Mr. Media Home

iTunes

Stitcher

CBS Digital Radio/Chat About It

BlogTalkRadio

Image via Wikipedia

There’s something kind of vampirish about Anne Rice’s faith dilemma as it plays out. To wit:

Anne Rice, on Facebook, Wednesday at 1:36 pm:

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

Anne Rice, Chapter 1, Called Out of Darkness in 2008:

If this path to God is an illusion, then the story is worthless. If the path is real, then we have something here that may matter to you as well as to me.

And so, it’s worthless and we can all move on. But wait (Facebook):

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

In the name of wha… But maybe we could see this coming (Called Out of Darkness):

Is it not possible for us to do with gender, sexuality and reproduction what was long ago done with the stars? To realize that…new sources of information on them may be as valid as the information given us long ago?

Probably not anytime soon with the Catholic Church, so (Facebook):

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

But of course (Called Out of Darkness):

…my concept of God came through the spoken words of my mother, and also the intensely beautiful experiences I had in church.

Which leaves us with a Body that once sustained Anne, but is now dead to her. However, the life source of the Body has somehow been extracted. So is it still real? Or is it an illusion? This can get a little creepy if you think about it late at night.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Anne Rice: “I quit being a Christian” (beliefnet.com)
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Image by greyloch via Flickr

As the T/S farewells pile up, and tears are shed and toasts are made (midnight July 31 is endgame; even Gawker gave kudos), I have realized one thing about all my outdoorsy bloggin’: I never once talked about duct tape.

The reason being is that duct tape is as regular as air and water to the outdoors person. You really don’t think about it. It’s just there.

Look, I don’t know if you can repair an SR-71 or a Formula-1 car with duct tape, but tonight I did indeed duct-tape shut the inseam of my bathing suit in preparation for a day of kayaking tomorrow. Is that a total bachelor move, or just pure River Rat? Yeah — both.

Check this out: The duct-tape wallet –

Like many of you, I’m guessing, I always have a roll of duct tape nearby. I carry a roll in my vehicle, training bag, and on the boat. I’ve used it to do everything from secure a pheasant wing on a bumper to patch a leaky wader during a duck hunt to cover a blister on my big toe in the backcountry. But while on vacation recently my older brother, Christian, showed me a new use for duct tape.

It wasn’t an emergency and it had nothing to do with dog training, but it was pretty damn creative. He made a wallet from a few strips of duct tape. Not a clunky, sticky bunch of tape but a genuine wallet. In fact, he’s been using his own duct tape wallet for two years.

To be honest, I’m not too sure of the benefits of a duct tape wallet, but I do know you can peel some tape off if you need it in a pinch. And if you get tossed in the pond after you win a field trial your wallet will be fine. Or if your dog takes a liking to chewing on it, the replacement cost isn’t very high.

Four feet of duct tape and a pair of scissors. That’s all you need

That’s from Dave DiBenedetto, who writes the “Man’s Best Friend” blog over at Fieldandstream.com, all about his training his Boykin spaniel, Pritchard (he also wrote a great striper-fishing chronicle, On the Run.) Dave’s your man when it comes to Boykins, fly fishing the flats, and, clearly, duct tape. Read on.

And with apologies to Caitlin Kelly and Laurie Essig, whose posts I’ve read daily since I joined T/S, the photo choices that the Wordpress service offered for “duct tape” were a plain-old roll of duct tape and a young woman who had made herself some duct-tape underwear.

I selected for creativity.

Oh, and here’s a Hello Kitty AR-15, in case you wanted one.

via What is the Ultimate Use for Duct Tape? | Field & Stream.

In November 2008, this so-called Jet-Set Hobo was in Buenos Aires when he filed his first story for True/Slant. It was called ‘From Argentina with Love’, and was in some way concerned with what was the new James Bond movie, ‘A Portion of Condolence’.  If there was any actual film reviewing going on, I think it would have betrayed some disappointment. But greater disappointments were to come.

There could still be ‘A Scintilla of Comfort’. But you’ll have to read/scroll until the end of the piece for that.

For one thing, troubles at MGM indicate that after ‘A Quantum of Solace’ the James Bond series of movies has been suspended …indefinitely! As assiduous followers of this blog can tell you, one of my great, unfulfilled ambitions was to play a villain in a James Bond movie. Any villain. Naturally I would have preferred to be the doomed evil mastermind, but anyone of his windswept and interesting henchman would have sufficed.

This has been true ever since I used to go to the cinema as a toddler back in the 1960s with my rather glamorous mother, who I somehow sensed – even back then – wouldn’t have minded a certain former Edinburgh milkman slipping his JB monogrammed velvet slippers under her bed one fateful night.

It must have been jealousy on my part, but I wanted to turn the tables on Bond, or more literally, feed him to a shark tank, or slice him in two with a laser beam, or pull the levers on him in a remote controlled helicopter on a collision course with a mashing machine – anything to get rid of that infernal Queen & Country prat.

With the combined ages of Messers Connery and Moore now at 163, more recently I’d set my heart on little Daniel Craig. But now even that seems to be in doubt.

Ah, but back in those far-off, heady days of 2008, and at the tender age of just 42, I had other, equally romantic ideas about blogging, and what it might do for what I sometimes laughingly refer to as my career. That is, when I’m absolutely determined to burst the seams of trousers.  These ideas were about the “vision of a contributor and community driven news and opinion websites that would forever change the face of journalism”. And I misquote. Because actually, these weren’t so much ideas as warm, mushy feelings engendered by reading online interviews with our CEO, COO, CTO and all the other chiefs. The guys in the backroom who stop the frurckendeiser from being mixmitized, as I like to put it. I like to put it that way because I can’t be arsed getting to grips with the jargonology. Anyhoo, it all sounded so gee whiz this is straight out of the lab, let’s see what it does, it might change everything.

Like Kim Jong Il, who may not understand precisely how all this nuclear technology works, but sure-as-hell knows he’d like to use it, well, that for me was the blogosphere. I wasn’t quite sure how blogging for True/Slant was going to finally catapult my diabolical alter ego ‘The Jet-Set Hobo’ to literary fame, but I felt it had some part to play.

So, for nearly two years, in fits and starts but fairly regular great bursts of activity, I’ve thrown a lot of stuff at the wall here to see if it would stick. Travel stories straight and twisted, from the high and low end of the social scale; from Florentine restaurant reviews and Budapest’s little Hollywood all the way to gangsters in Belgrade and an assassination in Beirut.

I have regularly cast a rueful eye over the English Channel to comment on the degrading spectacle that British public life seems to have become in the last 15 or 20 years. I’m not a Republican, out to eviscerate the Royal Family, neither am I a toadying colonial.

From time to time, I’ve held forth on what might be called modern manners; such as what to wear when you’re abroad or how to conduct a foreign affair.  Perhaps I should have done a bit more of this sort of material, after all, no offence intended, but take a look around at some of the baseball cap and sweatpants wearing, Cheeto eating contributors and I assume consumers of this site who could certainly use an overhaul, please -nobody-say-makeover.

There’s been my Fiction, which I started to publish late in the game here, just after we all knew the end was nigh. Some of which it must be owed, such as Krakow Nights, is fairly dark matter. They’re all stories that have been told to me, I swear! Your correspondent has always lived a life of blameless domesticity which is why he is also able to turn out work such as his as-if-Jean Cocteau-wrote-a-children’s-book over-a-couple-of-afternoons minor masterpiece, The Wild Cats of Piran.

You see, now we really are getting to the crux of the matter. The Jet-Set Hobo has both literally and figuratively been all over the map since this blog began. Not enough focus, and I suppose if I do return in some shape or form it will be with a tighter focus. But can you blame me, entirely? Since I began this blog in November 08 I’ve lived in and filed reports from Buenos Aires, Auckland, Beirut, London and Budapest.

But wait, there’s more.

From time to time, I’ve even posted some of my weird little movies online, which must really throw readers who come to True/Slant looking for either, broadly speaking, policy wonks discussing health care reform or otherwise smart people discussing articles with headlines like “Can sex with Dakota Fanning make Bela Lugosi hot again?” (Okay, I’m mixing it up a little there, but a headline like that would be more fun.)

Which brings us neatly to my final ‘beat’. When I’ve had enough of it, I’ve also vented against the mind-dumbing fatuity of celebrity culture. Yet some of my most popular posts have been about celebrities, so I can’t help but think I have failed in some way. I don’t just mean as a writer, but as a person. Because I can’t help watching and commenting on the tawdry parade of low life distraction that it is. For the record, I’m Team Oksana, all the way. So what if she is manipulative and a gold digger, (which I suppose she must be), you can see a train when it’s coming, can’t you? Besides, I never cared much for Mel Gibson and that was cemented for me by his revisionist historical movies. For example, painting the Brits of the War of Revolution as if they were the Gestapo. Plus I used to cringe whenever you’d see his co-stars talking with forced smiles about what a pranky prankster the Gibster was on set. But I digress as I am so wont to do. I’ve said that before too.

Perhaps it’s time for the Rogue Bond movie. Remember the Australian Bond, George Lazenby? Well, imagine him enjoying his sunset years at Strangways health farm, puttering about in a wheelchair, trying to get it on with the nurses. Along I come at the wheel of lawn tractor and crash straight into bank of rhododendrons. Later while recuperating, my character strikes up an unlikely friendship with the octogenarian secret agent, finally getting close enough to strangle him with a stethoscope, or his tie-your-0wn bow-tie. That’d truly be a happy end, for this fantasist at least. But I jest, I’m just jealous.

So anyway, a happy ending for my real future in the virtual sphere? I don’t know. I’ve migrated most of the stuff filed here over to another site, and I’ll be sure to post there when I have the energy and stamina for it. Like about once every five years.

I’m thinking of cancelling my facebook account too incidentally. All these people, putting all their junk out in public, affairs going toxic, surrendering all their personal data to a 26 year old fratboy. Hmm. When did we ever think that was a good idea? Privacy. It’s the new luxury. Besides, it’s occured to me many times how much like high school Facebook is, and I never particularly cared for that either.

So, we’re going to wrap this up, because it’s already 1200 words or so, and I think a good blog post is seldom no more than a thousand, just like eight hours is as long as you ever really can enjoy sitting in a plane, no matter how good the service. This isn’t quite goodbye however. It’s my understanding some of the True/Slant team are going to be asked to stay on in some new, transmogrified version of this site, and I’d quite like to be one of them …so you never know. Hmmm.

Besides, it’s not midnight EST on July 31st just yet, so we’ve time for a few more laughs and some goodbyes.

Stay tuned.

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week the long list for this year’s Man Booker Prize was announced and it was hard to miss the coincidence.

While the list of 13 authors was alphabetical, sitting atop it is also the writer who has quickly become the favorite to win his third Booker Prize — Peter Carey.

Carey, the Australian-born novelist who moved to New York some 20 years ago and now teaches at Hunter College, has already won twice — for Oscar and Lucinda and for True History of the Kelly Gang. He’s also been shortlisted for Illywhacker and longlisted for Theft: A Love Story.

The man can write.

“Next morning the Weasel slung his misbegotten bedroll across his narrow shoulders and headed off into the woods without, it seemed, a word to anyone. Concerning this departure, the printers — arguers and complainers to a man — made not a boo, although the absence of our best pressman would make more work for everyone.”

It’s from Carey’s new book, Parrot and Olivier in America, on the longlist and Carey’s first book set in America.

And it’s wonderful, certainly deserving to be on the list.

As do the others. There’s David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jaob de Zoet and Andrew Levy’s The Love Song, a love for which I have already professed.

I have also professed a bit of disdain for prize competitions because I really believe as much as writers might enjoy recognition, they’re not necessarily writing to prove their better than someone.

So, look at the longlist not to wonder who’s better than others but maybe for the name of an author you haven’t heard of.

And pick up a book and enjoy it.

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• Man Booker Prize Longlist Announced (observer.com)
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"Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives," Blake says.

In the film Glengarry Glenn Ross, the character of Blake, played by Alec Baldwin, utters an oft-quoted line following the famous ’steak knives’ scene: “A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing.” In the context of the film, Blake repeats this mantra so as to burn it into the minds of his underperforming sales force, reminding them that their failure to sell condos and time shares will only result in termination. It’s not so much a morale booster as it is a warning to those lacking the killer instinct required in sales. But on a grander scale, Blake is talking about selling — no matter the product, no matter the price.

I was reminded of this scene while watching a new ad campaign for Coke’s energy drink, called Burn (see video below). It’s a dilemma I think about often, the fact that so much of today’s creative output is subsidized by corporate dollars, and the blurry ethical line this infusion of cash can create among those tasked to produce the work — art directors, graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, animators, etc.

Look at the visual aesthetic of the Burn campaign, for example. Imagine it was, in essence, a stand alone short film — not a commercial disguised as a short film. What does it mean? There are stark colors, skateboarders, an emotive musical score. But we’ve seen all that before — highly emotionalized ad spots. In fact, its become increasingly commonplace in the way products are marketed to us. The young men in the film weave through the city, their movements captured in crisp high-definition as they each burst into flames and continue to skate.

Aesthetically, it’s a beautiful piece of work. But when you take into account that you are being sold an energy drink, it’s hard not to feel cheated. In fact, it’s hard not to view this as anything less than bait and switch. Campaigns like this promise a film but provide no narrative substance, no evolutionary character development. That’s because there are no true characters, just models urging you to immerse yourself in a contrived coolness engineered by marketers, to desire a drink (a detail you learn only after being led down the Burn.com rabbit hole) that promises nothing but to temporarily jack your heart rate. It’s an elaborately convoluted sales pitch wrapped in artistry — a practice that has become the norm these days (and, obviously, the basis of all advertising). Coke, and so many companies like it, are no longer just hawking a single product, but instead selling you the life you want to have, the circle of friends you want to be a part of, a holistic physical manifestation of a target demographic.

In fact, this approach has taken the once subtle art of product placement down a nefarious path. It’s nothing new that corporations are desperate to enter the bloodstream of global youth culture. But it used to be that the creative minds borne of these cultures and subcultures (i.e. skateboarding, graffiti, hip-hop, metal, punk/hardcore, etc.) had a healthy distrust of those looking to cash in (read: desperate corporate overlord types) on their interests. But in truth, the pitch men (and women) are no longer plucked from a corner office in a company’s marketing department. Today’s culture brokers are the very people who forged the movements they now co-opt for cash. It’s a new cultural landscape of self-made entrepreneurs, those specializing in analyzing/monetizing trends, lending their cultural insight to the highest bidder. And while right now there is an unprecedented boom in creativity, the poacher’s market is also increasingly ripe.

As an example, back in May I was contacted by a woman from a viral marketing firm who sent me a press release regarding The Creators Project, a collaborative promotional campaign between Intel and Vice magazine. I receive hundreds of press releases each week. But this particular message stood out to me:

The Creators Project is a new network dedicated to the celebration of creativity and culture across media, and around the world. This video features James Lavelle discussing inspiration and collaboration and letting us in to the world of Unkle and his fantastic label Mowax. If you post this on your site in your MPU player or as part of an editorial, we can pay you for every UK based click to play.

Sure, pay-per-click returns are nothing new, but this was the first time I’d ever been so shamelessly solicited by a marketing firm. And this is not uncommon. The campaign to inject advertising into original content in television, film, and print media has been ongoing for decades. But today, the practice is pervasive. And as future generations come of age, it becomes harder for them to discern the difference between editorial and advertorial, engineered content and genuine artistry. In essence, there is no difference between reality and nonreality. When creativity — and the notion of creativity — is so widely subsidized, how can the purity of its vision be trusted?

[Video by Arnaud Jordain]

Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife

Since its inception, hip-hop has endured endless attacks – typically, but not always, wrongheaded – mostly because of references to violence and for celebrating a culture that devalues women. When a wealthy, white radio host used a derogatory term to describe members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, other wealthy, white men rushed to his aid by inexplicably pinning blame on hip-hop.  Perhaps the fever pitch of misdirected blame on rap music was reached when Congress devoted time and resources into hearings probing the genre, another hilariously off-kilter spectacle in which a body of old, wealthy white men who authorize war wagged their fingers at the use of indelicate language.

But perhaps the most ignorant and insulting knock against hip-hop yet – and that’s saying something – is this suggestion from a writer at TheLoop21.com that it in spotlighting the gritty, ravaged neighborhoods from which many rappers emerged, the artists are actually glorifying poverty. It’s a ridiculous premise in virtually every imaginable way – the most obvious being that acknowledging poverty and desperation exist and treating them as if they’re worthy of aspiration are far, far different things.

The author confuses one of the most celebrated notions in hip-hop – pride in one’s roots – as a devastating concept that forces those who make it out of poverty to act as a sort-of one-man welfare agency for his deadbeat friends back home.

“This mentality of dependence is encouraged and glorified by rappers and then forced back upon the potential breadwinners of poor communities. Athletes, politicians and even members of are own family are thrust into positions of sharing with the hood.”

This is about as logical as knocking someone who sits at his mother’s bedside during chemo treatments of enabling cancer.

In other ways, the author simply seems laughably unaware of most popular hip-hop – he makes the bizarre assertion that hip-hop should embrace self-sufficiency, which is essentially the equivalent of suggesting country doesn’t talk enough about pick-ups trucks and American flags. The braggadocio and swagger that exemplifies hip-hop relies on artists reveling in having taken matters into their own hands. Take this Kanye West line from “Bring Me Down”:  “Made a mil myself, and I’m still myself, and I’ma look in the mirror if I need some help.” That type of back-patting is typical of an artist and a genre that rewards those who climb out “tha hood” but who don’t forget those who never made it.

Notably, the suggestion that rap glorifies poverty ignores what has been an enduring – and valid – critique of hip-hop’s materialism. Rappers have long touted their bling, be it cars, clothes, jewelry, houses, whatever, precisely because those things are big, glittering symbols that they have escaped poverty. There are certainly arguments to be made that an obsession with diamonds and Dom shows misplaced priorities, but it’s hard to ignore these rappers’ desire to distance themselves from having very little and what it represents.

Look, don’t get me wrong – much as I love hip-hop, it is ripe for critiques, and indeed, many brilliant ones have been made. It’s a complex community with characters ranging from Soulja Boy to Mos Def, and anything that big, crowded and noisy is bound to have its problems. But this assertion is patently ridiculous – and so blind to even the most obvious and celebrated hallmarks of the genre it purports to want to help that it deserves to get called out.

Photo from Gawker

Ryan Tate at Gawker decided to sic a paparazzi on the man who brought an end to online privacy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, over a long weekend. You can check out the photo shoot here. The photos must be a bit old because he still has his iPhone in them, and I noted yesterday that he’s moved on to the Android.

You may find the photos a little disappointing. Like my experience lurking in the life of a fellow New Yorker, Gawker’s biggest discovery is that Zuckerberg is not actually very interesting. At the end of the day, most people are pretty boring… which may be the best privacy protection we have.

In New Hampshire a bear entered a house through an open door then proceeded to eat two pears, a bunch of grapes, sipped some fine agua from the fish bowl and then on his or her way out grabbed a stuffed bear. That’s an adult grown bear that could tear you limb from limb grabbing a toy stuffed bear before exiting the house. It must get lonely in those woods.

via Bear Eats Fruit, Takes Stuffed Bear From NH House – NYTimes.com.

Can she beat the Men in Black -- in 3D?

Universal just may have assembled the most beautiful movie cast this side of Twilight. The studio has signed three of-the-moment stars — Friday Night Lights‘ Taylor Kitsch, True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgård, and, most recently, pop idol Rihanna – for Battleship, an action film based on the Hasbro board game that’s set for release on May 25, 2012.

For those of you who haven’t already done the math, that’s almost two years from now. Two years — a virtual eternity in pop-culture time. Kitsch, Skarsgård and Rihanna are hot now, but will we still love them tomorrow? Chances are that we will. But what about in 2012, when Battleship must wage combat against Men in Black III-D at the box office over Memorial Day weekend?

The film’s price tag, reported to be in excess of $100 million, is a lot of money to bet on three unproven leads up against Will Smith, probably Hollywood’s most bankable star. (Eight of his last nine movies have grossed more than $130 million in North America.) If Universal were smart, the studio would rush this thing into production for a 2011 release date (originally, it was supposed to come out next summer), if not to get away from Smith, to make sure that its principals are still piping hot.

I suspect that Rihanna will continue to sizzle. She’s beautiful and stylish, the perfect pop package, and we know the camera adores her. But can she act? For a film like Battleship, that might be beside the point. She already proved in the “Hard” video that she’s perfected her battle pose, and she wears combat couture gorgeously. She’ll also have some extra time to work on her acting technique for what will be her film debut —  at least as much as she needs to prepare for a role that is sure to be not particularly demanding on a thespian level. And she can even revive Jordin Sparks’ great 2009 hit “Battlefield” for the soundtrack.

Kitsch, who will portray Naval commander Alex Hopper should have no problem handling whatever acting tasks are thrown his way. He’s already spent four seasons as the resident bad-boy hunk on one of the most critically beloved shows on TV, so I’m surprised that he has yet to break out as a big-screen leading man. As for Skarsgård, who’ll costar as Hopper’s brother, he’s as improbably gorgeous as the others; he has a respectably lengthy resume (which includes the 2001 cult classic Zoolander); and HBO’s True Blood is nearly as high-buzz as Glee among TV shows. I have yet to be washed in the True Blood viewing experience, but I loved Skarsgård as Lady Gaga’s lover/tormentor/poison victim in the “Paparazzi” video.

So potentially disastrous release date aside, Rihanna has chosen wisely for her first movie role. She has two strong costars, and in Peter Berg, a well-respected director with a decent rack record. (Ironically, his last film, 2008’s $227.9 million-grossing Hancock, starred Will Smith.) That Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) considered taking on Kitsch’s role before opting to do There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson’s next movie gives it a slight credibility boost. It might not be the best test of Rihanna’s potential as an actress, but it could be her ticket to movie stardom — at least for one summer blockbuster.

The only thing standing in her way will be Will Smith.

My neighbor (Image via Wikipedia)

I got all excited when I learned that Don Draper’s bachelor pad was in my neighborhood. I’ve never had a leading character from a high-quality TV drama living anywhere near me.

We’ve been told he’s located in the vicinity of Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue so I hustled over there to see if I could ferret out the exact address.

I figured Don would be on (comparatively) quiet Waverly rather than hectic, clangorous Sixth (which the city fathers once tried to get New Yorkers to call “Avenue of the Americas” and failed utterly). He has a lot of dissipating to sleep off.

I’ve always loved Waverly. It wavers all over Greenwich Village, at one point bending so sharply there appears to be an intersection of Waverly Place and Waverly Place.

I also figured Don for a large-apartment-building inmate rather than a brownstoner; he’s the kind of guy who’d need a doorman to run interference for him, make up excuses when necessary, calm down and/or misdirect jealous husbands, hysterical women brandishing guns, that sort of thing.

I found the place in about three minutes: “The Waverly,” 136 Waverly Place.

I just knew.

It had the right look. Old, discreet, fifteen floors, maybe 100 apartments, faded yellow brick façade, just off the corner, southwest side. The lobby’s dark, art-decoish, with a diamond-pattern floor that I worried might pose a danger to Don if he comes in a bit tipsy just after it’s been buffed. It’ll be slippery.

The doorman instantly confirmed my suspicion. “Don Draper?” he said, all innocence. “No, there’s nobody here by that name.” Clearly Don has tipped this fellow well.

His apartment is probably in the back and on a high floor. The further away from the street, the better. Early ‘60s rents being what they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if he got two bedrooms for a couple hundred a month.

Right next door to 136 is Hong Kong Tailor Jack, which will come in handy for emergency clothing repairs. Things do occasionally turn violent in Don’s world. People get punched in the nose. Garments are removed quite hastily and strewn carelessly about.

There’s a subway at Waverly and Sixth but I don’t see Don using it. He’s more of a taxi man.

Then there’s the Waverly Restaurant. It’s not really Don’s kind of joint, too downscale for him to ever eat in. But the place has booze. And it’s very close by. So late some night, maybe the call girl slaps him a little too hard, maybe Bert Cooper tells him he’s failed again, maybe Betty still hasn’t moved out of the damn house, maybe he’s out of gin…Don’t be surprised to see Don, collar turned up, hat brim pulled down, duck across the street for a quick one. Or several.

Image via Wikipedia

Do you remember that cotton-swab-haired singer with the little girl voice who once implored us all if she was really wanted? Let this blast from the 90’s past remind you:

Well, the reception Stateside may have been hot enough then, but it’s literally steaming now. Robyn is back. She’s so back that she’s coming out with three, I repeat three, new albums this year. Wowee. Someone’s really been working hard. There was a great, and adoring, article on Robyn by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker recently, and a new interview on the Creator’s Project yesterday. She’s everywhere, and she’s phenomenal. Talk about pushing through, persevering in a very real sense. And the Robyn we see now, the idiosyncratic fembot, has a much more mature and original sound than in her young days when she appeared classically engineered like the typical teen pop stars that dominate the airwaves. In fact, her current sound is quite daring. As Frere-Jones remarked, it is unusually versatile. She mixes all kinds of sounds, meaning that every single song coming out of her Konichiwa Records label is more surprising than the one before it. She’s also a refreshing pop star who plays down the sex appeal and spins complicated lyrics about expectation and love– that repeatedly bridge into the robotic…literally. I’m smitten. I bet you will be to.

Here is one of her new songs I can’t get out of my head:

Oh, and did I mentioned she’s Swedish? That obviously makes this Swede love her even more.

- Astri

She's the short one...Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Laughing all the way to the bank, reality television stars  — who begin as no-names hired for peanuts — are demanding real TV money, reports The New York Times:

Fame soon found them, and so did the desire for fortune. This summer, the stars of “Jersey Shore” held out for more money before resuming production in Seaside Heights last week. Together, they shared about $25,000 as a cast for the entire first season; now they will reportedly earn at least that much for each episode. The series will resume Thursday night on MTV, part of Viacom.

Reality television became a force because viewers liked it and because, without celebrities or big salaries, it was cheap. The shows can cost as little as $200,000 for a half-hour episode, compared with the $1 million or more typical for hourlong scripted shows.

But now the genre is creating its own stars on shows like “Jersey Shore,” “The City” on MTV and the “Real Housewives” franchise on Bravo. With stars come demands for higher salaries, threatening the inexpensive economic model of reality TV. Are the shows falling victim to their own success?

Network executives say no, but they concede they are constantly on guard against that possibility. They strive to make shows grow proportionally: as the salaries grow, the ratings and the rates paid by advertisers must grow in lockstep. When the proportions break down, cancellation can loom.

I love the irony.

Nobodies get plucked from obscurity because of where they live and/or what they say or do or wear — whether pompadour hair or cat-fighting over whose husband is richer — and turn into the latest crop of celebrities, without which the TV industrial complex is potentially hit-less.

Then, as viewers find their “real” bizarreness addictive, and the nobodies become somebodies, they start realizing their commercial value — and demand some serious coin. As they should.

I think it serves greedy TV execs right. “Exposure” per se isn’t worth much to most of us, despite daily offers — increasingly common now in journalism — to work or write or perform for no, or very little, pay so millions of people can read/see your stuff and….and, what?

Hire you? Pay you tons more money? Riiiiiiiiight.

The standard disclaimer is that all that “exposure” leads to “opportunities.” Maybe. Maybe not. Why should we gamble our time, energy and talent for pennies?

Last time I checked, Con Ed and Verizon and my mortgage-holder do not accept “exposure” as payment for any of their services. The naive and stupid take this argument and accept it in lieu of useful, practical legal tender.

I like cold, hard cash.

Snooki and her ilk should too.

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Image via CrunchBase

When I originally heard about Andrew Wylie’s announcement last week that he was partnering with Amazon to create “Odyssey Editions” — 20 special e-book versions of modern classics by writers whom he represents that will only be available for Kindle and devices that support Kindle software such as the iPad, I thought:

This is bad news.

After all, at its face it seems to be exclusive deal with one retail outlet.

Here’s the thing, though.

As I like to point out, Kindle’s not just a device, it’s software that works on many devices.

What Wylie has done is take 20 great books that have not been available electronically and made them available to a pretty large audience.

Sure there are some people who are upset.

For instance, I suspect Wylie won’t be getting any holiday cards from Random House this year. And there’s a book store in Mississippi that’s making a big deal of this.

The only ones who seem to be taking a balanced, sensical approach to the whole kerfuffle is The Author’s Guild.

Is there any real difference between what Wylie has done and say, special editions for The Franklin Library or the Library of America?

Well, yes.

Wylie has created a series of affordable editions for a very wide audience.

Good for him.

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Drug information site Erowid recently posted a 1951 Disney comic where Mickey Mouse and Goofy take speed.

In the strip, ‘Mickey Mouse and the Medicine Man’, Mickey and Goofy discover a new medicine called ‘Peppo’ which is clearly meant to represent amphetamine. Their enthusiasm for the chemical pick-me-up leads them to become salesman for the product in Africa.

Although the idea of Disney characters taking speed seems rather incongruous these days, in 1951 amphetamine was legal and widely available over-the-counter in America, mostly in the form of Benzedrine inhalers.

It wasn’t until the mid-60s when these were made prescription only and non-medical amphetamine wasn’t outlawed until 1971.

As well as casual racism, the strip also features various characters eating ‘hash’ which knocks them out.

For those not familiar with American English, this isn’t a direct reference to hashish or cannabis resin but a reference to a peculiarly unappetising type of food of the same name which, in the story, seems to have been spiked with some sort of unidentified sedative.

However, given the rather unenlightened portrayal of Africans in the piece and the 1950s stereotype of marijuana being a drug of black Americans, I wonder if the lethargy inducing properties of the ‘hash’ are meant to be an indirect reference to the drug.

Link to ‘Mickey Mouse and the Medicine Man’.