April 2012
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"The Five-Year Engagement"
Everything I wanted it to be and more. Tremendous cast, great script, paced like an Olympic marathon gold medalist’s best run.
The night before my friend's wedding in Northern...
Just went to the Safeway with my fiancee and one of my best high school friends and was shocked/pleased by the ridiculous craft beer selection. Tomorrow’s going to be a rough night.
[Paragraph about nostalgia/growing up/feelings/whatever]
A funny point in my music listening "career"
Now that L.A. Unheard’s done, I don’t “have” to listen to local bands; because Rawkblog is in semi-retirement, I also don’t “have” to listen to every new record. I just have to listen to the one album or so a week I’m reviewing. And then whatever I want. This is going to be really exciting.
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My final L.A. Unheard column ran yesterday →
For almost two years, I’ve written about emerging local music in L.A. for first Brand X, and then the Los Angeles Times proper. You can find most of them here. I’m grateful to the paper for keeping the column alive after the death of Brand X, and to the bands, for playing our handful of Unheard shows and making covering the L.A. scene totally worthwhile.
I will say that the one thing...
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Things I've Learned
I’m turning 27 in May. I don’t really have it figured out (because you can’t) but I feel pretty good about life, or at least good enough to have some ideas about it that are marginally less embarrassing than Hanna from Girls’. Here they are.
1) Health comes first.
Somewhere between graduating college and my second job, I gained about 10 pounds. Hangovers got worse. I was...
Spin's piece on why Coachella did a second weekend →
The gamble clearly paid off, as both events sold out within hours. In music circles, that first weekend was covered as intensely as the Oscars or the Super Bowl. So, wouldn’t week two be like forcing Meryl Streep to reread her acceptance speech, or flying Ahmad Bradshaw back to Lucas Oil Stadium to rerun his winning touchdown?
The media machine certainly thought so.
This is an...
Proud of Beyonce →
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Caramanica writes about "Girls" and race, too →
Sub in “Parks and Recreation” instead of “Happy Endings” and this might as well be a point-by-point rewrite of my tweets and Tumblr posts from the last week or so. Sigh.
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ALL CAROLE EVERYTHING
Baffling narratives
“Though he’s had a handful of releases since 2007, Rufus Wainwright hasn’t made the last five years easy on his listeners… the casual fan might be forgiven for wondering if Wainwright had any interest in expanding on his uniquely composed and orchestrated brand of pop.”
Given that writer Mark Pytlik didn’t particularly like 2007’s Release the Stars...
Vulture's take on last week's GG →
Forget the Chuck revelation, I can’t believe Blair said “spirit animal” (but it is so awesome that she did) (that’s probably sorta-racist?) (sigh)
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Really enjoying TheBillfold.com →
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Yankee Hotel Foxtrot memories
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is 10 years old today. In the decade since, maybe two albums of comparable quality (The National’s Alligator; Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People) have been released. For the most part, we’re still waiting.
1) Senior year of high school, convincing the tennis team to listen to it in the van on the way back from a match in Santa Barbara and having...
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“Invisibility is problematic. Caricature is worse.”
– ‘Girls’ Through The Veil - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic (via brooklynmutt)
Agree with everything Coates says in this piece.
The Flight From Conversation →
This is a good piece and one I agree is an increasing problem, or at least a concern to be aware of. I have a bad tendency to expend most of my conversational energy for the day on the Internet, in turns absorbing and expelling: by the time I’m meeting a friend for drink at 8, I feel like I have little left to talk about. Or little worth talking about, perhaps.
Logging out of all my social networks. Will return when this book proposal draft is finished. See you on the other side.
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The bros in the Katy Perry "Call Me Maybe"... →
They should put this video in the Urban Dictionary page.
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Anonymous asked: Advice on how to nudge artists you write about on a blog to actually email me about new songs/releases? Sorta tired of tracking down stuff from artists I've been writing about for two years now. Thanks!
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If Popular Music had called it a day after this...
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A brief lyrical dissection of "Call Me Maybe"
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” is a teen-pop hit recorded by a woman my age, propelled to the Billboard top 10 and YouTube viral status by support from Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and other pop figures, who have unwittingly unleashed a track better than anything they’ve collectively done. The chorus, which arrives after a mere 28 seconds(!) is charmingly sure of itself:...
Guys how do I turn off “Call Me Maybe”
It’s been half an hour
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WatchOh my God how is this real
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"Why is it nearly impossible for women, even... →
Important and funny.
Apparently Coachella was more crowded this year... →
Now I’m glad I didn’t go. Last year was borderline claustrophobic. Don’t trust those 2010 numbers, which don’t count the hordes who snuck in.
hopeisforpresidents replied to your post: Just curious
I read what you write, but only so I can be informed when I tell my friends how much I hate you.
Leave me your mailing address and we’ll get you some street team swag immediately.
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David Shapiro interviews Waka →
Is Pitchfork Reviews Reviews writing for Interview the new Hipster Runoff writing for Grantland? This is a good, funny piece, though. Surprised it’s not longer.
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Ad Hoc Cont'd →
“The Internet makes it so that you can be a music journalist,” she says, “and not have to hope and pray that one of five music entities will take you.”
This is a cute thing to say while in J-school on student loans/Dad’s money and cuter after one of those “five music entities” just gave you the audience that’s paying your new site’s rent....
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Were her parents "Roman Candle" fans? →
“I want to experience something new,” said Monique Elliott-Smith, 16. “The northeast — New England especially — has so many colleges. You really get to experience so many different people from so many different places.”
She was born pre-Good Will Hunting. Authentic?
Message boards still exist →
Still, apparently, to serve the same function they always have: making snobby people on the Internet feel good about themselves by feeling worse about everyone else.
Thanks for indulging me. Hard to know what’s going through your heads after my daily 1,000 words of IMPORTANT THOUGHTS ABOUT LENA DUNHAM.
If anything
The lack of a multi-racial cast on Girls is a reflection of its characters’ sheltered, limited experience and an accurate reminder that we do not live in a wonderful, rainbow-colored post-race paradise. Related, and far more damning: The Bachelor class-action lawsuit.
This is the part where I recommend watching Parks and Recreation, the best show on television, which includes a cast of...
morerobots replied to your post: How do we, as an Internet, learn to stop…
The lesley arfin thing? I just didn’t really get why she would post something like that after Dunham basically did press releases concerning the lack of diversity - it was kind of a sabotage-y thing to do.
More the “Everything everyone talks about all day” thing, myself included. I didn’t need to...
Yet one more howling voice, cast into the cultural...
barelyeducated:
Ok, so I broke down and watched Girls. Here are yet one more white man’s thoughts that mean nothing and no one cares about, but I figured I know one dude who would read em (Hi Dave)
…
2. The opening scene is really strong, but I see why it engenders such a visceral response, for better or worse.
“And then I am busy trying to become who I am, who you want me to be,” says...
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Sickest burn →
Indeed, aging out of a brand is common. Elisabeth Donnelly started shopping at Anthropologie in high school, and her habit of “dressing Zooey Deschanel-ish,” she said, reached its peak when she worked a few blocks from the SoHo location. When Ms. Donnelly, a 30-year-old development assistant, moved to Albany, she had a realization. “These are art-teacher clothes,” Ms. Donnelly said. “Who is this...
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Personal note
My fiancee just passed her grad school comprehensive exam and will finish up her master’s in a couple weeks. Freelancing is fun and exciting and enough to pay the bills. Next month, we get to go see my favorite band in the world play in their old hometown. KEEP IT UP, 2012.
