Nick and I at the “America’s Hottest College Girl” party.
In the spirit of hot chicks and funny boys, I was going to interview da ladies on the most inadvertently funny thing a guy has said or done to try to impress them. But it was a bit noisy so we just did me.
The story’s true, by the way.
This is fucking hilarious.
This article in the New York Times describes the reaction to Charlotte Roche’s first novel. Here is my favorite quote:
A provocative female rapper in Germany, Lady Bitch Ray, who runs her own independent label, Vagina Style Records, grabbed headlines when she accused Ms. Roche of stealing her explicit form of empowering raunch. “I am what’s in the book,” said the rapper, 27, whose real name is Reyhan Sahin, in a telephone interview.
I think I would be shocked speechless if an American hip hop star accused an American author of stealing his flow and turning it into fiction, but you know what? I’ve learned as much about narrative technique from Nas, Jay-Z, Slick Rick, Chuck D, 2Pac, and Q-Tip as I have from Henry James, Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, and Joyce Carol Oates. When I listen to Illmatic, The Low-End Theory, and Reasonable Doubt (among many others) I am reminded of late-19th century french stylists like Rimbaud and Zola, early-20th century french writers like Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anais Nin, as well as the Americans John Dos Passos, Henry Miller, and Jack Keroauc. Here’s why: in those records, a self-awareness that says the art form is malleable, that “what is hip hop music?” can be changed track by track. Parisian writers - from about 1850 to 1940 -felt exactly the same way. Arthur Rimbaud (at age 17 no less) was the first person to utter the phrase, “I am quitting Europe.” He did not quit Europe as a citizen, but as a poet. He declared himself free from the continental European tradition.
“They don’t make ‘em like me no more, matter of fact, they never made ‘em like me before.” - Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
When I listen to hip hop, I feel certain artists understand what the art form has done and what the art form will do. Fiction has lost this vital impulse. When authors begin to ignore the fact that they can change the course of an art form with one work (call it apathy, or a silent, miserable respect for a form they feel has been an inherited birthright rather than a living medium capable of reinvention), then writers tend to play the innocent victim when change is wrought. Oftentimes, this is not the author’s fault. Another excerpt from the Times article:
With this in mind, critics have asked what practical help a book like “Wetlands” can offer, and even whether, by hyper-sexualizing the main character, it represents an all-too-familiar commercial ploy rather than a step forward.
Now, I had several reactions to this paragraph. First, I thought: Who are the readers asking that a book be “practical” and what kind of ”step forward” does each book needs to make? Fucking absurd. But then I thought: this is an American newspaper. Here is a cloying attempt at critical hegemony: another American writer (fluent in German certainly) who is sticking it to the simplistic European critics who feast too voraciously on a newly-invented dish. These German critics, we think, what fools.
In any event, I am amazed to see a novel’s content so intensely discussed in public. It fills me with hope that this country too has a less-than-complacent public, ready to speak openly about new works of art when those works communicate something about us that we did not expect to hear.
from the Post-Star, my hometown newspaper in the Adirondack region of upstate New York. Photo via a google search for “Cruzin Cooler.”
Man driving motorized cooler faces DWI, other charges
WHITEHALL - In case you were wondering, a motorized cooler on wheels is a motor vehicle under state law.
A Whitehall man learned that on Memorial Day, when he was charged with driving while intoxicated after police pulled him over for swerving and driving on the sidewalk on a four-wheeled, motorized cooler known as a “Cruzin Cooler.”
Leslie J. “Bomber” Marr, 57, could face felony DWI and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle charges because of prior arrests and convictions in drinking-and-driving cases, said Whitehall Police Chief Richard LaChapelle.
The electricity-powered Cruzin Cooler that Marr was riding contained 14 beers, the chief said.
LaChapelle said Whitehall Police Patrolman Andrew Mija stopped Marr at about 7:45 p.m. after the officer saw Marr swerving and preparing to cross William Street on the motorized cooler.
The machine has handlebars, and its operator sits on a seat atop the cooler, LaChapelle said.
“We were told it can do up to 12 mph,” the chief said.
Marr had apparently just left the nearby American Legion Post 83, but it was unclear where he was going, LaChapelle said. He was not headed toward his Lafayette Street home, and he refused to take a breath test, the chief said.
The Cruzin Cooler was seized by police, the chief said.
No listed phone number for Marr could be found Monday.
The Proclaimers, “Over and Done With.” From Bottle Rocket
Have been looking for this for five years. Have checked iTunes, Limewire, the Russian mp3 sites, and the music collections of every friend I’ve remembered to ask. Sure, could have ordered their debut album or the Bottle Rocket soundtrack from Amazon (never seen either disc in stores), but I wanted to find it in the junk bins. It’s an antique this song. An old Scottish relic I heard 20 seconds of in a film I loved ten years ago. I’ve hummed this song so many times since, it’s strange to hear someone else singing it. Just found it. Glorious.
Tha Carter III was the most anticipated record of 2007. Lil Wayne just never got around to releasing it. In December, five tracks leaked. He released them as an EP and wrote new ones, pushing the album’s release date back to April, then to May, now June 10.
The album leaked to the internet on Monday, and I’ve spent the last 24 hours listening to probably the record of the year, the most anticipated record of 2007 and 2008: a glorious 16-track opus of awkward stylistic shifts, sexy beats, offensive rhymes and confounding slurred preaches. Over the course of the record he plays a lady-cop obsessed criminal, a granny killer, a doctor, a chronic fellator, the greatest rapper alive, and a martian. There’s a song where he rhymes over a symphonic film score. He’s maniacal on one track and belly-laughing the next. Fans of the The Love Below will have a reference point, but the characters he creates never stray far from the man who created them: the one… the only… Weezy. This is not a circus. This is a journey.
If it gets a 9.6 from Pitchfork (they’ve been frothing about it for months), a 4.5 stars from Rolling Stone, and a 4 stars from Spin, ironic white people the world over will be championing Lil Wayne all summer long. This might not be a terrible thing; music needs a record like this. Comparing Tha Carter III to other highly anticipated hip-hop records of the past two years (T.I.’s T.I vs T.I.P., The Game’s Doctor’s Advocate, Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come, 50 Cent’s Curtis) one can’t help but notice Lil Wayne is having a fucking great time making this record. His enthusiasm for pushing boundaries reveals itself about once every minute.
Like Wayne, T.I., Jay-Z, The Game, and 50 Cent were each trying to prove they were the “greatest rapper alive.” Weezy succeeds where the others did not for one basic reason: there is no doubt in his mind.
A warning to those looking to snatch it up early on the file-sharing websites. Use the Carter III Wikipedia entry to construct the album’s track list. There’s about 50 songs on Limewire claiming to be tracks from this record.
Healy Biodiesel, a company in Sedgwick, Kan., says it offers a top-quality fuel made from local cooking oils.
Ben Healy, the owner, has contracts to collect the raw grease from several franchises around town.
“One particular night not too long ago, 9 out of 15 were stolen,” he said of the grease bins. “That’s a majority of the oil and it was a big kick in the stomach.”
This immediately took me back to Fafblog’s brilliant Legend of Benjamin Healy. When I went to Fafblog to find the article, I was stunned to find that after a two year hiatus… FAFBLOG IS BACK??!!
Fantastic news for the internet.
?
I think Eric Lodwick has stumbled across a place we locals call, “The Upper East Side.”
“And it is not enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves - only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, from a book I found on an electrical box, Manhattan Avenue, 10pm Sunday. Highlighted to all hell. Abandoned but read. Introduction by William Gass. I never knew Rilke wrote a novel. An extraordinary little find.
I realize now (in my post-weekend haze) that I completely forgot to thank the extraordinary Brian Quinn, who built our party invitation website. In fact, Brian has done our last 3 website invitations. It’s a debatable topic: have they gotten more preposterous over time or maintained their level of irreverence? Whatever your stance, his Pink Ball invite was the classiest one yet.
I pitched a new invite to Brian on seven days notice. I said, “Can you do a site for the Pink Ball in two days?” We met Monday at 9:30 for ideas. He had a draft up in a few hours. It was hilarious. I asked if he could redo it (he should have told me to shove it up my ass). He redid it on Tuesday night. The second draft is far more refined than the first, more subtle too. The first draft, if you can picture it:
1. pink-stockinged legs float down a pink background, legs and frilly panties.
2. the woman’s legs move at you very fast, and her panties seem poised to leap through your screen.
3. suddenly, violently, a pink flower blossoms out of the middle of her crotch, filling the browser. The word “Invitation” appears.
Brian understands the one major theme that unites these websites, the reason I find them so memorable. Each site requires more patience from the user than is necessary. Now, a shitload of websites make you spend far more time visiting them than you can stand. But that’s because they are designed to be user-friendly and aren’t. In an ironic twist, Brian’s invitations are like Evites. Both take a considerable amount of time to use and accomplish the same end result (inviting you to a party). But Brian’s use of your time is deliberate. Evite has no idea they’re wasting your time.
I have nothing against Evites. The cookie-cutter themes. The advertisements. The registration requests. The extraordinary amount of text. The corny roll-call with corny comments. Love em to death. But I’ll never be caught dead putting one together.
Here are Brian’s web invites with the event dates. Sadly, these evenings are nothing but memories. And by memories I mean jpegs on Steph’s Flickr set.
The East River Badminton Club’s “Gin Social”: June 2, 2007 (click on the birdies that appear)
Bastille Day: July 14, 2007 (turn up the volume on your speakers)
Pink Ball: May 17, 2007 (click repeatedly)
oh… and of course, Brian also designed this site and the site for my business.