I moved from San Francisco to the East Bay last summer, and while I do like Joanna Newsom — and even San Francisco! — I think this is an apt critique of the city and the woman.
San Francisco has a major chip on its shoulder. Anything that comes out of the city (Joanna and Gavin Newsom, for instance) tends to have a cast of staunch, very vocal, overly educated, not necessarily well-informed, yet well-connected supporters who will defend any product of the City by the Bay to the death. So it’s not so much that people like Joanna Newsom, but that they’ve been bullied by those S.F. types into thinking they’ve got something really hot on their hands there.
Truly, I can’t even say “New York” within those 49 square miles lest I be attacked by a roving band of insecure self-described hipsters wearing Williamsburg-like fashions circa 2006/2007. Bitches be crazy with their inferiority and superiority complexes in that place. They probably wouldn’t even attack, they’d just blog about it later like they had, and get tons of likes on Tumblr from all their S.F. friends. Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of incentive to grow within the positive feedback loop here, and I find it stifling sometimes. Break the cycle, kids!
Anyway, as a side note, I’m great at imitating Newsom’s ‘teething infant’ act; feel free to ask me to do this at a party some time after I’ve had a couple drinks.
I heard this Craig Morgan song for the first time a couple weeks ago in the car; I guess it’s a sensation. I played it for my roommate and she said it reminded her of this MGMT video. So, well, here you go — mashed for your pleasure. YouTube killed it immediately but maybe it will live on at Vimeo.
I’ve been up to a lot in the last month or so, but none of it is currently up to blog snuff, so please accept this Tom Brosseau video in the meanwhile…
I think Rachel Maddow is one of the most talented journalists working today. She has both normal human social skills and sincere reporterly interest, and when combined, she can ask Tom Ridge the sorts of questions we’d like to ask — but she actually coheres her anger into dutiful follow-ups. Plus she looks just like Ira Glass you guys OMG!
When you’re writing a profile of Naomi Klein for the New Yorker, you need to put things in terms your base readership can understand, or at least drop some cultural cues as to why Klein is polished enough for that full-page photo despite her dirty, dirty, plebey politics.
“She was wearing dark jeans tucked into tall brown boots, a crisp white shirt, and a long black blazer. She was dressed for a fox hunt. She looked terrific.”
“[Klein's home] is furnished simply, as though on one quick trip to Crate & Barrel.”
I guess a more cynical reading would be that the author is trying to undermine Klein’s thesis here. But then they really seem to genuinely love the outfits and the furniture over at the New Yorker.
There was a This American Life marathon on television today, I guess to get everyone in the sappy patriotic mood. Now I don’t believe everything Ira touches is gold, but this is… well, just watch it.
I don’t read Jezebel, but I do subscribe to their Joan Didion tag. This is what Sadie Stein had to report back from Didion’s “cold, detached” presence at last week’s New York Review of Books panel.
She started by describing the “unexpressable uneasiness” she and some others had felt early on in the campaign. Why? “We were getting what we wanted,” she continued, meaning, a smart, qualified, decent candidate the Eastern elite could get behind. And yet the frenzy surrounding Obama made her uneasy — both the sense that he was a young person’s candidate, “a generational thing we couldn’t understand” and the unthinking embrace of “naivete transformed to hope, partisanism as consumerism.” Didion bridled at the wanton use of “transformational” and said she couldn’t count the number of times she heard the 60’s evoked “by people who apparently had no memory that the 60s” didn’t involve decking babies out in political onesies.
Didion was at pains to say that she did not think any of this was Obama’s doing, nor to his tastes. He would, she speculated “welcome healthy realism” and achievable expectations. In our frenzy, we are doing him a disservice, expecting miracles “at a time when the nation can least afford easy answers.” She recalled, the day after the election, an overexcited newscaster declaring that we now possess “the congratulations of all the nations.” She likened this to the naivete of thinking we’d be regarded as beloved saviors in Iraq. But, she ended, “in the irony-free zone that our country has become, this is not what people wanted to hear.”
Sorry, you can go back to worshiping your Hope posters now, kids.
Honestly, I had no idea the economy was so bad as to drive the Mountain Goats and the Weakerthans into the cruise industry. Et tu, Kids in the Hall? Et tu?
I guess I’m not the only one annoyed by Adrian Grenier. It seems Hollywood is mounting a multi-pronged anti-green campaign at this very moment…
“Lionsgate has acquired worldwide rights to ‘Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty,’ a spec script by first-time screenwriter Adam Sachs,” who writes for the Harvard Lampoon. The film follows “a lonely reporter and an outspoken teen” through their awkward friendship, at the end of which the teen becomes a hero by standing up to the SHAC “terrorists” to save an animal testing lab. (Because, yes, don’t worry, Sachs specifically assures us they’ll be depicted as “terrorists.” What are they teaching the kids up at Harvard these days?)
Next up is another comedy featuring some of my favorite “terrorists”: Mike Judge’s new animated series for ABC, “The Goodes,” about a family of vegans who mean well but fall into a lot of the usual guilt-laden traps. Of course the frustrating thing is that vegans are a perfect target for great, slightly nuanced comedy (Judge, of course, being known for his nuance…). To be fair, I don’t think he means to villainize veganism with the show — just trivialize it.
But any publicity is good publicity…? Veganism is going mainstream!! Never thought I’d say it, but, um, thanks, Oprah.
Sure, they’re a little too surprised (”10 million Americans!”, “The food is quite good, actually!”, “cut more CO2 than buying a Prius!!”), and yes, we can all thank Oprah, but props to the CNN bookers for going to the source for amazing vegan cuisine, Chef Matteo. (Yes, I’m a hypocrite, but I’m even kind of glad they didn’t mention that stuff costs like $50.)
I was a little more skeptical about the second segment, but that newscaster has such a crush on Russell Simmons, I bet she’ll go veg before the week is out. Don’t underestimate the influential power of cute vegans. (I should put that on the “vegan sex and relationship” survey I got yesterday…)
I guess I’m not the only one annoyed by