December 2011
120 posts
Lemonade, honey cough drops, day-quil and takeout = oh hey! I just won Lady With Weeklong Precursor To A Cold Trying To Be Functional Enough To Go Out On New Year’s Eve Bingo! (with apologies to Erin from Jezebel)
“deej is right: avoiding cliche is the most important part of any kind of...”
– - “difficult listening hour” on ILX.
Massive guilty conscience over the last paragraph. This is the thing I most beat myself up for in my own writing, btw.
It’s also why I like (good) forums and communities so much - you can start with the lazy thing that has a tiny bit of the unlazy in it, and...
marathonpacks:
“The term resonated with me at the time, but in the intervening months I’ve come to think that it’s more a product of the overload a journalist feels when she is deeply immersed in online culture and rigorous about her critical duty to track each new phenomenon (not to mention beholden to pageviews herself). Ultimately trollgazing is what pop culture has always been about. Novelty,...
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My Year In Jukeboxing: November
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
Inside: one of my favorite blurbs of the year. And other things worth reading, too.
Risa Bender, “You Made It Rain” (November 2)
Oh jeez. I had the bitterness festered and ready after reading the lyrics. Of course he didn’t make it rain. He Googled the weather on his smartphone five...
strictlyalright:
As is the constantly reoccurring theme in my life (and I’m sure many others’), I haven’t learned my lesson from the other day. I clicked onto a blog entry on the local paper’s website about some local rapper’s new video (“I’m So Indie” is the name of the song, NO COMMENT) and, lo and behold, it got me all riled up and upset like it did two days ago. The exact same feeling....
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"Why are the lives of girls so interesting right... →
maura:
Finally, someone is mansplaining the male gaze and the victory of feminism. FINALLY, YOU GUYS.
T______ C______: now literally with a preschool mentality!
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“Everyone always said that Miss Mush and Mr. Pepperadder were terrible cooks, but...”
– Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School
No, I don’t relate to this AT ALL.
(The premise of the problem, by the way? The worse it tastes, the fewer people will eat. Find the point where you get the most people eating. Spoiler: it’s the point where the food tastes as bad as it smells....
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#do you guys have the one person who follows you and who you follow #but you’re not sure why they follow you because they’re such a quality blog and you’re NOT #and you never talk or anything #but sometimes they’ll like one of your posts and you’re like I HAVE PLEASED HER/HIM
No comment.
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My Year In Jukeboxing: October
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
Almost there: In here: Kate Bush, Sneaky Sound System, Frank Ocean and more! Oh, and if you’re wondering why I’m punting on a few, it’s because lots are in my top 50 songs list, which is forthcoming….)
Sneaky Sound System, “Big” (October 1)
“Hang With Me”...
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“Not only the whistling… (yes I only read the headline), but recently,...”
– BECAUSE INTERJECTIONS(!) SHOW EXCITEMENT(!) OR EMOTION(!)
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My Year In Jukeboxing: September
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
This is where I go off on HYPE and NEW DIRECTIONS! In regards to Pistol Annies, Bon Iver, Beyonce, and Florence AND Marina!
Florence and the Machine, “What The Water Gave Me” (September 2)
Thank God for “Rolling in the Deep”; without it, the music industry would still be doing...
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soliciting novice new yorker advice
This is my first New Year’s Eve where my plans aren’t going to my friends’ six-years-running party, but I’m in New York with approximately 8 shows at the same time. recommendations?
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My Year In Jukeboxing: August
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
In this edition: August isn’t getting any thinner. This is good for the Jukebox, less so for my workload…. (Inside: Rebecca Black v1.0 (2.0?), Lana, Taylor Swift, Kay, and a few less controversial folks.)
Zola Jesus, “Vessel” (August 2)
Finally, Zola Jesus arranges...
Lessons Learned in 2011
nickminichino:
fightwithknives:
Just like you didn’t see 27 Dresses when it came out, begin avoiding 95% of writing that uses personal pronouns, which means almost everything online. It doesn’t matter if it’s written by someone you’ve met in real life, or in a publication you’ve read any liked before. If it’s someone who claims “my ‘I’ gives me transparency,” they are playing football and you...
insomnius asked: Hello! Sorry I was ambiguous about Google Talk, cost, etc. The price I referred to is purely metaphorical, unless you count it as selling your soul to Google. Which I guess is also metaphorical. NEVER MIND.
“Merry Christmas! Where the hell are you? I hope you have a job. Last e-mail I...”
– My personal Christmas tradition, besides doing Shoutcast: every Christmas I send myself an email from last year. Somehow they usually begin with guilt trips. (They get better, though?)
“I can’t prove that good software respects people, but I can look at good...”
– Brent Simmons This is about gamification. See also: too many trends in Web design this year, the underlying principle of which seems to be “hey, all that malware was really successful at getting users’ attention, so how can we copy it?” (Um… and merry Christmas Eve! Our...
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My Year In Jukeboxing: July
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
In this edition: NO SERIOUSLY, EVERYONE. June was half a full-on month, this was an entire full-on month. But Kreayshawn, Patrick Stump, Cher Lloyd, etc. Also: the year I hated everything people loved, loved everything people hated, etc. I blame the heat.
Also, I’m taking Christmas off...
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My Year In Jukeboxing: June
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
I’m not 100% going to say June was the biggest month for the Jukebox. But it probably was! Blurbs inside for just about everybody.
Coldplay, “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” (June 15)
Freshman year of college, I tried to fall in with the folks on my randomly assigned...
isabelthespy asked: favorite body talk song that was not a single? & how does it rank compared to the singles that are not The Song That Shall Not Be Made (obvs I know how it would compare to that) other non-ranking-style thoughts also weldomed. also, favorite verse on u should know better? and is time machine a great back to the future reference, or the greatest?
thevidsarealright asked: Best and Worst Xmas presents you have received/given?
microphoneheartbeats:
my second Sound of the City roundtable column is up!
katherinestasaph:
In which I end up talking about Take Care after all. I blame Slate.
And I hit my word count about 80% through, so I’ll say here that it’s been really fantastic to take part in this! (Also, I just read Tom’s piece — he’s up next — and I’ll also say that it’s equally fantastic, not that that’s much of...
my second Sound of the City roundtable column is... →
In which I end up talking about Take Care after all. I blame Slate.
And I hit my word count about 80% through, so I’ll say here that it’s been really fantastic to take part in this! (Also, I just read Tom’s piece — he’s up next — and I’ll also say that it’s equally fantastic, not that that’s much of a spoiler.)
Best Essay about Comics in 2011 →
tomewing:
twiststreet:
USA Today actually published the perfect summation of what comics looked like in my head in 2011. It is … perfect in ways I could never hope to achieve. I could never come close to this. I’m… I’m envious of this.
It’s a list of “36 of the best things that happened in comics” — 36! sure, why not?— punctuated with cliches like “epic epicness” and “nuff said”,...
soliciting more plane questions! →
No layover this time — I’ve got a direct flight and should be home by 10 a.m. — but I’ve nevertheless got time. Fill it!
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My Year In Jukeboxing: May
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
I also didn’t blurb much in May, for two reasons, one of which was a bit of site housekeeping and the other of which was moving and such. So this’ll be a short entry….
And while we’re housekeeping, no linkdump from me until Dec. 31 at least, because I’m not done...
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Lykke Li, "I Follow Rivers (demo)"
Is it just me, or does that intro purposely evoke ABBA’s “SOS”? I’ll have more to say on that when I write up my singles (soon, I promise), and yes, it’s an overly glib, easy comparison, but a) I didn’t recognize the artist at first, just the melody, and b) it seems like it could be deliberate. (via Spin)
Best Music Writing 2012 →
tomewing:
o-song:
Right now, the (newly independent) annual Best Music Writing series of books is looking for nominations of music writing from 2011. If you read this blog, you probably read a lot of music articles this year, because I linked to 8 pieces of music writing a week in my ‘Music Dump’ series on the Vine. So if some of these really did it for you, nominate!
(I also wrote some...
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“Ordering a potentially unfamiliar ingredient in soup is “less of a...”
– Wall Street Journal
It worked for stones! (Seriously, this article just keeps giving.)
EDIT: No wait, this is the best quote, as in once again I have used up my Lyttle Lytton allotment:
Earlier this year, a pear and Gorgonzola ravioli with shrimp went too far.
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My Year In Jukeboxing: April
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
I didn’t blurb much in April, because I had 100 things to do and was under constant stress rivaled only by… well, by December actually. That, plus working nighttime copy-desk shifts most days, which plus the commute got me home around 1 a.m., right after Jukebox deadline. But the...
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The North Pole of the Web →
Old, weird, fantastic sites from Christmases long, long ago.
microphoneheartbeats:
Budget Fashionistas: WE HAVE TO FIND BETTER REASONS TO MAKE FUN OF DRAKE
pussy-strut:
THAN, LIKE, “HE’S GAY BECAUSE OF FEELINGS” (CAUSE THAT SHIT IS SMALL-MINDED/TIRED AS HELL)
I’LL HELP:
DRAKE’S REAL NAME IS AUBREY
DRAKE IS CANADIAN
DRAKE WAS ON DEGRASSI AND PLAYED ONE OF TWO CHARACTERS WHOSE IRL CELEBRITY PERSONA EXISTS APART FROM HIS CHARACTER AS PER THE 2010...
the only thing I am going to write about this
Back in college, the journalism project I was part of for a semester got derailed when our then-editor and professor was found to have sent explicit chats to a female student. (Not me.) It was on HuffPo and Gawker for about a minute, and the whole situation was really ugly and not something I’d really want to link to or make more Googlable. That’s not the point.
The point: I had...
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Popdust's Best Songs of 2011: #20-1 →
This is it: our top 20 songs of the year! I wrote on “I’m On One,” “Beat of My Drum,” “The Edge of Glory,” “Novacane” and “Rolling in the Deep.”
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“They have to consider the complex web of cultural meanings that each name...”
– Slate article, by Laura Wattenberg on naming and/or Siri
Yeah, I mean, this isn’t a new phenomenon at all. This is essentially the thinking behind Puritan virtue names, for instance, or using saints’ names, or a dozen other cultural traditions.
bisutun asked: ALONG-FOR-DERIDING! That made my day. When's your novel of manners coming out?
and here's my first roundtable column! →
This entry’s a bit all over the place, but stops include Occupy Wall Street music, persona management, Women(tm) in Music(tm), and Katy Perry. Be sure to read the past two (and future!) columns, too — great stuff all around so far.
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My Year In Jukeboxing: March
(Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
March was a weird fucking month. That is all.
Magnetic Man ft. John Legend, “Getting Nowhere” (March 1)
I will listen to basically whatever Magnetic Man produces; in this case, taking what sounds like they rigged a bunch of Windows chimes up to one of those perpetual-wind...
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Popdust's Best Songs of 2011: #40-21 →
My blurbs this time: Hyuna, “Bubble Pop”; Pistol Annies, “Hell on Heels”; Katy B, “Broken Record”; Gotye ft. Kimbra, “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Two of these, incidentally, made my singles ballot this year (there’s a five-song overlap; I’ve gotten to two, which you can guess, and the other’s in our Top 10. And yes, I’m...
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“Two of the defendants, Jeanette Ogle and Randall Sorrow Jr., both in their 20s...”
– New York Times | In Georgia, Pecan Thieves Find Windfall, at $1.50 a Pound (via rachael-maddux)
Hey, anyone want in on my new pecan thievery ring?
Sound Of The City Roundtable →
tomewing:
I am contributing to one of those pop roundtables! I love reading them, they are my second favourite* year end round up format, so I hope my contributions are good. My first one - up soon I guess - was written at 4.30 AM having been woken up by my 5 year old worrying about us dying. TIME FOR PJ HARVEY I said.
(I particularly like the clink-of-eggnog-glasses politeness of the...
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My Year In Jukeboxing: February
Continuing the series; these are the Jukebox blurbs I’m most proud of and/or have more to say on.)
Today’s entries include P!nk, the song that ruined P!nk for me, and my LONGEST BLURB EVAR.)
P!nk, “Fuckin’ Perfect” (Feb. 4)
Do teenage girls (because let’s be honest, that’s who this is really written for) really have a self-esteem crisis so massive that every...
microphoneheartbeats replied to your link: Popdust’s Best Songs of 2011: #60-41
I was curious to see the JoJo place this high, but returning to it for the first time since we reviewed it at Jukebox, I like it a lot. Did it grow on you also, or was it just luck of the draw who got assigned which blurbs?
It grew on me too, although I didn’t dislike it at all when it came up on the...
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Popdust's Best Songs of 2011: #60-41 →
*deep breaths* Wrote 11 blurbs for this one:
Lady Gaga, “Marry the Night”
Drake, “Take Care”
Britney Spears, “How I Roll”
Das Racist, “Michael Jackson”
Billy Currington, “Love Done Gone”
Lykke Li, “I Follow Rivers”
Ke$ha, “Blow”
Coldplay, “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall”
Florence and the...
Tim F's track countdown at ILX is really good →
He’s at #77 now (from 100).
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“you are so sad. how did i run into you in the quantum universe, I’m not quite...”
– Guys, is this a death threat? Do I get to add it to my running tally? I can’t tell! You’d think death threats would be the one thing that you can’t fuck up, but nope?
An actual citation for the "Hitchens would have... →