New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones is concerned that all the indie kids don't try to sound like black people anymore. He went to an Arcade Fire show and was totally bored! Do they even have a rhythm section? It's all shouting and French horns, isn't it? "But, in the past few years," says Sasha, "I've spent too many evenings at indie concerts waiting in vain for vigor, for rhythm, for a musical effect that could justify all the preciousness." Ok so he didn't he get there in time for LCD Soundsystem then? [New Yorker]
Cornel West takes time away from his busy teaching schedule to discuss his new record, Never Forget: "50 Cent, Snoop, Game, Nelly. On one level, I love those brothers, because their artistic and aesthetic work is a part of who I am... On the other hand, I challenge those brothers because I'm just against misogyny. I'm against homophobia. So somebody can be in my house and in my community and I still have to present a moral critique, because I'm just against those things. I just think they're wrong. So the question is, how do I deal with the love and embrace of them as artists and at the same time respectfully challenge them? So in that sense, I'm not really with the crowd that trashes hip-hop. I can't stand that. That's ridiculous. And I'm not with the crowd that somehow tries to give some justification for misogyny or homophobia. I just think the critique of homophobia has to be more explicit on hip-hop records—that's why I've addressed it on my album. Including the domestic violence and the misogyny and the sexism and so forth—it goes hand in hand with that. That's true with anything—anti-Semitism, it could be racism, any form of bigotry. I just have to take a stand against that. It's just who I am. Now that's a little different from this post-Imus trashing of Snoop. Because I'm not part of that crowd. At all." Okay then! [VV]
Rod Townsend records the gays in and around their natural environment of Fire Island and reports back. This is the time, and this is the record of the time. Put your hands over your eyes.
EXT. BAY BAR
The Sunday noon crowd at Bay Bar consists of those running in and out to get iced coffee products and those sitting at tables enjoying iced coffee products. VISORGAY, wearing olive drab cargo shorts and a navy mesh Nike visor, sits with TANKGAY, in olive drab cargo shorts and a robin's egg blue tank. They are at a prime table overlooking the harbor and the boardwalk that runs along it. Across the water, unidentifiable shrieks can be heard.
The gentrification of Carroll Gardens, the land of pregnancy, is hitting a sticky patch. A bunch of Brooklyn parents are upset at the behavior of some of the teenagers in Carroll Park, at Smith and Carroll Streets. On Wednesday, Gowanus Lounge posted some of the parent's complaints and summed them up thusly:
This all has to do with teenagers snapping wet t-shirts near some moms and kids. The teens didn't enjoy being told to stop. Many recriminations ensued. Threats were uttered by the kids to the adults. The police were called—and to us this is the most interesting part—didn't respond to what could have become a lousy incident in anything resembling a timely fashion. The kids kept up the harassment. They threw things at the adults. And, when the cops finally showed they are said to have been disinterested if not dismissive.
There's more, involving rock-throwing and threats to break people's noses, but the gist of it is that parents with their small kids were scared of the teenagers.
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Latest by shanaisapunkrocker: I'm going to ignore the flame wars and try (as many already have) to steer the conversation back in the direction of what actually happened.
As a Carroll Gardens resident myself, I'm as disappointed as anyone else about the fact that more »
The New York Post today fronts a photo of golfer Tiger Woods with his smoking-hot wife and new daughter Sam. While commending Woods for releasing the pictures without seeking remuneration, the paper is totally confused about his offspring's ethnicity.
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Donations to Heritage of Pride, the horribly-named non-profit that produces New York's annual gay pride parade, have dropped off so significantly that the organization is now in the red after years of flushness. Why? Because rich and white people just don't care about their stupid parade. According to the Observer: "'Some people,' said Dennis Spafford, a spokesman for Heritage of Pride, 'don't care anymore.'" OMG no!
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You have, by now, surely seen the world-famous video wherein a bunch of kids, using their pelvises, perplex an ottoman. Did you know that, thanks to the creativity of the Internet communities, there is a parody of that video, but about blogging? Hahahahah, it's true! It's this kind of thing that explains why we still haven't told our parents what we really do for a living. (Should you be one of the eight people who missed the original ottoman-fornicating clip, we've placed it after the jump.)
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Latest by bigmonkeycar: Todd in the parody video is Todd Rohal. He made an amazing movie called "Guatemalan Handshake," starring Will Oldham. This is..a bit different.
And the other dude was in "Hannah Takes The Stairs." more »
Great news on the race front: An African-American man, long known for his servile demeanor and non-threatening appearance, has attained a position of responsibility and respect in corporate America.
Uncle Ben, who first appeared in ads in 1946, is being reborn as Ben, an accomplished businessman with an opulent office, a busy schedule, an extensive travel itinerary and a penchant for sharing what the company calls his "grains of wisdom" about rice and life.
Dude's a rice-shilling Dick Parsons! We have finally made Dr. King's dream a reality. Gladys Knight, all is forgiven. —balkMore »
Like the rest of you, we've been deeply disturbed by the recent controversy concerning Kenneth Eng's infamous "I Hate Blacks" column. (Eng was dismissed from his position at Asian Week yesterday.) But then it occurred to us that we have two members of the Gawker family who might be able to help us heal the breach, or at least begin a dialogue, between blacks and Asians. We asked The Assimilated Negro and Spinachdip to get to the bottom of the enmity between the two communities. The results will make everyone feel a little better. Except maybe the gays.
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The last week of Black History Month started so well! Two black people won Oscars! But it was all downhill from there: A city council hearing aimed at discouraging the use of a racist and offensive (contextually speaking) term—what the papers call "the 'n' word"—resulted in that term being used nearly fifty times. Back on the West Coast, a San Francisco newspaper was forced to pull a column entitled "Why I Hate Blacks." One sample reason: "Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years." (Full column at right, click to enlarge.) In South Africa, white folks have begun to rally around a song that extols the virtues of an Afrikaner general. In trying times like these, where can a troubled soul turn to get away, however briefly, from the tangled thicket of race and its presentations? Maybe to the culture section!
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Latest by phil anderson:
How old is he? After seeing those pictures, I think I went to high school with him. Either that or all Asians look the same! more »
Over on his blog, deep thinker/afro-joke-goes here New Yorker scribe Malcolm Gladwell ponders the recent Michael Richards imbroglio and comes up with a few simple ways to determine the racism level of public outbursts. Gladwell boils it down to three factors:
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Today, screenwriter John Ridley responds to the four pages of hyperventilating comments that his Esquire excerpt provoked by . . . uh, we're still not sure. The title of his new essay is 'Nigger v. Queer: How Gays Got it Right," which seems to imply that he equates the way gay people have "reclaimed" the word queer with how he wishes black people would nullify the stigma associated with "nigger." Wait, is that what he's saying? "There is not one individual on this planet who can make a black into a nigger. We can only do that to ourselves."
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Latest by Fishman:
I'm having a hard time following this whole thing, maybe it's because I don't read Esquire, which I guess is a magazine for gay black lawyers. more »
Literary pugilist Stanley Crouch turns his eye to Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, whom many believe will be this nation's first black president. Except, according to Crouch, he won't: "Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan. Other than color, Obama did not - does not - share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves... when black Americans refer to Obama as 'one of us,' I do not know what they are talking about."
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Latest by Fishman:
I don't think debating Obama's geneaology serves any purpose, although he is one of the very few people that the term African-American accurately describes. But politically, his resume is short and undistinguished, his defining characteristic is that he is more »
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