hey

i hope you all had a nice christmas. but let's remember the less fortunate.

you know what, fuck y'all if you hate on this

for just a few minutes, two of the great men of english-language popular music met and sang a song together. one was a legend who would die in a few weeks; the other had just recorded "heroes." the latter didn't want to sing "the little drummer boy," so he wrote his own counterpoint to be sung in tandem with the former. and for a few short minutes in 1977, that crazy little thing we call divinity smiled on a tv studio.



happy christmas, one and all.

cnn presents: the goatee-ation room

seen tuesday afternoon:



in case you can't see it from my iphone photo, rick has one too. that's not just his jowls.

so wait

i just thought of this, but does the election of barack obama mean we'll never see a vietnam veteran in the white house? if so, hella weird, right? that was the war that defined 40 years of american history and, more importantly, much of american presidential politics—but no one who served in it has been elected, and now they're all too old anyway.

never forget this fucking song

seriously, it's fucking great. "pale september" is a close second for that album. and yes, i was borderline gay in 7th grade when i played this album all the time. WHAT THE FUCK OF IT

Title of Graph: "I Have Lost Touch With Current Music"

this will only get worse by friday

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me."

—Abraham Simpson, 1996

kate beaton makes my favorite thing

katebeaton.com

and of course, h/t to the lovely jen for finding this lollercoaster.

and that's how they became the brady bunch

surely the best youtube i've seen in months:



stick around for the whole thing, plz.

my new post story: small but significant!

"Silver Slaps FDIC"

haha, it was originally a good deal longer, but they only had room for the first two paragraphs. but hey—the point was that i now have my first SOLO byline in an ACTUAL major metropolitan newspaper! and the editors said they really liked it and want me to write more, as opposed to just getting information and phoning it into someone back at the offices! huzzah!

TUSK!

best daily show bit in a while

john oliver takes on CNN's magic election screen.

blunder-scale

thank god for jason sudeikis—he's all SNL's really got, now that mccain and palin are out of the picture. i mean i love fred armisen with all my heart, but even he knows that he can't do a good obama.



i look forward to bits like this, and to actual real-life joe biden mistakes!

if you watch one youtube video all year

make it this one:



sweet jesus this is statistically impossible.

in case you wanna watch it

paramount just released the official, high-res versions of the new star trek trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/

abortion contest

TAKE SIDES.

battle of the late-90s alterna-rock songs about regretting an abortion:

-"the freshmen" by the verve pipe


-"brick" by ben folds five



personally, my vote goes to "the freshmen," but it's close.

thoughts?

and so it's come to this

timeline:

-10:37pm: i am opening wikipedia to read about the star trek reboot
-10:38pm - 1:45am: i am reading lots of other articles on wikipedia, each leading to another.
-1:46am: i somehow am reading about budd dwyer.
-1:47am: i watch a video of budd dwyer killing himself at a televised press conference.

good night, internet!

rise above my station

i have no history of child abuse, and yet, as of late, i can think of few songs better than "hast thou considered the tetrapod."




the only other song i can listen to these days is "love and affection."




oh, and also this wonderful and forgotten gem: a live medley/mashup of "love and affection" with "sweet jane," all performed by a largely forgotten group called two nice girls.




i guess this is a music blog sometimes?

also: found on the internet

not made by me. but appreciated by me.

seriously, a guy named barack hussein obama II.

did anyone else choke up at...

...the sight of jesse jackson with tears streaming down his face and his fingers in his mouth, like a child?

not to mention the scene at NBC election central afterward, when tom brokaw, ann curry, AND chuck todd all had to fight back tears of emotion. only brian williams stayed calm, but that's because he's brian fucking williams.

seriously—tom brokaw.

basically.

"I live in New York. Everyone around me agrees with me."

—J. Stewart, 2008

post story: cops shoot two; mysteries remain

"Cops Kill Gun Sibs"

the answers are not all there, just yet. stay tuned.

another post story

i know it's not my regular job anymore (i start at NY1 on friday), but i might still do the occasional new york post story. here's one i did yesterday!

"Mike and Chris Made Threats Over Term Limits: Foes"

enjoy!

employment update

i am now a writer for NY1. i am very happy.

for those of you who care

stay tuned for an announcement from me in the next 48 hours about my new job. i'm deciding between two offers, and was leaning toward one, and am now leaning toward the other, so just stay tuned.

the point is that, barring some crazy happenstance, i will be an employed, working journalist in new york city within the next few days. i might be one of the few people in america to be actually getting a job this week.

improbably, i return to journalism

i had a freelance day with the post yesterday.

here's the story i reported and then co-wrote: "Paralyzed Rev. Thanks God"

i also wrote another story that will come out tomorrow, probably.

origin of the market crisis.

hahaha i can NOT make this stuff up

front page of the drudge report as of 11:49pm EDT, october 7, 2008:




also, did anyone else notice that obama was the one who (a) used 9/11 as a talking point, (b) quoted the bible, and (c) said "holocaust" before his opponent did? are we in the bizarro universe??

here, at the end of all things

this blog is essentially defunct (i'll post up my last couple stories from the dying sun someday, but not tonight), but i needed to share with someone.

i don't even really like this movie. but, uh, well, everything's kind of, uh, well...

good night.

i came here too late.

the first time i came to new york city, it was march of 2002. i never saw this place before the towers fell. i am of a generation of new york arrivals that will never know what this city was, before that day. i feel impoverished. i'm sorry.

hard times in new york town

so, in case you hadn't already heard, the new york sun, where i was working up until this week, is in dire financial straits and may well close before the month is out.

i don't have anything to say here, so i'll just let you see what's out there for yourself:

the editor's open letter announcing the problems.

the new york observer's story on it.

gawker's analysis of it.

the wall street journal's article on it.

romenesko's brief on it.

i hope the paper pulls through.

stories 39 - 44: corruption, tragedy, torture, and abu dhabi

sorry that these posts are getting so infrequent. circumstances make it difficult to make regular posts.

okay, first the big stories:

"New Yorkers Claim Mistreatment at Hands of Chinese" (the pic above is from that story)

"Police Department Will Send Liaison Officer to Abu Dhabi"

"Judge Rejects Dismissing Indictment Against Senator" (a poorly-written headline, not my fault; should read something like "Judge Rejects Effort to Dismiss Indictment Against Senator")

"Pace Student's Death Being Probed as a Homicide" (really tragic; hard to write as a result)


and now, the briefs:

"Window Contractor Falls 12 Stories, Dies"

"Man Arrested in Cab Drivers Robberies"


and that's it for now.

sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it?

politico.com's top 5 stories as of 12:51 p.m. EDT:

story 38: a bigger chinatown story, this time with sheldon silver!

"Chinatown's 'Glorious Flute' Facing an Unusual Primary Challenge"

new york magazine picked it up, too!

spent a lot of time on this one, and they let it run at a big word-count, which is nice. probably my last long-form feature at the sun (i finish up my gig there on thursday). sad!

stories 31 - 37: chokeholds, old ladies, car crashes, and big rigs

lots of stuff this week. first the full stories, then the briefs:

"Man is Wanted for 12 Brooklyn Robberies" (featuring horrifying video!)

"Fire at Homeless Center Injures Two Firefighters"

"Court Date Set for Officers Charged in Bronx Beating" (can't wait to hear their side...)

"Business Owners Send Strong Message on Willets Point" (they gave me a break from the crime / emergency beat for the evening)

"Arrest Made in Robberies of Elderly" (echoes of d'angelo barksdale in the last few paragraphs)


THE BRIEFS:

"Politicians Demand More Protection for Seniors" (related to the elderly robberies...)

"Woman Who Crashed Police Van Faces 7 Charges" (crazy!)

stories 29 & 30: the intersection of disaster

"Times Square Taxi Crash Causes Injuries"

"Another Glass Pane Hits the Street in Times Square"

seriously, y'all—it was the same freaking intersection! over the course of about four hours, a cab flipped over onto a median and hit six people, then a 15-square-foot pane of glass fell out of a skyscraper! onto the same intersection at 43rd & broadway!

WATCH THE SKIES

story twenty-nine: pray for him

"Dying Woman's Unborn Baby is Saved"

the baby's in critical condition. let's pray. stay tuned for an update.

stories 24 - 28: the whirlwind

so i'm the crime / emergency reporter now, all of a sudden. it's been exhausting, but pretty fruitful. the stories aren't long, but they're intense to do—you're running against the clock and the other papers!

so, here's what i did this week:

"Fumes Shut Down Subway Station"

"Two Injured as More Glass Falls at Bryant Park"

"Shots Fired Into Judge's Home"

"Developer Bruce Ratner Is Honored at Gala" (not technically part of crime / emergency beat, but i did it in addition to all that)

"Fumes Cause Evacuation of West Side Duane Reade"

sheesh! will this city just slow the hell down??

actually, even better context

thanks to this post from user "k8t" over at metafilter.

Georgia and Russia fight over South Ossetia. The Caucasus never seem to settle down. Georgia, a "beacon of democracy" since its Rose Revolution in 2002 (which has seemed to turn into a benevolent dictatorship since), and its northern neighbor, Russia are fighting over South Ossetia. South Ossetia declared itself independent in 1991 although in Soviet times it had been part of Georgia. After an 18-month war that killed 1,000 (of a population of 60,000) between 1990 and 1992, South Ossetia is now propped up by Russia. Its citizens have Russian citizenship as well. In the past week, violence has escalated. Reports vary as to what exactly is going on, but it is certain that people have died and bombing is happening on both sides. Many argue that the timing is intentional, with August being prime holiday time in the Former Soviet Union and the Olympics beginning.

This is a very difficult situation for Georgia as S.O. isn't the only breakaway republic is is dealing with. There is also Abkhazia along the Black Sea coast. Russia has been meddling in these republics for years, and it's not likely Georgia would be inclined to grant them independence, as that would only allow Russia to move its sphere of influence even closer. Georgia's aspirations toward EC and especially NATO membership were also items with which Moscow has not been happy. Finally, the completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline has meant that oil can now move from the Caspian oil fields of Azerbaijan without going through Russia. So, it is not entirely surprising that Russia has bombed the Georgian oil port of Poti and also near the pipeline. Any disruptions in this supply chain will only increase the price of oil and enrich Russia even more - another example of how increasing worldwide demand for oil subverts democracy.

I was in Georgia last weekend and everything seemed perfectly fine. It is amazing how quickly things can change.

Background reading:
An excellent Slate piece on South Ossetia from earlier in 2008
Eurasianet coverage
Radio Free Europe coverage
Civil.ge (English language Georgian website - on and offline)
Global Voices Online

things are really, really bad

like, really bad.

don't underestimate the significance of what's going on in the caucasus right now. read the NYT coverage of it after you read that link, to get the context, but basically, here's what you need to know: the kremlin just ordered an invasion of a foreign country. the last time they did that, they invaded afghanistan. and we all know how well that turned out for everyone. not a perfect analogue, of course, but still.

and bernie mac's dead. and john edwards announced his affair. at least no one blew up the olympics yet.

story twenty-three: live at the gay marriage trial

"Paterson Win on Gay Rites Looks Likely"

okay, not a trial. but i wanted to reference an album by the fall.

update, as promised

so, i'm most likely not doing a story on the hearing (i'll probably write something down when an actual decision comes down, after labor day), but the update, upon going to the gay marriage hearing, is that things look very bad for the alliance defense fund (the enemies of governor paterson's pro-gay-marriage executive order). the judge pretty much hated their lawyer and shot down everything he had to say, and kept saying "yeah yeah!" to the two litigators for the defense.

OLYMPICS SUPERSITE

HERE IT IS

second one is my story.

story twenty-two: gay marriage set for trial

"Christian Group Challenges Paterson on Gay Rites Order"

love that pun. a big issue with a complicated legal history. stay tuned for an update after i go to the hearing.

DOLLY CALLS OUT THE HATERS

wow. this report from a dolly parton concert just saved my whole week.

"Poor little Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan," Parton said at her concert
last night at L.A.'s Greek Theatre. "Ain't it awful? If those little girls slept
with as many men as they say in the tabloids, why their little butts would have
more fingerprints than the FBI!"

AND

"People are always asking me in interviews, 'What do you think of foreign
affairs?' I just say, 'I've had a few.' "And the boob jokes were aplenty. "They
say, 'What do you think about global warming?' " Parton said. "I say, 'If my
globes get too warm, I just take my sweater off.' "

AND

She performed a honky-tonked cover of the Fine Young Cannibals' "She
Drives Me Crazy"

as my pal kristina (who found the thing) put it: "all this depressing news all the time, and then dolly parton puts a great spin on it."

one quick disavowal

just so you know, i recommend that you do NOT read the latest story from me in the online edition of the sun. it's a gutted-down (like, as in, wordcount literally cut in half) version of last week's page-one feature. it's only up there to accompany the slideshow and go on the sun's olympics supersite, set to debut tuesday.

once again, sorry for the silence

my laptop's in the shop, so i'm working at a terribly slow backup computer that i keep around for situations like these. makes posting regularly hard. will get back on schedule soon.

multimedia: abe speaks!

we went to a pro-olympics parade and made a multimedia slideshow! and i'm talkin'! enjoy!

story twenty-one: the big chinatown story

"Olympics Expose a Rift in Manhattan's Chinatown"

the product of nearly a month's work; page one of the print edition (if you wanna pick it up). let me know what you think.

they done made it

holy freaking moley.

tim and eric get their moment in the sun with the NYT, and dave itzkoff totally sticks the landing. he totally gets what the dudes are all about, and puts it in plain english — a task i thought was impossible.

so that's good for newbies, but for superfans, here are some stunning revelations:

The Brule character has proved so popular that he is being given his own six-episode spin-off show, tentatively titled “Check It Out!,” starring Mr. Reilly and produced by Mr. Wareheim and Mr. Heidecker. “So much happens in a day of him improvising and us throwing stuff at him that you want to use it all,” Mr. Heidecker said of Mr. Reilly.

and uh:

Mr. Wareheim and Mr. Heidecker are also developing a game show for Adult Swim that would star the comedian Neil Hamburger. Mr. Wareheim described it as “a mixture of a Japanese bizarre game show and ‘The Price Is Right.’ ” And like everyone in Hollywood they would eventually like to make feature films. (“We’d like our first movie to be a pretty pure Tim and Eric vision,” Mr. Wareheim said, “before we get sucked into the Apatow system.”)

a NEIL HAMBURGER GAME SHOW??

and all of this in the same week that the house of representatives apologized for slavery. good job, america!

the new crop of "those shirts" are in!

as i've said, this blog will not endorse a candidate, nor will it play partisan politics. that said, what the hell is going on at everyone's favorite "screw you, i want you to hate me" apparel superstore, ThoseShirts.com?

i'm not criticizing them for being "conservative" or hating "liberals" (whatever those terms mean in this election cycle). i'm just literally confused as to what some of their newer shirts are going for.

see, back in the day, you had easy ones, like this old chestnut:


okay, makes sense—guns are good, the sixties were bad. message conveyed. mission accomplished.

and you had the more openly partisan ones, like this classic:


now we're talking! sure, it's partisan, but more importantly, it's totally over the top. solid-gold ThoseShirts.com greatness.

but these days, we're getting into kind of a weird area.

first off, you've got these weird, delusional shirts that don't really mean anything. there's not one, but two shirts that endorse reagan for president in '08. here's one:


wait... what? is that supposed to be an attack on the democrats? how would that even work? if anything, the garment comes across as an attack on the republicans, for straying from their roots! since when has there been such nuance at ThoseShirts.com?

then we get into the obama ones, which just don't really make much sense.

first off, we have one that is childish, but not in the tried-and-true ThoseShirts.com brand of childishness. see for yourself:

yeah! fuck B.O.! body odor sucks so fucking hard! oh wait, you meant barack obama. okay. so, uh, fuck him! yeah! he represents... the FBI? or you work for the FBI, and you hate obama? what? where's the "hillary is a communist" rhetoric? you're just going to say "fuck him"? hell, this shirt doesn't even call barack a liberal! and in the brief time it takes for a passer-by to see you and judge your choice of shirt, he or she will be left baffled, thinking you have a mis-printed "FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR" tee. sub-par, at best, ThoseShirts.com.

but this one... uh... well:

um... what? i'm literally in the dark about this one. can someone explain it to me? he's a wimp, just like mickey mouse? i'm sure there's some political reference point here that i'm missing. i'm literally asking for your help. point it out to me.

and, moving away from the election, we get a shirt that is deceptively classical in its form:

okay, so on first glance, you think "alright, a vintage ThoseShirts.com winner! it takes something that liberals hate, something that's totally violent, and says that it's a good thing!" but would you really rather be torturing someone? i mean, brandishing a gun, sure, that's something people will respect you for, and they'll say "you are doing your patriotic duty" (i'm serious). but just saying "i would like to torture someone"—does that really convey a message that you want to send? there's nothing inherently manly or conservative about torture, is there? it has its defenders and detractors, but who says "it's awesome! i want to do it!" and is respected by anyone?

then again, i guess i should expect that last one from the people who brought you this old-school beauty, which still brings a swelling to my bosom:

god bless something.

story twenty: uprooting construction

"Mayor Announces Changes to City Construction Projects"

do you think the building boom is over in NYC? the jury's still out...

not a slow news day in asia!

so, as of this writing, the top story on nytimes.com is about how excited the US basketball team is to compete in the olympics (not really an A1 story on an average day, my friends), the top story on wsj.com is about a somewhat famous private equity investment firm going public (maybe worthy of a front-page headline in a paper's business section), and the WaPo has a piece about theories on the oil spike (certainly interesting and relevant, but not really breaking news).

sure, it's a sunday. but stuff is going down, people! there is news to be reported! get with it, major american newspapers!

let's just look at two really freaking crucial stories that were buried today.

(1) chinese authorities link muslim groups to terrorist bombings; say those groups are planning attacks on the olympics. okay, that one is just a goddamn no-brainer. muslims! terror! bombings! the olympics! where americans will be! americans like the basketball players you seem to care so much about, new york times! and what's more, the chinese government is most likely exaggerating about the attacks, or at least using them to justify the sure-to-be-high levels of repression that are planned for the games. this is pressing stuff! and it's not run-of-the-mill, either: people need to get educated about who the uyghurs are, and what's going down in muslim china.

(2) istanbul blows up. to their credit, the major papers are picking up this story, but obviously not giving it pride of place. look, we're talking about the most populous city in europe (or, if you don't consider it to be part of europe, the third most populous city in the world), a country that is an unstable ally in the iraq war (with its own agenda there), a country with a precarious balance of official secularism and rising religious discontent, a country where kurdish separatists have just recently taken foreign nationals hostage... basically, a powderkeg, and you're talking about sparks being lit in one of its most crowded neighborhoods, then having those sparks linked to kurdish "terrorists." shouldn't we all be getting worried? and not thinking about an american firm known for its buyout strategies?

my point is that it is never, ever a slow news day. any news junkie — or editor of a paper with an international focus — who says it's a slow news day is just not paying attention.

story nineteen: small contributors

"Number of Small Campaign Contributors Soars"

just a brief on a report that the campaign finance board issued. thought you should know.

story eighteen: brooklyn flea UNDER ATTACK

"Brooklyn Flea Market's Future is Focus of Town Hall Meeting"

STAY TUNED, BROOKLYNITES

also, the story got picked up by the NYT (scroll to the "neighborhoods" section).

are they really allowed to do that?

Mortgage-Lobby Chief Resigns

By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON and DAMIAN PALETTA
July 23, 2008; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- The chief of the mortgage industry's most powerful lobby group resigned Tuesday, just as the industry is defending itself from a hostile Congress and a punishing housing slump.

or, as i like to put it:

KEMPNER: Hey, look over there! [Runs offstage]

JELLYFISH UPDATE

the story got gawk'd, and i have to say, it is quite odd how the jellyfish became yesterday's big story in four of the city papers. what the hell?

story seventeen: jellyfish (...?)

"Spotlight on Jellyfish After the Triathlon"

i'm gonna be honest—i'm not super-proud of this one. i don't really know what it was supposed to be, and i think that uncertainty comes through in the text. but there it is.

update: keeth smart audio slideshow

you can view it here.

big trouble in big china

i reeeeeally hope that stuff like this doesn't keep happening.

people really ignore the level of domestic terrorism that china could theoretically face, as well as its ongoing prosecution of a low-level counterinsurgency against the uighurs.

this could be bad news.

story sixteen: the tribulations of keeth smart

"Fencing Captain Brings New Perspective to Third Olympics"

my first long-form profile at the sun (they don't do many of those—it's not that kind of paper). we're doing weekly profiles of olympians. i'm really proud of this piece.

oh and i'll be re-linking soon, when we have this multimedia thing for the piece up on the site. there were some snafus, i guess, because it wasn't ready for the site yet. whatever. you'll get to see it soon.

"it's a sign, alright!"

so of course, i loved the dark knight. and afterward, i thought to myself, "when has a hugely successful summer blockbuster ever been this good before?"

and now i know the answer:






NEVER FORGET.

story fifteen: clinton, obama, malaria

"President Clinton Says He's at Obama's Bidding"

closest i'd ever been to the guy. the article doesn't focus too much on the main event of the day, which was the malaria deal, so here are some links to stories that focus on that aspect:

WSJ writeup (complex, but written before the actual event)

AP writeup (short, sweet)

NYT writeup (pretty straightforward)

story fourteen: trenton & anchorage top NYC in GDP

"Odd Sign of Strength: Trenton Tops City in Per Capita GDP"

do with it as you will.

i know apologies mean nothing on a blog

but sorry for the silence. some stuff's going down in the family. i'll post when i can, but don't expect me to be too prolific.

oh wikipedia, will you never cease to amaze me?

who greenlit this as a category?

story thirteen: tools against sexual assault

"City Introduces Forensic Tool For Rape Cases"

not a big story, but i'm a little proud of it in that the NYT sent a reporter but didn't care about the story; rather, they just wanted to ask bloomberg about this charlie rangel mishigas.

stupid amtrak

they upped the fares.

honestly, we really need some kind of competition here, or at least a little bit of federal intervention. then again, i suppose the federal government has other things to worry about right now.

story twelve: the mysterious wonder-councilman

"Council Member Liu Excelling in Fund-Raising for Unknown Race"

a stoic man, playing his cards close to his vest. but playing them quite well.

also, i did the number-crunching for this page-one whistleblower: "How Payroll of Paterson Dwarfs All"

i just did the numbers, folks.



UPDATE:

NY1 picked up my john liu fundraising story. it's down at the bottom.

respect for the departed

i'm sure that i'm not the first to have asked this question, but what's the grace period on speaking ill of the dead?

i'm not speaking ill of anyone, but i know there are liberals, centrists, and media critics out there who are just chomping at the bit, waiting for their editors to let them rip into tony snow.

none of the obits slammed him, although many of them had subtle indications that future retrospectives would not be so kind to the former white house press secretary.

probably the most fair and balanced (pun partially intended) obit comes from peter baker, who used to be a white house reporter, albeit in the clinton years. most of it is glowing and respectful, but baker knows when to point out the important contradictions/subtleties of the man:

When a flamboyant radio reporter demanded to know whether Snow was going to evade a typically offbeat question, Snow chuckled. "No," he said, "I'm going to laugh at it."

In short, Snow led the first press briefing for the talk-show era, and he played the role with gusto. As the first working journalist in 30 years to serve as White House press secretary, he loved nothing more than jousting with reporters and expressed disappointment when they did not challenge him enough. To him, the job was the "Disney World of communications," as he once termed it. But at times, it seemed to be more about theater than information. He demonstrated little interest in the nitty-gritty of policy and delegated most off-camera reporter inquiries to his deputies. Precision was not his strong suit; translating difficult decisions into easily digestible explanations was.

the NYT does a mini-biography that kind of acknowledges the problems he faced, but doesn't delve too deeply.

the AP tries to play it down the middle, for better or worse. they play up the "something of an embarrassment" comment that snow once made about bush, using that as a way to counterbalance the man's general conservative outlook. not sure it all weighs evenly, but it must have been awkward to do an AP-style obit about a media figure.

the AFP doesn't even try to insinuate anyone's negative feelings about the man.

NPR takes a weird middle path, by having their most conservative commentator, juan williams, do a personal speech about snow, thus letting them have their cake and eat it too.

and of course, there are plenty of individual columns from fox news that are very positive.

so my point is, when are people going to start talking about how much they hated him? what's the moratorium on things like that? i'm not saying i hated him (no partisan stance in this blog), but it's not like it's a secret that he was persona non grata with a large swath of media commentators.

hell, even the daily show was holding back in its final interview with him, months before his death! and the daily show was probably more critical of tony snow than any other source!

when can we expect the backlash?

either way, my thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

story eleven: brazilian tourism boom

"Brazilians Lead City's Tourism Charge"

i'm not making up that part about the restaurant being named the ipanema.

more posts about trains

good magazine has a long, somewhat rambling, but still relevant article up about why america's train system sucks. i post it here because it's part of my growing obsession with the idea that trains could replace planes for regional travel — provided that they stop sucking.

key quote:

For better or worse, the company has proven good at survival, if not great at delivering passengers happy and on time. It now operates 425 locomotives pulling more than 2,000 train cars, employs nearly 20,000 people, and serves 46 states—Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, and South Dakota get skipped. But despite the recent increase in ridership and revenue, the company is still at the mercy of political crosswinds. In 2005, President Bush proposed cutting Amtrak’s entire $1.2-billion federal subsidy, arguing that it needed to become self-sufficient; presidential candidate Senator John McCain has been a vocal critic. Most important for me, Amtrak is also at the whim of the freight companies from whence it sprang. The company, too poor to own nearly any of the rails that it runs on, operates on borrowed infrastructure, using tracks owned by private freight companies who are legally bound to let Amtrak roll on their rails, but little else. Meaning that when a freight train needs to get by, Amtrak waits. Thus the delays, which begin to pile up.

food for thought.

why doesn't anyone talk frankly about 4chan?

i don't know what the hell is going on, but there are two big stories about 4chan that went up this week. the WSJ has an article up, written by jamin brophy-warren, and lev grossman wrote one for time. ah, another episode in the millennia-long struggle for adults to understand teenagers (and those with the maturity of teenagers).

despite the fact that the articles are about 3 years too late to be breaking news, they're actually pretty well written! indeed, if you don't know about 4chan at all, the pieces are pretty decent entry-points, given that they're written in plain english. i don't know of a better way to sum up the format of the venerable message board than by copying and pasting these two paragraphs from brophy-warren's piece:

4chan is a quaint throwback to the earliest Web pages that have since been eclipsed in the newest iterations of the Web. While other Web sites focus on flashy-social networking features and eye-catching advertisements, 4chan's design is archaic and the color scheme is two-tone. Each page on 4chan features photos and text. One user will post an image of something to start a discussion on one of the more than 40 different subject areas spanning origami and automobiles. Other users follow up with responses or requests for more images.

"It's like Craigslist -- hugely simple and highly useful," says David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 4chan's utility is its ability to gather millions of people in conversation in a single place and create a "meme-rich" environment, says Mr. Weinberger.

but in a way, that user-friendly writing defeats the purpose.

i don't want to be an elitist internet jerk, but i have to say that 4chan is fundamentally incomprehensible unless you: (a) use it for more than 2 hours a day over at least a 1-month period, (b) have an extensive knowledge of geek culture in all its forms, (c) have a willingness and desire to learn all the previous memes, and — and this is the big one — (d) are not easily fazed by insane amounts of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and death-worship.

sure, the time article acknowledges those concepts' existence on the board—"If you're looking for obscenity, blasphemy, homophobia, misogyny and racial insults, you don't have to dig too deep," grossman quips.

but he, as well as brophy-warren, spends the vast majority of his time talking about how 4chan is a "meme-factory" and how it created lolcats. sure, that point is relevant and everything... but it misses the forest for the trees, really.

it's a classic journalistic problem. you have to dance with the one that brung ya. if the story is "here's the site that created alla dem memes they's talkin' about these days," then you focus on that aspect of the environment, ignoring the rest.

it's like writing about an annual parade—the thesis is always going to be about what tiny aspects make that year's parade unique, and never about the fact that thousands and thousands of attendees are just having a good time, like always. so we never read the real truth of the event, because the event is far more boring than the lede makes it seem.

so, the fact that, like, 73% of all posts on 4chan are shockingly racist (moreso than the homophobia or the sexism, the racism is insane) is not the story that people will hear about. because the story is memes, memes, memes.

and yet, the parade analogy doesn't excuse reporters who examine 4chan. it's the most popular message board in the world, everyone. that makes it a big deal, not just on the internet. how can we ignore the fact that the most-used message board on the planet, the insane, lawless vanguard of the internet, is more of an obscenity fest than a meme-fest?

everyone who uses 4chan knows it. but they're not reporters. except me, i guess, but the trouble is... if i wrote an article about the truth of 4chan, would anyone care? does everyone really just want to hear about lolcats and nothing else?

and what does it say about me that i'm too afraid to actually post any of the offensive images from 4chan onto this blog? have i wimped out, too?

stories nine & ten: local vacations & a beaver gets an award

two "briefs" today:

"New Yorkers Urged to Be Tourists in the City"

but don't say the word "stay-cation."

"Municipal Art Society Honors an Eclectic Mix"

the beaver could not be reached for comment, as of press time.

beck: the untold story

today, beck hansen, born bek david campbell, sold to us as beck, had a double celebration. now's as good a time as any for me to tell you his secrets.

but first, the auspiciousness of today, july 8th, 2008. cause for celebration #1: beck had his 38th birthday. cause for celebration #2: he released his 12th (or is it 10th? or 8th? it depends on which albums you count) LP, modern guilt. it's great, but i'm too much of a fan to judge it with much objectivity. feel free to read what everyone else thinks. (i'm particularly fond of the rolling stone review.)

and so, with that double-whammy as a time-peg, i figured it was high time to do something i've meant to do for a long, long time: write down what he told me behind closed doors in the autumn of 2006.

mtv has a little sub-division called mtvU, aimed at college students, and they have a show there that they put out periodically, called "my shot with..." it's pretty simple: they give college kids the chance to interview their pop-culture idols. in 2006, with the information hot off the presses, the high lords of mtv sent word out to beck fans that they could sit on the interview couch with mr. hansen. i applied, went through several vetting processes, and got the gig.

on october 20th of that year, i entered the mtv studios, planted myself on a designated sofa, and after a bit of delay, he entered the room. we talked for about 45 minutes. i can't really describe the rush, but that's not important. if you want a more detailed account of how it all felt, here's a memoir i wrote about it (sans secrets) right after i did the interview, but before it was aired.

here's what mtv aired (sorry for the watermark—it was one of my first dvd rips, back in 2006, and i was using lame freeware):


My Shot With Beck from Abraham Riesman on Vimeo.

(oh also, i've lost a lot of weight since then. don't judge.)

now, here's the thing: they butchered the interview. they took 45 fascinating, revealing minutes and cranked out a 3-minute set of soundbites primarily aimed at selling the CD. can't say i exactly blame them, but it still feels shitty. and more importantly, they destroyed the remaining footage. it's gone forever.

but i have my memories.

so, without further ado, here are some points of interest that beck told me, and which have been lost to time until now. choose to doubt me, if you want, but i swear to god he told me all of these things:

• 1999's midnite vultures was originally going to be produced by richard d. james, aka aphex twin. how much of a wild insanity fest would that have been? apparently, the deal only fell through because richard was buying a new house at the time.
  
• the only song he hates performing is "debra"—a huge fan-favorite. he said people took it as a satire of R&B slow-jams, a reaction that made him uncomfortable, because he wanted to write a genuine slow-jam—no mocking intended. he didn't want to mock a genre he loved so much.
• despite his reputation as a secretive fellow, he thinks he doesn't hide his faith, his home life, or his real self—what you see on stage or in the hour of DIY videos he made at his house is basically all there is, given how tour- and recording-filled his life is. he was surprisingly calm when he talked about the topic of his personal life, even though i said "faith" (and i saw the producers cringeing, what with the flak he gets about scientology). he really felt that there wasn't anything to hide. (take that assertion for what it's worth—the anti-scientology types out there won't buy it, i'm sure.)
  
• nevertheless, he let me in on the raising of his then-two-year-old son, cosimo henri. it was a-do-ra-ble. i asked him if he sang songs to put his son to sleep, and he said yes. i asked if he sang his own hits, and beck laughed and said, "no, see, he forces me to write new songs." apparently, cosimo would say things like "daddy, sing your song about the airplane," and beck would say, "but i don't have a song about an airplane," and cosimo would then just demand that beck make one up!
• also, he said cosimo was weirdly inspiring, given that he was at an age when kids don't really know what words mean, so they'll just string together bizarre sentences, based on how the words sound. dammit, beck had an example, but i have forgotten it.
• he was a huge proponent of filling his website with tracks that would never see release anywhere else — like three nick drake covers that he abruptly posted just a few weeks prior to the interview — because he didn't really know how to fit lots of his songs onto albums. i mean, where would those nick drake covers go on an LP of mixed-genre acoustic funk?
• he'd just seen orson welles's f is for fake, and recommended it to me.
• working with michel gondry is freaking insane, because you have no idea of what his general vision is going to be—he just tells you to do things, and none of it makes sense until you see the final product.
  
• UGH HERE'S WHAT FRUSTRATES ME: i know i asked him (a) about how his music is received differently in japan, and (b) whether he has strange dreams, and i KNOW that he had interesting answers to both questions, but they're gone, like tears in rain.

man, when i started this post, i thought i was going to be all proud of myself for what i remembered, but now i'm just angry at what i forgot. i'm not sure i'll be able to sleep comfortably tonight. well, maybe some director kept a copy of the full thing somewhere, and it'll surface someday.

but in general, it was the first time he'd ever talked candidly about his personal life, which is a big deal for beck fans. but mtv (and his handlers) probably didn't really want you to see that stuff.

oh the terror of memory.

story eight: allegations of slavery

"Ex-Ambassador Enslaved an Immigrant, Lawsuit Claims"

let's see what happens with this one. stay tuned. it has a lot to do with filipino politics, but it still has relevance here.

story seven: local campaigns and social networking

"Social Networking Sites a 'Revolution' for City Candidates"

it's not necessarily the same at a local level as it is at a national level.

NY1 put it at the head of their daily political roundup, too. well, it's the headline at the top, and the story's at the bottom of the page.

a funny thing and a terrifying thing

first, the funny thing: the guys at spill.com come up with the dark knight, as done by michael bay. spoiler — boobs.

then, the terrifying thing: peter maass argues that equatorial guinea's teodoro obiang might be worse than mugabe.

long-stewed books and the implicit future of journalism

in a recent essay in the WaPo, jonathan karp — the publisher and EIC of venerable publishing house twelve — offers a very concise analysis of today's publishing market, and its potential future. shocker: he thinks intelligence is coming back.
'
i'm not the first to blog about the essay: the also-venerable leon neyfakh already covered it for the observer, calling it a "precise, sober critique of the publishing industry."

the gist of the essay is contained in this pithy assertion: "We are living in the age of the disposable book."

any subway rider or bookstore browser can back up paragraphs like this one:

Visit your neighborhood superstore, and you will be overwhelmed with ephemera: self-aggrandizing memoirs by recovering addicts; poignant portraits of heroic pets; hyperbolic ideological tracts by insufferable cable TV pundits; guides to staying wrinkle- and toxin-free; odes to Warren Buffett and Jesus Christ; manifestos for fixing America in 12 easy steps; manly accounts of the best athlete/season/team ever; and glittery novels about British royalty, love-starved shoppers, mournful cops and ingenious serial killers. (There are more novels about serial killers than there are actual serial killers.)

of course, that phenomenon is nothing new (he recalls working on tracts by manuel noriega in his early days), but has reached a fever pitch.

but all is not lost, he exclaims! like marx, predicting the inevitable, dialectic-induced collapse of capitalism, karp foresees the industry exhausting itself of such garbage. what will be the linchpin of that self-implosion? what will save the print industry?

why, digital competition, of course.

Many categories of books will be subsumed by digital media. Reference publishing has already migrated online. Practical nonfiction will be next, winding up on Web sites that can easily update and disseminate visual and textual information. Readers of old-fashioned genre fiction will die off, and the next generation will have so many different entertainment options that it's hard to envision the same level of loyalty to brand-name formula fiction coming off the conveyor belt every year. The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle.

bizarre, right? no one in the world of prognostication about journalism sees the blogosphere as a way of improving — much less saving — print from itself. but here karp is, saying slow-cooked works like those of franzen or messud will make a return:

Consequently, publishers will be forced to invest in works of quality to maintain their niche. These books will be the one product that only they can deliver better than anyone else. Those same corporate executives who dictate annual returns may begin to proclaim the virtues of research and development, the great engine of growth for business. For publishers, R&D means giving authors the resources to write the best books -- works that will last, because the lasting books will, ultimately, be where the money is.

now, what can i add to what karp has already said? an implicit corollary that might be bad for major newspapers, but good for hard-working journalists.

see, one of the long-standing fears among newspaper editors has been that more and more reporters will go the way of bob woodward, largely abandoning periodical reporting and instead taking on lucrative nonfiction book contracts.

i mean, why not? just like gus says, a lotta times, if you really want to get a story right, you need to get all the angles. and how can you get all the angles if you're in the pressure-cooker of a daily, or even a weekly?

that's where karp's predictions might be good for publishing, good for journalists, but bad for periodicals. if the publishing industry really does start going for more long and thought-out books (although he's referencing fiction, non-fiction would clearly fit into his rubric, as well), that could mean more of a market for big-name writers at the NYT, the WSJ, the WaPo, the LAT, the trib, the times-picayune, the new yorker, and so on, to get contracts with publishers. and then boom—you've got better books about nonfiction topics, with real journalism that gets all the angles, but a gradual abandoning of the periodical ship.

of course, i'm prognosticating based on a prognostication, and that's about as useful as a blog blogging about a blog that blogged itself. but it's a thought, and i don't think it's too far-fetched.

ghost story: obit for clay felker

"Clay Felker, 85, Trend-Spotting Editor"

sorry this one's a bit late. forgot to post it. i wrote half of it, and it was a real honor to interact with some of the people who remember him. other great obits and memorials are available at the NYT, the observer, and of course, new york magazine.

story six: whole foods and urban development

"Whole Foods Seen as Boost to TriBeCa"

the store sort of represents what the area around ground zero has become, for better or worse. as one anti-gentrification activist put it to me, it's not really gentrification if there weren't any poor people there to begin with.