December 2011
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“Red Barber recounted in Ken Burns’s Baseball Documentary that...”
– “Branch Rickey,” Wikipedia
Idealism and astute business sense. The most American reason to do anything.
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Top 20 most played artists in 2011
According to my Last.fm, and therefore not entirely accurate.
Tyler, the Creator
Lady Gaga
The National
Taylor Swift
Kanye West
The Gaslight Anthem
Nicki Minaj
Laura Marling
Ke$ha
The Horrible Crowes
Curren$y
The Notorious B.I.G.
EMA
Lil Wayne
Bon Iver
Jay-Z
Britney Spears
ASAP Rocky
Fleetwood Mac
Young Jeezy
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Top 20 most played tracks in 2011
According to my Last.fm, and therefore not entirely accurate. List edited to one track per artist.
EMA - California
Lady Gaga - Hair
Britney Spears - Till the World Ends
Russian Red - Cigarettes
Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are
JoJo - Marvin’s Room (Can’t Do Better)
Ke$ha - Blow
The Gaslight Anthem - She Loves You
Frank Ocean - Strawberry Swing
Against Me! - I Was a Teenage...
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“Paul really is a federalist in the extreme sense, and he would give states and...”
– Andrew Sullivan, “Why Aren’t The Gays Attacking Paul? Ctd,” The Dish, December 30, 2011
“Sorry to break the news, but he’s a libertarian.”
So what.
This silly idea that adherence to libertarianism excuses support for oppression because libertarians are...
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“Saturday was Vanessa’s vampire day. She usually woke up after dark and then went...”
– Cecily von Ziegesar, Gossip Girl (2002)
Note: Vanessa doesn’t sleep until sunset. She has a “vampire day.”
Awesome.
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“Hello?” Daniel Humphrey answered his cell phone on the third ring. He was...”
– Cecily von Ziegesar, Gossip Girl (2002)
And later:
Dan was eating an Entenmann’s chocolate donut—his second—and sipping instant coffee with Coffee-mate and four teaspoons of sugar. He liked sugar and caffeine, which was probably part of the reason why his hands shook. Dan wasn’t into being...
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11 stories that mattered in 2011 →
This here is my end of year wrap up for American Review, highlighting the biggest stories in American politics from January 3rd to December 18th. Just when you thought you’d safely forgotten how Republicans tried to make the US treasury default over the summer, my column is here to remind you! And what about that Osama bin Laden guy? Remember him?
2011… it was a year in which things...
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“What CD is Bella listening to in Chapter Seven? I took that information out...”
– StephenieMeyer.com | Twilight Series | Twilight | FAQ
thisisareallybadidea:
So 1, thanks, Sarah, for bringing this to my attention.
2, Man, The Hunger Games is so much better than this.
Word to Stephenie Meyer for thinking about this. The passage in question:
Once in my room, I locked the...
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ninefruits asked: Montreal is only about 13% Anglophone (people with English as a mother tongue), but over 20% of the city are allophone (people with neither French nor English as a mother tongue). These people may gravitate towards English due to it's economic advantage in North America as a whole. Montreal was never a majority anglophone city, however, it had a much larger anglophone population, who were...
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More on Montreal →
I was hoping one of my Montreal-based followers would comment on my post. Here’s Alex, who knows more than I do:
As a Montréalais, this is pretty on-point. Except for a few things. I’m not sure if Montreal was ever majority Anglophone. It was around 50% at times and these days is closer to 40%. Also, the issue wasn’t just economic domination - this is a really simplistic read...
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“A North American example comes from the Montreal indie rock boom of the aughts....”
– Matt Yglesias, “The Cheap/Cool Connection,” Slate, December 28, 2011
This is why it’s important to understand the intrinsic subjectivity of taste and the way racial, economic, and gender dynamics inform our idea of what is “good.” Look, I like Arcade Fire and Wolf...
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Watchedwardok:
People often used to ask me: “Edward, you have such a clear speaking voice. Can you sing as well?”
If you watch this video of me massacring “Call Your Girlfriend” at karaoke, you will know the answer is “no”. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love every minute of it.
We went to karaoke tonight! Ed did “Call Your Girlfriend.” We also did “Dancing On My Own”...
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Top 91 things in music in 2011 (6-10)
6. Ducktails - Art Vandelay (Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, 2011)
The catchiest, most overtly pop move I’ve heard from Ducktails, and would apply for Matthew Mondanile’s regular band Real Estate if they hadn’t gone on to release “It’s Real” later in the year. The languid suburban wooziness of “Art Vandelay” reminds me most of the Promise...
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“One wonders if Puff, who does seem to be a bit of workaholic, buried himself in...”
– Michelle
Weird thing is that Puff’s so ostentatious — and, let’s face it — exploitative of his grief that it seems strange to think of how he might have privately reacted to Big’s death. When Jay mentions Big, even in the most self-aggrandizing way, you always feel he’s...
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New York I love you, but get off my TV
We all know my disdain for the myopic focus on Los Angeles and New York posessed by the American culture industries. Great news: It’s now quantifiable! The myopicness, I mean, not my disdain.
The 2011 US fall television season began with 83 different programs airing each week. Of these, 19 were news, reality, game shows, or sports programs, and had no identifiable US setting or their...
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International Brewers Anthem
jakec replied to your photo: Spotted in an Australian bottle shop: Imported…
Ew, are there really Australians that truly believe American beer is categorically worse? I always assumed it was transparent posturing to cling to national identity.
Why is American beer like making love in a canoe? I suspect this is changing as beer moves upmarket, and consumers improve their knowledge but a ton...
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“Two conclusions can be drawn from this brief history. The first is that the...”
– Joseph Stiglitz, “The Book of Jobs,” Vanity Fair, January 2012
…Merry Christmas?
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De La Soul - Simply (Art Official Intelligence:...
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Boxing Day is the worst day of the year.
The manic joy of the holiday season starts dissipating around 4pm on the 25th, but it isn’t until the next morning that the smoke really clears and we get to take proper account of the damage. From there, the queasy yawn of summer stretches into the distance: a blast furnace of days without demarcation, numbing repetitions of cricket, the inanity of the summer Herald, and reports of new...
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katherinestasaph asked: Hi! Just to clear something up -- it's not that I hated those parts, so much as I hated hearing them because every time I did, it made me almost literally sick. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's done well -- generally lousy work can still have that effect on me if it hits close enough to home -- but in this case, it was. I think I gave it an [8] and "great job, poor...
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Top 91 things in music in 2011 (1-5)
I might do some other lists this year, but this will be my main one. Not albums, not songs, not shows, just things. Listed in alphabetical order. Some reflections will be recycled, some will be new, some will be short, some will be sprawling and discursive. Like every year, I haven’t heard everything; like all years, discovering what I missed will be part of the fun.
2011: Tom Ewing said...
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“Pedestrians scowl, make anti-white remarks, and shout anti-white rap songs to...”
– Ron Paul*, “Washington, D.C.: A Black Thing,” The Ron Paul Political Report, December 1989
Ron Paul* on rap music: It’s deliberately designed to annoy white people!
(If you don’t know, he says things far more poisonous than this bizarre snippet. But I gotta bring you news...
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Counting the errors.
douglasmartini replied to your quote: It’s all a far cry from hip-hop’s “no homo”…
Was it really 2009 that people started saying “no homo?” I feel like that’s a factual inaccuracy. I also feel like even though rap culture is “far” from “no homo” (at least as far as it has been), it’s still pretty close to “no homo.”
I mean, yeah, the 2009 part is his most egregious mistake. He’s half...
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“It’s all a far cry from hip-hop’s “no homo” movement, which swept the culture...”
– Chris Lee, “Why Rappers Are Suddenly Speaking Out in Support of Gay Pride,” The Daily Beast, December 20, 2011
Yes, this also mentions Lil B. What’s more embarrassing: Well-intentioned journalists awkwardly misunderstanding rap or well-intentioned rappers awkwardly trying to be...
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“My basic problem with Paul is this: His conception of freedom is fairly simply...”
– Adam Serwer, “Freedom For Some, Ctd,” The American Prospect, August 25, 2011
More:
In that light, Friedersdorf’s characterization of the Civil Rights Act as some anachronistic concern is a bit frustrating. Paul’s opposition to the bill suggests to me that as president, he...
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“Liberals don’t just want new legislation. We also desire new ways of living and...”
– Rakim Brooks, “Are Liberals Really Abandoning Obama?” Dissent Magazine, December 1, 2011
As I say: Liberalism is about taking a mercenary approach to individual rights. Can a government help advance support individual liberty? Support it. Is a government constraining freedom? Oppose it....
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Shell games and conjuring tricks.
Both Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey use symbols in a very specific way, and they both attract considerable opprobrium for doing so.
Usually, when artists make use of symbols in their music, particularly highly charged ones, such as icons of patriotism, commerce, history, or sexuality, they do so because they want to use the symbol as a tool to impart a specific message. Bruce Springsteen, for...
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“3. Remember that what matters out of Iowa is the spin.
4. Remember that the...”
– Jonathan Bernstein, “Quick Iowa Notes,” A Plain Blog About Politics, December 19, 2011
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“Men might still dominate the creation and production of television, but women...”
– Anna Holmes, “The best TV criticism’s ink is pink, but powerful,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2011
It is indeed possible for crit to be less male dominated — or not male dominated; Holmes says ”female membership in [the Television Critics Association] has risen from 30...
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A Holiday in North Korea
theutopian:
By Michael Goldstein.
The concept of oriental despotism also helps explain the architecture of Pyongyang, which is in many ways more similar to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, or Astana in Kazakhstan than to Stockholm or Santiago de Cuba. One finds the same long roads, flat surfaces, rows of equally spaced apartment buildings; everywhere the same arid, isolating monumentalism. Amidst this...
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monsterpussy asked: what do YOU think are Ron Paul's chances at the primaries and why? The corners of the internet I spend my time on either say he's the saviour or the worst thing to ever happen - where would you call it going? (sorry i'm too drunk to word this well, I hope you know what I mean though?)
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“Gingrich is broad and self-assured and faintly decadent, with a Cheshire Cat’s...”
– Ross Douthat, “Ron Paul Rising,” The New York Times, December 13, 2011
Perfect.
And:
Most important, they represent two very different endpoints for the Tea Party movement. Paul, for all his crankishness, is the kind of conservative that Tea Partiers want to believe themselves to be:...
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Christina Milian - Who’s Gonna Ride ft....
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““Culture of Poverty” is a poisonous phrase, mostly because...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Empathy, Cont,” The Atlantic, December 14, 2011
You should also read this.
EDIT: I probably should pull out a section of the TNC bit that I think is particularly important, which is the first sentence. It’s always useful to remember that even though stupid...
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