Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Ten Rap Stars Who Have Come Out In Support Of Gay Equality
Our friends at ego trip count Jay-Z's comments to CNN Monday as the fourth example of a notable rapper to have "publicly voiced some progressive opinion on the issue." (After Chuck D, El-P and Fat Joe.) But there have been more! 50 Cent, Eminem, Prodigy, ASAP Rocky and Lil B have, too. And N.O.R.E, who last year told XXL magazine, “If a gay person bothers you, that’s because they know something about you that you don’t know about yourself yet... Nobody should really care what happens in someone else’s bedroom... That’s their lifestyle. It doesn’t bother me. I live my lifestyle my way. It doesn’t bother me.”
The Early Days of Tenacious D
One night in 1996, Jack Black and Kyle Gass — the rambunctious, rotund frontmen for the mock rock outfit Tenacious D — stood on stage in a small cafe making demands. They were performing a bit in which they mapped out to a couple of Hollywood agents, played by Mr. Show’s David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, the route that would take them to stardom. “Number one we want a fucking record deal,” began Black, before ticking off further requests for a TV show and a movie. “That would be the pinnacle — if we had a movie.” At this point in their career Tenacious D were little known outside of certain small comedy circles in Los Angeles, so as he began to speak Black was unable to suppress an amused grin at the outrageous nature of their requests.
Yet within a decade Tenacious D would achieve, in bombastic fashion, all that they envisioned that night on stage. In short order they had under their loosely strapped belts a television show, a critically acclaimed record, and a feature film with the band’s name blazed prominently into the title. Although the rock opera Tenacious D In The Pick of Destiny turned out to be a surprise box-office bomb, earning a paltry eight million dollars, the duo’s prominence was still incontestable. On the journey upwards their 2001 album Tenacious D went platinum, they played Madison Square Garden as part of a world tour, and Jack Black emerged as a mega-star actor in his own right.
But it was that first jewel in Tenacious D’s crown that best captured the rowdy, freewheeling spirit of their act. READ MORE
So David Byrne's birthday was Monday. Brian Eno's birthday was yesterday. Today is the 66th birthday of guitar genius Robert Fripp. If anything were going to make me believe in astrology, the fact that these three were all born on roughly the same day might just—nah, even that's not gonna do it, astrology is junk. Still... WEIRD. @ 2:40 pm
Chefs Are The New Rock Stars And I'm Already Sort Of Wishing They Weren't
“[That] anti-establishment, sticking-it-to-the-man mentality. They’re the ones saying, ‘I’m going to butcher a whole pig and serve you its face, and if you don’t like it, too bad.’”
—Lollapalooza culinary director Graham Elliot, on how celebrity chefs are the new rock stars. You know, for the most part, I am okay with the cultural ascendance of food in America. I like food and I like it to be good, and if silly fetishization and despicable words like "foodie" are the price to pay for an increase in the quality and availability of things for me to eat, fine. But this is all starting to feel like a Dan Cortese "Rock N' Jock" softball game. (I will pay Darryl Hall A MILLION DOLLARS if he changes the words of "Maneater" to "She's a ham eater," after April Bloomfield is done butchering her 200-pound pig on the main stage at The Great GoogaMooga festival on Saturday in Prospect Park.)
"People have an inbuilt 'gaydar', which enables them to judge in the blink of an eye whether someone is gay or straight, a study at the University of Washington has found. And it is easier to judge a woman's sexuality than a man's – just from glancing at them." @ 2:00 pm
When and What Do Guys Think About Pants? An Investigation
Content series are produced in partnership with our sponsors. Up first: Pants! Brought to you by Life Khaki from Haggar.
Over the weekend I went to the Lehigh Valley Mall. It’s just outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and would rank as the most popular (and second-most swanky) of the malls in the region. It’s standard-issue, two-levels, lacking a proper food court (although it does have what they call a “lifestyle center,” which was added in 2007, and which is basically a strip-mall add-on with stores slightly more upscale than the ones inside).
Recently I have become concerned about my own wardrobe. I have been somewhere just north of a slob, pretty much always wearing blue jeans, a t-shirt and a button-up over it. Unless it’s the summer: then the jeans get swapped out for a pair of cargo shorts. I never really gave it much thought (obviously), but recently have been forced to reevaluate after a small blow to my vanity. I'm growing up. So I went to the mall.
The standard-issue enclosed shopping mall hasn’t changed much since its popularization in the 60s. They are uniform, convenient in their climate control and their stacked arrays of retail concerns and their vast seas of asphalt on which to park, cemented into popular culture by
one thing or the other, depending on your demographic. I grew up in them like everyone else in the suburbs, and the Lehigh Valley Mall is no different than the malls of my youth, which was not making it any easier to figure out which dudes to talk to about pants.
The inciting incident regarding my vanity, between you and me, was an acquaintance, having heard that I once acted in plays, asking if I’d be game to audition for a show. Tempted, I asked to see a synopsis of the production, and quickly realized that I was a candidate for a character described as "fat and balding." Now, I may be above my optimum weight, and there’s a big difference between thinning hair and baldness, but whatever, vanity wounded! Time to start to get my business correct.
The problem was, how to go about my business and getting it correct? READ MORE
An Interview With Thom Steinbeck
Thomas Steinbeck got a whole lot of advice from his dad. John Steinbeck would send his son letters — sometimes 18-page-long ones, when he didn't have time to edit — ranting, raving, and generally trying to be helpful. That's more than my dad did for me; his best (read: only) relationship advice has been to "always have an extra bottle of ketchup on the shelf, for when you run out."
Thanks, pops.
So when I read the beautiful relationship advice John wrote in a letter to then-14-year-old Thom, I wanted to hear from Thom what it was like to receive such weighty letters. I should be so lucky.
Nope. Turns out John Steinbeck was just like every dad: He had his brilliant moments, but he had his crotchety old where's-the-remote-pass-me-my-beer-sorry-I-forgot-your-dance-recital moments too. And just like me, Thom often dismissed his advice. The best advice John gave his son? Don't become a writer. And Thom dismissed that nugget, going on to write three novels — Down to a Soundless Sea, In the Shadow of the Cypress, and, most recently, The Silver Lotus.
Thom told me all about the girl in the letter, being a hormonal teenager, and how damn hard it was to decipher his dad's tiny handwriting.
A: How about we start with the letter. Do you know the one that I'm talking about?
T: Yeah, I do. READ MORE
Man On, About, Against the Internet
Facebook still figuring out their business model.Hope they nail it by Friday.
— Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) May 16, 2012
"Andrew Keen is a smooth-talking hired gun who blankets the country warning conference rooms full of middle managers about the straw-men dangers that await them if they share with one another too freely."
"[W]hen a study of identical twins found an aversion to cilantro stems from a genetic glitch, the herb's bashers finally had a good reason why they found the leaves of the Coriander plant so offensive. But who are these people in the anti-cilantro community? No one had a clue — until now." @ 11:40 am
The Bodybuilder's Guide To Getting Rid Of "Computer Back"
Do you suffer Computer Back? I do. Mine is caused by the terrible habit of hunching over the laptop while also curling my legs under the chair in a sort of corkscrewed position that is osteomuscularly nightmarish but somehow conducive to concentration. When I stand up I look like a stooped, slightly concerned turtle. Now, lots of people have Computer Back, and nearly everybody with whom I've talked about it has, at some point in the conversation, brought up the fact that Philip Roth works at a standing desk. That tidbit, you'll remember, came out in a 2000 David Remnick profile, and it apparently haunts the imagination of everyone with a computer-related job who read it.
Roth wakes early and, seven days a week, walks fifty yards or so to a two-room studio. The front room is outfitted with a fireplace, a desk, and a computer set up on a kind of lecturn where he can write standing up, the better to preserve a bad back.
That The New Yorker included no diagrams or ordering information seems like an oversight/ lost opportunity on somebody's part. But if you're interested, here's an option that might suit, and here are some others. (A standing desk also has the benefit of keeping you from dying from "sitting disease.")
If that's not for you, what else to do? Obviously, sit and stand up straighter, but when things have gotten really crinkled, who can remember what good posture even feels like? Emailing about this with writer Lili Loofbourow ("let's talk about ailments!"), she directed me to some ace advice she'd found at a bodybuilding forum, and I share it now in the spirit of a Computer Back PSA. READ MORE
"What I want her to do is get rid of those bloody jackets. Every time she turns around you’ve got that strange horizontal crease, which means they’re cut too narrow in the hips. You’ve got a big arse, Julia. Just get on with it."
—Feminist hero Germaine Greer speaks truth to power while discussing Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. @ 10:40 am
Future Brooklyn: The Dadvorcé Mancave
Good news! I ran into a bunch of married Brooklyn dads last night (in Manhattan, of course), who weren't so happy about our thoughts on how the real estate needs of their upcoming divorces are going to destroy whole swaths of gentrified Brooklyn.
But the disgruntled dads did bring up something obvious I hadn't considered. What do you think the likely behavior of a bunch of 40-something dadvorcé's will be? That's right: dadcaves. They're not going to live on their own when they get divorced, thereby hogging all the apartments. They're going to all be roomies! They'll form packs of bro households, with a high-up wet bar that the kids can't reach and a Wii in every room. A Frankies cookbook in every kitchen! It'll be their third boyhood! This, at least, will keep the housing market from being completely flooded by the forthcoming Brooklyn divorce wave. Plus, they're all going to be living in the new Crown Heights, after it's gentrified, anyway. That's too bad, because do you know how hard it is to get from the 3 train to the F train? Commuting from daddy's Brodown Palace to Mommy's Lil' Yoga Retreat in Carroll Gardens is going to be horrible for Parsnip and Carrot, the sad hipster twins of divorce.
(Also obviously: the gay dadvorcé—you know, the ones who were bi and then married a woman and then started dating men again after the divorce—will just move back to Manhattan.)
