One Of The Best Rock Albums Of All Time Returns Tomorrow
Tomorrow Matador Records is reissuing Come's "11:11." If you don't remember the 90s, and really why would you, it's one of the great rock records of… all time? Yup, absolutely. Come toured with Pavement and Nirvana, considered their major label options, and put out three more albums in the 90s, even as half the lineup left. And then… everyone sort of drifted away. Now the original four-some is on tour in Europe; they'll wend their way to America in mid-June. Over the weekend, we Skyped with Come's Thalia Zedek about getting the band back together. She was in Berlin, getting lost; she also has a new album out herself, from the fine folks at Thrill Jockey.
I always think of you as a New Yorker, but you live in Boston. Do you… like Boston?
I do like Boston a lot. It’s a really cool town. It’s a very liveable town. I like New York too, but Boston is a little easier to be a musician in: places to play, clubs, rehearsing. I’ve never had a problem getting a show in New York living in Boston. I loved living in New York but I kind of didn’t have my shit together. It’s so competitive. So many people from everywhere trying to make it there.
It’s nicer now that we’re older.
I was kinda screwed up when I was there. But Boston’s actually a really cool town! I know a lot of people don’t see that. It’s a good small big city, tons of music, and it’s pretty and it’s pretty small in a sense. They say it’s the most European of American cities.
So would say Henry James. What’s it like going on off on a big tour again?
I’ve been touring with my solo band fairly consistently, it’s not like I haven’t toured in 20 years. It’s really cool. I would say that … none of us have really changed that much. It’s all coming back to me. Everyone’s changed a little bit but not actually that much.
In my make-believe mind about your world, I imagine you guys making this dark album and tearing each other apart the whole time.
I think we weren’t tearing each other apart. To us, it was what came out of us when we started playing with each other. I guess we’re all sort of, we had our separately—we’re a good combination of people. It didn’t come out of fighting, but it’s where our heads were at. We weren’t like 'we’re so depressing, why don’t we write something less depressing.' We'd all kind of met before in various ways. Chris used to be in the Barbecue Killers. They were insane, they had this singer Laura Carter that I went out with briefly, and they toured with me with Live Skull and we got in a lot of trouble. Arthur never got in trouble, he was a good boy. I was hanging out with a lot of Athens peole. And they both ended up in Boston, and I knew Chris from a mustual friend—when you live in New York, you have a visitor every weekend. So we'd all been through a little bit of stuff by that time. I was probably 27 or something. READ MORE
"So maybe 'hoping it doesn’t rain' isn’t the best business model for an outdoor food and wine festival in New York City?"
Busta Rhymes Is 40
Trevor Tahiem "Busta Rhymes" Smith, Jr. occupies a singular place in hip-hop history. He is a super-good rapper, blessed with a flow as quick and nimble and flexible as any we've ever heard. He's never put together truly great songs, though, or albums you want to listen to all the way through. He's perhaps most famous for his guest appearances on other peoples' songs—beginning with his jaw-dropping verse on A Tribe Called Quest's "Scenario" in 1991, he earned a reputation as the genre's greatest scene stealer. (Andre 3000 has since stolen that crown.) What Busta is, though, I think, is hip-hop's greatest video artist. He is the very definition of "animated" and his collaborations with Hype Williams in the late '90s set a new standard for rap video—showed how they could be something more than, better, beyond, the music they were set to. Busta turns 40 today.* Let's celebrate with five of his groundbreaking performances. READ MORE
"New research suggests chronic smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and increasing age are all associated with increased oxidative damage to brain tissue."
—I am not sure what they're trying to say here, although that probably proves their point.
Terrible Combination In Your Mouth Explained
You know, if you gargle with bourbon none of this is ever a problem.
"If you like using online tools to hunt and gather your food, take note: Seamless and GrubHub, two of the better-known players in the mobile food-delivery business, announced today that they will be merging their services."
I Made $570K Last Year, But I Don't Feel Rich (In Fact, I Feel Worried)
Jake Smith is a name I've made up for the person who sent me this email:
I'm a physician in my early forties. I make $450-500K. I read a lot about finance and I know that technically I am in the 1%, but I don't feel rich at all. I don't know if it was the way I was raised or because for a time I was living paycheck to paycheck or if it's because I have three kids (and hence, eventually will have three tuitions to pay), but I don't feel wealthy yet. Maybe it's because I live in an affluent suburb of a big city and most of my neighbors seem to be doing really well. I don't know. Have you run across other folks like this?
I had not, personally. So we arranged to speak on the phone. READ MORE
I don't know what you did from Friday to Sunday, but I spent the weekend putting together the proposal for the book I have so long refused countless entreaties to write. Boo Hoo Hoo I'm Sad: A History Of Why I Suck is pitched as a memoir—because, really, that's the only way to sell anything these days; unless it happened to you (or, you know, "happened" to you) apparently it does not appeal to the only prurient interests that remain susceptible enough to manipulation in our post-literate society to entice the purchase of a piece of print carrying no perfume samples within its covers—but is less a recounting of all the terrible tragedy I've experienced in my life than it is an examination of why I feel everything so much more strongly than the rest of society, most of whose members seem perfectly capable of conducting the quotidian activities of existence blissfully unaware of the rampant anguish that comes at them from every corner. Why is it possible that almost everyone else needs not contend with the staggering wave of sorrow under which a simple stroll down the street submerges me? It can't simply be because my emotions are more finely calibrated or my empathy levels are much more attuned to the manifest misery humanity wears on its sleeve. I mean, yes, that's part of it, but it can't just be that; in the absence of some kind of higher power who has designated me as the back upon which the suffering of the world must be borne (although how much easier would things be if I could just blame God for everything? A lot! A lot easier!) an alternate explanation, probably involving my superior intelligence and considerably more powerful capacity for compassion, needs to be found. So the book will be an attempt to understand how it is that I am seemingly the only one who sees the sadness while the rest of you continue with your callous indifference and insensitivity to the agony all around. Again, this is not the work I wanted to write, but more and more it is clearly the work I have to write, particularly now that the new edition of The Big Book of Crazy is causing so much controversy. I mean, if we can piggyback off that I can totally retire and be sad from the comfort of some tropical island. Email me if you're interested.
Why A News Portal Snapped Up A James Deen Furry Cosplay Gif Site
Yahoo buying Tumblr is digital gentrification.
— Jason Chen (@diskopo) May 19, 2013
The question of the weekend is: "Why did Yahoo! spend one-third of their cash on hand to buy a company that by all accounts is about to run out of money?"
And here are some fairly sober answers, including: "if you were given 1.1 billion dollars, would you be able to build a service used by more than ten million people for more than an hour a month? You could not. That's a bigger audience than American Idol, or for that matter anything else (except Facebook or Twitter)." That's very attractive!
(I mean of course if you gave me $1.1 billion I'd be like "screw blogging, let's PUT SOME CATS ON THE MOON AND START CIVILIZATION OVER," but I suppose that's not really relevant.)
Also, counterpoint:
@djacobs @mike_ftw Clearly though you *can* build something the size of Tumblr for less than a billion dollars because Tumblr did it?
— Rusty Foster (@rustyk5) May 20, 2013
And here's Yahoo's CEO: "The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience." That is quite literally the money quote. But, AWESOME! Hooray, someone invented advertising that will enhance user experience finally! I cannot wait for it to be unleashed on the Internet at last!
Of course, and here's Tumblr's CEO: "Fuck yeah." Oh… well said, sir.
The real question before us: will Tumblr always be a safe space to put our complaints about the TSA opening our James Deen dildo boxes? Only time will tell, see you in 2017.
FLASHBACK: Picture it, February 2009. Tumblr's then-lead developer Marco Arment mocked talk of a Yahoo! purchase of Tumblr (rumored sale price: circa $50 million): "I hope they let me work on some of the many exciting projects at Yahoo! Who needs a high rank at a small company in New York? I want to move to California and get stuck in traffic every day on the way to my midlevel engineering job where I sit in a cubicle all day and can't make any product decisions while working on something nobody will ever see to manage regional ad clickthrough stats tracking." Good stuff.
Moon Explosion Video Not Explodey Enough
"An explosion caused by a meteoroid impact on the moon a couple of months ago was visible from Earth with the naked eye, according to Science@NASA. But don’t worry if you didn’t catch it — it was only noticeable for a moment."
—Ugh, they are totally right about the way desensitization happens. It used to be that a simple video of the moon getting walloped by space would have kept me sated for days, but after years of poring over each and every frame of hot rock-on-moon action it barely registers; I need something considerably more graphic and extended to excite me now.
Let's Talk About Books, Baby, Let's Talk About You And Me
Things to do include: Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, Katha Pollitt on Muriel Rukeyser at McNally Jackson, and Gary Greenberg with Gideon Lewis-Kraus on the DSM at BookCourt.
Hanksy Makes Good: From Art Goof To Art Star
In 2012, Hanksy was a street artist gaining a degree of notoriety for his street art depicting Tom Hanks as a Banksy rat. Since then, he has sold out multiple New York gallery shows, created a large and loyal band of internet supporters, energetic detractors, and is about to open his first show in Los Angeles, at Gallery 1988. Since my first interview with Hanksy, we have become good friends. I do not believe this infringes on my ability to ask questions about pun-based street art.
EA: Hanksy, we meet again. The first time I interviewed you was in February of 2012. How much has your life changed since then?
Hanksy: Well damn, time flies. And so does my "art career" apparently. It's been hectic and nonstop. When we first chatted I had just wrapped up my first show and I was unsure what to do next.
EA: And now you're about to do your first west coast show at a new gallery.
Hanksy: Yeah! Crazy. I sadly moved away from exclusively mashing up my namesake with iconic Banksy images. And with this new work came new opportunities. I had a second sold-out NYC exhibition back in December of 2012 and now I'm out in LA, ready to give the West Coast some light-hearted pun in the sun.
EA: Can you talk about moving away from the solely Tom Hanks/Banksy image? What was the impetus?
Hanksy: Well after my first show, I was wondering how long or far I could take this whole pun thing. Like how many times could I beat the horse before it ceased to exist? So I made myself a deal: put up one round of work, all revolving around celebrity puns that did not involve my century's greatest thespian. And if the public or my lonely internet fans liked it, I'd keep going. And the response was great. Probably better than anything I had received previously. So I kept going and going. And here I am today. Killing the pun game, yo!
EA: Were you concerned about criticism that you were a one-trick pony? READ MORE
New York City, May 16, 2013
★★★★ The smell of growing things came through the door, but that was the only change to mark the crossing from indoors to out. The air flowing under a shirt in public was indistinguishable from the air in private. Sun shone white on the treetops in Dante Park; birdsong was general. The bodega had peonies and watermelons out. Now things had overshot equilibrium, and a light sweat started and evaporated. On the office roof, the scotch in the lowball glasses was golden, and the light was heading that way. Thermal balance had returned. In a crosswalk, raw threads poked out from a dress chopped off short. Uptown in the evening there were light blue clouds against a deep blue zenith, and deep blue clouds against the light blue west.
In Support of Credit Card Points, With Caveats
My husband and I put almost all of our expenses on our Costco American Express card. Dinner, groceries, gas, travel—it all goes on the card. And then once a month, I use money from our joint checking account to pay the bill in full. Sometimes we've had an expensive month: We've been doing a lot of traveling lately, and we're preparing for a cross-country move, so our credit card bills have been much higher than usual lately. When that happens, I figure out how much more money we need, and we each transfer that amount from our individual accounts to the joint one (we have a standard amount we put in the account each month that covers normal expenses, so the extra transfers only happen when we buy something big, like furniture or plane tickets).
This works for us because we don't live paycheck-to-paycheck. I would never recommend making heavy use of credit if you're coming up lean at the end of every month. But we do have enough that we could pay off last month's credit card bill and pay for this month's spending. So always being one month behind in paying for things, so to speak, isn't something that worries me. Besides, when I calculate how much money we have, I always subtract the current credit card balance from whatever's in savings. I'm very aware of the fact that at any given point in the month, our checking balance isn't accurate until I account for what our credit card bill will be. READ MORE
What It's Like To Be Eaten By A Bear, Particularly If You Are A Camera
"Terrifying footage shows what it is like to be eaten by a bear." Trigger warning, I guess, if you've been eaten by a bear before.
Supposedly Dead Rapper Accused Of Being Not Dead
"A recent news story claims that Tim Dog 'may be up to his biggest scam yet'—faking his own death. WREG in Memphis interviewed Esther Pilgrim, one of the women featured in this Dateline story back in June of last year, who had been one of many victims reportedly swindled out of money by the rapper, and she alleges that a death certificate for Timothy Blair (the Dog’s government name) has not been found by a private investigator she hired. The news station also did some diggin’ and supposedly didn’t come up with anything either. And here’s the kicker: their P.I. did, however, locate an Atlanta address 'active' since last month for the supposedly deceased rapper!"
—Our friends at ego trip report on a weird emerging scandal involving one of their all-time favorites. Did Bronx rapper Tim Dog trick us all into thinking he had died in February? (Like Jim Morrison and Elvis and Tupac?) According to the title track of his 2003 album, YES.
"Meet three young women who want to teach our repressed society how to explore its relationship with death."
The Annotated Wisdom of Amy Poehler
Amy Poehler has a pretty solid resume as both a comedian and a person. After spending time studying at Second City and iO in Chicago, Poehler moved to New York with friends Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts to found the Upright Citizens Brigade, which has since grown into the massive community of learners and performers of long-form improv and sketch that it is today. In more recent years, on her off time from her TV work on SNL and Parks and Recreation, Poehler and friends Meredith Walker and Amy Miles started Smart Girls at the Party, an online network to encourage and educate young women about being smart by being themselves. Along the way, Amy Poehler has proven in countless interviews, podcasts, and articles, that she is smart, kind, and funny, about every topic from feminism to Hell to old TV. READ MORE
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