The Awl

PJ Harvey, "Written On The Forehead"

Maura Johnston — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:10:40 +0000

This just in: A new PJ Harvey song from her forthcoming album Let England Shake, which comes out next February. The song is a half-spiky, half-spacey track that finds Harvey exploring the upper register of her voice the way she did on White Chalk; it is called "Written On The Forehead," and it's definitely not what I expected after hearing other songs she'd been working on. (A sampling of artists/labels name-checked by friends who'd heard the track: Deerhunter, Cocteau Twins, the Knife, Kate Bush, "early 4AD," "almost Stones Throw.") But what fun would the predictable be? Stream after the jump.

Right? BTW:

Let England Shake was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset with long time collaborator Flood who co-produced the album with PJ Harvey, John Parish and Mick Harvey. The record was also mixed by Flood.

[Stream via 17 dots]

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Apparently Naked Hooping People Attack L.A. at Night

Choire Sicha — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 10:00:10 +0000

Erykah Badu may have stripped down on the streets of Dallas for her crazy video but she definitely didn't maraud through the night-time streets of Los Angeles in her underwear whilst hula hooping, which is extremely impressive.

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A Brief History of Kanye West's Twitter

Ryan Broderick — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:10:49 +0000

So last night professional crazy person Kanye West opened up a Twitter account after performing a mysterious and confusing (but kind of awesome) a capella performance at Facebook HQ. If you were lucky enough to start following him last night you either stayed up late into the night waiting for his next insane, misspelled (but again kind of awesome) Tweet or awoke this morning to a torrent of craziness. So, without further introduction (or parentheses) here's our guide for understanding the unhinged tweet-rantings of Kanye West.

"Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone Valley" 11:17 AM Jul 28th

And we're off, word misspelled, but it's not really too insane right?

"Lol I spelled Silicon wrong ( I guess I was still thinking about the other type of silicone ITS A PROCESS!! : )" 12:05 PM Jul 28th

Ok, that smiley is a bit strange, but nothing like his capslocked blog posts, maybe Kanye West has calmed down a bit. Who doesn't get confused about the difference between silicon and silicone? He dates a lot of models.

Between 12:53 PM Jul 28th and about 22 hours ago West made shout outs to various celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Perez Hilton, did a shoutout to Pitchfork, usual stuff. He tweets here and there about how cool twitter is; around yesterday afternoon it really looked like he was all better from the kooky thoughts that made him yell Taylor Swift and cry on television. Last night it looked like we were in the clear America-we got our college dropout back!

And then about 13 hours ago he started posting about goblets...

And he kept posting about goblets...

Oh, here's another goblet picture...

And then after that, as the night rolled into the early morning he pretty much just stopped making any sense whatsoever.

About 13 hours ago he tweeted "I feel the glow" and from then on it was a mish-mash of insanity with tweets like "SWAGGER ON 200,000 THOUSAND TRILLION!!!" (I don't think that's a number...), "Dating models I had to learn to like small dogs and cigarettes," "Classical music is tight yo," "William Tell" Overture by Andre' Rieu ... Maybach music!!!," and then about 2 hours ago West tweeted "I specifically ordered persian rugs with cherub imagery!!! What do I have to do to get a simple persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh."

And then there's this. Which we can get behind!

this J.Press tie is the greatest tie of all tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!!!!!!!!! Kool Aid smile!!!! It's the small things that mean so muchThu Jul 29 19:34:44 via webKanye West
kanyewest

So, there you have it, a simple and easy to follow timeline on the rising insanity of Kanye West's twitter account. There's probably a good chance it's only going to get more insane from here, so be sure and start following him now, it can't be long before he tops Hayley Williams and twitpics his penis wearing shutter shades "accidentally."

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Maureen Dowd of Arabia's Flickr is 'Vanity Fair'

Choire Sicha — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:20:30 +0000

Maureen Dowd went to Saudi Arabia and all she got was this hilarious slideshow of photos of herself in different outfits. (Oh and a big piece in the August Vanity Fair.) I LOVE IT. It's just like Sex and the City 2 except 1. no galpals and 2. at least MoDo pulls out a notebook sometimes. I clicked through every picture two times! Actual caption of the photo seen here: "Dowd and friend on the outskirts of Riyadh. 'It's funny,' she writes, 'to see how many people have named their camels Barack."

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Tina, Twitter; Twitter, Tina

Choire Sicha — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:00:57 +0000

Tina Brown has a Twitter now. Yay! This should be great. But the real question is: whose job is it to print out all her followers' Tweets so she can read them?

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UCLA Students Riot Over Huge Tuition Increase

Choire Sicha — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:20:30 +0000

Maybe the kids are alright! "A crowd of more than 500 demonstrators rushed Covel Commons on Wednesday to protest a proposed 32 percent student fee increase."

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Hummer's New Daddy, Revealed

Choire Sicha — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:59:32 +0000

Congratulations to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd.! I wish it many successes with the Hummer, its newest product.

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