The text at the beginning of Drake's video for "HYFR"—"On October 24th 2011 Aubrey 'Drake' Graham chose to get re-bar mitzvah'd as a re-commitment to the Jewish religion … the following is a clip displaying the event that took place"—can be taken as seriously or sardonically as you want. Drake's much-anticipated "bar mitzvah" video, released on the first night of Passover, was originally hyped on the web as a "re-creation" of his original childhood ceremony. We get actual footage from baby Drake’s celebration at the intro, but beyond that, this is a music video staged at a bar mitzvah. If we hadn’t been told in advance that it means [...]
What do Awl pals Eric Freeman, David Roth and Bethlehem Shoals have in common? Well, they're Awl pals. But also this.
I can’t tell if the Internet is a never-ending job, an inescapable workplace, or both. I suppose my job is “writing” (I try to stay a notch above “warrior of content”) but it still feels weird to introduce myself as “a writer." In my ears this always sounds like I've been revising a historical novel about my great-uncle's flight from a Cossack bandit gang in the latter part of the Crimean war, complete with an appendix explaining several varieties of cannon.
For pretty much all my waking hours, I sit in front of a laptop, juggling windows and frantically typing as the world goes white behind me. Multi-tasking was a [...]
I have never understood how critics, outside of the few tenured at operations with their heads above water, manage to make a living. I say this as someone who, for several years, more or less got by writing about music. The primary audience for criticism seems to be other critics, or at least consumers with, for lack of a better word, "critical" sensibilities. But maybe I'm denying the awesome, fundamental power of the written word. Criticism—and in this, I would include any form of review or preview—passes judgment so that others might be free, or at least spared any inconvenience.
Naturally, this is an essay about Twitter.
For as long as I can remember, I've gone out of my way to enjoy eves, precipices and the part of a roller coaster right before that first drop. Even though I hate everything that comes next—and in the case of holidays and other special occasions, I bore easily. I just love the anticipation. Still, the night before my second book came out, all I could think about was my fucking record shelf.
Pish to the LeBron James television special, or Kevin Durant's unassuming tweet that he would be keeping his talents in Oklahoma City. At least within my little world, no NBA star has generated more multimedia tailspin this off-season than new Knick Amar'e Stoudemire.
Last week the impossibly sculpted, explosive 28-year-old power forward proclaimed, via Twitter, that he was a Jew headed to Israel to study Hebrew, Yesterday saw the release of a completely baffling sitdown with the Israeli station Sport5, where Stoudemire insists on stumbling through the tough questions that the interviewer is trying to avoid. As much of a professional mistake as this may prove to [...]
