The fine folks at Arc90, the people who brought you Readability, are thinking about some new products. I’m partial to their scheme for Appathy, which delivers the non-fuzzy side of the social network. I also enjoy the perspective-giving livestream app Getagrip, which can inform you how many of your childhood friends are dead. Enjoy!

by Chris Trenchard

It was a truly glorious thing to be reminded of the righteous, orgiastic power of the Woodstock Effect over the weekend at Lollapalooza. Sunday’s downpours put an exclamation mark on a lineup that included: Eminem, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Deadmau5 and a lot of pop music, plenty of skin courtesy of shockingly fit Midwesterners, the endless parade of hoopsters — Bulls jerseys and white NBA players were trending disproportionately again this year — the sausage, the pizza, the sausage pizza, the koozies, the tall boys, wine water bottles, old people selling drugs to young people, young people selling drugs to old people, tweakers, trippers, drunks, rollers, hand-standers, jumpers of invisible jump ropes, tank-top tans, jorts, the occasional celebrity sighting, a field of mud and/or dog shit, a rash of bros riding bros’ shoulders, no cell service, erotic hula hoopers, not one poi sighting thank god, lasers, kids everywhere (with one notable toddler taking photos with the poise of an aging pro), rappers seemingly conversing to a script (that would be you, Eminem), DJs talking trash about festival organizers (that would be you, Girl Talk), rockers being completely in awe of the crowd sizes at their sets (Foster the People, Local Natives), teenagers making out with teenagers or passing out mid-day in between check-in calls with Mom and Dad, an untold number of references to the fountain from “Married with Children,” doughty and variously phallic Chicagoland skyscrapers rearing in the absurdly near distance and, yes, seas of white people.

Before the rain began falling and the mud obscured the writing on our tees, this was a weekend awash in competitive irony. While the girls invariably tossed on a cute dress with some neon undergarments, dudes were there to make statements. Here were some of the weekend’s winning slogans.

Chris Trenchard covers the arts for 7×7.com and the Santa Barbara News-Press. His writing has appeared in Pitchfork, Yahoo! Entertainment, SF Weekly, the Dallas Observer and the SF Bay Guardian. His body trembles at the thought of covering Outside Lands Music Festival in SF this weekend.

Top photo by Brendan Wright

by Awl Sponsors

A lot of really random stuff happens in Los Angeles, tucked away, in a warehouse on West Pico Blvd, a little bit west of downtown LA, where there is a group of likeminded, creative people working on the newest products for the Gap 1969 line.

It looks a lot like what you would think it would look like, rebellious types who are well dressed and working away in a creative environment. They’re the seemingly disaffected youth type that most people ascribe the term “hipster” to, sometimes, but not always, as a pejorative. If they lived in New York, people who lived in Manhattan would probably assume they lived in Brooklyn, and it’s exactly these sorts of people that the Gap, the company formerly most popularly known for khakis, has enlisted for this new line.

What are these clothes? Well, there’s a picture of some right there (see above), but also you can see more, and learn more about the Gap 1969 studio, at the Gap 1969 Facebook page.

Chancellor George Osborne, once he found out that PM David Cameron left Tuscany just a few days after North London was overtaken by riots, “immediately” left California to go back and watch London and Manchester burn. (And observe its Diesel stores get their windows broken.) When will anyone ever get a long foreign holiday??? Not as long as angry jobless yobbos exist.

In other news, Angela Merkel is in the Alps, Nicolas Sarkozy is in the French Riviera, and Nick Clegg just got back from Spain and France. (This and many more photos here.)

Check out this collection of “Sesame Street” cover songs. I’m particularly taken by Andrew Bird’s version of “Bein’ Green,” but there’s a lot here to like.

The truth is Coke needs Pepsi. Good old Pepsi: perennially coming in second, and now third, sometimes tasting better but always with worse packaging and that evil Sauron eye for a logo. The existence of Pepsi is what forces Coke to be better. To not get complacent. To continue to innovate, such as with the Coke Freestyle Machine with which, at Kelly’s Roast Beef, I was able to make myself a Coke Zero with Lime and Root Beer monster drink. Even Coke’s missteps — the early response to “The Pepsi Challenge” and the debacle of New Coke — ended up being huge wins for Coke in the long run. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if, in 50 years, they finally figured out that Coke owned Pepsi all this time.

Right now, President Obama needs a nice tall glass of Pepsi — in the form of a liberal Democratic opponent. Should you decide to run against Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries, you’d be doing him and his crew a huge favor. You may not be in to the mood to do President Obama any favors, but this isn’t really about you or him, it’s about America, remember? And does it seem to you that a Tea Party-dominated Republican Party is going to be a fun thing to deal with going forward in the short term? That debt-ceiling brinksmanship is just the beginning. Obama will always give in at the end, to please alleged “independents.” But what about all the people who actually like what Democrats have traditionally stood for? Being a Democrat didn’t used to be diet Republicanism. That was Bill Clinton’s grand idea: Defeat the right by moving to the right. So, congratulations, Clinton was a gifted enough politician to remain in office despite the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and his own goofy desires, and the Democratic party became the party that’s Not as Bad as the Republicans. Yet somehow many Americans still see Obama as Trotsky Smurf. He needs a Pepsi to show the world he’s Coke.

And this upcoming Presidential Cycle could use some fizzy bubbles. Otherwise it’s looking pretty dour. So far the Democrats’ re-election strategy seems to be that you’ll vote for Obama, whether you like him or not, simply so that the Republicans won’t take over again. That isn’t the type of campaign strategy I’d want to go with. Obama’s other argument for a second term is that he’d like to keep his daughters out of cars with boys. I’m not sure that’s a campaign slogan America can get behind: “KEEP MY KIDS IN GOOD SCHOOLS!”

Instead, how about a Democratic challenge to President Obama from the left? A hard-fought struggle for the presidency would allow Obama to look centrist to those independents he always wants to keep happy. And it would force him to craft a message and market himself better. You know, like Coke does. He could travel the country, debate some lefty wacko and emerge a stronger candidate.

Who would run against Obama, maybe setting him- or herself up for a trip down the aisle in 2016? Except that never works either — no one likes leftovers — so really, it’s just a race to see who fills the 8 p.m. spot on MSNBC down the road. But nevermind that! Every Muhammad Ali needs a Joe Frazier. And every comeback needs a minor triumph to get it rolling. Here are some candidates who couldn’t beat Obama but could maybe make him drink his tears and make him stronger.

Russ Feingold
Not only was Feingold the best member of the US Senate over the last 20 years, he was the only one worth about anything. After the death of good old Paul Wellstone, Russ was a socialist’s dream of what a Democrat should stand for. He didn’t vote for wars. He didn’t vote for health care because it sucked. He’s much too smart to ever run for president. But he’d be perfect for my sinister purposes. Can you imagine changing the conversation from cutting budgets to just totally raising taxes on everyone? Especially the rich? If your company has record profits, the US government should get a taste, just like any good mafia boss. I mean, we could solve America’s deficit problems today if we just cut defense, ended the wars and forced companies to hire Americans or give back billions to the Treasury. Feingold is too good to be president, but he could school Obama on what it actually means to be a fire-breathing, who-gives-a-fuck liberal. Feingold is even more professorial than Obama and just as smart. It would be like an English Department meeting catfight. Like me, Russ actually does want to redistribute wealth in a real way. Like walk onto Wall St., take all their money, and throw it from a helicopter down on the Bronx. Obama could emerge as slightly less willing to do that, keep his “friends” in the hedge funds, fundraise like crazy and win by a lot.

Nydia Velázquez
One of the most dedicated liberals in the House of Reps and my representative in Congress. I’d run against her, but she votes 99% liberal and how much better than that could I do? I’d just be funnier doing it: make some awesome speeches and do some showboating. Velázquez doesn’t really showboat or play to the cameras much — which sets her apart from most of the New York contingent. Of course, there’s no way she’d actually run against Obama. She’s too interested in working hard. And she’s not rich. But hear me out. Rep. Velázquez, who was born in Puerto Rico, could rally at least some of the Latino vote (and Latinos will be deciding all the elections from now on in your lifetime, so get used to it). And she stands for good old liberalism, making Obama seem like the center of all centers. When she eventually loses, she could make a speech about how Obama is the only one who is going to save Latinos from the National Witch Hunt for illegal aliens that will soon be going straight through everyone’s living room at 4 a.m. with Navy Seals or whatever. Obama appoints her National Immigration Czar and maybe gets to keep the non-Cuban Latino vote that would otherwise go to Republican Candidate that runs with Marco Rubio as VP.

Bev Perdue
First-term governor of North Carolina, a state Obama won last election and will probably lose this next time around. And Perdue will probably be defeated for re-election anyway. Her advantages here: She’s got a terrific Southern twang, looks like a librarian. The kind of librarian that could beat you up. She’s seen as hard on illegal immigration and has a record that can be spun for job creation. She uses phrases like “business friendly” in a way that seems genuine. Obama’s allowed himself to be pegged as a job killer; instead of having a War on Libya maybe he should have announced a War on Unemployment. Put Obama up against a genial Democrat and see if it pushes him to be less of a dreary professor and more of a man of the people. Perdue will have the same amount of political experience as Mitt Romney and it’d be tough to go rough on her. It’s clear Obama actually has to be forced to do the right thing (just ask the inmates at Guantanamo) and will say anything to get elected. Let’s make him make more promises he won’t know how to keep.

Matt Damon
Matt’s smart and handsome and doesn’t want to be president. Which makes him perfect. Actors are great politicians, and Damon possesses a boyish charm and that whole killer Bourne Identity side of his personality. He’s practically an Iraq War veteran from that movie Green Zone that no one saw because no one wants to watch PBS “Frontline” with action sequences. Damon could represent the Hollywood Wing of the Democratic Party. His mom is a teacher, so he could run on the whole Working Families platform. Jobs and kids. The media loved the idea of a Trump presidency because he was on TV. Imagine the reaction a bona fide movie star would get. Obama comes out looking like he’s fighting against the big-money Hollywood types — and Damon can hype his movie about playing Liberace’s boyfriend. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Hillary Clinton
Let’s admit it now: We made a mistake and should have made her president. Can we somehow beg her to take over?

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

Tonight, at PowerHouse Arena, it is the Brooklyn Launch Party for Tom Scocca’s Beijing Welcomes You, a nonfiction chronicle of what Beijing has so recently become. As China is now (well, as usual) so much in the news, we asked him some questions!

Choire Sicha: Tom Scocca, as you have written a book called Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, which is brand new and good and also a book I have read, you are the only expert on China.* (*That I personally know.) Is this a great week for China or what?

Tom Scocca: If you set aside the fact that all the American debt China owns is turning into junk bonds, then, yes, it’s a happy time for the People’s Republic. London, which did not have the foresight to strangle Twitter and Facebook, is being torn apart by riots, only a year before it is supposed to host the Olympics. The 50 Cent Army of China’s government-backed Internet commenters is apparently having a parade to celebrate.

Choire: Today the “Wen Wei Paper” (sort of “News of the World” but with extra party cronyism) seems to be loudly saying that the U.S. owes every Chinese citizen 5700 yuan. (That would be $886.) Is this true? Do we???

Tom: Seems plausible. I’ve still got a few hundred yuan kicking around my desk drawer. That may turn out to be my most prudent investment holding.

Choire: You’re an entry-level currency trader! Right, so not only is China making fun of our “downgrade,” they are also making fun of the current “lawlessness” of London. Now, obviously, you were there in Beijing before the last Olympics. Were there chavs looting all the time?

Tom: There most emphatically were not. There was one person who stabbed an American to death at the Drum Tower, an event that was ascribed to insanity and quickly buried in the press, thanks to a total lack of information. And there was some sort of protester or streaker at the closing ceremony, likewise crazy, according to the best (only) available information. And the Free Tibet people climbed a flagpole early on. But beyond that, it was Harmonious Society 24/7. What’s more: after the stabbing, they outlawed the sale of all kitchen knives throughout the city. We went to the newly opened upscale-kitchen-implements store, where they had like all the All-Clad equivalent cookware and silicone basting brushes a First World cook could hope to see, to get poultry shears to cut up food for the growing child, and the sharp-objects section had been swept clean.

Choire: That’s the kind of harmony that countries like England and the U.S. have a hard time making happen. For instance, mandating alternate driving days with even and odd license plate numbers, as China did. But it seems to me that there is a very China-specific relationship to law and order. Let me quote from your book!

My first trip to the inner sanctum was for a press conference on forestry. On the way, we hit a traffic jam on the Second Ring. The left lane had closed to regular traffic, as one of the reserved Olympics lanes, and through some sort of traffic-engineering algebra, half as many private cars driving in two-thirds as many lanes worked out to much worse traffic than usual. When he saw me looking at my watch, the cabbie began fighting his way around the traffic, tapping his horn with his thumb. To keep demonstrating his concern, he continued tooting along the Third Ring when we got there, even though there was no Olympic lane and the traffic was fine.

“The Olympic things are only convenient for the Olympics,” I said, in a flash of Mandarin competence. “For everyone else, they’re annoying.” The driver clapped a hand over his mouth and held it there theatrically. Then he put it back on the steering wheel. “Understand?” he said.

Choire: In America and in London, we’d just be loudly and grandly beefing about such things.

Tom: Would we really, though?

Choire: Hmm! Well we do not make jokes in airports, true.

Tom: Four years before those Olympics, you and I had the pleasure of seeing the Republican National Convention in New York, did we not?

Choire: I recall it well! Okay, I recall it hazily.

Tom: It might have been more memorable if the mayor had not locked up a few hundred would-be protesters before the whole event began.

Choire: Yes, the preemptive and illegal incarceration! That was not very “American.” In which 1800 people were arrested, almost all of whom had charges dropped. (And charges of “resisting arrest” were fabricated.) Lawsuits, etc. Much, much more.

Tom: So these major made-for-TV events share a certain logic, all around the world.

Choire: And I can’t imagine that London will be any less “vigilant,” given that it is a near-total surveillance society, and that the 7/7 bombings were only six years ago.

Tom: Yes. The West sold China a lot of facial-recognition and crowd-behavior-processing surveillance software to help guarantee a peaceful Olympics.

Choire: That’s nice of us! And in fact, you write, China also had designated protest zones: “During the games, an official announced, there would be official protest zones in three city parks. Reporters huddled up afterward to figure out where the third of the parks, World Park, which nobody had heard of, was located — halfway out to Hebei Province, it seemed. But the other two, Purple Bamboo Park and the Altar of the Sun Park, weren’t bad.”

Tom: Yes. And then the people who applied to use them were arrested.

Choire: Well that does have a certain logic.

Tom: It does. It is tidy. Ultimately, the I.O.C. endorsed that logic.

Choire: The IOC takes the Olympics max seriously. As a “China Expert,” you have been doing things like TV and radio all over the fine United States of America. What sort of questions do you get asked? Are they… dumb?

Tom: Not at all.

Choire: I am shocked.

Tom: Many of the questions exist in a realm beyond “smart” or “dumb”; they are simply the questions that are out there being asked: “Is China really going to surpass the United States?”

Choire: Is China going to surpass the United States?

Tom: In what? Total surface area? We’re tied, basically, depending on some tricky issues about how to count bodies of water.

Choire: Haha.

Tom: Population? China is already far ahead. Money? We’re still ahead, there. There were, in fact, echoes of this in the Olympic medal count.

Choire: Oh right. There was much to-do.

Tom: China won! Also the United States won. China won 51 gold medals to the United States’ 36. The United States won 110 medals to China’s 100.

Choire: That’s a lot of medals. And everyone gets to go home happy!

Tom: Yes. The Olympics doesn’t specify how many “points” a medal is worth. If gold-silver-bronze gets scored 3–2–1, the United States gets more Medal Points and is the Olympic Winner.

Choire: USA! USA!

Tom: If it gets scored 5–3–1, China gets more Medal Points. 中国, 加油!

Choire: One of my favorite parts in the book is the press honcho lady for the Beijing Olympics talking about China’s place in the world. Sort of viewing China as like, the world’s younger adopted sibling, complete with the usual resentments and hurt feelings, and then getting all this attention. She said:

“The world is like a village and there are some rich residents, for example the United States, the UK, Germany, and China is… a poor villager, a poor villager in that village. And the Olympic Games is like a party, and many rich residents hosted these nice parties for the whole village, but China had never had a chance to do so, because China is not developed so well and has so many children, so many people to feed. And later China grew and the economy is better, and finally the rich residents said, ‘OK, now we can ask China to host this party for us,’ and China is very happy to have this opportunity, and we ask all the neighbors and all these relatives to come to help. We built a bigger house and we planted all the grasses and some people say, ‘You are using chopsticks, and we are not used to it,’ so we bought knives and forks, and we have also learned these languages, foreign languages, that our neighbors use… and we prepared many nice food and we welcome, we sincerely welcome all these villagers to come, but when they come they ignore all the nice things, the nice food that we put out, put on the table. They go to the… restroom, they go to the garbage bins, and they ignore all these nice preparations that we had put up….”

Tom: Yes. Why are we so negative all the time? So it’s always diverting when China gets to flip the script, as it has this week, and deplore the Americans’ reckless and incompetent government and the Britons’ seething unhappiness and societal instability.

Choire: I have to say this is a great time for me to be rereading this book because America really is tearing itself apart in silly ways, like a teenager at its first therapy session, and North London is pretty much actually tearing itself apart. And China is like “mmm hmmmm.”

Tom: China is like a very un-fuzzy therapist. It has absolutely no sympathy for our good intentions. “We are glad to see that you, too, appreciate the value of indefinite detention and torture in preserving your national security.” “Surely you won’t begrudge us the chance to use the same tools you do, to promote our own national interests.”

Choire: Boris Johnson and Mike Bloomberg share this one world one dream!

Tom: Exactly. That was one of the central themes of this book, the more I watched the New Beijing present itself to the world. This belief that the spread of prosperity brings liberalization with it — well, does it? The notion that staging an Olympics makes you a member of the community of Good Nations is one small facet of this larger Pollyanna-internationalist ideology (or religion).

Choire: Right. SEE YOU IN LONDON!

Tom: Quite so. The Security State — now that’s a value that all sorts of different governments can get behind.

Choire: And finally, on more meta questions: have you, now that you’re an Author, found any way to deal with the problem of public readings?

Tom: Which… aspect of the problem?

Choire: Well, for the reader himself, maybe.

Tom: Standing up and reading the book in public is maybe less frightening than the prospect of other people reading the book in private.

Choire: Oh, I’d never thought of that! Great, new phobias for all.

Tom: At least you can hear the people chuckling or see them sneaking out the door.

Choire: Oof. But you can’t see them throwing the book across the room at home.

Tom: Or reading it over and over and laughing out loud. You just do not know.

Choire: Not that your book is anything but engrossing and thrilling! “A VERY GOOD BOOK,” says the Washington Post! Could a review be more concrete? Is the book good? Yes. How good? VERY.

Tom: And the Post shared lots of quotes, which is nice. If you enjoyed the text in this review, you can buy 100,000 more words of it!

Choire: Gosh that’s a lot of words.

Tom: Beijing is a big city! But an endlessly diverting one. So maybe I was trying to be mimetic. I’ll ask my publisher to add a scratch-and-sniff smog sample to the next printing. So everybody please hurry up and buy out this printing!

Choire: That would be incredibly… tasty?

Tom: But it is a very good book even without any interactive olfactory element. One odd thing about being an Author is that I find myself being less self-deprecatory than usual.

Choire: Oh! That’s interesting. I always thought publishing a book would send a reasonable person into a deep shame spiral.

Tom: The shame spiral is maybe a bit of a luxury. I mean, we’d all love to be the early Jesus and Mary Chain, turning our backs on the audience, making 20 minutes of terrorizing feedback, and then skulking away. Or maybe the first-person plural is inaccurate there.

Choire: Ha! Well many of us would like to be that.

Tom: “Whatever! I wrote this. Like it, don’t, fine with me, fuck you.” But while a book is NOT AT ALL LIKE A BABY — I know this — one does feel responsible toward it, and protective.

Choire: Right. Babies are more expensive.

Tom: I did spend years working on this thing. And a publishing house got behind it, and many talented and rigorous editors and proofreaders went over the text, and the designer made a really great cover.

Choire: A REALLY GREAT COVER.

Tom: So being like, “Oh gosh, so awkward, no big deal, it’s just some stuff I typed” — that feels a little cheap and bogus. I’d be kind of a jackass if I’d taken the money and spent this amount of time and I decided to be too shy or self-protective or whatever to say that I think it’s good and I want people to buy it. I’m a writer, not a salesperson, but there isn’t any more writing to be done on the book. And there is selling.

Tom: So, dear readers of The Awl, if you have gone this far through this dialogue, please do buy and read my book: BEIJING WELCOMES YOU: UNVEILING THE CAPITAL CITY OF THE FUTURE.

Choire: Well-played. Yes, as we said: the book tour goes to Brooklyn tonight! At 7 p.m. at the PowerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, in Dumbo. Then tomorrow, August 10, at Politics & Prose, the party goes to Washington D.C., also at 7 p.m.

There are only two answers, and neither of them are good. Either “Help a Reporter” — a lazyweb service that broadcasts “reporter requests” for sources — is a terrible piece of performance art, or there are a lot of people lazily writing total garbage stories. OH WAIT: there’s a third option: someone’s messing with the system, man. Hilarious! It starts subtle…

URGHARO: moyemail@cox.net needs to speak to a camel expert.less than a minute ago via web

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Oh it gets weirder.

URGHARO: moyemail@cox.net needs an expert on women with two wombs.less than a minute ago via web

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URGHARO: moyemail@cox.net needs an expert who can speak to the advancements in robot air hockey.less than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

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URGHARO: moyemail@cox.net looking for an art critic who can discuss if corn mazes are art.less than a minute ago via Twitter for Android

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Oh there’s more: “moyemail@cox.net needs ppl to discuss rocks shaped like sex organs. Must have actually seen the rocks.” “moyemail@cox.net needs to speak to a ninja expert asap.” “moyemail@cox.net needs carnival barkers and sideshow performers pronto to get reaction to President Obama’s comments.”

WHAT’S YOUR GAME, MOYEMAIL@COX.NET, AND CAN ANYBODY PLAY?

*GASP*: AND HERE HE IS!

“Employers may punish women who are obese with lower wages, but not all women are paying a penalty. Single women who are obese earn higher wages because they invest more in unobservable job skills. Why? Because heavy women have to plan on never having a husband to help pay the bills.”

“Gucci Mane, recently released from prison for the umpteenth time, sounds no worse for wear here, managing impressive nimbleness with his mealy mouth. He has more gears than most rappers do, a versatile stylist with nothing so old-fashioned as a commitment to structure and the integrity of words. He prefers sounds.”
 — Awl pal Jon Caramanica’s review of the new Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame album in today’s Times

brings up a good point about rap. There are important elements to it other than the lyrics. Sometimes these other elements get overlooked. This is the case with Hua Hsu’s review of the new Jay-Z and Kanye West album. Hsu writes a lot about the album’s thematic subject matter, and how the album’s existence represents a current trend of collaboration over conflict in hip-hop, and he places all this in the context of today’s socioeconomic climate. And he does so thoughtfully and eloquently (and, like two seconds after the thing came out, too.) But the music, or even the sound of the rappers’ voices, goes unmentioned. “What makes hip-hop such a durable form is its capacity to scramble fiction and fact,” Hsu writes, “the artifice and the realities that art conceals or amplifies become one.” That’s not all that makes it so durable. Dope beats play a big part too. And killer flows. Rap albums aren’t position papers; they’re more than that.