Awl pal Rob Walker examines what happens to our Internet presence after we die. It’s a long read, but worth it.

“Researchers say intuition can either be a useful ally or can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes.” Well, great, Science, that tells me all I need to know! Thanks for nothing, you dick.

A: YOU. Because? The Web Is a Customer Service Medium. A must-read!

Will Friedwald has a nice appreciation of the late Louis Prima in the Wall Street Journal. Prima, born a hundred years ago last month, had one of those great voices that, much like his fellow New Orleanian Louis Armstrong, contained within it so much joy that it is almost impossible to hear without cracking a smile. The next time you’re feeling a little down, listen to his version of “Pennies From Heaven”; if it doesn’t cheer you up even a little bit there is probably no hope.

There is shock and horror in the city of Philadelphia about the news that local snack producer Tasty Baking Co. — maker of gut-expanding delights such as Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets and Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes — might be forced to sell itself off amid financial turmoil. One local columnist conveys the sense of fear and disgust now prevalent in the City of Brotherly Love.

YEARS FROM NOW, I will remember where I was when I heard yesterday’s shocking news.

I was sitting right here at the Daily News when I learned that Tastykake, financially teetering after a brutal fourth quarter, announced that it may have to merge with another company or — gasp! — sell itself.

Merge this Philadelphia icon with some out-of-town pretender pushing snacks like Drakes or, Lord help us, Little Debbie?

Gag me with a cupcake.

Or sell it? Hell, as long as we’re peddling our local treasures, why don’t we put the Liberty Bell on Craigslist? Or see if Walmart wants to buy Reading Terminal Market?

Meanwhile, a resident interviewed by the city’s Fox affiliate for its five minute segment on the story expresses a sentiment that demonstrates exactly how severe the crisis is to these sons of the Schuylkill: Asked to envision a world without Tastykakes, a woman explains that, “It would be like life without music.” Fortunately the reporter has a Butterscotch Krimpet on hand to cheer her up for the moment, but there’s no denying it: things look pretty grim. It is hard enough on these people, having to live in Philadelphia. Must they be denied the one pre-packaged treat that makes their miserable existence momentarily tolerable? Only time will tell.

“’The best service I can provide this president is, for the next couple of years, outside this building,’ said Gibbs, who announced Wednesday that he would leave his press secretary job in early February. He will then hit the lucrative speaking circuit and become a paid consultant to the Obama reelection campaign.”
 — And that’s just the beginning of this incredibly brutal farewell to press secretary Robert Gibbs. For instance: “’He’s had a six-year stretch now where basically he’s been going 24/7 with relatively modest pay,’ Obama said Wednesday in an interview with the New York Times. Gibbs’s White House salary is $172,200 a year.” Mrow!

Wow. The hairs on my arm just stood up. Just now, while I was listening to this new Eminem song for the first time.

As you may know, Eminem has enjoyed a major comeback over the past year. Two huge singles, “I Love the Way You Lie” pushed his album Recovery to 3.4 million in sales, more than any other artist in 2010, and his 10 Grammy nominations lead the field for February’s awards show. This after a five-year hiatus and a 2009 album, Relapse, generally thought to be the worst of his career. So I was happy for him. Because he’s had a rough go of it, what with all the crazy drama with his mom and his wife and drugs and, especially, losing his best friend, Deshaun “Proof” Holton, to a tragic shooting four years ago.

But I found the music I heard from Recovery very disappointing. In the past, in his prime, Eminem’s rapping was terrifically playful and wacky. He always sounded barely-hinged. As if his tongue, quick as it was, couldn’t ever keep up with the rhymes coming to his mind like flashes of lightning. His emotional expressiveness, his woundedness, the extent to which he didn’t give a fuck — it all leapt out of him, all important to his appeal. On his more recent work, though, he’s sounded deadened. (His world-crushing guest verse on Drake’s “Forever” notwithstanding.) On Recovery most of all, he sounded so straight and serious. He was obviously giving it his all — which, you know, that’s good — even bravely, if unwisely, singing. But there was a joylessness to the music I associated with his recent sobriety. Apparently he was jogging like five hours a day while he was recording it. I mean, people should certainly do what’s healthiest for them, and I applaud him for it, but 12-step-program rap just isn’t that much fun to listen to. God, that stuff on “I’m Not Afraid” about how he felt so strong in his commitment to sobriety that he could go to the club and lift the whole liquor counter up — because he was “raising the bar.” (Groan.) It seemed like was rapping for the wrong reasons. To prove something to someone other than himself or something.

A new Eminem song came out last week, “Syllables,” featuring Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Cashis and Stat Quo. (Well, maybe not so new. It was recorded three years ago, apparently. And some people think it’s actually from Dre’s long-awaited Detox album.) It’s a tongue-in-cheek attack on the decline of lyricism in rap, and I like it. Em, on a short verse wherein he employs the kind of funny-style accent rapping he explicitly swore off on “Not Afraid,” sounds like he’s enjoying himself. And it’s exciting to hear this particular assemblage of heavyweight starpower on one track. (Jay is great: “So you want the chat room or the house in Malibu?/Em, your emphasis is on the wrong syllalable…”) But the song suffers from the same disconnect between verse and chorus that made this summer’s “I Love the Way You Lie” such a bummer to me. In fact, the chorus kind of sucks. (Maybe it sucks on purpose — a subversive statement about pop hooks? Maybe it was not supposed to come out this way? Maybe it’s not finished? It’s hard to tell these days.)

“Difficult” is much better. It avoids the verse-chorus agreement problem by avoiding a chorus altogether. Opting instead for a clipped, spoken, half-sentence: “Difficult as it sounds…”

And it sounds pretty difficult. The song is about Proof, a minor-key dirge that no one would describe as joyful. But there’s raw feeling in it that sounds different from the Recovery stuff. It finds a somber Eminem in mourning, referring to Proof as “Dudie,” a nickname they shared for each other (he doesn’t remember the origin, he says), and remembering anecdotes from their younger years together. Like when Proof, who was black, snapped at Em’s sunburned skin with a rolled-up t-shirt. So there is some joy here, actually — as subtle as it is, leaking through what sounds to have been a tearful time in the vocal booth. You can hear it, the slight curl of a smile, as Em says he still has to get back at his old friend for that.

Here’s how the third verse starts. This is the part that made the hair on my arm stand up:

“This may sound a little strange, but I’m a tell it/I found that jacket you left at my wedding/I picked it up to smell it/I wrapped it up in plastic until I put it in glass and/Hang it up in the hallway so I can always look at it…”

Wow, right?! He picked it up to smell it! Wow.

There’s more snow on the way! A winter storm watch is in effect until Saturday, Jan 8, 6:00 AM. Estimates call for anywhere from 2–7 inches, which is actually pretty great because it will provide a nice cover for all the BAGS OF FROZEN GARBAGE LINING THE STREETS. The roads shouldn’t be too bad, though, because after what happened last time you can probably expect the plows to be out before the first flake strikes the ground. Anyway, winter! Snow! Let’s pretend we’re excited about it!

Image by Johan Lange, from Flickr.

Are there organizations we love more than local bookstore McNally Jackson? Maybe NARAL, or the SLA. So when we question the introduction of a Espresso Book Machine there, we do it with love. The EBM, the brainchild of Jason Epstein (AKA Mr. Judith Miller, among many other achievements), carries, in its current incarnation, about 3 million titles — trade books and out-of-copyright books. That’s not bad! The New York City Public Library systems has more than 20 million books, but, you know, with them, you don’t get to keep the books forever. Google Books, a main supplier to the EBM, has about 15 million titles; those are not all completely available books, as they’re not all in the public domain. (And yes, according to Google, there are only 130 million books out there anyway, give or take.) So there are real benefits to having one of this machines around; this is why the Library of Alexandria (motto: only 2060 years since our last destruction!) has three of them, although most of us get our out-of-copyright books for free on our electronic devices now, you know, but I guess we can pretend that’s not happening. What’s most interesting is that the EBM is also an extremely regressive revolutionary implement.

While its nearly $100,000 price tag is reasonable — I mean, the thing prints books! In minutes! — and its $600 monthly “support and maintenance” fee is… semi-reasonable, what’s less reasonable is that for every book it prints, the Book Machine kicks back to its owners, OnDemandBooks, $1.50 a book or 10% of the cover price, “whichever is greater.” Aww, look! The book printing machine thinks it’s a distribution network! Sure, historically, printers charge per book too. But they didn’t make you buy the printing press first.

All this being said, it seems unlikely that McNally Jackson would be paying full retail price; OnDemand’s offices are literally around the corner, and this kind of attention is good for them. Plus, OnDemand realizes that McNally Jackson also services writers, and a real benefit of having a machine right there on the edge of NoLIta is a stream of people willing to pay for self-publishing. The future! As you see in the video above, bookstores are also slowly becoming publishers. The second book published, via their new EBM-only imprint, at Village Books, in Bellingham, Washington? Village Books’ Guide to Self-Publishing. At least it retails for just $7.95.