Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, is one of those artists that would have been fun to follow back when people followed artists; when each change in sound or theme demanded explanation; when bands and musicians had clear trajectories and obvious motives. Now they just appear on your internet somewhere without warning or context. Months or years later when they briefly appear again they might sound exactly the same or totally different, but you don’t feel betrayed either way. You start again, maybe a little more forgiving than you were the first time. But that’s it. Anyway! This is not what I expected when I clicked play. (via)

Big huge tech acquisitions bring out the worst in people. I do not know exactly why: I assume that it has something to do with seemingly infinite sums of money being made to seem finite or even small in the presence of even larger infinities of money. Anyway, has anyone noticed that the loud and visceral reaction to Apple’s multi-billion dollar acquisition of Beats, the headphone and music service company, is kind of racist?

I asked this question on Twitter and got a number of private responses immediately. One, from a well-known tech writer: “I did, but only in DM, because I can’t deal with that shit today.” Then some more! So furtive, so quick:

@anildash @pkafka fanboys are reacting to Apple with Beats as akin to their girlfriends being seen publicly on Instagram with Magic Johnson

— Nait Jones (@NaithanJones) May 9, 2014

This is about right. The way that people are handling what they understand to be the Signifiers of Beats is not very helpful. For example, this news factoid, which everyone is running with.

Dr. Dre could become the world’s first billionaire rapper If Apple buys Beats: http://t.co/WqUfobkkGA $APPL

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 9, 2014

The first billionaire _______ is an identity-focused construction. It’s defensible but basically irrelevant; it’s a type of headline that will be most interesting to people who don’t know or care to know that Dr. Dre has primarily been an electronics entrepreneur since 2008. Anyway, that’s not really the racist part.

The racist part is the emotionally defensive pose that Apple fans, or even just people who feel like they know a lot about Apple and the INDUSTRY, assumed within seconds of hearing rumors about this news. It’s the utter defiance with which people refuse to see the parallels between Apple, a company that uses identity-based marketing to sell electronics at very high margins, and Beats, a company that uses identity-based marketing to sell electronics at very high margins. It’s the inability to reconcile two companies that sell physical, electronic status symbols to different but widely overlapping demographics. (Apple Stores sell thousands of Beats headphones already, anyway; maybe it’s helpful to think of this whole thing as simple vertical integration.) It seems like a serious problem here is that people can’t imagine Justin Long and Dr. Dre in the same commercial; or that Apple’s weepy family ads just wouldn’t work with rap music in the background.

And then you read fretful passages like this:

This is what makes the reported Apple deal so troubling. Apple can easily afford it. From that viewpoint, it’s not a terrible deal. But Apple has been emphasizing that high quality products and focus are its soul. This doesn’t fit either of those.

Focus. Soul. If this doesn’t already sound insane just switch industries: New Balance and Nike? But their marketing cohorts don’t align, and what about New Balance’s immortal essence?

And there’s all the grousing about how Beats headphones aren’t the best, how there’s better stuff for the money, how only a dumb uninformed status-obsessed idiot mall teen (there’s an age thing here, too) would choose to buy those instead of the VASTLY superior Grado Prestige Series SR-60i with non resonant air chambers and wider frequency response, because quality is an objective attribute and in a better world it would correlate exactly with desirability and sales. There are charts and forums that PROVE this and EXPLAIN this. Those idiots! Our pure Apple doesn’t need THOSE idiots, no, they’re diluting our brand. (See: The comments on this video of Dr. Dre and Tyrese celebrating last night. This one took one minute to find.)

Mmhmm. This is all very latent and unintentional and I suppose really about privilege and unexamined biases, so how about this: Apple has $150 billion in cash just sitting around. What are you honestly worried about? What is at stake, for you?

Image via Charlie

by Awl Sponsors

Jon Pyzel took up surfing at a young age in Santa Barbara, CA, an area rich in surfing history and known to have some perfect waves. After traveling around surfing and competing, Jon realized that he needed to surf better waves in warmer water, making a permanent move to Oahu’s North Shore in 1992. Here is where he started out fixing dings in boards, to eventually work his way up to full time glasser and shaped himself his first board around 1995. Working under some of the best shapers and glassers in the industry, Jon’s understanding of the craftsmanship and time that went into hand shaping a surf board.

The combination of being surrounded by many of the world’s most talented surfers, and the high quality of the surf have given Pyzel a great opportunity to build world-class surfboards around the world Today Jon still lives in Hawaii, where he runs the Pyzel Surfboards factory on the North Shore. Pyzel currently has some of the biggest names in the industry riding his boards and Jon travels to shape in Europe, Brazil, Uruguay, Japan, Indonesia and California on a regular basis.

Check out more videos here.

There’s something perversely pleasant about the idea of every piece of creative work on the planet that is designed to get people to buy something to feel better about themselves being generated by a single, ocean-spanning, monolithic advertising firm with an ominous name, whether it’s selling Coke or Pepsi, Walmart or Target, Budweiser or Coors. It almost happened! But then it didn’t. The proposed merger of Omnicom and Publicis, two of the four ad mega-companies, has collapsed, in large part because powerful rich people couldn’t decide who should have which powers in the new ultra-ad company. But we still might get something like that, if we’re lucky:

Publicis could make a hostile bid for Omnicom or go after another big player like the Interpublic Group. Dentsu, a large Japanese advertising firm, might also seek some kind of deal.

“We’ve essentially tossed the salad up in the air,” Mr. Wieser said.

“The Internet retailer, which controls more than a third of the book trade in the United States, is marking many books published by Hachette Book Group as not available for at least two or three weeks. A Hachette spokeswoman said on Thursday that the publisher was striving to keep Amazon supplied but that the Internet giant was delaying shipments ‘for reasons of their own.’”

Ah, god, Amazon’s seasonal publisher demoralization came early this year! The story is a little crazy in just how transparent it is: Neither Hachette nor Amazon wants to say exactly what’s going on but what is probably happening is a routine, broad negotiation of terms. Hachette is saying something like, “can we please keep what we have, it’s barely enough to keep up alive after what you did to us last year” and Amazon is saying something like “…” and pushing a slip of paper with the word “HALF” across the table and walking away. We will never know the PRECISE results of these negotiations but we will be able to guess who won.

What’s at stake? Everything:

Amazon has begun discouraging customers from buying books by Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Colbert, J. D. Salinger and other popular writers…

James Patterson’s “Alex Cross, Run” published at the end of February, is taking as much as five weeks. “NYPD Red,” by Mr. Patterson and Marshall Karp, will take as much as three weeks. Other Hachette books by the prolific Mr. Patterson are readily available, however.

Leverage!

★★★★ The sun was up and unimpeded so early that it seemed as if everyone must have overslept. So much day, when checked against the clock on the mobile phone — enough to relax and roll over and be woken up an hour later by a child, once everyone had overslept for real. By the end of the school drop-offs, the two-year-old had made up for the lost time, bombing down the wide gradual downhill on his scooter so fast that the parental scooter-minding shuffle-jog gave way to a real trot, past Japanese maples saturated with wine-red. The security guard at the co-op complex turned his head to the sunshine, peeled off his cap, and ran a hand over his face. A sparrow splashed in the chemically turquoise-tinted waters of the top tier of the fountain. The toddler, returning from school, could not get enough of scootering, back and forth across the sunny plaza, ignoring his demonstrated knowledge of the brake in favor of crashing into a wall or the footing of a railing. Sweat matted his hair when the helmet came off. The white-brick condo tower borrowed some blue from the sky. A harmless approximation of summer, summer without the suffering. In the late afternoon, the black rubber matting on the playground overlooking the Hudson gave off mild waves of heat. The play of light and chilly shade through the western clouds was like the play of the children: now congenial, now disagreeable, now tenuously congenial again.

by Brendan O’Connor

16. “Thanks for taking the time to talk Mr. President. Your words meant alot.” — Justin Bieber, after he shouted “Fuck Bill Clinton!” while peeing in a bucket. [Twitter]

15. “I am learning.” — Rachael Sacks, author of “I’m Not Going To Pretend That I’m Poor To Be Accepted By You.” [Thought Catalog]

14. “I am learning how to learn.” — Tal Fortgang, author of “Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege” [NYT]

13. “I love Korea. Im sorry” — Justin Bieber, after he posted photos of his visit to a Japanese war memorial widely understood by other Pacific nations to be a shrine to Japanese war crimes. [Twitter]

12. “Sorry if it offended anybody.” — Caleb Johnson, “American Idol” season 13 contestant, after he referred to fans requesting songs as “retards.” [Facebook]

11. “It was not my intention to criticize Pope Francis.” — Sarah Palin, after she criticized Pope Francis. [Facebook]

10. “Got carried w excitement over Cinco de Mayo celebration on GMA — sorry” — Lara Spencer [Twitter]

9. “Please be assured I did everything in my power to not use that word… My efforts obviously weren’t quite good enough.” — BBC “Top Gear” host Jeremy Clarkson, after he dropped the N-bomb while rhyming “Eeny-meeny-miney-moe.” [Twitter]

8. “It’s certain that there were things we could have done differently.” — Github CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath, after former employee Julie Horvath revealed ongoing harassment at the company. [Github]

7. “I will try to elevate my vernacular to the level of those great men that I’m learning from in the world of politics.” — Ted Nugent, after he called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel” in
an interview with Guns.com

. [CNN]

6. “I doubt that I am the first member of Congress to tell off a reporter, and I am sure I won’t be the last.” — Michael Grimm, after he threatened to break a NY1 reporter in half. Grimm has since been indicted by federal prosecutors. [NYT]

5. “What I said was offensive,” — Rockingham, Vermont Town Manager Willis “Chip” Stearns, after he said that he hoped the deployment of K-9 units would make “a lot of Latinos leave” town. [Rutland Herald]

4. “I’m a monstrous hypocrite.” — Hugo Schwyzer [Twitter]

3. “We failed.” — Daily Oklahoman sports editor Mike Sherman on his paper’s “Mr. Unreliable” Kevin Durant headline. [NewsOK]

2. “I wish I had just paid her off.” — Donald Sterling [DuJour]

1. “We apologize for any inconvenience.” — Instagram, after it accidentally shut down Rihanna’s account. [Daily Mail]

#apologies #sorrynotsorry #whitepeople

Brendan O’Connor is a reporter in New York.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

ode

on film, it’s a fountain lit from behind erupting or a story-high wave’s motion barely foiled by indifferent coastline. that is, always water, always upward then the inevitability of gravity, always light then always less light.

not in the movie, what is bright is internal. usually in a dim room, though sometimes pitch dark, the brightness can never be seen.

perhaps that’s its source of power: an unseeable phantom with unmistakable presence, a presence that violates the peace of the body then leaves, abruptly, only an asymptotal approach to numbness we call linger.

with this sloping to vacancy — the body emptying din — so much room is left for sadness to grow.

if you’re smart, you let that sadness settle into your bones the way lovely dust & oil settle into the grooves of old unfinished wood.

then, when the tingle revisits, what once was merely tinder is now a furnace that burns the meaning of that violent joy the body is owed.

Robert Andrew Perez works for the English departments of UC Berkeley and Saint Mary’s College. He is an associate editor for speCt!, a letterpress imprint based out of Oakland, and his work is forthcoming in Omniverse and Manor House Quarterly.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

by Casey N. Cep

Dolly Parton does it all in only two hundred and two words. Eighty-four fewer than the Gettysburg Address; one hundred and thirty-six more than the Lord’s Prayer. Two hundred and two words, one of which is repeated thirty-one times: Jolene. Parton wails her name like a banshee. Five times Jolene; once Jolene, Jolene; six times Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. Parton says the name Jolene thirty-one times in less than three minutes. It’s a story song, and the story is as familiar as they come. Where there was happiness, now there is heartache. A woman loves a man, but that man loves Jolene; the woman confronts Jolene and pleads with her not to take the man. That is all.

I don’t know when I first heard the song. It used to creep onto country stations like kudzu and that is all we listened to when we listened to the radio. I doubt I knew what adultery was when I first heard it. I certainly couldn’t imagine what it would be like to hear the name of another from the sleeping lips of the one you love.

But that didn’t stop me from howling all those long syllables. “I have to have this talk with you,” Jo-leeeeeeeene. “I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man,” Jo-leeeeeeeene. “Please don’t take him just because you can,” Joe-leeeeeeeene. “I cannot compete with you,” Jo-leeeeeeeene. “My happiness depends on you,” Jo-leeeeeeeene.

Some women, I suppose, identify with Jolene. Those whose “beauty is beyond compare” might easily imagine themselves into the role of a temptress, but mine is not, so even before I had a lover to lose, I found myself comfortably in the role of the desperately discarded, the frantically forlorn. It is hard to believe that Dolly Parton’s husband never strayed with the flirty red-haired bank teller who inspired the song, since the lyrics capture so perfectly what it is like to lose the one you love, even while that one is still sleeping in your bed.

Parton recorded “Jolene” in June of 1973, and released it in October. By November, it was the number one song on Billboard’s country chart. Since then, every singer who has ever been anywhere near a microphone has covered it. Parton has said that Mindy Smith’s version is her favorite, though she seemed pretty pleased to sing it with her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus. Parton has also said “because it’s just the same word over and over, even a first-grader or a baby can sing, ‘Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.’ It’s like, how hard can that be?”

A baby might be able to learn the lyrics, but the song has been tortured and abused by so many of these covers. Three years after Parton released the song, Olivia Newton John offered her own version; her spiraling disco twang didn’t improve on the original. Three of the least offensive covers are by Alison Krauss, Reba McEntire, and Sherrié Austin. They borrow the song the way you’d borrow clothes from a best friend: taking great care not to stretch or stain what they’ll never own.

Most of the “Jolene” covers are natural disasters: You can’t look away, and even though you know they happen often, every one is its own fresh three-minute tragedy. I’ve never watched “American Idol,” but if you do, then you might remember this performance by Jessica Meuse, who tried to make the song into some sort of power ballad. No better or worse, I guess, than what Ellie Goulding did a few years ago, making Jolene into a kind of Joe Lean, some rail-thin dogcatcher come to steal your prize poodle. Even the television show “Glee” took a turn, somehow wringing every drop of emotion out of song completely soggy with it; it’s only tolerable in the manipulated version made by some fairy-godmother-of-a-YouTube user, speeding it up to end the tragedy more quickly.

Everyone seems to know and love what Jack White has done with. He slows the song and reverses the roles, crooning as a cuckolded man pleading with Jolene not to take his friend. It’s the deferential version of what Jennifer Nettles tried to do last year with her song “That Girl.” Her role reversal rewrote the song from Jolene’s perspective. It’s a terrible song, with Nettles repeating in dark, brooding swells that “I don’t want to be that girl,” meaning the kind who steals another woman’s man; Jolene is drained of all her power, the helpless prey of a powerful man, come to beg forgiveness from that man’s husband.

Only a few years before, Nettles had already written the answer to the question of “Jolene.” I have no idea why she felt the need to write another song when “Stay” was already the perfect confessional plea from the perspective of the adulteress. There, Jolene, though never named, is herself trying to keep the man, and pleads with him not to leave. Nettles claims “Stay” was inspired by Reba McEntire’s “Whoever’s in New England,” but it’s so clearly the counterpart to “Jolene.”

But for all the covers and sequels, the best version of “Jolene” is one made of, but not by Parton. “Slow Ass Jolene” was uploaded to YouTube in 2012, and now has over two million views. It’s Parton’s original recording, but stretched like taffy. What we used to do with turntables, the user does with Dolly Parton’s voice: dragging it from the soprano to the alto range, slowing it to near standstill. It’s beautiful and strange, even more haunting than the original song. There aren’t many songs with as many afterlives as “Jolene,” but then again there aren’t many songs like “Jolene.”

Casey N. Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Photo by Clarissa Rossarola

“The driver is a stranger to me. He is young, no more than twenty-five, with a smooth face and a tentative moustache. His name is Shadad, but he is not a taxi driver, and this is not a taxi. This car and this driver were arranged hastily by my guide and friend, Majed, who helped me around Jeddah the previous week. Before this drive began, Majed and I considered it a decent, if necessary, idea to employ such a driver for this trip, but now I am pondering how I could leave this car. If I open the door and roll out, would I survive? And if I did survive, where would I go? There’s nothing but rocks and sand for miles in any direction.” Does Dave Eggers being a racist asshole lead him to jump out of a speeding car and maim himself? Or does his cab driver kidnap and kill him for being an asshole? Or does he make it back to America to pen a long missive about his cab ride across Saudi Arabia and the lessons he learned about being a racist asshole? We may never know.