R ex S orgatz

David Foster Wallace's papers are all going to the University of Texas, including some "juvenilia" like 200 books from his own library, poems, and college/graduate papers. Why Pomona didn't get these is sort of head-scratching, but UT is building up quite the collection. In case you wanted to hear what Chuck Klosterman thinks about this:

"He definitely is the writer I've ripped off the most," said Klosterman, author of "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," on Monday. "Wallace showed me that you could present ideas that were insightful and complex, but the presentation could still be as entertaining as any sort of writing whose sole purpose was to entertain. Considering how dense his work could be, it was almost never confusing."

Unlike say, having a quote from Chuck Klosterman in your article that has nothing to do with the subject matter of where DFW's materials are ending up. --DG

online

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While compiling this list, I asked a few people a dumb question: What was the biggest online event of the year?

Random answers included Oprah joining Twitter, Michael Jackson's death breaking on TMZ, and Susan Boyle coming and going. Someone even tried to argue that a writer who detailed his firing from The New Yorker on Twitter was momentous.

Sigh.

But frankly, I've got nothing better. So try this out: Matt Haughey selling PVR Blog on eBay for $12k was the most emblematic online event of 2009. Why? Because the amount seems both ridiculously high and preposterously low at the same time. It proved that if there was ever a time when you couldn't tell what the fuck something was worth, this was it.

With Kim Kardashian making $10k per tweet, even internet fame seemed synchronously bankrupt and filthy rich. Or as someone else asked, how didn't we notice that Perez Hilton had accidentally become more famous than his namesake Paris? And how is it possible that more people are reading Reblogging Julia than Julia herself?

So it's time to stop being wishy-washy about our value assessments. A few years ago, someone convinced me to drop the title "Best Blogs" from this annual list and change it to "Most Notable" blogs of the year. It made sense at the time, when the medium was still figuring itself out: chiefs were being chosen, voice still being refined. But as I began to assemble this year's list, it became clear that, no, these blogs actually were my favorites, not merely the most interesting.

So here they are, the 30 Best Blogs of 2009:

[Previous years: 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008.]

30) Dustin Curtis
Woe, the personal blog. It's a small tragedy that the decade began with the medium being used primarily by single individuals to gather and share small insights, but ends with the impersonal likes of Mashable and HuffPo. In the age of more more more, it's remarkable to see someone dedicate so much time to a single post, making sure the pixels are aligned and the words are all just right. Dustin Curtis' personal site is one of the dying breed of personal bloggers who care about such things (similar to how Jason Santa Maria puts art direction into every one of his posts). Start with: The Incompetence of American Airlines & the Fate of Mr. X. (See also: Topherchris, We Love You So, A Continuous Lean, and Clients From Hell.)

29) NYT Pick
The bloggers behind NYTPicker had quite a year: they got Maureen Dowd to admit to plagiarism, they pointed out several errors in the Times obituary of Walter Cronkite, and Times contributor David Blum was revealed and then un-revealed as one of them. In the process, they showed that blogs can comment on the New York Times in a more substantial way than making fun of silly Sunday Styles trend pieces. If anyone really still thought blogs couldn't be the home of original reporting and research, NYTPicker proved them wrong. They watch the watchdogs! Just wait for an enterprising blogger to start NYTPickerPicker in 2010.

28) Gotcha Media
Every year it seems like a site should emerge to take the video aggregator trophy, but the space is still a hodgepodge of sporadically embedded YouTube clips. Gotcha Media was the closest to the quintessential destination for finding video events we remembered through the year, whether that be Kanye crying on Leno or Michele Bachmann leading a anti-health care prayercast. (See also: Gawker TV and Mag.ma.)

27) Animal
As Virginia Heffernan recently asked in a recent NYT essay, what exactly should a magazine look like in the digital age? Once a sporadic print title, Animal is now one of the last remaining examples of what an underground magazine could look like online. (See also: Black Book Tumblr and Scallywag & Vagabond.)

26) Shit My Dad Says
Several people tried to convince me to change this entire list to "Best Twitterers of the Year," a listicle that someone probably should compile but which exceeds my pain threshold. In the meantime: "Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

25) The Rumpus
As literary magazines go, The Rumpus is something of a mess. Created by Stephen Elliott, who spent most of the year jostling around the country in support of his novel, The Rumpus defined itself mostly in opposition to what it is not. But columns by Rick Moody and Jerry Stahl, along with a rambling assemblage of interviews, links, anecdotes, reviews, and whatever fits onto the screen, make it the best case going for a reinvented online literary scene. (See also: HTML Giant, The Millions, Electric Literature, and London Review of Books Blog.)

24) Best of Wikipedia
...Coprolalia, Foreign Accent Syndrome, Stendhal Syndrome, Dude, Mopery, Sokushinbutsu, Tyvek, Shm-reduplication, Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, Pica, Kayfabe... (See also: Double Tongued.)

23) WSJ Speakeasy
It didn't start off very well. In the backdrop of the Wall Street Journal announcing Speakeasy in June was the chatter about Rupert turning the internet into a clunky vending machine (put a quarter in, junk food drops out). And the coverage at this culture blog was spotty at first, but the gentility eventually morphed into a more conversational aesthetic. (See also: NYT Opinionator.)

22) Script Shadow
"I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process," said Tim Robbins' cocky producer character in The Player in 1992, and Hollywood seems to have listened. By reviewing movie scripts before they get made into movies, this site turns the focus back onto the written word. (See also: First Showing, Movie of the Day, and Go Into The Story.)

21) Newsweek Tumblr
It isn't enough that Newsweek is the only mainstream media organization dangling their toes in the rocky stream of Tumblrland; it also happens to be doing it better than most of the kids. (NYTimes.com has been threatening to do "something interesting" with the medium for a couple months, but there's still nothing to show for it.) It's tricky for an established old media company to find the right voice on a new platform, but the Newsweek Tumblr has figured out how to mix their own relevant stories with the reblog culture. (See also: Today Show Tumblr.)

20) Asian Poses
The Nyan Nyan. The Bang! The V-Sign. The Shush. These are just some of the poses Asian Poses introduced us to this year, illustrated by photos of cute Asian ladies. Is it offensive? Maybe, but many of the most interesting blogs straddle that offensive/not-offensive line. Also, based on the well-known "members of a group can make fun of that group and you can't" rule of comedy, this is not offensive since it is run by a Chinese guy. But maybe it objectifies women! Color me confused-pose. (See also: Stop Making That Duckface, This Is Why You're Fat, Really Cute Asians, and Awkward Family Photos.)

19) Look At This Fucking Hipster
If you thought the Internet had run out of ways to mock hipsters, Look At This Fucking Hipster and Hipster Runoff proved you wrong this year. Look At This Fucking Hipster took the more direct approach, simply asking you to look at photos of these fucking hipsters, complete with caustic one-line captions. It may come as no surprise that the author, Joe Mande, appears to be a self-loathing hipster, posing in black-rimmed glasses and a flannel shirt on his website. Literary-minded hipsters are surely jealous of LATFH's book deal.

18) Hipster Runoff
Hipster Runoff's Carles took a more satirical approach, blogging about pressing hipster issues such as the music meme economy and whether you should do blow off your iPhone in fractured, "ironic quote-heavy" txt-speak. Many people suspected that "Carles" was actually Tao Lin, since Carles' writing was so similar to Lin's affectless prose, but Lin denies this. Whoever Carles is, he is most certainly another self-loathing hipster. He knows far too much about Animal Collective to be a civilian.

17) Reddit
There's a long-standing joke on this annual list to mention Metafilter every single time. But this was the first year it seemed that more people were paying attention to what was going on in the conversation threads on Reddit. For the uninitiated: Reddit takes some of the features of Digg, mixes it with the aesthetic of Twitter, adds the editorial of Fark, and accentuates it with the comments of Metafilter. But better than that sounds.

16) Smart Football
If you had told me at the beginning of 2009 that Steve Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell would get into a heated debate about football esoterica, and that this debate would happen, in all places, within an internet comment thread, I would have said, "Yeah, and Brett Favre will have the best season of his life at 40." But every once in a while intellectuals wander into sports, and recently the NFL seemed the place where the Chronicle of Higher Ed crowd is hanging. So if you want to get smart about football, this is the place to do it. (See also: Deadspin and The Sports Section.)

15) Information Is Beautiful
Is it? Yes, but only in the hands of those who know its power. (See also: Infosthetics, Data Blog, and NYT Bits Blog.)

14) Snarkmarket
It looks like a conspiracy that Snarkmarket has made this list a few times now, but unlike most blogs that become sedentary in their success, it just keeps innovating. This year, Robin Sloan quit his job at Current TV to become (among other things) a fiction writer -- and one of the most fascinating ones on the scene in some time. Matt Thompson had been gigging at the Knight Foundation, but recently hopped to a new gig at NPR. With them being so busy, Tim Carmody settled in as the new scribe of ideas. If they let me give it a tagline, it would be "The BoingBoing it's okay to like." (See also: Hey, It's Noah and Waxy.)

13) Nieman Journalism Lab
Where were these guys when we needed them? Sure, it's another think tank, but Nieman Journalism Lab has been putting its not-for-profit money where its mouth is by also breaking news, such as the item about Google developing a micropayments sytem, the crack-ass idea from the Associated Press to game search, and little factoids like NYT's most frequently looked-up words. It also happens to be the only place still hiring journalists. (See also: Reflections of a Newsosaur and Newspaper Death Watch.)

12) Anil Dash
At some point during the year, I asked Anil for an explanation in the upsurge of blog posts on his site. He said it was merely recognizing an opening: there are so few people writing intelligently about technology today. True! Daring Fireball may have the links, and TechCrunch may have the coverage, but there are scant intellectuals left in the space. When it was announced last month that he was leaving Six Apart to work for a new government tech startup within the Obama administration, the techno-pragmatism all made sense. (See also: Obama Foodorama.)

11) Slaughterhouse 90210
Slaughterhouse 90210 combined lowbrow TV screencaps with highbrow literary quotes, making it kind of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups of Tumblr blogs. Another comparison: an intellectual I Can Has Cheezburger. Seeing a quote from, say, The Bell Jar underneath a Friends screencap is pleasantly shocking -- especially after you realize the quote fits the show perfectly -- and a reassurance that it's okay for smart people to like stupid things. Could be a good candidate for a book deal, if it weren't for those pesky copyright issues. (See also: The G Maniesto and Fuck Yeah Subtitles.)

10) Letters of Note
We've known for a while that the best blogs are dedicated to a precise nano-topic, but there is also a new thread emerging: the blog dedicated to disappearing technologies. The tagline of Letters of Note, "Correspondence deserving a wider audience," says it all. There's Hunter S. Thompson starting a screed "Okay you lazy bitch," there's Kurt Vonnegut writing his family from Slaughterhouse Five, there's the letter from Mick Jagger asking Andy Warhol to design album cover art, and there's J. D. Salinger's hand-written note aggressively yet delightfully shooting down a producer who wants to turn Catcher in the Rye into a movie. (See also: Significant Objects, Iconic Photos, and Unconsumption.)

9) Mediaite
Launching another media blog didn't sound like rearranging Titanic deck chairs; it sounded like booking a flight on Al Quada Airlines to Jerusalem. But not even six months after launching, Mediaite was already on the Technorati 100, eventually landing somewhere around #30 on a list of players who have been there for years. Sure, it can go a little bananas with the seo/pageview bait, but it's also one of the few entities in the whole bastardly New York Media Scene to actually have the will to take on Gawker (or its pseudo-sibling, The Awl). (See also: Web Newser and Politics Daily.)

8) Clay Shirky
There were only, what, a dozen or so essays on his blog this year? But one of them, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable, caused such a little earthquake in the industry that tremors were still echoing months later. Shirky is the only guy in the whole space who doesn't sound like he has an agenda, who doesn't have a consulting agency on the side that he's pumping his half-baked theories into. (See also: Umair Haque and The Technium.)

7) OK Cupid: OK Trends
Even the breeders in the crowd will be fascinated by the data porn on display here. (See also: Music Machinery.)

6) Harper's Studio
The book industry is about to go through the same disruptive changes that the music industry set upon a decade ago -- this, it seems, almost everyone agrees upon. But just as with the previous natural cultural disaster, no one is sure how to prepare for the earthquake. The editors at the new Harper Studio are the most likely candidates for turning all the theory behind "the future of books" into actual functional products. An impressive list of inventive works on the horizon hints at their agenda, but the blog, which is something of a clearing house for discussing everything that has to do with the future of publishing, is like an R&D lab for print. (See also: Omnivoracious, The Second Pass, The Penguin Blog, and Tomorrow Museum.)

5) Eat Me Daily
As one competing food blogger put it to me, Eat Me Daily is the Kottke of food blogs. Which, if you want to follow that obtuse metaphor, makes Eater the genre's Gawker and Serious Eats its Engadget. And which, if you understand any of that at all, means that this blurb can end now. (See also: Eater and Serious Eats.)

4) Mad Men Footnotes
As I wrote earlier, Mad Men Footnotes revived the moribund genre known as tv recaps.

3) TV Tropes
If you don't know TV Tropes, it's too bad, because I probably just ruined your life. If you've ever recognized a hackneyed plot device on a tv show and thought "I wonder if anyone else has thought of this," the answer is: yes, a lot. I don't even know where to suggest starting in this labyrinth, but try entries like Butterfly of Doom or Chekhov's Gunman or Bitch In Sheep's Clothing -- or just hit the random item generator. My dream is to have Tarantino spend a month here and come out with his Twin Peaks. (See also: Television Without Pity and Urban Dictionary.)

2) The Awl
The Awl is too good to exist, or so goes much of the catty banter in the media business scene. There is seldom a conversation of The Awl lately that doesn't ask, "How the hell will they make money?" But let's set aside that gaudy little question for a second and instead ask, "Why has The Awl become an internet love object?" I've done the math, and I have a theory, involving at least two factors: 1) It winks at all the sad internet conventions while both debunking and adopting them at the same time (Listicles Without Commentary and those Tom Scoccha chats are the best example). And 2) it is willing to go to bat for the unexpected without sounding like one of those intentionally counter-intuitive Slate essays (Avatar and Garrison Keillor are two good recent examples). In short, it's just less dumb than everything else. Even Nick Denton joked about it at launch, and I don't know how they'll survive either, but The Awl already exists in an admirable pantheon that includes Spy and Suck. (See also: Kottke and Katie Bakes.)

1) 4chan
Go ahead, scoff. But I will tell you this: no site in the past year has better personified the internet in all its complex contradictions than 4chan. Blisteringly violent yet irrepressibly creative, vociferously political yet erratic in agenda, 4chan was the multi-headed monster that got you off, got you pissed off, and maybe got you knocked out. When I interviewed moot in February, I discovered a smart kid who had seen more by the age of 16 than someone who actually lived inside all six Saw movies. People tend to think of 4chan as pure id, but there are highly formalized rules (written and unwritten) within the community. Inside all the blustery fury of the /b/tards, there is more going on psychologically than we are equipped to understand yet. (See also: Uncyclopedia, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and Know Your Meme.)

Special thanks to these exceptionally nice people for contributing ideas to this list: Caroline McCarthy, Joanne McNeil, Melissa Maerz, Chuck Klosterman, Soraya Darabi, Mat Honan, Katie Baker, Erin Carlson, Noah Brier, Jason Kottke, Taylor Carik, Nick Douglas, Lockhart Steele, Matt Thompson, Anastasia Friscia, and Kelly Reeves.

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Well, it took less than 24 hours for @CKlosterman to have more followers than me.

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It's my responsibility to explain why list-making matters, probably by making up some ridiculous counterintuitive argument and using words like "paradigm," self-reflexive," and "counterintuitive." I suppose I could suggest that the acceleration of technology has changed the way humans organize their internal thoughts, or that the proliferation of media has made list-making a necessary extension of cultural engagement, or that the ability to place pre-existing items into an arbitrary sequence has replaced the desire to generate an authentic personality. But that would be predictable.

--Chuck Klosterman, intro to Inventory. (The 2009 List of Lists is up to 250 entries and should double by the end of the year.)

Klosterman talks to WSJ about laugh tracks. His new book, Eating the Dinosaur, which contains an essay about laugh tracks, is out

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Beatles Klosterman reviews the new 13 Beatles remasters (out tomorrow) as though they were from "a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes." It's funny.

The entire proposition seems like a boondoggle. I mean, who is interested in old music? And who would want to listen to anything so inconveniently delivered on massive four-inch metal discs with sharp, dangerous edges? The answer: no one. When the box arrived in the mail, I briefly considered smashing the entire unopened collection with a ball-peen hammer and throwing it into the mouth of a lion. But then, against my better judgment, I arbitrarily decided to give this hippie shit an informal listen. And I gotta admit -- I'm impressed. This band was mad prolific.

Klosterman's new book has a cover and release date: Eating the Dinosaur. The format will be similar to Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

media

Long audio: Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman talk about the newspaper business. Chuck argues that newspapers should have started charging from the beginning, that the internet is not a meritocracy, and that the best newspaper strategy would have been to write longer. The best counter-arguments out there right now: Clay Shirky's Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable and Steven Berlin Johnson's Old Growth Media And The Future Of News (his SXSW speech).

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Conversant Life: Are You a Christian Hipster? If you don't like contemporary Christian music, megachurches, and mimes, yet do like "Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, or anything ancient and/or philosophically important," then yes, you are a Christian Hipster!

15) Hercules & Love Affair, Hercules & Love Affair

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It was a year that chimed in with idealism, and clanked out with pragmatism. "Hope" began the political season as an optimistic revelation, but concluded the year as a is-that-seriously-the-best-we-can-do? mantra right up there with "don't be evil."

Perfection was the goal, so music set itself to the task of eliminating the blemishes. Auto-Tune diluted the rough edges, but the economy fell apart and Kanye's mom died while undergoing plastic surgery. So much for perfection.

By the end of the year, we were searching for compromises. Once garish, Will.I.Am's take on "Hope" ended up sounding down right utopian.

There's a lot of fun to be had in the albums below, my picks for the best of 2008. Some of you will be disgusted by the likes of Lady GaGa, whose filthy rich party lifestyle is more gaudy than throwing a potlatch outside a homeless shelter (which is not that dissimilar from Kanye's Gucci soliloquy on SNL).

But compare that party-with-what-ya-got materialism to whatever "hopeful" nostalgia that the cosmoblogosphere was scolding you into: Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver and Vampire Weekend. When asked to pick between a luxury simulacra and faux authenticity, I'll take the loot any day. I have no idea where these indie kids found cause to overuse the word "beauty" in this weary pastoral, but this year's Pitchfork bands felt more like a retreat from the future than nothing else since -- fuck, I dunno -- prohibition. Fantasy, indeed.

Then again, I banged my head to Chinese Democracy, so what the fuck, right?

Here they are, my favorite albums of 2008:

1) Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
Depending how you want to construe it, Girl Talk is either the most cynical thing happening in music right now or the only relevant culture for our time. Or you can just ctrl-alt-delete the historicizing and declare it the Finnegans Wake of pop music: a difficult mashup classic that is as fun to discuss as to ingest. (And as my Joycean college mentor would proclaim, dance to.) Nothing this year made me think more about music: how it's created, where it's distributed, how it's discussed, who owns it, how fans have become critics, and how critics have become artists.

2) MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
It wasn't easy, but they survived the summer.

3) Santogold, Santogold
It felt like an eternity between the moment you first heard "L.E.S. Artistes" in 2007 to when the album finally became available. And then another eternity between the album and the inevitable Bud Light commercial. The elongated backlash sine wave was the funnest roller-coaster ride of the year.

4) Juno, Soundtrack
There's a little Mark Loring in all of us. Who? Mark Loring -- that would be Jason Bateman's character in Juno (and one of the many coded references for Minneapolitans -- a memorial to the famed posthumous Loring Bar). Trapped between eras, Loring couldn't find the right place between his rocker past and grown-up future. Like the Alice in Chains tee that his wife (Jennifer Garner) splotches in eggshell yellow, he's ill-equipped for the upgrade. That tension, which is also a prevailing narrative of our time, is the essence of this soundtrack.

5) Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
Kanye is your needy friend, Kanye is your worst blog commenter, Kanye is your John the Baptist, Kanye is your spoiled crybaby, Kanye is in your closet, Kanye is your form swallowing your content, Kanye is your everything, Kanye is your new bicycle.

6) Lykke Li, Youth Novels
Blonde, Swedish, design-damaged girl makes blippy, sullen, vulnerable album made for dancing around your apartment on a rainy day while waiting for your lipdub to finish uploading to Vimeo. Forget Suicide Girls, she's like the Tumblette of my dreams.

7) Lady GaGa, The Fame
Downtown NYC desperately needs a new hero. The hipsters, who eat their young faster than they can become zygotes, have already chewed up and spit out Lady GaGa, but she's the last great hope for a Madonna-esque crossover from naughty street creature to shiny pop diva.

8) Guns 'N Roses, Chinese Democracy
On the last page of the extensive liner notes, Axl gives his thank-yous for an album that he began recording before Dakota Fanning was born. Like the music itself, it's a hodge-podge of mysterious choices, with recognizable names and places jumping out of the jumble: Donatella Versace, Hoobastank, Suicide Girls, Ferrari, Weezer, SoHo House, Mickey Rourke, Bungalow 8, Apple Computers, Lars Ulrich, and Alice In Chains. If you stare at this list long enough, cross your eyes, spin around a few times, and throw some Hail Mary's at the Falun Gong -- Chinese Democracy sorta begins to makes sense.

9) Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles
This year I almost ceded victory to the music blogs, MySpace, and HypeMachine. The single seemed to finally drive the nail in the jewel case coffin of the album, so I nearly replaced this annual "best albums" list with a "best songs" list. (How else can I tout Teyana Taylor's "Google Me" or The Count & Sinden's "Beeper" or Kid Sister's "Pro Nails" -- songs all released in early 2008 but still have no accompanying albums.) With producers rushing out tunes and leaks fueling an embeddable culture, the time gap between hearing the song and getting the album now seems agonizingly long [see above]. But so what? No one will care about Crystal Castles this time next year, but "Crimewave" was the best Depeche Mode song never made.

10) Beyonce, I Am... Sasha Fierce
Slinging "fierce" into your lexicon at this point is like lighting the fuse on the ticking timebomb of obsolescence. Unless you're Beyonce, who can slap on a robot glove and look like she just dropped in to say hi! from 2012. The futuristic, angry Beyonce songs are always her best, and half of this two-disc package is throw-away R&B, but the other half is loud, bitter, and -- okay sure, whatever you say, Comandante Knowles -- fierce.

11) Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III

12) The Teenagers, Reality Check

13) M83, Saturdays=Youth

14) Cold War Kids, Loyalty to Loyalty

16) Beck, Modern Guilt

17) Santogold and Diplo, Top Ranking

18) The Cool Kids, Bake Sale

19) Black Kids, Partie Traumatic

20) The Virgins, The Virgins

21) Portishead, Third

22) Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)

23) The Ting Tings, We Started Nothing

24) David Byrne & Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

25) Gang Gang Dance, Saint Dymphna

26) Lil Mama, VYP: Voice of the Young People

27) N.E.R.D., Seeing Sounds

28) TV On The Radio, Dear Science

29) Metallica, Death Magnetic

30) DJ /Rupture, Uproot

31) Tapes 'n Tapes, Walk It Off

32) Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple

32) Hold Steady, Stay Positive

33) Foals, Antidotes

34) The Walkmen, You & Me

35) Hot Chip, Made in the Dark

Previous Yearly Music Roundups: 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2006 | 2007

nodak

Chuck's "What I've Learned" in Esquire. "When I read criticism, I never learn anything about the record or the movie or the book. I mostly learn about the writer."

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Chuck reviews Chinese Democracy. Grade: A- (At midnight on September 16, 1991, Chuck and I waited in line outside Budget Tapes and Records in Grand Forks, ND to buy Use Your Illusion I & II. Standing outside a Best Buy in New York, NY on November 22, 2008 sounds less enticing.)

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Esquire: Chuck's wacky "Brief History of the 21st Century." "NOV. 7, 2028: Tom Brady (R-Michigan) defeats Will Smith (D-California) in the race for the Oval Office."

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There are a hundred Klosterman interviews out there right now, but Steve's is the best. I'm going to grab this quote, even though only five people will know these North Dakota towns, including the one I grew up in: "[Owl] is sort of a synthesis of the cities that we talked about the most -- towns like Napoleon, Langdon, Munich, Thompson, Cando, Larimore, cities like that." Update: an unexpected rave from This Recording.

Pretty good profile of Chuck in Salon.

nodak

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ESPN Mag has an excerpt from Chuck's newest novel, Downtown Owl. I can guarantee this will be the only book to ever feature a passage about my high school sports+girls rival -- Wishek, ND (pop. 800).

nodak

Klosterman in Time Out. "People talk about how strange it must have been growing up on a farm in North Dakota. But I think kids who grow up in Manhattan have the weirdest understanding of what the world is like. They essentially don't even live in America. They live in this place where nobody drives, where you can get anything you want at any given time, where diversity is normal. A political moderate here is somebody who, like, doesnt want McCain to die. To me, that would be weird."

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Chuck's weirdest Esquire column to date: Chuck Klosterman Has an Opinion, But Does It Matter?

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ESPN Mag: Klosterman on Kobe & Shaq, feuds, and hatred.

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What do European kids think about American culture? Chuck is in Germany finding out.

The proliferation of media has made it virtually impossible to tell the difference between a) what information is unilaterally interesting, and b) what information is merely available. I used to think Richard Nixon and Ryan Adams had nothing in common, but I now realize I was wrong -- they both share an equal potential to be randomly fascinating to Germans.

Chuck recently confessed to me his love of The McLaughlin Group. I didn't really believe him. Then he said he was writing an Esquire column about it. I didn't really believe that either. Turns out, they're both true! "Critics sometimes suggest that the success of The McLaughlin Group has led to the erosion of serious discourse in American media, but that's like complaining about AC/DC because of Rhino Bucket." The cross-section of people who appreciate Rhino Bucket and John McLaughlin jokes isn't vast enough.

Even though it won't be in bookstores for seven months, Chuck's new book, Downtown Owl (cover), is now available for pre-order on Amazon. His first novel, it is set in North Dakota in 1983, a time and place I know quite well!

Chuck's newest Esquire column: Me, On Shuffle. The interrogative thesis might be puzzling (Chuck, you like '70s guitar riffs and things that sound like '70s guitar riffs -- dilemma solved!), but the nibbley multimedia format (a magazine article with music clips!) is sweet.

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Kottke and Buzzfeed and everyone else have been all over this gay Dumbledore thing, but I'm with Chuck on this one: ignorance may be death, but I don't care this time around.

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If I were in college right now, every term paper would somehow contain references to Trapped in the Closet and every night would be spent arguing with Chuck about some nuance of R. Kelly's masterpiece. Thankfully, I've grown up, and now my stupid blog is obsessed with the 22-chapter series while Klosterman writes about R. Kelly in The Guardian. (It's pretty great -- go read it. After you've watched the magnum opus.)

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A little late to the scene, NYT does its cover feature on mumblecore. Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation) was also profiled by Klosterman a few months ago. (Update: the trailer for Hannah Takes the Stairs is out now too.)

So I didn't make it back to the Prince show, but my pal Ross put together a great collection of various people answering the question, "What's your favorite Prince song?" You can see my answer ("When You Were Mine"), along with a bunch of my old friends including Melissa Maerz, Taylor Carik, Chuck Olsen, David de Young, Keri Wiese, Josh Grier, and Chuck Klosterman.

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Gawker: Melissa to Rolling Stone.

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Amy's Robot: Klosterman, New York magazine, and the Eagles.

Salon: a bunch of people (Robert Christgau, Ann Powers, Mark Dery, Greil Marcus, that Klosterman fellow, etc.) comment on the purported subversiveness of voting for Sanjaya.

Lately I've been thinking about how writers enjoy making declarations like "We live in an age in which..." or "New Yorkers are the kinds of people who..." or "Paris Hilton is representative of our time because...." Statements like these are addictive in their simplicity, creating the appearance of aphoristic profundity. And I'm more ridiculously guilty of this form of generalization than anyone. (I recently looked back at the columns I wrote in my college newspaper. Nearly every screed declares how we live in a new era of [whatever].) And that's why I really enjoyed Chuck's Esquire column this month about stereotypes.

media

13 comments

The usual caveats apply: I have no inside knowledge on any of this stuff. I talk to media+tech people about trends all the time, but nobody ever tells me anything important. And I only have mutual funds, so don't try to play that angle.

Besides, I'm just taking cheap shots anyway.

1) $100 PC. Finally, computing in the Third World! But priorities are reassessed when someone does the math and realizes that the One Benjamin PC could feed a single African for 37 years.

2) MySpace. Despite (or because of) News Corp's ownership of MySpace, unique users start to disappear. Someone at the New York Times realizes that your friend Tom has released absolutely zero new features to the community since Fox's takeover. In a scramble, MySpace releases a bunch of bad features that everyone hates. However, they sell several more sponsorship deals for movies, tv shows, and bands that you don't care about.

3) Apple. Apple buys Last.FM. Finally. And iTV is a hit. Finally. And the iPhone? Nope, never. Why? Cuz the iPhone is like God -- if it really existed, you wouldn't care that much.

4) Google. By partnering YouTube and Apple's iTV, Google has you watching Ask A Ninja on your plasma. Hello, Google Video ads.

5) Gawker. A rumor is leaked about a Conde Naste buy-out that involves a digital unit built around the new WiredNews.com. Nick Denton is too busy updating Lifehacker to respond.

6) The Office. Jim chooses Pam. Forgetting this is fiction, I attempt to drunk-dial Karen.

7) Studio 60. Sorkin's new show sorta catches on. Gloating until my pancreas explodes, I try to explain that Studio 60 is the first example of middle-brow camp. You call me a moron.

8) Technorati. A media company takes a shot at buying Technorati. Maybe Tribune, maybe NYT, probably Wash Post. By the end of the year, people are talking about a Newsvine purchase.

9) Publishing. Your mom is charged with plagiarism. Her book skyrockets to the top of the best-seller list.

10) TV News Anchor Ratings. 1) Brian Williams. 2) Charlie Gibson. 3) Katie Couric.

11) Windows. Vista ships. You try not to yawn.

12) Twitter. Google buys Twitter. A bunch of media organizations sigh deeply over not thinking of this first.

13) AOL. I have no idea. And neither do they.

14) Facebook. That snotty Harvard kid tells Yahoo, "Tell you what, I'll buy you instead."

15) Yahoo. Ba-bye, Terry.

16) Zune. Version 2.0 of the Zune is launched. A small group of converts start to form, while Engadget asks "too little, too late?"

17) Second Life. Robots invade and kill everyone. Turns out "everyone" is 5 kids in Tallahassee.

18) Mobile. 2007: the year in mobile. If I keep saying it, eventually it will be true.

19) Comedy. Dane Cook gets invited to speak at this year's White House Press Corps dinner. When Cook jokes about fucking the Bush Twins, G.W. laughs more than he did at Colbert.

20) Chumby. This little nerd toy you've never heard of becomes a huge hit.

21) Newspapers. More lay-offs, more shrinkage, more free weeklies, more navel-gazing.

22) SmartPox. Add it to the list of great ideas that won't catch traction. (See also: Open ID, micro-payments, free city-wide wireless.)

23) CBS. The digital unit will make a few acquisitions that seem peculiar. But by the end of the year, they will look hipper than Unkie Viacom.

24) GNR. Klosterman spreads a rumor that Axl will release Chinese Democracy on April 24. Thousands of thirty-somethings show up at a record store at midnight only to discover... ha ha, fooled you, old man.

25) Courtney Love. Comeback album, comeback movie, comeback fragrance.

26) Celebutantes. People talk a lot about Britney's comeback, but the new summer album does as well as releases from Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, and K-Fed. Meanwhile, Nicole Richie accidentally eats herself.

27) Ze Frank. The funniest guy in America lands a deal at Comedy Central.

28) Amanda Congdon. While the blogosphere wonders who's watching, Amanda's ratings go up, up, up. When you go home for Thanksgiving, you realize your dad has it bookmarked.

29) lonelygirl15. Remember Ellen Feiss?

30) Earth. The planet will get warmer.

Have a swell 2007.

internal

Believe it or not, I make a living as a futurist -- in the same way that nearly all of us (writers, entrepreneurs, bookies... Miss Cleo) bring home the butter by trying to predict what will happen next. The Prognosticating Class has become so large that you now can't click 'empty trash' on your desktop without a futurist falling out.

Last year was the worst -- I made 33 Predictions for 2006 in Media, Technology, and Pop Culture. It's time to look back and see how well I did. In fairness to myself, this wasn't really a true attempt at clairvoyance -- several of the predictions were just meant to be goofy. Oddly enough, those were the ones that turned out to actually be right.

Next month, I'll publish some predictions for 2007, but in the mean time, let's review last year's effort, with ratings of 0-10:

1) Netflix will be bought by TiVo, which will be bought by Yahoo....

Um, not so much. Score: 0.

2) Absolutely no one will buy Knight Ridder....

Oh boy, this is getting ugly. Score: 0.

3) NBC's new Thursday comedy line up will be a big enough success that tv execs will once again try to invoke the phrase "destination tv"...

Wellll...30 Rock is a hit, My Name Is Earl still does okay, and the relocated Office is stellar. But, well, no one is exactly shaking the presents under the tree at NBC this Christmas. Score: 5.

4) A new Pew study will reveal something about internet use that will be drastically over-cited by people who are reading this blog post.

See, that's me being funny. Score: 5.

5) David Chappelle will do something that makes everyone ask "why the hell did he do that?" It will be "brilliant," but "enigmatic and frustrating."

Tricked ya. That was written after he actually did "enigmatic and frustrating" things. Score: 1.

6) Showtime will pick up Arrested Development.

Um, yeah. Well, MSN picked up the reruns. Score: 2.

7) "Hello Katie, welcome to CBS."

Doy. Score: 10.

8) After a guest appearance on Veronica Mars, Amanda Congdon will sign a deal to host a new show on UPN...

Okay, wrong about Veronica Mars (how cool would that be?), and wrong about CBS and UPN... sorta -- instead, she'll be on sister company HBO. And ABC. So I get some points. Score: 7.

9) Book publishers will drop their silly little fiat and announce a triumphant partnership with Google Print.

Sorta yeah, sorta no. Score: 5.

10) Nonetheless, Google's stock price will slip 20% by the end of the year.

Can I get negative points? Score: 0.

11) Someone in Seattle or San Francisco will get beaten to death at a dinner party after saying the words "Web 2.0" for the five-trillionth time before the first course.

I can't prove it, but I'm sure this has happened. Score: 6.

12) 2005: the year of search. 2006: the year of mobile....

Maybe next year? Score: 3.

13) Current TV will start to show up in Nielsen. The numbers will be good, not great.

Well, not yet. But they got closer. Score: 2.

14) The break-up of Viacom will have unforeseen repercussions...

Maybe I should have kept them all this vauge. I was thinking something big would happen, but nothing really did. MTV got older, CBS joined the YouTube revolution. Score: 2.

15) Steve Jobs will announce a DVR.

Not quite. He announced iTV. But still... Score: 6.

16) iTunes will give in to record labels and adjust pricing such that songs will range from $.50 to $2.

This is getting painful. Does Zune caving to Universal Music count? Score: 1.

17) Sirius will double subscribers but it still won't be enough to pay Howard Stern's salary.

They started the year with 3.3 million and ended with over 5 million. So close. Score: 7.

18) David Letterman will announce his retirement.

I'm a moron. Score: 0.

19) Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, will launch in mid-summer, and will get surprisingly good reviews.

Hah! Score: 0.

20) Despite the L.A. Times' dismal failure, several media organizations will release successful wikis....

One word: wikiality. Score: 2.

21) Martha Stewart will quietly become a nobody. Donald Trump, however, will still somehow manage to remain famous.

Is this even measurable? Score: 4.

22) Mary-Kate and Ashley will return.

Shoot. Me. Now. Score: 3.

23) One person will finally figure out a cool use for Google Base....

I'm still not sure this has happened. Score: 2.

24) At the end of the year, the New York Times will drop Times Select. Soon after, CNN.com will make Pipeline free.

You wish, blogger. Score: 0.

25) Despite some inspired ideas, Craig Newmark's new journalism project won't be a gigantic success, but it will inspire others sites that quickly take off.

What the hell happened to DayLife anyway? Score: 0.

26) News Corp's purchase of MySpace will yield a decent record label that has a surprise hit.

Mickey Avalon! Mickey Avalon! Mickey Avalon! Score: 9.

27) FBC -- Fox Business Channel -- will launch.

Pft. Score: 0.

28) Ten major cities will release city-wide WiFi.

I had to use the word major. Score: 3.

29) Fergie from Black-Eyed Peas will announce a solo album...

Rock out. Score: 8.

30) The New York Times Sunday Styles section will write a trend piece about the trend of trend pieces. It will then implode.

It didn't, but it still could. Score: 3.

31) Chuck Klosterman will announce he's writing new columns for Vanity Fair, Wired, and Modern Midwestern Living.

Well, he almost wrote some stuff for Wired. Score: 3.

32) Fimoculous.com makes a triumphant return as an "almost decent" blog.

Fuck yeah. Score: 10!

33) Anderson Cooper will claim he's the father of Katie Holmes' baby. A wicked paternity suit -- in which everyone refuses to take DNA tests -- ensues.

You wish, Andy. Score: 0.

Average score: 3.27. Before you get all schadenfreude on me, please consider that some of those predictions were intentionally outrageous. As will next year's predictions. Tune in soon...

Chuck is an Onion A/V Club interviewee. Also: new Esquire column on YouTube.

Chuck's new book is doing well. Some reviews: New York Times Book Review, L.A. Times, Onion A/V Club, Slam, Akron Beacon Journal, and Portland Mercury.

Chuck compares Lost and Survivor in Esquire.

Klosterman's list of Music You Should Hear on Amazon.com.

games

Klosterman responds to the criticism of his game column via a GameSpot interview. Chuck's newest column: harshing on Snakes on a Plane's "prefab populism." Uh-oh.

games

Klosterman's "The Lester Bangs of Video Games" seemed to get a thumbs down from blogosphere gamers (though I think most of them missed the point), but Henry Jenkins himself discusses the essay on his new blog. UPDATE: Clive Thompson takes it on in Wired too.

Flaming Lips cover War Pigs with Cat Power.

Great. Now I have to hide my vintage bottle of Cristal, because if friends come over and see it, I'm a racist. On with the links:

MEDIA

The Nation's annual Entertainment State diagram.

MUSIC VIDEOS

Just forget you had a day of work ahead of you: Pitchfork's 100 Awesome Music Videos, with YouTube vids included.

'80s Music Videos.

Moz versus the paparazzi in "The Youngest Was The Most Loved" video.

Tapes 'n Tapes got video!

Sunday Bloody Sunday. Video of the year.

ARCHITECTURE

So in Minneapolis last weekend, I saw both the new Cesar Pelli library and the Jean Nouvel theater. L.A. Times has a good review of the latter. Those two plus the new Walker and new Michael Graves MIA expansion make Minneapolis the hottest architectural city of the last couple years. (UPDATE: Newsweek's "Design Dozen" drops Minneapolis as #1 in its Design City issue.)

WORDS

New Yorker on Timothy Leary.

FILM

Slate's profile of Keillor is gosh darn good.

Onion A/V: 10 Classic Movies It's Okay To Hate.

ONLINE

You saw Ze Frank in the Sunday Times, right?

T-SHIRTS

You Looked Better On MySpace.

Is This What Passes for an Ironic T-shirt.

KLOSTERMAN

Gnarls Barkley, NYT Mag.

Book cover to A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas is out. That's Chuck above the 'K'.

On the lack of influential video game critics in Esquire.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

So at some point I'm going to start reading Future of the Book's experimental collaborative book project on gaming, GAM3R 7H3ORY. But here's the hard question: when do I start? By the very nature of the project, it is never done. More thoughts on Future of the Book.

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

ONLINE

The best update of Hot Or Not of all time: Fuck Kill Marry.

The cure for illegal immigration? Webcams, of course.

Typography brought down Dan Rather -- could it reveal the answers to Lost too?

NEWS

FILM

Remnick on Gore in the New Yorker.

Winona has reunited with director of Heathers for something called Sex and Death 101.

Apple on the use of Keynote in An Inconvenient Truth. A design firm actually helped him with the powerpoint.... er, keynote.

Trailer to another off-beat, quirky, indie comedy! Little Miss Sunshine, starring Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear.

T-SHIRTS

McSweeney's Lists: Comeback T-shirts, For "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts.

Boston Globe: On t-shirts and celebrity, aka art and copyright.

GAMES

BOOKS

MUSIC

SPORTS

Both Klosterman and Gladwell use Kevin Garnett as important instances of different quasi-economic principles.

THINKING

Brian Grazer and Malcolm Gladwell have a hair-off on the Charlie Rose show. Among other things, they talk about Gawker.

MEDIA

At the end of last year, I chose Arianna Huffington as an "artist of the year." My lede: "The Huffington Post should completely suck." David Carr notices the one-year anniversary of The Huffington Post in The Times. His lede? "When it began a year ago, The Huffington Post seemed like a remarkably bad idea." Yo, just sayin.

WORDS

NYT Mag: Scan This Book! Surprisingly polemic towards the end, but spot-on.

NYT: Media Immersion Pods in Tokyo.

Okay, why hasn't the Al Gore on SNL thing been yanked of YouTube yet? I'll never understand...

NYT gave my fave girl Virginia Heffernan an upfronts blog. It's snarky!

T-SHIRTS

I'm The Decider.

MUSIC

Klosterman texted me from the ooh-ooh-big-deal GNR show in NYC ("Axl got thin again!"), but the big news is that Axl is obsessed with his online persona.

FILM

Wow. This is the best thing since those Negativland Casey Kasem tapes: Siskel and Ebert behind-the-scenes from 1987.

The first eight paragraphs of Melissa's Yeah Yeah Yeahs Spin cover story. Good.

Traffic is to Seattle as weather is to Minneapolis. People love to talk about hating it, but they're all resigned to its existence. Alright, here are a few links:

MEDIA

So I'm listening to last week's On The Media via podcast, and I hear Bob Garfield start swearing at an FCC official. It's both really funny and really good. But I'm thinking, "This can't possibly have aired. This must just be on the podcast." But no, it turns out that it actually was broadcast. There appears to be no fall-out yet, but I can't wait until next week's reax pieces, which seem inevitable.

ONLINE

Digg Soundboard. Indeed.

MUSIC

Since earlier this week we linked to a Tom Waits dog food commercial, this week you get a Rolling Stones 1964 Rice Krispies commercial.

Klosterman wrote a fake review of Chinese Democracy, but half the blogosphere thinks it's real.

SOCIETY

I became obsessed this week with NY Mag's "Up With Grups" story, which is effectively about aging hipsters. I basically took over a MNspeak thread with my theories.

Bob Saget is friggin nuts.

My life coach (Daily Show | NYT Styles) says I better get blogging again because not even Amanda reads me anymore. So here are some links:

FRIENDS

I have much to talk about, but first here are some updates from various Friends of Fimoculous:

Tapes 'N Tapes were on last week's Best Week Ever. After taking SXSW by storm (and landing an 8.3 on Pitchfork), last night they played the last show on this tour here in Seattle. They were awesome.

Diablo Cody was on Letterman last week. So best, go girl.

Michaelangelo Matos has exited his perch as the music critic at the Seattle Weekly to join the up-and-coming eMusic. For his final goodbye, he gives a farewell mixed tape to Seattle.

Waxy is still fighting Bill Cosby.

Elizabeth Spiers' DealBreaker.com launches on Wednesday. Interview.

Chuck Olsen interviewed Bruce Sterling.

Klosterman wrote an essay for the upcoming Criterion version of Dazed & Confused. His forthcoming book, Chuck Klosterman IV, is a collection of his previously-published work.

MNstories did a video of my farewell party in Minneapolis. That's really not me crying at the end.

Whoa, did you know Andy Milonakis is 30 years old? According to The Times, he has a growth hormone condition. He's the Gary Coleman of our times!

In addition to VH1's Web Junk 20 and Bravo's Viral Videos, other upcoming projects include a show on USA based upon eBaum's World and a show on NBC called The Net With Carson Daly. In the future, everyone will create a viral video.

The first season of Wonder Showzen is coming out on DVD this week.

BOOKS

Which is more peculiar -- that Terry Gross' interview with J.T. LeRoy is online without any notation of recent events, or that J.T. LeRoy sounds so obviously like a chick in the interview?

Enter the ISBN number of a book into BarnesAndNoble.com and get a quote for how much they will buy it for. Cool.

I've been busy alphabetizing my CDs and running to Ikea for book shelves, so somewhere along the way I missed that Malcolm Gladwell started a blog.

Although I'm morally obligated to read every book even remotely related to the internet (especially if it has something to do with blogging), I haven't decided whether to dive into Kos' Crashing The Gate. The decent NYTBR review includes the first chapter, so maybe that's a good starting point.

FILM

[Insert Snakes on a Plane link here.]

Well, at least William Gibson liked V is for Vendetta.

A second Scanner Darkly trailer.

MUSIC

Go read Douglas Coupland's "interview" with Morrisey, which is really an essay on the state of the interview.

Even Tom Waits once did a commercial -- for dog food, no less. It's especially interesting since he later sued Frito-Lay for impersonating him.

ONLINE

There's hope for all of us: Jason and Meg got married. Remember when they sorta spatted on Blogumentary?

Newsweek's cover story: Putting the 'We' in the Web.

You've probably read Danah's essay on why Friendster lost to MySpace, but here's the link anyway.

CITIES

The Top 15 Skylines in the World.

GAMES

One of the many things I like about Wired is that it truly is a magazine. That is, for all the talk about the death of print, Wired stories are the best example of the perfection of a medium that doesn't easily translate into other mediums. You can, for instance, read most of Will Wright's game issue online, but it's not nearly the experience that the magazine is. (See also: Wright doing a walk-through of Spore.)

GOOGLE

On the new Google Finance, you won't find this info: how much of Google stock that Google execs have sold.

FOOD

Every side-street around Microsoft campus seems to have one of those create-a-home-meal shops, so I'm not surprised to learn that Seattle is home to one of the biggest chains. From the NYT story: "The prototype, a kind of elevated cooking session among friends in a commercial kitchen, popped up in the Northwest in 1999. The concept did not take off until 2002, when two Seattle-area women streamlined the process so customers could make 12 dinners for six in two hours for under $200. That company became Dream Dinners, which opened a year later and now has 112 franchise stores, with 64 under construction." (Old MNspeak thread on the MSP-based versions.)

TV ON THE INTERNET

Look at all this: 1) NBC is producing an internet-only reality tv show called Star Tomorrow. 2) Bravo will launch a site, OutZone.tv, with original gay programming. 3) AOL and Mark Burnett are working on an internet reality tv show called Gold Rush. 4) NBC is greenlighting Carson's Cyberhood, a showcase of homemade videos. 5) Amazon is starting an original talk show hosted by Bill Maher called Amazon Fishbowl. All of these online-only -- no broadcast.

Occasionally funny: MySpace: The Movie. "Why am I not in your top eight?"

Current Rocketboom ad price: $15K

Super Bowl ads via Google Video.

MUSIC

Alright, what the hell is this about? Disney hijacked Devo for... Devo 2.0?

ONLINE

This is painful: Blogonomics Blog Cruise.

New Denton blog: Valleywag. Gotta love the post about the Larry Page's girlfriends.

FILM

More trailer mashups: Brokeback to the Future.

Or how about fake trailers? Tarantino and Rodriguez have crazy ideas.

What was the weirdest part of the Super Bowl? Noticing during the Mission Impossible III trailer that Philip Seymour Hoffman is the main villain in the movie. Here's a PSH interview with David Remnick.

SPORTS

Klosterman's ESPN.com Super Bowl blog was quite fun, right? He talks about blogging here.

MEDIA

The editor of the SF Bay Guardian thinks that Craig Newmark isn't the hero you think he is. Anil responds.

Time's tv critic, James Poniewozik, has a blog: Tuned In.

FAKE NEWS

A new journal for cross-disciplinary studies in plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification: Plagiary. [via NYT story.]

FILM

Media pundits are flopping around like suffocating carp over Soderbergh's new movie, Bubble (trailer), which will be released on DVD (now available for pre-order on Amazon) just a few days after it comes out in theaters.

T-SHIRTS

Is Chuck a t-shirt merchant now? I guess so. His newest (and strangest) Esquire column invites you to buy one of these t-shirts.

ONLINE

From last month, a Rolling Stone profile of the guy who created NowThatsFuckedUp.com, which is extremely fucked up -- among other things, the site contains gruesome unedited photos of people killed in Iraq.

Tag everything: TagWorld.

Last year's totally old rumor is back: Yahoo to buy Technorati?

Current.TV has put up a training module for citizen vlogging called survival guide. Meanwhile, Blogumentary has Vlognomics.

VisualComplexity.

Anyone else notice that nearly all the skits on this weekend's SNL contained musical numbers, including the intro monologue by Scarlett Johanson? Lazy Sunday, what have you wrought?

Outrageous Firsts in Television History. First toilet on tv, first use of the word fuck, first abortion, first rape, and of course first lesbian kiss.

Did you catch the first episode of Web Junk 20, the new show created by Viacom for VH1 after purchasing iFilm (VH1 link | iFIlm link). Why does it suck so much?

GADGETS

Although I've already got a Harmony 880 remote, this new SimpleRemote with WiFi sure does look tantalizing.

MUSIC VIDEOS

Wikipedia entry for Trapped in the Closet. The DVD is awesome.

3030Media.net is collecting some of the best hip-hop vid clips on tv, including the amazing Lil Wayne / Robin Thicke performance on Leon last which, which Kelefa gave a NYT shout-out to.

ADVERTISING

Cool Sony commercials in which balls are set free in San Francisco.

The Go Daddy commercials that won't air on the Super Bowl. Boring.

MEDIA

Think your a hot shot in forecasting the big events in 2006 culture? Take the USA Today quiz to make your predictions.

BOOKS

I've had several conversations with people who so greatly misinterpreted Gladwell's Blink that it seemed they never read it, but I never realized someone could write a whole book about his misinterpretation: Think.

I should really start a whole blog about last week's James Frey scandal, but here are just some related links: mammoth Kottke thread, Laura Miller at Salon offers her take, a history of literary hoaxes, and what will happen to Frey's and JT Leroy's movie deals?

MOVIE TRAILERS

Idlewild, the new Outkast film.

Miami Vice, the Jaimie Foxx / Colin Farrell version directed by Michael Mann.

Apocalypto, in which Mel Gibson goes native.

Tristram Shandy, the first postmodern novel turned into movie.

Manderlay, in which Lars von Trier continues his Beckett-inspired movie-plays.

18 comments

Are we there yet?

While everyone else tells you that 2005 was the year of disasters and chaos, I was too busy trying to figure out the cultural significance of Million Dollar Homepage and the E!'s Michael Jackson trial re-enactments.

Okay, it wasn't a great year, but at least you didn't hear anyone use the phrase "year of the blog" anymore. So just thank your lucky stars the whole friggin world didn't blow up, and prepare yourself for next year when it undoubtedly will.

And with that shot of optimism, I present my idiosyncratic mix of Predictions for 2006 in Media, Technology, and Pop Culture.

1) Netflix will be bought by TiVo, which will be bought by Yahoo. Since I obviously should be drawn and quartered for last year's prediction that Apple would buy TiVo, I might as well double-down on my bet.

2) Absolutely no one will buy Knight Ridder. C'mon, would you?

3) NBC's new Thursday comedy line up will be a big enough success that tv execs will once again try to invoke the phrase "destination tv," while the rest of us have no idea what network or time the shows are even on because our TiVo neglects to tell us.

4) A new Pew study will reveal something about internet use that will be drastically over-cited by people who are reading this blog post.

5) David Chappelle will do something that makes everyone ask "why the hell did he do that?" It will be "brilliant," but "enigmatic and frustrating."

6) Showtime will pick up Arrested Development. And then Showtime will announce a deal with iTunes in which the show becomes the first of its kind to have more viewers watching via portable player than on tv.

7) "Hello Katie, welcome to CBS."

8) After a guest appearance on Veronica Mars, Amanda Congdon will sign a deal to host a new show on UPN. That's Viacom-owned UPN, peeps. You know, CBS. So get ready for the Katie and Amanda show in '07.

9) Book publishers will drop their silly little fiat and announce a triumphant partnership with Google Print.

10) Nonetheless, Google's stock price will slip 20% by the end of the year.

11) Someone in Seattle or San Francisco will get beaten to death at a dinner party after saying the words "Web 2.0" for the five-trillionth time before the first course.

12) 2005: the year of search. 2006: the year of mobile. No, for real this time! The big change will be that carriers open up the deck to external providers. Why? Because Google releases the killer mobile apps that everyone needs. Seriously!

13) Current TV will start to show up in Nielsen. The numbers will be good, not great.

14) The break-up of Viacom will have unforeseen repercussions. Okay, that's vague, but I predict no less than three essays from Marketwatch.com about the failure of the split.

15) Steve Jobs will announce a DVR. That one's a no-brainer, but the big deal here is that iTunes video downloads will skyrocket. No wait, that's a no-brainer too. Fine, I predict...

16) iTunes will give in to record labels and adjust pricing such that songs will range from $.50 to $2. Oh hell, another no-brainer.

17) Sirius will double subscribers but it still won't be enough to pay Howard Stern's salary.

18) David Letterman will announce his retirement. Or at least I hope so, because right now it's like watching your favorite band from the '80s do a reunion show.

19) Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, will launch in mid-summer, and will get surprisingly good reviews.

20) Despite the L.A. Times' dismal failure, several media organizations will release successful wikis -- this time, in areas that actually make sense.

21) Martha Stewart will quietly become a nobody. Donald Trump, however, will still somehow manage to remain famous.

22) Mary-Kate and Ashley will return. Where the hell did they go, anyway? Some upcoming indie film director will cast them in a "quirky New York film" with Parker Posey playing their mom. Gen-Xers suddenly realize they're the next Baby Boomers.

23) One person will finally figure out a cool use for Google Base, sparking over-use of the word "mashup" by Slashdot nerds.

24) At the end of the year, the New York Times will drop Times Select. Soon after, CNN.com will make Pipeline free.

25) Despite some inspired ideas, Craig Newmark's new journalism project won't be a gigantic success, but it will inspire others sites that quickly take off.

26) News Corp's purchase of MySpace will yield a decent record label that has a surprise hit.

27) FBC -- Fox Business Channel -- will launch. Pundits describe it as "more fun" than CNBC.

28) Ten major cities will release city-wide WiFi.

29) Fergie from Black-Eyed Peas will announce a solo album. It will be Entertainment Weekly's worst album of the year for 2006.

30) The New York Times Sunday Styles section will write a trend piece about the trend of trend pieces. It will then implode.

31) Chuck Klosterman will announce he's writing new columns for Vanity Fair, Wired, and Modern Midwestern Living.

32) Fimoculous.com makes a triumphant return as an "almost decent" blog.

33) Anderson Cooper will claim he's the father of Katie Holmes' baby. A wicked paternity suit -- in which everyone refuses to take DNA tests -- ensues.

Note: I have zero insider knowledge on any of these predictions. And except for the last one, I actually believe them all, if only metaphorically in some cases.

7 comments

MEDIA

Tucker Carlson and Jon Stewart are going head-to-head again. Their shows will air at the same time.

NYTBR has Richard Posner looking at the media.

MUSIC

NYT's Sunday arts cover story is on the history and future of the music video.

Spin.com: Klosterman Q&A.

ONLINE

Wired's 10 years cover story is starting to appear online. Good stuff, including Kevin Kelly's We Are The Web.

Of all the uses for Google Maps, this is by far the mostest awesomest. Instant maps of where the hotties are.

Speaking of which, did you know that there's a Google TV ad campaign for Google Maps?

FILM

NYT Mag profiles Jim Jarmusch.

Quirk ensemble indie film or trite remake of the genre, you decide.

An excellent list of good upcoming movies. (New ones by David Lynch, LaBute, Aronofsky, Tarantino, Linklater, etc.) Looks like 2006 will be a good year for film.

T-SHIRTS

What Is Scientology?

BLOGS

The Onion A/V Club has a blog.

BlogHer was the place to meet babes this weekend. Oh, I'm so bad. Here's a Flickr stream.

The Dessert Island Question.

8 comments

Let me tell you a story.

The first couple months of college sucked. I was a pre-med student at a boring midwest state school who hung out with other boring pre-med kids from the midwest. It was like high school, except everyone wanted to be valedictorian. The best thing I could say about my doctor-to-be friends was that they were as exciting as organic chemistry.

One day, I accidentally walked into a dorm room where a couple slacker kids were on the floor playing Nintendo. Not even bothering to notice what game they were playing, I immediately focused on the poster hanging on the wall. It was a standard-issue Michael Jordan dunk shot -- the kind of poster that has no purpose other than to hang in a dorm room. Except the ingenious Nintendo players had taken a standard 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, cut a 3 x 3 hole in the center, taped it over the poster so that the hole highlighted one player in the fuzzy background on the bench beneath Jordan's splayed legs, and scribbled "Detlef Schrempf" on the poster.

I instantly knew that these guys were going to be my friends.

And now, let's have Chuck give his version:

I met My Nemesis in November 1990. I walked into somebody's dorm room to play Nintendo, and he was sitting on the bed, holding an acoustic guitar on which he could play only one note -- the opening note of Tesla's "Love Song." He was wearing a denim jacket, and he had used a black Magic Marker to draw the symbol for anarchy on the back. It was just about the silliest thing I had ever seen. We immediately became friends.

The first story is how I remember meeting Chuck Klosterman; the second is how he tells it in his new book, Killing Yourself To Live, which officially comes out today.

I'm not here to tell you Chuck is lying about how we met. For his last book, I did a point-by-point response to what he wrote about us, and he almost seems to concede fuzzy historical remembrances this time around by subtitling the book "85% of a True Story." Actually, I might be completely wrong about what really happened. In fact, "what really happened" is probably a useless concept when discussing drunken Nintendo battles.

(But just for the record, let's get a parenthetical in here. I am resisting the temptation to tell you the 15 percent that is inaccurate in his telling of our times together -- which you can hear for yourself in this MP3 of him reading from that chapter. But again, that's not what I'm here to talk about, because, for the most part, it's "true" (especially when you put it in quotes), and whatever isn't true is better this way anyway.)

Here's where I should tell you about the book. KYTL is basically a travelogue disguised as a memoir. First devised as an article for Spin, the ostensible narrative is Chuck travelling around America and visiting the places that rock stars died -- but that's all subterfuge for reflecting on various relationships and friendships from the past (and that's all subterfuge for reflecting on life and death). When he comes to Minneapolis (in theory, to visit the place Bobby Stinson died), the book recounts how a group of music critics (plus me, "someone who probably should have been a music critic") go to the Kitty Cat Klub, drink too much, argue way too much, go back to my house, drink more, climb on the roof, and nearly kill ourselves. And yeah, there's some stuff about the fist-fights we had in college.

Now that's out of the way, so let's get back to what I wanted to say. Look at the two different stories at the top of this page -- now ask yourself this: Which story is better? In college, this was the kind of thing that Chuck and I would have argued about for a week -- not just whose story is better, but what percentage of other people would think each is better, and who told the story most economically, and which story was more historically true, and if historical accuracy even matters, and who would play the parts in the movie of this story, and what Kant thought "better" actually meant, and so on. It was completely nuts.

But it was also probably the most important time of my life. Even though there were several occasions where I literally wanted to strangle him, nowadays my emotions about Chuck are pretty simple: I think he's funny, and he only occasionally pisses me off. As for "what really happened," it's all a blur, some of it intentionally so. But I now know this: I learned more about friendship from him than anyone else in my life.

But I can still totally kick his ass.

The link farm:

Buy the book

Listen to part of the book

Discussed on Stereogum.

On The O.C.

Entertainment Weekly review

KYTL being made into movie.

Book Notes from Large-Hearted Boy

Common Errors in English.

6 comments

WORDS

Awesome: List of fictional curse words.

McSweeney's: Pickup Lines: The First Drafts.

Random House: Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers Contest.

ONLINE

Best CNN.com homepage ever.

Best TV promo ever.

First indication [?] of who's behind Blogebrity.

I haven't been following Podcasting on this site, but I found it odd that TV Guide is now podcasting.

MUSIC

That immensely annoying frog song is at the top of the British charts.

Kaleefa Sanneh sings the praises of the new White Stripes.

New releases today: A Bjork remix and covers album, a new Oasis (which is getting a surprising amount of attention), and a new Smog.

New Yorker: The Record Effect.

In Spin, Chuck dissects music genres. "IDM: This is an acronym for 'Intelligent Dance Music.' Really. No, really. I'm serious. This is what they call it. Really."

Nerve.com: Sex Advice from Accordion Players.

The first and second seasons of Moonlighting came out on DVD today.

TVsquad interviews Kendra from The Apprentice, who will be heading down to Palm Beach to oversee construction of a new Trump mansion, and according to this Palm Beach Post story, taking a salary cut.

FILM

New Wallace & Gromit trailer.

A lucious six-flick Steve McQueen box set came out today. Makes me want to watch Bullitt right now.

Oliver Stone Arrested on Drug, DUI Charges.

MEDIA

Are you reading NYT's series on Class? Here's a fun interactive graphic showing how much class you have.

Kurt Andersen thinks Radar looks just a wee bit like another magazine from the '80s.

BOOKS

Bookforum: Pynchon From A to V.

NYT Styles this week looks at the glut of sex-themed books, which I won't say a thing about because I know at least two girls writing these.

I don't know if anyone is reading Umberto Eco's new book, but here's a profile of him in the Telegraph.

Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat.

5 comments

If you know me, you know I love t-shirts. Compulsively and annoyingly so. Saying I'm a t-shirt collector would be stupid, but I do occasionally buy sweet tees with a "just to have it" mindset.

I dug through my closet and pulled out my favorites (an idea blatantly stolen from Preshrunk's "What's In Your Closet" feature). Click the thumbnails to see the fullsize (or view them on Flickr).

	Atmosphere Keepin it real.
	Stryper I bought this beauty during a drunk eBay binge. Klosterman tried to buy it off my back one night. I told him I'd trade it for his Cenex tee.
	Rx It's, like, personalized for me, dude.
	Save Mary Kate Yep, the one that brought on a lawsuit.
	Wonkette Operative Shill.
	Hyperboy Probably my fave, this is early Bjork.
	Talk Nerdy To Me This tee doubles as my pajamas.
	Sheena, Suzi, Judy No one gets this one. They're all Ramones girls. Bought it from a store in Portugal for vastly too much.
	Nordeast Local favorite.
	I Read Your Email Total ThinkGeek.
	I Just Love Corporations My only remaining Onion t-shirt. The rest burned in the fire of '97.
	Not Helping From a Creative Electric show.
	Rumsfeld This guy is friggin Nietzsche.
	Radiohead The last non-ironic band tee I bought.
	Sonic Youth Very, very old. Long out of print.
	I Fuck Like A Girl I really do.
	Faux News I'm technically a journalist, but I still wore this to work one day. To hell with objectivity.

Thanks for stopping by my closet. Here are some resources:

Preshrunk

Cool Hunting

Threadless

Nerdy Shirts

Busted Tees

Non-Zero Chance

FILM

New Line Cinema picked up Klosterman's new book (not out until July) for a potential film. I'm a "character" in the book again, and am demanding to be played by someone no less handsome than Giovanni Ribisi (which I'm sure means Steve Buscemi will be Rex Sorgatz). I'll do some kind of review of the book here in a couple months, but if you're curious, it's Chuck's modern-relationship-cum-dead-rock-star opus. (Previously: Rex Rock City.)

Pedro's house in Napoleon Dynamite is up for sale.

Everyone's talking about Old Boy (trailer), which won Cannes this year.

War of the Worlds trailer. Starring Tom Cruise; directed by Steven Speilberg.

Finally a Joss Whedon comeback? He will direct the next Wonder Woman movie. Radosh predicts the lead.

Woody Allen interviewed in... SuicideGirls.com? Huh.

ONLINE/TECH

Yahoo bought Flickr. A great move for Yahoo, which is kicking Google's ass in the user-generated content arena.

And Ask Jeeves is being bought by Barry Diller.... for $1.9 billion. Jeesh, Jeeves.

Somebody please stop Christine Rosen from publishing this story again. First in The New Atlantis, she wrote about how cell phones and TiVos are ruining our lives. Now she's done it again in a NYT Mag essay.

Agence France Presse is suing Google News. Although I'm sure this will quickly get settled out of court, this raises an interesting spectre around Google News, which makes no money because there are no ads -- and this almost gaurantees it never will.

The upcoming Microsoft typefaces for the next version of Windows.

SHOES

Pimp my shoe! NYT Mag story on shoe customizers who will turn a pair of Nikes into $500 collector's items.

Adidas' computerized sneaker.

Converse's "Spin The Bottle" commercial.

Reebok's controversial 50 Cent spot.

Someone is aggregating all the Daily Show video links on one page. Sweet.

The video of the Lessig on West Wing episode.

Firefox advert or Franz Ferdinand video? You decide.

Everyone who wasn't talking about Flickr/Yahoo rumors at SXSW Interactive last week was talking about the Tivo/Comcast deal. Here's a good follow-up interview with the CEO of Comcast, which clears up some of the questions. [Via LostRemote.]

GAMES

For those who don't think Vice City is gritty enough, here's a preview to the new 50 Cent game, Bulletproof.

MUSIC

Tom Waits lists his top 20 albums.

Pitchfork gives the new Moby album a 2.4.

SXSW

Why can't it be SXSW every day? Here's a small selection of people that I had the great pleasure of speaking with for somewhere between 5 minutes and 8 hours in Austin last week: Malcolm Gladwell (author: Blink, Tipping Point), Chuck Olsen (blogger & filmmaker: Blogumentary), Rex Hammock (blogger: Rex Blog), Rob Davis (marketing maverick: Mozilla Foundation), Tara Hacker (blogger: HumminaHummina.com), John Vars and Ted Rheingold (web guys: Dogster), David Hudson (blogger: Green Cine Daily), Andrew Krukoff (blogger: Krucoff.com), Amanda Congdon & Andrew Barron (videobloggers: Rocketboom), Michaelangelo Matos (writer: The Seattle Weekly), Molly Steenson (blogger: Girl Wonder), Chuck Klosterman (author: lots of stuff), Lockhart Steele (editor: Gawker Media), Jason Kottke (blogger: Kottke.org), Jake Dobkin (publisher: Gothamist), Jason Calacanis (founder: Weblogs Inc.), Ricky Engelberg (digital guy: Nike), Ross Raihala (writer: Pioneer Press), Melissa Maerz (editor: Spin), Jennifer Maerz (editor: The Stranger), Matthew Haughey (web community guru: Metafilter & PVR Blog), Lindsey Thomas (editor: City Pages), Craig Finn (rocker: The Hold Steady), Bridgette Reinsmoen (editor: City Pages), Dave Campbell (publicist: 2024 Records), Alex Pappademas (editor: Spin), Anna Lee (fashionista: Voltage), Keith Harris (writer: freelance writer), and that one coke dealer. And how come no one told me Tony Pierce was in the house? Here are a few pics.

LOCAL

They love us! Both Newsweek and the Sunday New York Times wrote about our new museum expansion this week. In Newsweek, The Walker is called "probably the leading American venue for cutting-edge artists (both visual and performing)." Description: "The tour de force of their building is the silvery five-story cube, with its daredevil cantilevered corner hovering over the entrance -- anchored by hidden tons of steel and concrete -- and the whole shebang wrapped in shimmering aluminum-mesh panels that look as light and luscious as crumpled silk." In NYT, The Walker is dubbed "a place that prefers artful provocation to blockbuster entertainment, privileges the obscure and experimental over the tried-and-true, and cultivates a willful insouciance about the forces that govern most big museum establishment." And many arty lavishes are dished on our fair city.

It's sad that the problems that The Varsity Theater is having sound like something out of Kafka. The only good (if selfish) news is that the TC ElectroPunk Show might be rescheduled to a date that I'm in town.

When people ask me what my blog is about, I always stumble around for an accurate answer. Whereas most of my favorite blogs are about a single topic, this site mixes elements of pop culture, technology, media, and internet prattle. When pressed for a defining characteristic, I usually mumble something about online culture, and hope that is somehow self-defining.

Whatever the definition of "my little experiment in ego-casting" (as I like to call it), I am honored to be nominated by Wired for a Rave Award (press release).

Newcomers might wonder how this dumb blog stands out among a kjillion others out there. The short answer: it doesn't -- blogs are best consumed as an aggregate, a sum greater than its parts. It's a tired metaphor, but it's worth restating: the blogosphere is a living breathing entity that survives because all of its various cells work individually to create an organism.

However, I do have a suspicion that those people who come here (a meager 8,000 of you per day) don't need more long-form opinion in their life. There are plenty of clever commentary blogs out there, but I personally believe the world has enough opinion -- but hey, that's just an opinion. So if this blog has a theme, it's to fulfill its namesake: consuming and redistributing the carrion of online communication.

You see, when I dubbed this site fimoculous -- which is a type of micro-organism that inhabits and consumes its own excrement for sustenance -- I took it literally. This site lives in and eats its own shit. To put it more prosaically, I think of Fimoculous.com in simple terms: a place to find what people are talking about online today. So the best part of this site is probably the left column where the links are. I am online at least 10 hours/day, and that's where I store what I encounter.

Defying that depiction, I have nonetheless gathered below a small collection my favorite posts over the years. I apologize for the hubris of this greatest hits collection, and I swear this is the last time you'll see me talking about myself.

Yearly Lists, Lists, Lists
Think about how many devices you use that serve the simple purpose of aggregating content that you already have access to. I'm thinking of your TiVo, your iPod, your RSS Reader, and many other devices in your digital life. None of these devices provide you with new content -- they just organize it in a more effective way. When making a definition of blog, this aggregating element would have to be part of it. So it makes sense that the most popular feature on this site is not even really content -- it's a list of lists.

Blogs of the Year
These are my picks for the blogs that all deserve a Wired nomination for disrupting publishing in society-shaking ways.

IM Robot Chatter
I'm strangely proud of this one. All I did is write a program that allows two AIM clients to "talk" to each other. Postmodern love ensues.

The Rise and Fall of Plain Layne
This wasn't on my blog per se, but it was chronicled here and I think of it as my manifesto on online identity.

American Taliban on Usenet
I always felt like the mainstream media should have grabbed this story. Right around the same time as Google opened up the Usenet archive, America was obsessing about John "American Taliban" Lindh. All I did was Google him on the archive, and his 46 pre-Afghanistan posts opened a complete personality profile at a time when everyone was asking "what kind of person could possibly do this?"

Game Culture
This rambling essay looks at some of the trends in gaming today.

Digital Media Predictions
Here are my digital media predictions for 2005.

Rex Rock City
Chuck Klosterman is my nemesis, and I am his. This is a footnote face-off of our friendship. (His new book has another chapter about our relationship, which will be deconstructed at a future date.)

Blogumentary
This is another article I wrote for City Pages, looking at Chuck Olsen's film Blogumentary, which is essential viewing for those interested in personal publishing.

Wonkette Shakedown
Live reporatage of Wonkette's appearance at the Online News Association keynote.

Flash Mob
It's hard to even say flash mob without giggling, but it was fun to be part of this movement for a while.

It's scary to see my name on a list next to so many of my idols, including Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, James Surowiecki, Steve Jobs, Michel Gondry, Quentin Tarantino, Bjork, Prince, The Streets, Jon Stewart, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page. The other nominated bloggers are an amazing cast: Wonkette.com (Ana Marie Cox), Blogmaverick.com (Mark Cuban), Instapundit.com (Glenn Reynolds), and Kevinsites.net (Kevin Sites).

Franz Ferdinand Ring Tones.

Sorry I've been gone for a few days. It was a busy week on the homefront. Interpol played a good show on Tuesday; I spoke at the MIMA Summit on Wednesday; the single best design-cum-politics event anywhere was on Thursday. Leaving aside my personal life speaking only about local events, this has been the best Fall. Every day has something cool going on. Bite me, New Yawkers.

We have a lot to get to today:

POLITICS

Bush & Kerry live together... as Sims.

Blood relatives of Bush unite for Kerry: Bush Relatives For Kerry Dot Com. (Back story.)

Reason collects answers to the question "Who's Getting Your Vote?" from a diverse set of people including John Perry Barlow, Drew Carey, Nat Hentoff, Penn Jillette, P.J. O'Rourke, Camille Paglia, Louis Rossetto, Glenn Reynolds, Jack Shafer, R.U. Sirius, Andrew Sullivan, Eugene Volokh, Matt Welch, and Robert Anton Wilson. Some surprising answers.

Results of the Nerve.com sexual/political poll, which answers such important questions as "There are two spots left in your hot tub: Do you invite the Bush twins or the Kerry daughters?"

Mark Cuban's Benefactor was quietly cancelled (thank. fucking. god.). But Trump, who wrote Cuban a letter, ain't letting it disappear so easily.

MUSIC

Three more music director videos are coming. The first directors were Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry. The second set will be Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer and Anton Corbijn.

A certain Klosterman fellow sorta reviews the new Wilco album in City Pages. (Wherein you learn Chuck and Jeffy Tweedy both like -- ugh -- Jet. Right, right, I don't like Jet because I'm a hipster.)

Now, this is rock 'n roll! A one-week cruise with Journey, Styx, and REO Speedwagon: RR Holiday Escape.

Pitchfork gives the new Le Tigre a 3.3 and EW dissed the "I'm So Excited" cover this week. This really disapoints me.

MEDIA

Boy-oh-boy, Tina Brown's new website is lame.

T-SHIRTS

I ♥ The Internets.

WORDS

The Book Spoiler Dot Com. "The ending to these books will be revealed!"

Neal Stephenson does the Slashdot interview. Good.

John Le Carre hates Bush.

FILM

Fleshbot Films has an Amazon storefront. Anyone wanna guess what future titles will be?

Gibson reports on his blog that Pattern Recognition might become a Peter Weir film.

BAD BOOKS

This turned up on my Amazon Associates list of things purchased through this site: The Complete A**hole's Guide to Handling Chicks. Is this my audience?

PUBLISHING

As noted here last month, O'Reilly is getting into magazine publishing with Make, but now there's a Wired News story.

MARKETING

Waxy on the highs and lows of viral marketing.

JON STEWART

Wal-Mart nixes the Daily Show book.

I looked everywhere in the Sunday Times for something about the Jon Stewart / Crossfire battle. It took them five days to finally get to it, though.

SCIENCE

One of those things you only know about me if you know me offline: I have no sense of smell. (It's a long tragi-comic story, but I lost it in an accident about six years ago.) I just noticed the Times Mag has a column by a woman who lost her smell, and the process by which she regained it. Looks like I have a winter project ahead of me.

DERRIDA

Terry Eagleton responds to the "bone-headed."

LOCAL

It's Melissa's fault that I've been watching America's Top Model, but I just found out that Nicole is from... Minot, ND. Impossibly, her bio lists herself as "former punk rocker." The kids who knew her (of which I am not one) are talking about her here.

Can you imagine writing this next sentence in 1994? Billy Corgan will be reading at The Loft today. (I wonder if I can get him to say "Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.")

If you live in Northeast (or visit that hidden NE Grumpy's), you've probably met Tom Taylor, the Green party candidate for that district's state house rep. CP profiles him.

Ever wonder why all your friends are leaving Uptown for Northeast. For reasons like this.

If you missed it, a few Pioneer Press reporters were suspended for going to a Springsteen concert. Weird.

Wired's Great River Road Tour is in Wisconsin now.

Just when you thought the film festivals were slowing down, here comes Get Real, City Pages' documentary festival.

CELEBRITY JOURNOS

The blogosphere likely won't shut up about the Times Mag story featuring Wonkette for quite some time.

Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart seem to be competing for Ubiquitous Fake Journalist of the Year. 60 Minutes today saw Mike Wallace do a long profile of O'Reilly; Time did 10 Questions for Jon Stewart. Rolling Stone did an O'Reilly profile; Annenberg released a survey that indicates Daily Show viewers are more politically aware. Slate did How To Beat Bill O'Reilly; CBS MarketWatch suggests Jon Stewart should moderate a presidential debate. And on and on... or you can just see them head-to-head.

ONLINE PUBLISHING

I'm not sure why more people didn't point to Jim Romenesko's cool new blog Starbucks Gossip when it launched last month. The Times this week picks up on the "Should You Tip Your Barista?" thread.

Gawker's Russ Smith interview is surprisingly full of good observations about alt-weeklies, meta-media moguls, and a dead counter-culture press. See also: a short interview with Esquire's sex columnist (and Daily Show correspondent), Stacey Grenrock Woods.

Last year around this time, I was talking about how Wired magazine has nicely reinvented itself. I've been less happy with the mag this year, but WiredNews.com (the website) has made some excellent editorial decisions lately. Two new columns, Sex Drive and Media Hack, have been required digerati reading. The most recent Sex Drive talks about The Sinulator, a vibrator which connects to a USB port and can be controlled remotely.

Ultragrrrl reveals (or so it seems, but maybe it's a joke) that the person behind the recently defunct TMFML (which even got a NYtimes obit) is.... a hot scenester girl?

CONSUMPTION

Kobayashi (the hotdog-eating guy) to retire?

Malcolm Gladwell put his awesome analysis of ketchup (I kid you not) online. Previously printed in the New Yorker.

The Times follows up Slate.com's analysis of vodka (I love this series from Slate) with a look at Cîroc, the vodka that was "disqualified" from the Slate contest because of "trying to pass itself off as a vodka."

Elle Macpherson has a new line of lingerie called Intimates. The ads, airing in Australia and the UK and featuring a knife-fighting supermodel, are causing quite a controversy. Yeah, I know, you wanna see them.

James Poniewozik brilliantly looks at the niching of America in Time: The Age of iPod Politics.

DESIGN

Good Bruce Mau interview. (Deborah Solomon seems to have become America's best interviewer.)

FILM

When I saw a trailer link for White Noise, the movie, I freaked out and called everyone I know. Or at least I started to. Then I saw "Genre: Paranormal thriller," and thought you motherfuckers ruined my favorite book! Turns out, this movie is unrelated to the book. But there was a rumor a year ago that DeLillo's White Noise would be a movie. Anyone have the scoop? (IMDB has Barry Sonnenfeld as the director of a 2005 release.)

From the Wong Kar-Wai profile in the Times Mag: "The kind of person who might once have proclaimed Jules and Jim or Wings of Desire his or her favorite movie now rates Wong Kar-wai at the top of the list." Which stings a bit, cuz I used to call Wings of Desire my favorite movie, and now I usually say Chungking Express.

Times: What's Your Take on Cassavetes? The five-disc collection looks so luscious.

MUSIC

This is the year Le Tigre is gonna hit the mainstream. Stop it, I'm serious. There's an exciting profile in the new Spin and the word is finally out about Kathleen Hanna's relationship with a Beastie Boy. And Stereogum has an MP3 of Le Tigre's cover of the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited," which is gonna beat the Jazzercise knickers off Britney's "My Perogative." Best. Song. Of. 2004.

U2's new single, "Vertigo," from the forthcoming album is available here. (Good song.)

REM's entire new album streaming here.

Sinead O'Connor: "Stop making fun of me." Okay.

TECH

Last year, Business 2.0 infamously gave its "Hottest Technology" award to social networking software (Friendster, MySpace, Tribe.net, Orkut, etc.). This year, it goes to VoIP (Subscription Link). Runner-ups include Satellite Radio, Open-Source Databases, and Concept Mapping.

GAMES

Everyone is waiting to see what Steven Johnson says about Sims 2.

LOCAL

While in Fargo a few weeks ago, I got in a conversation with someone who was contributing to the creation of 100 North Dakota Books, a list of -- you guessed it -- 100 notable NoDak books. The person was trying to keep Chuck Klosterman off the list. Didn't happen.

If you missed it, RatherGate can be attributed to a local blogger, Powerlineblog.com, which is part of the Northern Alliance collective. Strib has a story.

The Frank Stone Gallery is doing some great work. The Poster Offensive exhibits were both good. (And the parties were fun too.)

FILM

Lost In Translation came out on DVD today.

DESIGN

U.S. State Department ditches Courier in favor of Times. Which means they'll adopt Verdana in 20 years.

I kept hearing the Super Bowl streaker had a website written on his body, but could never find which one. Finally, a photo. Stupid gambling site which brags about it here.

Historical look at nudity on television.

POLITICS

Steven Johnson's post about Howard Dean's demise is one of those little succinct moments in the blogosphere where the right opinion is heard and the words echo in a way as important as a NYT op-ed. Or maybe that's the problem? Shirky has one too.

WORDS

Chuck interviewed at Gothamist. Best line of many: "I think the bars should stay open later, and I think there should be more people blogging about the media. Oh, and people should be generally crazier." (See previously, killing small people with Chuck.)

ONLINE

Brooke says Broken Saints is being turned into a DVD.

MUSIC

Li'l G n' R: First Ever Guns 'n Roses Kids Tribute Band. I hear Michael Jackson wants to play with Slash again. Rim-shot!

New Beastie Boys album in June.

Jeff Tweedy, poet.

That new Stereolab is album is getting their best reviews in years. Pitchfork even gave it a meteoric 7.6.

Britney little sister's blog is surprisingly like Billy Corgan's blog.

LOCAL

New "most popular articles today" link at CityPages.com.

Read the story about KSTP using Ed Asner as a pitch man? Funny.

Special treat today.

Chuck Klosterman and I met our first year of college, and we quickly developed the most dysfunctional friendship I've ever had. At the college newspaper, he was the sports columnist and I was the music columnist. At times, I hated him more than any girlfriend I've ever had. That's saying something.

His new book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, comes out later this month. One essay, which is also printed in the September issue of Spin, uses the tempestuous summer we lived together (1992) as a set up for a larger topic.

Here are the first few paragraphs, reprinted without permission from anyone, but it's my life so sue me. I've added some "footnotes" -- commentaries over the top of his analysis of the summer of '92. Watch out, kids, it's gory:

Even before Eric Nies came into my life, I was having a pretty good 1992.

I wasn't doing anything of consequence that summer, but -- at least retrospectively -- nothingness always seems to facilitate the best periods of my life. [Note 0.] I suppose I was going to summer school, sort of; I had signed up for three summer classes at the University of North Dakota in order to qualify for the maximum amount of financial aid, but then I dropped two of the classes the same day I got my check. I suppose I was also employed, sort of; I had a work-study job in the campus "geography library," which was really just a room with a high ceiling, filled with maps no one ever used. For some reason, it was my job to count these maps for three hours a day. [Note 1.] But most importantly, I was living in an apartment with a guy who spent all night locked in his bedroom writing a novel he was unironically titling Bits of Reality, [Note 2.] which maybe have been a modern retelling of Oedipus Rex. [Note 3.] He slept during the afternoon and often subsisted on raw hot dogs. [Note 4.] I think his girlfriend probably paid the rent for both of us. [Note 5.]

Now this dude who ate the hot dogs -- he was an excellent roommate. [Note 6.] He didn't care about anything remotely practical. [Note 7.] When two people live together, there's typically an unconscious Odd Couple relationship. There's always one fastidious guy who keeps life organized, and there's always one chaotic guy who makes life wacky and interesting. Somehow, me and the hot-dog eater both fit into the latter category. In our lives, there was no Tony Randall. We would sit in the living room, drink a case of Busch beer, and throw the empty cans into the kitchen for no reason whatsoever, beyond the fact that it was the most overtly irresponsible way for any two people to live. [Note 8.] We would choose to put out cigarettes on the carpet when ashtrays were readily available. We would vomit out the windows -- and this was a basement apartment.

Obviously, we rarely argued about the living conditions.

We did, however, argue about everything else. Constantly. [Note 9.] We'd argue about H. Ross Perot's chances in the upcoming presidential election, and we'd argue about whether there were fewer Jews in the NBA than logic should dictate. [Note 10.] We argued about the merits of dog racing, dogfighting, cockfighting, affirmative action, legalized prostitution, the properties of ice, chaos theory, and whether or not water had a discernible flavor. [Note 11.] We argued about how difficult it would be to ride a bear, assuming said bear was muzzled. We argued about partial-birth abortion, and we argued about the possibility of Trent Reznor committing suicide and/or being gay. We once got into a vicious argument over whether or not I had actually read all of an aggrandizing Guns N' Roses biography within the scope of a single day, an achievement my hot-dog-gorged roommate claimed was impossible (that particular argument extended for all of July). [Note 12.] Mostly we argued about which of us was a better at arguing and particularly about who had won the previous argument. [Note 13.]

Perhaps this is why we were both enraptured by that summer's debut of MTV's The Real World... [Note 14.]

0. This was the summer we discovered the movie "Slacker," which I still say is the single biggest cultural event of my life. It changed everything for me to realize one could make a movie about doing nothing that is this crazy and good.

1. My job that summer was mowing lawns on campus. But I got in big trouble for flirting with the University President's teenage daughter, who was always out frolicking on the grass like a Midwest Lolita.

2. The title of my book was, believe it or not, actually much worse: "Bits of Eternity." However, I later wrote Chuck a letter from Alaska joking that I should ride "The Real World" wave and call it "Bits of Reality." (I also like to think, with gritting teeth, that it was a precursor to Reality Bites [1994].) The novel, by the way, was wretched, and it was thankfully destroyed in a fire in 1997. I would describe it as a mix between Danielle Steele and Jack Kerouac. I was reading Hermann Hesse at the time, if that's any indication.

3. I was also reading Freud at the time, but there was no Oedipus complex.

4. Either this hot dot thing is a literary device or I should be more fat. What makes it double-weird is that I'm vegetarian now.

5. Lora was kind and giving and beautiful, but not that giving. Also of note here: she lived with us. That makes three of us in a very small one-bedroom. Chuck slept on the couch and always liked listening to us doing it at night. He doesn't think I know this.

6. True!

7. Very true! Sub-footnote: This will be painful to admit, but this was the summer I took to wearing a Malcolm X baseball cap. The 12-year-old neighbor kid chastised me because his mom (a psychology prof) said that Malcolm X was a racist. I almost capped that whitey.

8. It is mind-bogglingly surreal to see the boring Busch beer-drenched life you lived a decade ago retold in "Spin" magazine.

9. This is painfully true. I can remember almost every word of every fight of many of the things listed next. And I was right every damn time.

10. I was convinced there should be more Jewish NBA stars. Or any? I still believe there's a conspiracy.

11. This water one was a big deal. Water has no flavor. Period.

12. This truly was a vicious one. But my point was that he had skipped all the "philosophical" chapters. In retrospect, this is a monstrously hilarious accusation.

13. I would invite friends over to listen to us argue, and then force them to judge who the winner was. I remember our friend Lefty saying "well Rex, Chuck sometimes makes better points than you." I almost clocked him.

14. That's all just a set up to what follows: a thoughtful essay about watching "The Real World." It's a good book, go buy it.

Minority Report was good, not great. It will fall some near the bottom of the "Top 10 Movies of 2002" list. It could have been great if Spielberg could figure out how to end a movie. I really don't understand his problem -- at the end of A.I. he self-destructed with at least five different places where it seemed like a good place finish. But he keeps sprawling, unable to tie all the piecees together in the end. He's a walking shaggy dog story. The best part: the ads. The problem is that this kind of advertising saturation is fine for a dystopian future in which personalization will kill us all. But I don't really want it to be a trend.

BuddyHead.com is full of musical oddities like Vincent Gallo interviewing himself (which was supposed to appear in the defunct Beastie Boys mag Grand Royal) and insane Fred Durst and Slayer interviews. The music reviews use an "Axl Rose" rating system. In what be the coolest prank of the decade, the proprietors also once stole three Fred Durst baseball caps and sold them on eBay, with proceeds going to a rape counseling organization.

What the hell? Why is it that on an average Wednesday evening in July these three events are all happening at the same time: Minnesota Blogger Meetup, Mum at the Women's Club, DJ Spooky at First Ave.

Syracuse is planning to build a mall bigger than the one next to here.

In The Voice: Chuck reviews Linus of Hollywood and Matos reviews Slug.

Two flash-based NYC things to ponder AroundGroundZero.net | WTC2002.

Sorry, I'm back. John, Ross, and Chuck got me too drunk. Oh, an update? One just hated Vanilla Sky, one just turned 30, and one just lived with Ozzy for two days. And there was Lora, the ex who's now a doctor that looks like a supermodel flapper. (Chuck will have to send me pics so that I can prove this.)

Stephen King claims he's done?

FOX is pulling perhaps the worst television I've ever seen: The Chamber.

I've been saying for a long time that what Salon really needs to do is branch out beyond the web. Now, they are considering a magazine.

Compare: Name That Candybar | Name That Beer Bottle.

Crank your speakers for perhaps the worst TV website of all time: WBQP. (Courtesy of LostRemote.)

Oculart scares me.

Something to watch: White Stripes, "Fell In Love With A Girl".

Tom Tomorrow of This Modern World has started his own blog.

A new fusion restaurant has opened in Minneapolis: Sushi Tango. I guess I'll have to go.

Good David Sedaris interview.

More Googlish fun: Googlewhacking is a game by which bloggers try to come up with two-word combinations that force Google to only return one page -- yours. This thread at MeFi has people whacking the hell out of Google.

Chuck has a funny column predicting music in 2002. "I predict Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson will have a baby, which will be legally named 'I Am the Baby of Kid Rock.' In a related story, Tommy Lee will begin dating Britney Spears." (p.s. Chuck says he's taking three months off to work on his second book.)

I've finished Jakob Nielsen's Homepage Usability in record time. It reminds me of arguing with my best friend in college: it's difficult to differentiate smart-dumb from dumb-dumb. Nielsen tediously repeats the same thing over and over, but I have to admit that after I finished the book, he made me hate all of the websites I'm affiliated with because he's right: most web design is bad.

Speaking of arguing with college friends, it's been fun to watch Chuck's musical taste change through the years. Sure, it happens to everyone, but seeing him write about Suzanne Vega and the Vaselines a decade after the fact makes me grin.

My roommate once knowingly purchased a laptop computer online for $100 because there was a glitch in the checkout pricing. It created one of the most enjoyable ethical debates I've ever had (is it stealing? is it entrepreneurship?). This debate came up again when Amazon accidentally sold a $300 camera for $40. Metafilter has a great thread about it.

Chuck Palahnick (the guy who wrote Fight Club) has penned a piece about 9/11: The View From Smalltown, USA.

For your MP3 pleasure (amazing what Grokster yields): Beck Vs. AC/DC.

Well, maybe something good can come of this. The National Review cans Ann Coulter.

I knew I shouldn't have linked to that "bin Laden calls mom" story yesterday. It's already being debunked.

Uh-oh. Austere Google has added nav bars. There's also a preferences page now.

Usability expert Bruce Tognazzini chimes in on his feelings on how to make airports secure. Nothing new though.

Never trust anyone who says "Afghani" (like I've been doing in the things I produce). And, since I'm linking to Slate, I found this article on naming the "New New World Order" interesting.

Chuck listened to Nevermind recently, and here's a song-by-song analysis. Those "in the know" will be amused by this entry about "Lithium":

I knew an English education major who was obsessed with this song and what it was supposed to mean. In an attempt to impress her, I actually went to the medical school library to find out what lithium was used for, discovering that it was sometimes prescribed for multiple personalities. This seemed to answer all our questions, because Cobain sings about having friends "inside my head." It turns out Lithium is actually about a deeply religious family Kurt temporarily lived with after being kicked out of his house as a teen-ager. To be perfectly honest, I think my interpretation is more interesting than the actual reality, but the English major ended up having sex with some guy who fronted an alternative cover band called As If, so I guess I don't care anymore.

Oh, boo hoo. Just when you thought dot-com failures were the most trite thing in the world to talk about, the New York publishing world solidifies your suspicions by celebrating it in BooHoo.com, which apparently chronicles the catastrophic rise and fall of Boo.com. Gawd, they're talking to Cameron Diaz and Ed Norton about a movie.

Weird. The consistently clueless New York Times Arts Section just realized Serge Gainsbourg exists.

CNN is launching a Arabic-Language website. It will be called CNNArabic.com. (p.s. WE MISS YOU MARCIA!)

Eek! The IP addresses are running out!

The Dallas Morning News, The Toronto Star, the Houston Chronicle, and The Orange County Register have all cut their tech sections.

G'head, tell me you don't like saying Sill-vee-yah Poh-DJOH-lee. That's what I thought.

Chuck thinks David Sedaris Must Die.

This project that I'm working on is nowhere near complete, but I wanted to throw it out there to see what you think: Name That Play. The idea is that you learn a little bit of football by seeing some animations of classic plays. It needs work yet, but the general skeleton is there. Any thoughts?