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The Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party!)” isn’t just the rare song with two parentheses in the title, or the MTV debut of Tabitha Soren. Even after a three-decade Beastie career, it remains the cornerstone of their work. So five perspectives on a #7 single: 1. Public Enemy, “Party for Your [...]
posted 9 May 2012 in Links, Tasty Bits. 2 comments
That was the dullest Academy Awards ever, right? But there were some highlights for me, not least that Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall won the Film Editing Oscar for their work on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo–work that they were kind enough to dissect for me (and the readers of The New York Times). [...]
posted 27 February 2012 in Articles, Links. no comments yet
My history of Doritos was a story a year in the making; it required a trip to Texas to see the flagship Frito-Lay plant and some detective work to track down the snack’s then-96-year-old inventor, Arch West (who has since died, alas). But you can now read it on the Maxim website, with or without [...]
posted 14 February 2012 in Articles, Links. no comments yet
I’m always happy to learn more about the state of the art in artificial languages, such as this article in yesterday’s New York Times. If that whetted your appetite for a historical overview of totally made-up dialects, you might enjoy a 1996 Wired article I wrote that delivers exactly that.
posted 13 December 2011 in Links, Outside. no comments yet
This past weekend marked the twentieth anniversary of Guns N’ Roses’ messy yet magnificent magnum opus, Use Your Illusion. Honoring that occasion, the excellent Maura Johnston, music editor at the Village Voice, made herself a single-disc edit of the sprawling two-CD album–something I did for my own entertainment five years ago (although any honoring of [...]
posted 19 September 2011 in Links, Tasty Bits. 2 comments
Congratulations to the lovely and talented Melissa McCarthy for her Emmy win last night. McCarthy and I had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch together a few weeks ago, at which we ordered more fried food than we intended to. You can read a short excerpt at the Rolling Stone website, or check out the George Harrison [...]
posted 19 September 2011 in Articles, Links. no comments yet
I love having mysteries in my daily life, but I’m even happier when they get explained. Exit Through the Gift Shop provided me with a narrative for a lot of the mysterious street art and billboards I had been seeing during my first couple of years living in Los Angeles (although I’m still not certain [...]
My old friend Marc Weidenbaum has high-quality blogs to cover every conceivable interest. Well, if you can’t imagine being interested either in anything other than the iPad or ambient and electronic music. But they’re both excellent–go check them out.
posted 31 March 2011 in Links. no comments yet
Three reading recommendations from three talented friends on a summer Monday: There was an intense debate in our cafeteria over who would be the first rock star to make a video where he got crucified and sing his latest hit from up on the cross. Flynn thought it would be Ozzy. I argued for Billy [...]
The latest issue of Rolling Stone, still on newsstands, has an article by me about Aziz Ansari, who you might know from Parks and Recreation, Funny People, Human Giant, or his recent gig hosting the MTV Movie Awards. Since my profile didn’t get Ansari summoned to the White House and then fired, I have to [...]
posted 7 July 2010 in Articles, Links. no comments yet
