The Manual Internet #9

This series is getting a little tired, don't you think? Whatever, James Franco.

How to Look Good #40

"You should see the other guy!"

Your Weekly Post-Hiatus Apology #6

You see what I'm doing, don't you?

I'm writing Jurassic Park VIII.

If this were a series it would be halfway up the sidebar list.

I've been busy all day and I feel compelled to mention the new album by Radiohead. So here:

But more on that later, I'm sure. 

You Should Live Here #23

First-Person Shooter Battle Royale Expansion Pack (Limited Edition)

Level 1: Paris, 1968

Level 2: Legend of the Burning House

Level 3: Siege on Grassy Cliff (Underground)

Level 4: Midnight on a Bridge in the Snow (Boss Fight)

Parental Instincts, Spring/Summer 2011

 I have two competing thoughts here:

1. Who lets their kid's picture end up on the internet?

2. My kids are going to be so stylish.

Albumologist #5: Serious Music

Nine Albums You Can ... wait ... are you taking this seriously? Stop it.

	The-Dream - Love King "More serious than prophylactic salesmen."
	Die Antwoord - $O$ "More serious than a slap on the wrist."
	R. Kelly - Love Letter "More serious than your grandma's baking."
	The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever "More serious than James Blunt."
	M.I.A. - Maya "More serious than regulated internets."
	Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records "More serious than their early stuff, which personally I think is much better."
	Proud Mary: The Very Best of Ike & Tina Turner "More serious than a joke even I wouldn't make."

The WRS A-List #3: Mad Men

Announcing the important people since 2011.

Longtime reader The New York Times Review of Books writes us,

[...] the problem with Mad Men is that it suffers from a hypocrisy of its own. As the camera glides over Joan’s gigantic bust and hourglass hips, as it languorously follows the swirls of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling, as the clinking of ice in the glass of someone’s midday Canadian Club is lovingly enhanced, you can’t help thinking that the creators of this show are indulging in a kind of dramatic having your cake and eating it, too: even as it invites us to be shocked by what it’s showing us (a scene people love to talk about is one in which a hugely pregnant Betty lights up a cigarette in a car), it keeps eroticizing what it’s showing us, too. For a drama (or book, or whatever) to invite an audience to feel superior to a less enlightened era even as it teases the regressive urges behind the behaviors associated with that era strikes me as the worst possible offense that can be committed in a creative work set in the past: it’s simultaneously contemptuous and pandering. Here, it cripples the show’s ability to tell us anything of real substance about the world it depicts.

I took the liberty of bolding morally superior language.

Never mind the "world it depicts" nonsense. The Lucy Show depicts the sixties. Mad Men depicts the naughts playing the sixties. I mean:

Whatever, though. Post ruined -- thanks, NYTRoB. (Gross.)

Yes, this is that kind of blog. No, I didn't see it coming. At least I didn't do Lady Gaga. 

How to Look Good #39

"See, I like the idea of online dating -- I do. But one thing has always bothered me about it. What about blackouts? What do you do if the grid shuts down? I can't put my happiness in the hands of a bunch of machines. I don't trust Ben Franklin that much."

I Feel Like This #9

Can you explain this to me? (Blues for a Critic)

The first paragraph of Pitchfork's review of Isolée's We Are Monster -- which I honestly can't tell if I should hear -- written by Nick Sylvester in June of 2005:

The classics kid in me craves noble grandeur-- craft-happy shit with more than meets the rods and cones, less is always more (except with clothes), suggestive-seductive vs. the once-off gunfuck. Full-on body music's great, sure, but so is porno, and with that shit I'd much rather wax new flesh than drag my stylus off the same old 10-second loop. Same time, Intelligent Body Music's as much a nightmare as Intelligent Anal, both a prefab excuse for pleasure-lack. So we're stuck in this immediacy=better rut, when really the best stuff cross-genre-- cross-platform, cross-media-- has instant funk, but with enough tricks for prolonged appeal.

I mean, yeah, sure, of course, but still, you know, I guess, could be, then again, why not?

...Post-Hiatus Apology #5

as in, "Changing the name of this blog to..."

who needs punctuation

who needs linebreaks

it is winter and everything takes more effort

but by now you know it will not last all year

so just relax

even march is an improvement

// we need to comment this whole month out

Goodnight ladies, ladies goodnight (Lou Reed's Bedtime Blues)

[MISSING]

How to Look Good #38

"For my next trick, I will explode every convention of the sitcom."