MarketStrong
After resigning in disgrace from the charity he helped found and losing his sponsorship with Nike, Lance Armstrong now must cope with the leak of his new memoir—excerpted here.
Llewellyn Hinkes
Our Future National Pastime
Predictions for the baseball season ahead from someone who hasn’t paid attention to sports statistics since the 1992 Orioles.
Les Bêtes Fromages
America adores its clichés about French culture—skinny women, hot sex, and "surrender monkeys." But the Mali intervention shows France in a different light. From 2011, an appreciation for France's history of conquering and oppressing the world.
The Ghost in the Machine Is a Jerk
Everyone has computer problems--only a chosen few are driven insane by them. A defense of daily paranoia.
Just Criminalize It
California looks to legalize pot in November--and that, in many ways, would be a crime. An argument against political causes involving dreadlocked alien masks.
Cuban Kremlinology
In Cuba, bloggers face reprisals and internet access is governed by mysterious forces. Even telephones can't be trusted.
How to Become a Playwright
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we attempt to help a young thespian realize his misinformed dreams.
The Savior of Newspaperdom
Unless the newspaper honchos invent some brilliant ideas, the broadsheet is dead. A last-ditch brainstorm.
The Power of the Three
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we reveal the secrets of the mighty triumvirate that rules the universe. But you didn't hear about it here.
The Transient, Digital Fetish
As the world goes Kindle and iPhone-mad, paperbacks and mixtapes become worthy of devotion. Watching a music collection disappear and wondering what it meant.
Entertainment Hierarchy
The dimensional hierarchy of artistic mediums usually goes like this: Written Word < Music < Video < Music Video < Opera < Virtual Reality. Too often this is mistaken for a hierachy of quality, where movies are always better than books, music videos are always better than novelizations of music
The Week After
Barack Obama's inauguration next week will be full of significant, historical events. But what about the seven days to follow?
SoCal Decay
Southern California is a dark and foreboding place. People commonly associate it with the Beach Boys and Gidget, but that was from a long time past when you could still swim in the ocean without having to bathe in disinfectant afterwards. Now it’s better known as the home of
Programming in English, or Translate :: ParseLib :: English
Computer code may not be gobbledygook, but that doesn't make it art. A survey of the field of programming-cum-poetry to find the ghost (of Hamlet's father) in the machine.
Medications
Let’s just get this part over with quickly: Bad Brains, Fugazi, Dischord, harDCore. There, much better. It’s best to purge those words as soon as possible rather than continually dwelling on their importance in perpetual, middling adolescence. I wish I could say the same for a large portion
No Pause
Kids seem to love these mash-ups. It appeals to their dual desires of flaunting copyright laws and hearing lots of songs all at once. It’s a short-attention-span, intellectual-property-law jamboree. And this latest Girl Talk album is a sampling bonanza sure to boggle the minds behind any copyright claims. They
Better
The legend is true: The infamous, ill-fated, Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy has been leaked after 14 years of recording and scads of record-company dollars down the four-track. I had hoped it would be the greatest peak in maddening celebrity indulgence, like a thousand Golden Throats records combined into
African Scream Contest
In Africa, they’re just getting around to publishing essential psychedelic compilations that should have been out eons ago. Few know a name outside of Fela Kuti or King Sunny Ade. If there were any justice in the world 50 Cent would take the offer from Taco Bell to change
The Secrets of Iceland
From what I can tell, Iceland is on a breakneck pace to make it seem like a place called “Iceland” is a sun-drenched adventure land. They don’t use gasoline, produced Björk and Sigur Rós, and race around naked to their hearts content. It’s all part of a giant
3rd Planet
I really wanted to love bluegrass; I really did. It helped me think I didn’t actually avoid country music, just commercial country music. Or electric country music (or some other arbitrary distinction). That was before the Washington, D.C., N.P.R. affiliate would play 12 straight hours of
A Truer Top 40
We all know the Billboard Top 100 is a sham; it’s a meaningless list of vacuous posers and pitch-shifted payola. The bands, singers, and studios that make it to the top of their Singles Charts, Hot Canadian Digital Singles Charts, or even the Bubbling Ringtones Chart, only got that
Ulterior Music
Relatively Clean Rivers, “Hello Sunshine” (download) I’m not sure how many people recognized the reference to Relatively Clean Rivers in the stories a few months back about Adam Gadahn, the American who joined al Qaeda. Gadahn’s father, Philip, was the lead singer of the amazing, obscure psychedelic folk
The Great Angry White Hope, or the New Loud Sounds From Way Out
Right now there are thousands—nay, millions—of disaffected youths out there yearning for a music that speaks to the anger welling up inside—but without devolving into something that’s just loud, screamy, and stupid. What I’m saying is that hardcore, that originally American Art Brut, like jazz
South by Southwests of Yore
South by Southwest, that bastion of independent music, Web 2.0 crowdsourcing folksonomy panels, and drunken mid-level industry types, hasn’t always been such an established tradition. It took a good 20 years for that magnificent phoenix to rise out of the ashes of the late ’80s underground, through ’90s
Going Steady With the Singles
Richard Ayoade said it best on an episode of Time Trumpet as to why, every day, he was compelled to watch an ape being savagely raped on television because “he had to take the pulse of the nation.” Truer words have never been spoken. And right now the pulse of
Holes in the Year-End Best-of Lists
While everybody else was fighting for attention to get their year-end lists in by the 31st, I was lying in wait, culling the extremes, the ins and outs, to strain through the finest opinionated cheesecloth, so what’s left is only the purest top-10 filtrate possible before snorting it all
Video Digest: December 21, 2007
[ note: technical difficulties with some of these videos. all, however, run fine if push the play button.—ed. ] If there’s one thing that I identify with the holiday season, it’s that sense of malaise of long car rides to visit family, only to sit down in cozy sweaters
Those for Whom What's Laudable Is All That's Audible
Throughout the history of the written word and the recorded sound, there’s been a large discrepancy between what people listen to and what actually gets written about. Critics need something to write—there are columns to fill and ink to use, and two-word reviews are hard to write (e.
Long Live the File-Sharers
As the recent loss of OiNK sits heavy in our hearts, I’d like to take some time out to think about the other file-sharing applications that have come before us and made the world a better place. Not the cold and utilitarian Napsters or the sleazy-yet-reliable LimeWires that spit
What's in a Band Name?
What’s in a band name? A meaningless handle dreamt up after throwing enough random adjectives together, or some obscure drug reference/street name/sexual maneuver that will only mean something to the other band members? Or could it in fact be part and parcel of the overall pathos conveyed
The New Re-Appropriation of Hip-Hop
A few years back I tried pushing this concept to DJs called “the new re-appropriation,” wherein they should take rap away from the mumbling, punch-drunk death threats it’s become by removing the vocals, leaving only the backing track and R&B fill-in, and then distributing it. Also known
Video Digest: September 28, 2007
Like revenge fantasies, anti-drug videos are a creative bonanza for those visionaries who know how to exploit both sides of an issue; righteous indignation at the social ills while simultaneously indulging in their lurid details ills. There’s a treasure trove of anti-LSD educational films out there that depend on
Hunting the New Agitprop
We had just come back from a trip to Tower Records and sat down to play a couple tracks from what we had bought, with plans to skip around and listen to the rest later. The first track on one album, by whom I don’t remember, started out like
The Creole You've Been Waiting For
What I try to tell all of the black nationalists, white identity groups, and Polynesian isolationists I meet—we have a weekly potluck—is that cultural integrity is a musical dead-end. It’s your fringe cultures that are responsible for the majority of creative output. Cohesive group identities don’t
What Was Once Was Lost, Now Is Found
MTV owes me my youth. Most of my ’90s memories are a hazy blur of Lenny Kravitz videos, Mountain Dew commercials, and news about Madonna that will all come back to me in a giant rush of Dutch Schultz jump cuts on my deathbed. I’ll never recover that lost
A Personal History of Audiophilia
In the long summer days around high school, we used to get stoned and wander into the local hi-fi stereo showroom. Without a car, it was the closest thing we had to a record store. We’d stroll through, pretending that we might actually purchase a $10,000 quadrophonic laserdisk
Now That's Cult Music!
Religious cults tend to get a bad rap for the organized murders, weapon stockpiling, brainwashing, and mass suicide—but nobody focuses on the good they do. For example, nobody ever mentions the musical output. If you’re going to be stuck on the same compound with brainwashed denizens for long
Sydney: Carmen Rupe
Name: Carmen Rupe Time of birth: 1936 Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime? Entertainer and former Les Girls performer How would you describe your look? Unusual, different, fabulous What do people think when they see you on the street? While many people stare, others often come up to me
Hate Thy Neighbor
The word “scene” makes me retch something awful. As in “what about the scene, man?” It’s right up there with “society.” Besides being vague and meaningless, it carries with it the unwritten rule that, independent of quality or substance, you’re supposed to appreciate your local band before all
Americana Obscura
Essentially, a “song cycle” is a glorified term for a concept album. It’s a jazz-rock odyssey on folkier instruments, but when done right, adds an overarching, operatic theme to what would ordinarily be a random mix of great songs. While most song cycles are held together by small thematic
Looking for What Hasn't Been Done Before
It was only a couple years ago I remember some friends lamenting how out of touch they were with the music of today. At the time I could scoff at them; they lived in an isolated world that didn’t include Lightning Bolt or Tussle. It was OK—they didn’
Addendum, Errata, and Lost Recordings
That dueling guitar sound I previously mentioned, where two people play rhythm guitars in the same key, is actually called weaving, something pioneered by a number of older blues players, as well as the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones. » Listen to outtakes from the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request at
The Swinging Sounds of Modern Industry
Let’s not be hasty and rule out anything that sounds like the construction down the street. First off, it’s painting with a wide brush. You’ll block out too much and eventually paint yourself into a pleasant, drowsy corner with Norah Jones. Second, it’s too escapist. These
Dueling Instructions
I’m a sucker for dueling guitars—or any dueling instrument, for that matter. Whether it be Allman Brothers’ solos, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, or the soundtrack to an ‘80s videogame played by dueling electric violins, they all have that intertwining golden braid I can’t resist. One player goes
Summer Jams for Winter Storms
It was one month ago to the day that I was wondering, “Why can’t it be colder?” Seventy degrees in January seemed excessive. I asked myself, “Where’s that comforting isolation that comes with mid-winter cabin fever?” Without four proper seasons my biological clock goes haywire; my voice gets
Gallic Gutter Punks
I had always thought punk rock was mainly a British phenomenon, if for no other reason than its ruling party was composed of people who looked as if they might drop their monocles at hearing the use of profanity. It seemed more anti-establishment in a Three Stooges way. I’ve
Hard-Workin' Music From Musicologists
OK, forget all of these new bands with their false haircuts and arbitrary affectations. There’s a reason people are nostalgic for the music of a bygone day and age without video games—where you spent most of your life toiling at soul crushing work and the rest realizing the
Being Christopher Hitchens
Living as a once-Trotskyist megaforce, now war-toting superstar can take its toll. Particularly when your personality subdivides into pro wrestlers.
Out With the Old, in With the New
Maybe Bill Drummond is right. Maybe we are inundated with a glut of music nowadays via mp3s and too much of it is nostalgic. Rather than obstinately avoiding all music for a day, we should instead be aiming for more current sounds to widen the cultural breadth. Sure there’s
Getting Over Music Hang-Ups
I feel like at every point in my life I’ve had some arbitrary musical exclusion only to have it whittled down over time. It’s true: There’s always been some section of music I refuse to associate with. At first it was classical music, mainly since that was
Picking Genres From a Dictionary
Music genres come and go by the dozen, from emocore and screamo to nemocore, but what new genres lurk on the horizon? Will there be more amalgamations of current styles and trends (emoscreamonemocore?) or something so completely original and mysterious that it belongs in a class all by itself? * * * Swedish
CBGBs RIP
The history of rock may be written by the losers, but this week the losers will have some attention in their hands to point out the decline of Western civilization that’ll ensue when CBGBs closes this weekend. Some may be wistful, some will have moved on, and some might
Mp3 Digest: October 4, 2006
Having just seen the K Records Documentary, I can now say with authority that music critics do have a place in this world outside of keeping Yo La Tengo in clean spats. They can translate the rambling theoretical diatribes of musicians into actual comprehensible statements. For example, in the movie,
Ectopia
Steroid Maximus's Ectopia is classical-industrial music that uses John Cage's flaming-piano-out-the-window experiment as a starting point and turns it into the score for a movie yet to be made. Babies crying, jangling pianos, jungle chases, wailing violins, and boats creaking all mixed together to make something
Pure Drivel
Podcast, schmodcast. I'm not sure what the hubbub is about--it's just a bunch of audio files. While you're waiting for the next installment of Johnny Dollar, Insurance Investigator, I'm already listening to all of Steve Martin's Pure Drivel. I can
Cambodian Rock
Just like Ethiopian soul in the '70s, Cambodian psychedelic garage rock from the '60s, called "circle dance music," was eventually crushed by the incoming political regime. The Khmer Rouge imprisoned and killed off most of the artists, but these compilations are put together from the few
Grizzly Man
The amount of epic symbolism and ironic tragedy overflowing Grizzly Man, a documentary about a man who wants to live amongst grizzlies, makes it almost too perfect to be believed. Herzog made a similarly themed man-vs.nature mocumentary last year, the protagonist looks like Klaus Kinski's lost brother,
The Perry Bible Fellowship
The New Yorker's caption contest is challenging, but The Perry Bible Fellowship proves that some of the finer cartoons need no captions. Right here is where I'd say something about how "comics, they're no longer for ingrown man-children!" And I'd
The Intramural Sports of Kings
The signup sheet in the break room wants you and your co-workers to meet at the park on Saturday for a game of softball. For some it may just be fun, but for others it'll be pure competition.
The Mnemonics of Mnailguns
‘Tis the season for home renovation, but unless you have a degree (or years experience) in carpentry, a cheat-sheet is required for survival. Home-repair expert LLEWELLYN HINKES-JONES writes in with aids for the amateurs.