Anna’s Ghost All Around, A Decent Proposal, What Not to Wear, and Those Who Can’t Teach Write for ESPN
Proving once again that most of the residents of the Blogosphere are suffering from terminal cranial rectal inversions, Radiohead’s OK Computer bested Neutral Milk Hotel‘s In the Aeroplane Over The Sea in a 90s album throwdown over at MerrySwankster.com. And I don’t really want to hear it from the Thom Yorke fanboys about how he craps hits (unlike Courtney Taylor^2, who sneezes them). In the Aeroplane… is a singularly brilliant album, and the whole E6 movement is reminiscent of the bizarre musical meanderings of Gram Parsons.
I’ve been asked by local rocker Jeffro to contribute to the music blog MetroMusicScene. I’m terribly honored by the invitation, so keep your eyes peeled for my debut there.
Somehow I wound up with yet another subscription to Consulting Magazine. That magazine and Baseline are like herpes, in that they go away for a while but inevitably always return. The cover story was a piece on Archstone Consulting, a small consulting firm doing big things. Once I got over my initial revulsion at the name Archstone (after my quasi-well-publicized battle with those bastards who run Teabag Park), I flipped to the article. Decent read by industry magazine standards; then I glance at the accompanying picture of Archstone CEO Todd Lavieri. Where’s Stacy and Clinton when we need them? Mr. Lavieri is sporting a tie that looks like it was tied by either his dog or a six year-old, one which hangs several inches too low. Don’t they teach you how to tie a tie in CEO school?
I haven’t been a faithful reader of ESPN’s Page 2 recently, largely because Bill Simmons became an insufferable twat after being named a fellow at the Brookings Institution. I read a couple of articles by one of the page 2 contributors, one of which indulged in the fantasy that Kobe Bryant was a better player than Michael Jordan. I’m all for giving minorities, especially women of color, a chance in an industry dominated by old white gasbags like Woody Paige and Skip Bayless. That said, I would think the minimum qualification for being a contributor to ESPN’s web site would be the ability to write at, ohhhh, say at least a college level. McSweeney’s it ain’t, but ESPN should have some level of journalistic standards. I’m referring to Page 2 contributor Jemele Hill. Her prose is uninspired, cliche-ridden, and startlingly full of grammatical errors. If she weren’t black and female, she’d undoubtedly have followed in the footsteps of Jack Tagger and wound up on the obit desk of some nondescript southern Florida newspaper. I’ve decided to take it upon myself to start a “Fire Jemele Hill” campaign. Here’s your chance to be heard, and to demand that ESPN hire writers who can, well, write.
My co-HotW’s are Daft Punk, the lords of frogtronica, and Merry Swankster for bringing us this series of excellent live MP3s from their performances at the 2006 Coachella festival.
