Das Racist: ‘We’re Not Racist, We Love White People: Ford Trucks, Apple Pies, Bald Eagles’
last week Das Racist’s new mixtape got a glowing review and a score of 8.7 out of 10 on pitchfork, and a coveted Best New Music designation, and then the next day i was in central park seeing Pavement and when Pavement was finished playing, i texted Himanshu, one of the rappers in Das Racist, to see if i could ask him some questions.
The United Church of Deliverance
“If I had the money I spent on drugs and alcohol, I would buy this building, remodel it, and then take everyone here on a cruise,” Senior Pastor Carrie McEachern told her congregation of about a dozen.
Ciudad Juarez: How We Got Here
As the violence in Mexico rages on, with murder totals recently surpassing 28,000 since the start of 2007, it’s easy for anyone watching or keeping up with the news to become desensitized.
Who is the Greatest Diva of the Last 25 Years?
By way of eulogy to the dying animal that is the Diva, my crack team of consultants, statisticians and graphic designers have assembled DIVA-OFF 2010, a highly scientific (we used computers!) evaluation of the greatest divas of the past twenty-five years.
Stephen Tobolowsky: The X Factor, Part 2
I said, “The waiting room’s gotten so hard.” Felicia, the head of casting, smiled sympathetically. “The nerves-or the folding chairs?” I laughed. “No. The years. The waiting room has become harder than the audition. I never know whom I’m going to see or what it’ll stir up. I am now carrying three huge memories from my life like giant rocks on my back. And I have brought them in here with me now—to you.”
The Slap That England Deserves
Beyond any question of style is the fact of this book’s sheer nastiness. “The Slap”‘s not anti-anything-it’s anti-everything, the work of the moment for a nation that I met more at the pubs and picnic tables of England than in any other book I’ve read. It’s the book of the great muttering resistance of England, a dark-witted, vote-nay group who could rival the American Tea Party for influence if they could only agree on a bar at which to meet.
Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How To Make Vitamin Soup
When people say they want to get into freelancing but don’t know how to do it, what I tell them is: OK, fine, you don’t know how to freelance because you’ve never done it before, but take something you do know how to do-dating-and just use the same rules. Freelancing is basically just courtship, but the freelancer-editor relationship is nothing more than friends with benefits. The editor likes you because you remind the editor of when they had enthusiasm and appetite and vision and so you make the editor feel powerful in the way that nostalgia empowers people.
Stephen Tobolowsky: The X Factor, Part 1
How to audition. “Message to young actors: When you first come to L.A. and you start to despair, remember the X-Factor. Hollywood is not like school. There is no syllabus and there are no grades-here you can succeed by complete failure.”
‘Predators’: Robert Rodriguez Gets to the Chopper
he second version of Rodriguez’s Predators script contains the lines “This is not your father’s Predator” and “Think Predator on steroids.” At the same time, Antal and Rodriguez have talked in interviews about wanting to humanize the predators. It’s Bigger. Faster. MORE. Mostly MORE. The original single predator handily eliminated a team “accused of being the the best” in one 24-hour period. Now we are to believe a rag-tag bunch of killers is going to fight off a whole hunting party of predators, their predator falcon and predator dogs?
Guru: Hard-Earned
Tupac is dead, Biggie is dead, but they’re still fairly iconic 14 years after their deaths. Guru from Gang Starr, who died at 43 on Tuesday after months in a medically-induced coma, passed before his time, too, but he was different from those iconic stars in basically every other way.