So lanky Mark Zuckerberg kid gets the babe after her asshole boyfriend ditches her at the beach. They sup on juicy mangos and find a can of what is assumed to be weed washed up on the beach. What’s not to love?

2:54 pm  •  2 April 2013

I’m halfway through The Knife’s new album, “Shaking the Habitual.” 

Right now, at 1:01 p.m. EST, my headphones are belching layers of deep industrial synth hums as I make my way through the seventh song, “Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized,” a 19:03-minute epic.

I’ve listened to every song, as if played on a CD. That’s because the Swedish duo released a stream of the full 90-minute album on Pitchfork and you can’t pause it. If you hit stop, it returns to the beginning. But you can fast-forward and skip songs, like a CD.

I haven’t trudged through a new album like this since I was a 13-year-old kid thumbing through plastic jewel cases in a my neighborhood record store.

In recent years, as iTunes and now Pandora and Spotify have altered the way we consume music, many — including myself — have lamented the death of the “album.” So easy it is to cherry-pick tracks — why go through the whole thing? Sure, some people might give the whole thing a run-through or two. But then you pick out your favorite songs, add them to your work-out/driving/sex? playlist, and move on to the next musical high. It’s like going from single to single. It’s musical promiscuity. Lost are the subtleties that once made album-listening so much fun. The inter-song transitions. The carefully planned track order. Appreciating those little details suddenly has become a niche pleasure in the last decade.

I doubt this will be come the norm, just as Radiohead’s releasing “In Rainbows” for download at a name-your-price rate didn’t create an industry standard. 

Regardless, go listen to “Shaking the Habitual.” It shook my habit (har, har) of skipping around through new releases in search of catchy beats and hooks. And the mix of operatic epics and, surprisingly enough, trap-house beats is excellent so far. If I’m to make a judgement now, this one is the 2001 self-titled meets 2010’s “Tomorrow, In A Year.”

Let me know what you think.

1:15 pm  •  2 April 2013

You know you’ve made it when the New Yorker profile you. Vice Media — the multimedia beast that grew out of a gritty 1990s zine founded by a recovering heroin addict and a tree planter-turned-cartoonist from Montreal — landed in the pages of the April 8 issue, under Lizzie Widdicombe’s byline.

It comes at a fitting time. The company is about to launch an HBO news magazine show called “Vice,” a big promotional move for a bunch of scrappy hipsters that created what it is estimated in this piece to be worth anywhere between $175 million and $1 billion.

Not to mention Vice made waves internationally in February for bringing former NBA star and, as the New Yorker notes, cross-dresser Dennis Rodman to North Korea, where the basketball player and the correspondents supped with the Hermit Kingdom’s pudgy rabblerousing dictator, Kim Jong-un.

Here are some interesting highlights:

• Shane Smith, Vice’s CEO and jovial frontman, often hosting their shows, fancies himself Hemingway-esque: In one video, shot in Yemen, the filmmaker Spike Jonze, a friend of the founders, asks Smith to describe the Shane Smith character.” Smith calls himself “the poor man’s Hemingway.” His summary of his life style: “Bon vivant, storyteller, drunk. Let’s have fourteen bottles of wine at dinner, roast suckling pig, and a story about chopping a dude’s head off in the desert. Advertisers can pay for a single video, or, for a higher price—one to five million dollars for twelve episodes, according to Vice—they can pay for an entire series, on a topic that dovetails with the company’s image.
• Sponsored Content is the real money-maker, and board member/investor Joe Ravitch says the HBO show is just a “barker” for the cash-cow website(s): Advertisers can pay for a single video, or, for a higher price—one to five million dollars for twelve episodes, according to Vice—they can pay for an entire series, on a topic that dovetails with the company’s image.
• Founder Gavin McInnes, who left on bad terms in 2007 and led the print operations, used to write much of the magazine before Vice could afford its freelancers: Short on staff, and unable to pay freelancers well, McInnes wrote much of the magazine, often using aliases like Christi Bradnox. In early issues, provocation is mixed with a sort of helpfulness, even good cheer. McInnes, who is often called “the Godfather of Hipsterdom,” flaunted the lumberjack look that is now associated with Williamsburg: flannel shirt, beard. He became known for articles that functioned like alternative self-help guides, including “The Vice Guide to Eating Pussy,” an earnest, if obscene, primer, and “The Vice Guide to Every Religion in the World.”

Overall, the piece seems to be documenting a media company in late adolescence. Like a high school senior who still giggles at fart jokes and “Beavis and Butthead,” Vice is transitioning from cunnilingus advice to serious reporting from the Syrian Civil War. And as they strike that balance, they’re making huge, huge profits. Definitely worth reading the whole nine-page story.

Photo credit: Zimbio.

9:57 am  •  2 April 2013

angelamerkelfrowning:

Cyprus is blowing up. Germany is preparing for an election. And Angela Merkel Frowning is back. So take a bite out of your bratwurst and prepare for new pictures of the perpetually peeved chancellor. 

Thanks to People Biting Into Bratwurst for this one.

Nearly a year ago, I started Angela Merkel Frowning, my way of documenting the Euro crisis in a way I found funny. The idea came one day as I was thumbing through the Economist and realized — hey — I’ve never really seen a picture of that stoic, East German-born chancellor grinning. At all. I’ve since found some cheeky smiles, but they’re few and far between. For good reason. The Euro zone is in complete disrepair. Every simmering crisis gives way to a new one. Most recently, Cyprus ignited fears of a new contagion by rejecting the original bailout from the European Union that deducted from the savings accounts of all those who banked on the tiny island nation. A bunch of oligarchs were pissed. So were regular citizens. That story arc has yet to resolve. 

So, in the spirit of keeping up with such things, I’m going to try to revive the site. Can’t promise daily posts immediately, but I’ll keep it updated semi-regularly, at least at first. Let’s see what happens.

7:50 pm  •  1 April 2013

So, typically I’m not big on a deep, sonic bass under a distorted female voice. But this is worth a listen.

7:26 pm  •  1 April 2013

The Associated Press has long represented the gold standard of American journalism — its stylebook is nearly ubiquitous in U.S. newsrooms and its reports considered a form of factual verification.

But, with all eyes on North Korea’s recent saber-rattling, the newswire came under fire last month from veteran Korea journalist Donald Kirk, who excoriated the agency for operating a bureau in Pyongyang that operates as a bureau in name only.

Now, on the day Myanmar lifted its ban on private newspapers, that the AP has become the first western news outlet to stake a flag, will it churn out actual news? Or will it eke out the same meager coverage it has out of Kim Jong-un’s Hermit Kingdom?

In short, yes, this will be an actual bureau. 

“Myanmar should be a lot different actually,” Kirk told me in an email from New Delhi. “It was never as bad as North Korea even before reconciliation with [the] U.S., political foes, etc.”

Jean H. Lee, the AP’s Korea bureau chief, is stuck jumping back and forth to Pyongyang, where she is under the glaring eye of government handlers wherever she goes. She is not free to report anything she wants. Most of her critical reports and analyses about the North bear a Seoul dateline. While she told the AP’s Eric Carvin last month at SXSW that foreigners have exclusive access to fast broadband internet in Pyongyang (while locals are stuck with the heavily, heavily censored intranet), I haven’t read a single story with a Pyongyang dateline that couldn’t be reported by just the citing state television.

Myanmar is actively freeing its press. Publications now fill newsstands in Yangon from opposition parties. Editorials are critical of the government. This clears the way for a freely operating press in the country. 

The only area I could imagine there being conflict would be in the restive Kachin state, where, as I previously reported, rebel groups have been fighting the government for an autonomous state.

Photo credit: The Hindu

Updated at 12 a.m. on Tuesday with a quote from Kirk’s email.

7:09 pm  •  1 April 2013

Before Jay-Z namedropped Tom Ford, All Saints and Alexander Wang with former noodle-headed pop star Justin Timberlake, he was a scrappy kid spitting over beats befitting of Pete Rock. In this video with his rap guru The Jaz, Jigga has a machine-gun flow that’s actually more catchy and impressive than the cringeworthy Karmin. Enjoy. 

1:45 pm  •  1 April 2013

David Cameron, the British prime minister, joined Twitter Saturday, making him the sixth world leader in the Group of 8 industrialized nations to sign on to the social network.

Getty Images

The Tory leader sent his first tweet at 5:55 p.m. London time, and in five hours had more than 62,000 followers.

“I’m starting Conference with this new Twitter feed about my role as Conservative Leader,” he, or an aide posing as him, wrote. “I promise there won’t be ‘too many tweets…’”

Though an official account for the prime minister’s office, with 2.1 million followers, already bore his likeness, Cameron now joins President Barack Obama, French President François Hollande and Canadian Premier Stephen Harper as G8 leaders with personal accounts on the network.

The G8 is comprised of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia and Canada.

But like the existing account for Number 10 Downing Street, Japan and Russia have accounts that tweet robotic press release headlines for their nations’ highest offices.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda gives English speakers a sampling of pictures of the premier meeting with officials from Liechtenstein and videos of press conferences. Another account, @YoshihikoNoda, is a robotic aggregator of any stories mentioning Noda.

Russian President (and internet-beloved-bad-ass-in-chief) Vladimir Putin, whose profile picture is a pixelated golden eagle, has a President of Russia account that tweets out “Official Kremlin News,” which may be what a country in which 53 journalists have been killed since 1992 calls press releases.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains Twitter-less, along with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, however the so-called queen of the European Union’s leading parody account has been attracting thousands of followers.

10:31 pm  •  6 October 2012

There’s a copyeditor at the NYT kicking himself for this today. (Taken with instagram)

7:38 am  •  16 May 2012

New York Mag, in print, online, and brick and mortar. (Taken with instagram)

11:40 am  •  14 May 2012