Call and Oates
719-26-OATES (62837)
The new Ghostbusters.
Scott Sargent
A target demo office-dweller with appreciation for the written word, sports, great music and unnecessary - yet undeniably awesome - technology.
(Source: howtotalktogirlsatparties)
194The personality inequity between football and basketball is parceled out on several fronts, and it’s fair to point out that many of them have to do with the total number of players on the field and the actuality and rules of the respective games. But after watching Tebow turn into America’s favorite meme, I’m now convinced that the differences lie mostly in the cultures of the leagues. There’s a reason why the NBA took off in the celebrity culture of Los Angeles, just as there’s a reason why the NFL’s model of grit and teamwork plays better in the middle of the country. There’s a reason why most NBA fans will just forget about this lockout and go about their lives of retweeting Delonte West and Brandon Jennings.
Grantlandl’s Jay Caspian Kang on the NBA Lockout
Musicians often speak of the perfect music of their mind, the creative process being a slow, asymptotic approach to this ideal sound. During Take Care’s strongest and most meticulous moments, one gets the sense that this is exactly the sound Drake imagined. In this way, Drake seems more a descendant of Kanye West than his nominal mentor, Lil Wayne. It was Kanye who graduated from hip-hop’s vaunted resourcefulness — its ability to improvise — to aspire toward the heights of virtuosic, proggy perfectionism instead. And just as Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy bulged with all these enchantingly showy, prolonged explorations of technical proficiency — all those four-minute gems with three-minute outros — Take Care feels careful and intentional about its own pacing.
Hua Hsu, via Grantland, on Drake’s latest album Take Care
The real hypocrites are the morons telling Cleveland to ‘get over it,’ as if the place hasn’t gotten over it, or as if ‘over it’ is best defined by some asshole who likes telling other people how to feel and act.
Scott Raab on hypocrites, schoolmarms and, naturally, LeBron James
The needle begins to whir again as Machine Gun Kelly takes his turn in the chair, his bare chest exposing what must be hundreds of tattoos all huddled together on a sinewy frame. A spider’s abdomen encircles his right nipple. Pac-Man chases a yellow dot across his collarbone. The name “Casie” — the two-year-old daughter he had with his onetime girlfriend — runs along his rib cage in black ink, the lettering rendered in swooping cursive.
Today, Kelly will add the words “Locals Only” just below his ribs. It will be done up — like almost all of his bodywork — by Alfonso “Cev” Ceven, the owner of Ohio City Tattoo. Like the “216” that runs down his right arm, the latest ink is yet another glimpse into the complicated web that is Machine Gun Kelly’s life and the city he was unceremoniously dropped into — the one he, unlike other icons before him, refuses to leave behind.
Jordan Zirm at Cleveland Scene
Why exactly did people take Steve Jobs’s death so hard? I don’t much care to argue over whether or not this was the appropriate feeling to have, or whether another death was more deserving of this emotion. The fact remains, they did. The easy answer: Steve Jobs was a Great Man whose influence over contemporary culture is virtually inescapable. Through brute force alone, and pressure exerted by the world around us, the heart responds. I wonder, though, if it doesn’t have to do with the nature of Apple products. The iPod’s triumph—and to some degree, that of the snazzy Mac before it and the nascent iPad since—was to create a singular, personal space by means of a technological vessel. This effect was transitive, if backward; the metal and plastic were imbued with the memories and associations that music, in digital, context-less form, bundled up in one place. Those were the rules of the game, the order of things, and they were embodied in the device—stylish, elliptical, and slightly frivolous—that made this sound-space possible.
It makes perfect sense that Jobs himself would be, so to speak, taken personally. He was the one who allowed them to live more fully through technology. They created this version of Apple and its leader, but without the cues provided by technology, it wouldn’t have happened. Are we happy? Thank Steve Jobs. Does technology render us that powerless when it comes to matters of lifestyle and identity? Then thank Steve Jobs for that, too, out of a fealty that should leave an odd, acrid taste our mouths. Even if you’ve never owned Apple once. He’s gotten to you somehow.
