Addled Up

Today's blog poppin' quiz: How many times have Gawker and Defamer relied on the compounded "addled" to describe the brain or general condition of cokeheads, crack addicts, speed freaks, and drug users of all predilections?

Gawker: 72
Defamer: 50
Source: Google Research

Sounds like an addiction to me. Bonus fact: DID YOU KNOW "addled" has NEVER appeared on Wonkette??

Hail Hail Rock-n-Roll

The people spoke, Nike listened. (Jarvis, how come you're not covering this story?? HUGE victory for online citizen activism.) It's amazing to me how so many smart people simply don't get it, are defending Nike, and making sweeping generalizations about what "punk" is. (Sounding a lot like the buy-anything-shoved-down-their-throats 16 year old skaters making comments from blog to blog.) I'm sorry but you can't throw around an ignorant line like "Isn't punk all about taking without permission?" without concerned people responding, "what the fuck are you talking about?"

[FYI, using the term "punk" and thinking it means one kind of music/set of values/belief system is about as useful as claiming you need only two words -- "The Internet" -- to explain all the nuances involved from Amazon to blogs to cascading style sheets to DNS servers to e-commerce to FuckedCompany to Google to HTML to iWon (or i-anything) to Javascript to keywords to LYNX browser to Microsoft to newsgroups to Oracle to plug-ins to QuickTime to RSS to search engines to T-1 to "Under Construction" to viral marketing to Wi-Fi to X.com to Yahooligans to Ziff-Davis.]

This might be impossible (or futile to even try) to get across to anyone who didn't experience it (I know that sounds jack-assedly pretentious but I swear it's not...okay, maybe a little) but Dischord, Minor Threat and the entire history of the DC punk community, was not your typical independent/"punk" label/movement. These are people who got involved in the late 70's and to this day have never compromised their beliefs. If you wanna call it self-righteous pinko, anti-govt, anti-corporate America, anti-war, anti-whatever, tree-hugging, animal-worshipping freaky extremism then so be it. But one thing they are not is hypocritical.

Never straying from their version/vision of what's right and wrong, Dischord and their bands did not (do not) force it in people's faces the way you would find in the pages of Maximum RocknRoll (and tons of other punk zines) in the 80's and 90's. When the punk community went apeshit in the early 90's debating Nirvana and the whole "sell-out" issue, Dischord minded their own business, rarely (if ever) voicing an opinion on such matters. They just stuck to trying to make a difference in their own way: operating a label, controlling their means of production as much as possible, and distributing music without the aid of major labels in order to release records and CDs for $8-$10 or less. They attempted to limit show prices to $5 for as long as economically possible while most of the shows held locally were benefits for causes that genuinely meant something to them and empowered anyone who wanted to go along for the DIY ride.

I'm the first to admit I fell off the back bumper as soon as I put one foot on it. I desperately wanted to believe I had similar values but I don't. Even though I know it's bad (and not just for me), I like eating at McDonald's, shopping at chain stores, making money at the expense of others, and generally living a lifestyle that embraces all the conveniences made possible by corporate America. Yeah, I'm a gutless apologist too lazy to do anything else but I hope the self-loathing makes up for it a little bit.

Where am I going with all this? I don't know, I got kinda lost eating a double cheeseburger while listening to Rites of Spring on my iPod, but I think my point is about understanding how Nike stands for everything Dischord is against and the slightest appearance of a connection is offensive and wouldn't be tolerated or brushed off as harmless. You don't have to believe in Dischord or their worldview to respect the desire to control their own images. Dischord doesn't even really care about protecting intellectual property as much as wanting to disassociate with the Nike brand specifically.

It's hardly "homage" when you despise the party trying to pay you respect. And if Nike (or these "cool kids" who supposedly devised the campaign) truly knew anything about Dischord or Minor Threat they wouldn't have entertained the parody concept as a possibility in the first place.

Living The SoCalacanis Life

Jason, please come back home to New York. I think all that sun in Santa Monica and the conference hopping has fried your habit of making quips into bacon bits. (A few nights at the Salty Dog in the Ridge should set your bloggin' noggin' straight.) What am I talking about? Let's look at a couple of your more recent posts, not including the ancient Chinese secret of blogrolling you revealed earlier.

First, you mention that both Engadget and Autoblog made Time's 50 Coolest Websites list. Maybe I have poor eyesight or my reading skills have degenerated to my niece Amelia's picture-book level, but I don't see Engadget anywhere on the list. It probably deserved to be and I understand your intense focus during these "never get complacent" competitive race days, but you have to take the horse blinders off sometimes. I suggest a simple pair of magnifying granny glasses.

Then, when announcing your latest launch, DownloadSquad (btw, is "squad" the new "blog" in domain naming?), you say:

One major vertical I thought now one has really covered well is software and web-services. We all spend hours a week downloading and trying new software and web-based services (which are just software hosted somewhere else), but there isn’t one place to get news on the latest Flickr application, Firefox extension, or reviews of new podcsating software.

Is that so? Perhaps you've heard of your rival Gawker Media's Lifehacker, the blog that "recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live." I'm pretty sure you have since you once confused it for a knock-off of your own HackaDay which it bears no resemblance to but that would require reading the site to "hack it" and figure that out. In any case, Time magazine has definitely heard of Lifehacker. It even made that Top 50 Websites list you were talking about.

Disclaimer: I admit Time's entire list is rendered completely useless, almost fictional, with the inclusion of Gridskipper, a travel blog worth it's weight in a single copy of Wallpaper* magazine. In other words, $8 or a Thai handjob. Someone at Time got lazy or owed Denton a big favor.

Tom Cruise's Controlled Substance Abuse

Okay, it used to be easy to ignore the kumikaze-crazed comments of Tom Cruise and simply look in bewilderment that a human being such as him actually exists WITHOUT THE USE OF DRUGS OR MECHANICAL PARTS, but now he has gone too far with this "no such thing as chemical imbalances" stuff. He's trying to bull(shit)doze the very bedrock that keeps Manhattan above water. Someone needs to deliver him a serotonin re-uptake uppercut or the goons from Pfizer should give him the "Jersey weeds" treatment. [Pictured: Tom Cruise "respecting the cock" as T.J. Mackey in Magnolia]

Blogroll, Please

If Calacanis would have just asked my intentions I would have told him. It's a shame no one is doing real reporting or fact-checking in this incredible new world of blogs. The copying and pasting of someone else's blogroll is not new and it's exactly what I did with this site in the beginning. Here's the very first YM post with full admission. Now get your ad monkeys to drum up some revenue for Blottered or I'll de-link you!!!

The Great Coin Heist

On Saturday we took countless coin bags of American tender into the Commerce Bank on Broadway/Bond and left with $240 in hard bills. Today, we launch a crime blog: Blottered.

And Your Momma Shops At Pathmark

"hi yeah so i just had to inform you, you know that magazine for the preppy new york private schools? you know trinity, fieldston, horace mann, brearly, collegiate, dalton, spence-chapin, all those? yes well ahem, don't trash the mag, its actually quite good not to mention the fact that you don't know any of us, considering i go to one of these schools...so please refrain yourself from making rude comments about how rich we are because yes we're rich, yes maybe we wear marc jacobs, but no that doesn't mean we aren't like you so shut up and learn about something before you talk about it."
MTV's Rich Girls Discussion [popgurls]

Between the Cheese and Guac

Well shit on a summer roof shingle, "Bloghouse" is one of the 11 layers of citizen journalism. Though the proper spelling would be Bloghaus, I just want to say to the 30 or so people who'll get this: Next Year Is Now, Believe. Stock up on sunscreen.

The Drill You Know

No Data with bonus birthday tracks and drink specials for Dodgeball Dens.

All Aboard The Manhattan-Montauk Express

Jesse Oxfeld's "I'm a Jewish liberal New Yorker in media!" pose. (Hey, he provided the picture for his Young Manhattanite Interview.)

I can resist no more than Jacko in a crowded bathroom at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. I'm breaking my "No Gawker Media" posting policy halfway through week 2 (yes Lock, painful irony) but dammit, the Oxfeld era has stormed Manhattan like those retarded, but amazingly special-effected, Brobdingnagian tidal waves in The Day After Tomorrow. I will withhold serious evaluation until a sufficient sample of posts can be collected from The Jesseca Sim-dum Show; but boy-oh-boyardee, they sure didn't wait long to break out the school cafeteria sporks and feast on his old employer, Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby, on Day 3. "Pretty snarky, sis!"

Still, I'm a little confused why they keep disclosing that current Mediabistro editor-in-chief (MBEIC) Elizabeth Spiers was the founding editor of Gawker but not remind everyone in the same relevant posts that Jesse once held the glorious MBEIC position which ended rather nastily, reported by Gawker no less.

[To illustrate for my brother Peter: this situation is comparable to the O's getting Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling from Boston for Mike Boddicker in '88, only to trade Schilling two and a half years later with Steve Finley and Pete Harnisch to Houston for Glenn Davis who Enola Gayed in Baltimore. Cap it with Schilling eventually landing back in Boston last year to help them win the World Series and it's obvious to see...this has absolutely no goddamn similarity to the aforementioned media editor flip-flop but fuckin' hell, Baltimore really got the wide end of a fungo bat up their ass with the worst trade of all-time!!]

Anyway, I propose a small tweak to the Gawker logo that will surely close the distance in future posts.

Click image for larger version.

California Song Contest Update

I've received over 25 entries for the Name This Tune about California Contest on krucoff.com and they're all wrong. Please give it a shot before I'm left with no option but to frisbee these Entourage freebies around Times Square to tourists.
Update: Damn that was quick, now down to one.

The Artful Doubter

Gallup: Public Confidence in News Media Falls to New Low [E&P]
With a headline like that is there any wonder we roll our eyes over to the endless supply of celebrity nip-slips? It's intellectual sensationalism, that is if you think Gallup and E&P are worthy of such status. When you read the article and discover the new low is down 2% from the year before and squeaks under the previous low by 1% from 11 years ago (let me repeat, down 1% from 11 years ago) you get a more subdued picture, like a 1st grader's finger-paint project. It has all the statistical signficiance of the proverbial "fart in the wind."

[Disclosure: As a first-grader I had one such painting selected for a showcase in the Annapolis Mall along with a gazillion others from Anne Arundel County. As most mad bursts of creative genius go, I was unsure exactly what I came up with and when the teacher insisted it should have a title I blurted "Martian on a Fence."]

The article goes onto to describe how other institutions like the presidency, Congress, criminal justice system fared much worse. E&P gets some leeway with their headline since they mainly cover media-related news but why project such leading horseshit? Sure these numbers are down from previous highs in 2000 but since media scandals (Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, etc) are much more worthy of front page news and likely to have a shelf-life longer than the annual Pulitzer announcements, this is not surprising.

Also, when you broadly stroke any "institution" in a survey like that of course the creamed rises to the top. It's like those polls about trust in Congress that also ask about trust in your own Congressional representatives. Everyone says "baaad baaad" for Congress as a whole but always "goood goood" for their own. Same logic can be applied here. I wonder what wild percentages you'd get if they asked about lack of confidence in their local newspaper or news station. Doubtful it would look any different than the Congressional rep. example, though I never really trusted the Crofton-Crier after they put a close-up picture of my brother at the Village Green's annual Christmas lighting on the front page. As one of maybe four Jewish families in town at the time you'd think they could fact-check this shit. Where was the fact-checking??!

Anyway, I have an idea. How about a public confidence poll on public confidence polls?

If It Falls, It (Never) Leads (Unless It Bleeds Too)

"The other canard is that bloggers don't report. It's true that a lot of bloggers just point at MSM (mainstream media) stories. But just this morning I did actual reporting for my local journalism website. A phone pole fell on a house. I went, I took pictures, I talked to the neighbors. Real reporting does happen outside of the newsroom." [Lisa Williams via Buzzmachine: comments]

Ladies and gentlemedia-giants, I present to you another groundbreaking installment of Blog & Order: Citizen Journalism Unit. This week's episode takes place in Watertown, MA where a telephone pole was no match for Auntie Gravity. Read the full story on H2OTown.

Blogging The Headlines: Daily Noose

New York Daily News

* People know game, but pols lag behind - 5 hours ago
It was a TV moment for the ages: Bravo's Fab Five gay men working their makeover wonders last week on five very macho members of the Boston Red Sox. Not only that, but they were all cheered on by a crowd in Port Charlotte, Fla. - part of a red county...
Baseball is a pretty gay sport, Florida holds spring training. This much is true.

* Lives shattered by recklessness - 5 hours ago
The cruel indifference of hit-and-run drivers infects the city like a plague.
I think the punishment for hit-and-run drivers should be automatic enlistment in an Army infantry division on the frontlines of whatever war we're fighting at the time. No age, height, weight, disability restrictions. Dress 'em up like rodeo clowns and put rifles in their hands. Hit and run that shit.

* Dean has pols seeing gray - 5 hours ago
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's declaration that the GOP is a bastion of "white Christians" has put the Democratic mayoral wanna-bes in New York's liberal capital in a very tricky position.
So what? New York is a bastion of black Jews. Let's just keep politics out of politics, okay?

* Hard-line grilling or torture? - 5 hours ago
The so-called 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks was tormented by his interrogators with dripping water, sleep deprivation and Christina Aguilera music, secret Guantanamo Bay prison logs revealed yesterday.
The fact they even made a record of the torture they perform on prisoners is disturbing. Plus, how come they aren't using the highly effective rectal pear?

* Spurs make it look Two easy - 5 hours ago
SAN ANTONIO - Rasheed Wallace was left to restrain an irate Larry Brown from being ejected in the fourth quarter last night. Considering the reputation of the player trying to maintain the peace, the scene was both comical and desperate.
I might have clicked to read the rest of the story if "being ejected" was replaced with "ejaculating." Oh, two of my friends once worked for the NBA. Sorry, that's all I got on this one.

It Just Doesn't Matter

Adult Camp in the Berkshires (nothing like this)
Re-caps: Dens, Youngna, Josh, Becca

"But, the real excitement of course is going to come at the end of the summer, during Sexual Awareness week. We import two hundred hookers from around the world, and each camper, armed with only a thermos of coffee and two thousand dollars cash, tries to visit as many countries as he can. The winner of course is named King of Sexual Awareness week and is allowed to rape and pillage the neighboring towns until camp ends." [Meatballs]

Gangsters and Pranksters

Plans for a spin-off crime blog, Blottered, are still being mastered in subterranean lairs by liars and on roof decks by Team Hammer-X. There has been generous response to the open-call for anyone to contribute, regardless of criminal knowledge and copywriting or lock-picking skills. Recruits include highly qualified field practictioners with advanced degrees in criminal justice and a man named "Jimmy Dare" who plans to sniff out stories using strongly-worded Google News Alerts like assault+squid+wheelchair. The surprising trend in contributor interest is that women who wrote in outnumber the men by 5 to 1. Swear to Gotti. I urge all men (or ladies digging other ladies, even just as friends) to consider this opportunity; it's not too late to squeeze onto the paddywagon for a chance to meet hot DA's. Registration extends indefinitely, email the address in the upper right.

Related: Crime junkies gather and shoot the shit next week at the latest Little Gray Books lecture, "How to Commit the Perfect Crime." Case the joint and smoke 'em if you got 'em, etc.

Wonderful Stuff, That Romulan Ale

At the end of The Other Page #3, which I'm sure caused printers from here to Sherman Oaks to get a little lower on toner, a Dodgeball Riddle Quiz Contest challenged you to name the 3 errors in the sentence:

"There is three things worng with this sentence."

Entries numbered so high that the prize notifiers in Ellenton, FL crashed their previously infallible systems. Anyway, one person in particular who I don't think I'm allowed to link to was very unhappy that she didn't answer correctly. Here is the explanation I offered her:

It is widely believed that the third error is "the sentence is a false statement" -- even by the riddle's creator who I assume was an English Lit grad, with a vagina no less, trying to be clever -- but I completely disagree.

Any math, science, or philosophy student who's worth their weight on Jupiter would know that claiming the third error is the statement's falsehood would in fact make the sentence TRUE in a self-cancelling loop program and you're back at square one with only two easily provable errors.

As I said before, you are looking into the abyss of two mirrors facing each other, you're dividing by zero with an abacus, you're standing in the same room with Clark Kent and Superman.

So what's the answer? Well I've only seen one Star Trek movie in my life and that was number 2, the Wrath of Kahn (it was that special time in one's youth when watching movies on cable was an exercise in brain-engraving) and there's a scene with William Shatner and Kirstie Alley talking about solving a command training scenario called the Kobyashi Maru. It is in fact a challenge with a no-win solution and Captain Kirk was the only person to ever solve it by cheating and changing the rules.

The answer to this riddle is easy: ignore it.

Bang, Bang, Orangutan

First day of 9 to 5 in an office since last September. Here goes everything.

"To be tied to a wheelchair, parachute around your neck, out the plane and it opens..."

Spent - "Landscaper" (1.7MB)

The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill

My caption: "Charles Schwab don't surf!!"
It did not make the final round of three.

The Other Page #3 Tonight at 12", 6-9pm

Just to be clear, the TOP #3 happy hour is tonight at 12" Bar (Essex and Houston) from 6 to 9pm. If you thought it was last night you get a bonus day to ignore this all over again.

Everything You're Not, You Are

or... Bad > You < Good, where You cannot = 0.

I report for my first day of work at Conde Nast on Monday for a 3-month market research gig. This is notable for two reasons:
1) as a once promising Gawkerbot who later self-destructed, I did my share of crapping in the Conde pool as a guest-editor and here on my site.
2) I have a $100 bet with Nick, Lock, and Elizabeth that I'll actually show up this time. Vegas has it at even-money. (AJ, what do you say??)

Fortunately I'm now a reformed media blogger and hereby pledge my allegiance to the Newhouse family. It helps that I was hired primarily for my data analysis skills, not writing (lucky for everyone involved) which Choire Sicha was nice enough to highlight in his recommendation letter for me.

Any concern that I'm being planted as a mole has been alleviated by signing an NDA that penalizes any breach of contract with death by curling irons, or worse, deportation to Jersey. In an act of good faith, I am taking even stricter measures and have agreed to undergo the memory-erasing procedure known as "Eternal Sunshine of the Blogless Mind" tomorrow night. (Sac, please don't screw this up or get distracted by Maccers.) For your part, dear friends and readers, I ask that you never mention Gawker Media to me ever again. Thanks For Everything and Goodbye GM, I never knew ya.

(Nick/Lock, Meeeet meee innn Monnntaaauk...)

IM, IM, IM Superman

Friend and personal punching bag, Lock, says I exhaust him on IM. I'm sure that effect is not limited to him or the IM arena and I'm sincerely sorry about that. (Then again, no I'm not.) Truthfully I will miss these opportunities to relentlessly piss on his door, even if it's the wrong apartment, as this little party ends when I start work on Monday. Presumably, it's lines like this one that Lock will be happy he won't have to ignore anymore...

krucoff: wow, have you seen the alexa charts for mediabistro lately? it's all up, gawker down. mb takes the lead. this is huge, this is something. spiers is god.
lockloct signed off at 6:45:56 PM.

Questions: When exactly did Spiers, the OG, replace recent Gawker guest co-editor Jesse Oxfeld as Mediabistro Editor-in-Chief? How did Ox's guest stint traffic compare to MB's that week? This is all very, very interesting and the graphs are quite telling. Indeed. Shebam. Pow. Blop. Wizzzz....


Note: Comparing apples to oompa-loompas makes perfect sense through the proper microscope.

It's NOT Hal Holbrook??

Now we need to get to the important business of fingering "Debbie" and figuring out what exactly she was doing in Dallas that November day. I have no doubt it's Laura Bush.

(Someone please inform me if I'm committing treason or worse by linking to the First Lady's bio on the White House website. I think I'm safe since it's the Spanish translation.)

Off-Track Blogging

Let others ponder if print is dead, undergoing psychiatric evaluation and toilet torture at Fort Jarvis, flopping around like a fish out of water in a music video, or entering the final warm-down stage before cryogenic freezing can preserve (along with Ted Williams) the thrill of watching it die for future generations. We haven't been paying attention to the battle of heavyweight mediums because we're too busy growing our hair out and buying breathable flannel for the upcoming grunge revival.

Not that we enjoyed the dicey-fuzz genre much the first time around but a special bond with Mudhoney was formed the day we listened to "This Gift" and imagined what it would be like to live inside a nitrous tank. Perhaps the soupy feeling of congested haze, or even water-soaked clothing, will be re-created when Elizabeth Spiers participates in two readings next week as the author of "Andrew Krucoff and the Amazing Paper Weblog" from the book anthology, Bookmark Now. Painful background info was covered here before.

But first, after an exclusive print mailing to 100 People Who Matter and a series of invitation-only brunch lectures from Old Saybrook to Eastham, we're [adverb] [adjective] to announce the official public release of The Other Page, Issue #3. Inside its PDF-bound pages you'll discover the Publishing Land of Misfit Boys & Girls: publicity manager fond of big asses but not a rump roast , an editorial gal who plays the bass and violin, production editor who commutes daily from Manhattan to Jersey, copy editor turned full-time pro blogger, a failed pro blogger, sunlighting web editor/moonlit DJ, and even a writer who's getting herself hardcovered.

To celebrate we extend an open invite to all for an after-work happy hour tomorrow, June 2nd from 6pm to 9pm at 12" Bar, on Essex at Houston. Lots of door prizes including DVDs I Wish I Returned To Columbia House A Long Time Ago, new books by familiar names I'll never get around to reading, Dodgeball stickers, leftover commas, and one lucky winner will receive two minutes of personalized comedy from my roommate Becca who coincidentally is DJing at the very same bar tonight with other sex-starved girls. I can't guarantee you'll get laid but I'm sure you'll get more chances if you go both nights and come early.