Cultural critic = bullshit artist. It's an equation that even empirically-challenged Pauline Kael readers can wrap their McLuhan-addled minds around, and perhaps none better than Boston Globe writer James Parker. He tackled the aesthetics of karoke just in time for the New Year, and with high-minded results. Hilarity ensues:

The heart of the karaoke performer swells: Into this vacancy he must project his beautiful essence, his soul. He -- or she (karaoke knows no gender) -- may be emboldened or confused by alcohol; wild with a private grief; or, worst of all, suffering from a genuine desire to excel before his peers. Regardless, in the performance that ensues, something will be brought to light.

We're pretty sure that Parker shouldn't get paid to publish this, and certainly not by a supposedly Serious Newspaper; but he gives us hope. Also a desire to get fucked up and belt out "Livin' on a Prayer." You know, in public, for once. The inspired may wish to brush up on their karaoke etiquette here.

'This One Goes Out...' [Boston Globe]
Picking the Right Karaoke Song - The Fine Art [Something Requisitely Witty and Urbane]

Lately all of our time has been tied up in efforts to redesign our website, and, last night, while taking a break from alternatively studying CSS/XHTML textbooks and banging our head against the wall, we decided to assemble our blogroll. We've got links like gangbusters -- celebs, mp3s, movies, the funny haha, and lots of other coolness -- but we could not for the life of us find any good Portland blogs.

Seriously, where are they? The Portland Mercury, which in its newsstand edition has been boring us to death of late -- there is only so much of their brand of "journalism" that we can take -- has a blog, and it's quite good. The blogosphere seems to be the perfect place for their bizarre maneuvers against good taste and Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Other than that, we've got nothing. One of our favorite Portland blogs is Cowboyz 'n' Poodles, written by former Mercury escritora Julianne Shepherd; but it doesn't actually count, because she moved to New York like two years back.

So we've got nothing. At this point, we'd link to halfway-decent blogs by cool-looking people. Hell, we'd even link to Flickr. Or LiveJournal. Anything. We're desperate; we love Portland, and we want to know that Portlanders are out there right now tearing it up on the bloggernets. Please, send us your links.

We'd really love to hate Apple. We really would. As we sit here, tapping away at the streamlined keyboard of our slim PowerBook G4, we think back to the days when we carried around a bulky Creative mp3 player and blogged read blogs on our desktop PC. And we miss 'em. We'd like to go back. Honestly, we would. But—dammit—we just can't. You can't beat the iPod's interface, you can't hate on Tiger, and Apple's design work is certainly handsome. But, you can rip on their musical taste.

It's hard not to enjoy the Fratellis' "Flathead." It's got handclaps, harmonized backgrounds, and a nifty meter-shifting singalong hook. It's not wonderful—it's lyrically weak and too studio-glossed shiny—but it's a harmless pop song. Or at least it was, until Steve Jobs got his hands on it.

Ever since "Flathead" popped up in an iPod/iTunes/iBuy (?) commercial, the Fratellis have been vilified as hack musicians, soulless corporate cogs, and pederasts. Pitchfork hates the song, and so does the Phoenix. Apparently, the second rule of music journalism (after maintaining a steady 4:1 ratio of "life-changing" or "Garden State" to "the Shins") is that a song blows if it's been featured in an Apple ad.

It makes a certain amount of sense. After all, Apple owns us. They effectively control the way we listen to music, and they've monopolized cool in an age when aesthetic pluralism reigns and our design choices effectively define our identities. So eschewing our technology overlords' conventional pop ear becomes the only way indie types can create distance between themselves and the brand that even their baby-boomer, commuter-train-riding parents use.

So if you happen to watch an Apple commercial, don't like the music. It's the only way to stay cool. If necessary, keep a pair of earplugs handy while you're watching "The Office." (You WOULD watch "The Office.") Because if you want to keep your Stella-drinking, cloves-smoking friends around, you'll do what's best and refuse to enjoy anything you can buy via the iTunes store. And remember: Razorlight was never a good band, even when it was.

ESPN's Chris Broussard is fine with gays, as long as they know he hates them. Well, maybe he doesn't "hate" them—they'll still get a hug—but he does expect them to burn in Hell. His new post on ESPN's Magazine blog has a number of gems to its credit.

I'm a born-again, Bible-believing Christian (no, I'm not a member of the Religious Right). And I'm against homosexuality (I believe it's a sin) and same-sex marriage.

But before you label me "homophobic," know that I'm against any type of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. That includes heterosexual fornication (premarital sex).

Cool, Chris. We'll just label you batshit crazy. Still, though, his take on AmaechiGate (more like GAYte!) is relatively progressive: he thinks the NBA is ready for a gay player, as long as there's no hanky-panky in the locker room.

But if a gay player just goes about his business in the shower, showing that he has no sexual interest in his teammates and that he's not "checking them out," I think the awkwardness would wear off fairly quickly.

We're not even going to bother close reading that. Then there's the grand finale:

Believe me, when the ball goes up, his sexual preference isn't going to matter.

My take on John Amaechi [ESPN: The Magazine Blog] (via YAYSports!)

Sure, we've been reading blogs for half a decade, but it's hard when you're just starting to do one yourself. If you want to do it right (i.e. not on Blogger), you've got to be functioning at a basic level of technological proficiency, and until recently we were kind of like a remote-less Tracy Morgan shouting "Pornography!" at television sets. (Why don't they just show you porn when you want them to?) It's been an effing chore figuring out Movable Type, learning CSS, trying to design shit, etc. Anyways, we've spent so much time working out the technological kinks that we've hardly been able to figure out what the hell this blog is supposed to be about, and how we're supposed to write it. So we turn to sites like Gawker to understand just how we should be generating content. And guess what, it turns out we only have to write something once, and then we can use it again. How great is that!

Yeah yeah yeah, we used him as a jumping-off point the other day, but James Murphy is about to be everywhere because Sound of Silver will be album of the year. So get used to it.

Plus, he's kind of already everywhere. There was that wonderful puff piece in the latest Rolling Stone. No punches were pulled: it told us that Murphy likes Ultimate Fighting unironically (no really guys), is rereading the Pynchon canon, and has—gasp—DROPPED ECSTASY. The interview transcript probably looked something like this:

RS: Do something funny.

JM: What? No. Fuck you.

RS: Say something interesting. Anything.

JM: [Silence]

RS: Just say something.

JM: I've done drugs before.

RS: THIS IS PURE JOURNALISTIC GOLD!

Most revealingly, the article tells us that the man behind LCD Soundsystem is occasionally moody (or at least hates talking to Rolling Stone when he's hungover). But who can blame him? After all, everyone hates his blog for the Guardian.

Especially the commenters. Man, those Brits are mean. After Murphy's yawny post about frequent flyer miles (or something—it was kind of too boring for us to really understand), one commenter whined, "What a waste of time." Another comment starts out, "Hey dummy." PWNAGE!

But then he stoops to their level and comments back as theguywritingthis, starting a good old-fashioned flame war. (Why do people even start arguments? We're online! We're blogging! We have no dignity to salvage in the first place!) And then he writes another sort of meta-post where he basically breaks down in tears and asks why we can't all get along. Of course, the first commenter states his intent to take a cab to Murphy's house, whereupon he'll kill the blogger, the entire readership of the Guardian, and himself with a double-barrelled shotgun. It's a slightly dubious plan.

We're kind of sad Murphy started blogging. We still love everything LCD's ever done, but the mystique's fading fast. It's heartening, at least, to know Murphy has as much free time as we do.

Portland newspapers have hella beef. Why? What a good question! Maybe it's because nothing ever happens in the 503—and when seriously newsworthy, Willamette valley-shaking bizness does go down (like, once a decade), there's invariably a scramble to scoop the story. Feisty contender Willamette Week's uncovering of the Goldschmidt scandal was huge—like, Pulitzer Prize huge—and a hefty body punch to the Oregonian, the heavyweight champion of the local rag scene.

So where does the Portland Mercury figure in to this news/boxing metaphor? In our estimation, they're a sort of midget pugilist (does midget boxing even exist?). Like, it's fun to watch them flail around, but it's hard to take their jabs seriously. Occasionally, however—think now—they get in an uppercut to the nuts.

Yes, there was a time when Stereogum was a good blog. Earnest, somewhat hip (indie nerds with jobs can only be so cool), and not without a sense of humor, The Gum became the #1 music blog in terms of site traffic, so in October of last year Scott started doing this shit full time. Now, problem is, Stereogum totally sucks. Sad, right? We don't have an opinion about this "Stereogum sucks" affair, but that's what everyone keeps saying, over and over, whilst continuing to read Gummers not once, but several times a day. (Well, it's mostly Idolator, but they're paid to read that shit.)

Here's a wonderfully hilarious and totally indicative exchange from Stereogum's comment section today:

It blows my mind how lame and poorly written this blog has become over the last 6 months.

Posted by: lame at April 2, 2007 3:31 PM

Thanks for reading!

Posted by: scott at April 2, 2007 4:05 PM

• Favorite Worst Nightmare Cover [Stereogum]
• Let's Talk About Stereogum [Idolator]
• Who Sucked The Fun Out Of Stereogum? [Idolator]