DON'T STOP BEREAVING

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[dontstopbereaving]

WHAT A MERRY-GO-ROUND

I have been on an Alexander McQueen kick recently, which apparently just means having a zillion Wikipedia and Vogue tabs open, immersing myself in every runway show the late designer put on from his debut to 2010, going through them as I would a director’s filmography. I am interested in how shocked and thrilled I can still be by images I first saw as a high schooler in the early 2000s, waiting patiently for the little QuickTime video compilations on the official McQueen website to load. Somehow as an adult nearing the age the designer was when he took his own life, I can understand with more nuance the charges of misogyny lobbed against him in his earlier work, the revulsion many had to the uglier images and nihilism his clothes seemed to express. But even moreso, I am realizing how much I have internalized his work and how much truth I found in it even before I had the words to identify it. Even when he evolved out of bird-flipping youthful rebellion against the often cruel and stupid industry he worked in, a brutality remained, enshrined in increasingly baroque and elegant structures, but refusing to go away, a thousand memento mori strutting with bald-faced honesty down the runway. 

I am thinking about a kind of feminine or otherwise alternative understanding of violence. I only use the shorthand of "feminine" because our mainstream western understanding of violence is so inseparably male. Mainstream violence is punctuation. It is a narrative device that incites problems and solves them. It is a thing to be overcome, to wrestle with and win or die. In Alexander McQueen’s work I find an ambient violence, one I think I understood on an instinctual level even as a merely macabre teen in Iowa. Violence can never be overcome, violence will happen to you and violence will live within you in equal measure. And so one must find ways to live alongside it, to lie down in it, to press ones hands against it and stare into the darkened mirror. Until it becomes something beautiful by force of will.

I just finished watching A Murder At the End of the World, and near the end there’s a dialogue between its two young protagonists, amateur sleuths chasing a cold case of serial killer and the women he murdered. There comes a moment where the days on end living and breathing this violence breaks Bill (Harris Dickinson.) As a man he is revolted by this scourge, in the way one is revolted by anything one could potentially be complicit in. It becomes clear to him that solving this murder solves nothing, that it is in the very fabric of the world. He is inconsolable, transformed by the epiphany. Darby (Emma Corrin) — the daughter of a Iowa coroner, who is probably on the spectrum anyway — can’t relate. She has grown up immersed in, perhaps desensitized by, this world. She wants to bring the killer to justice in the way one wants to solve a Friday crossword, because it’s the one thing she feels she has the power to do. This impasse, a seemingly subtle difference in perspective, proves insurmountable; the couple parts ways. I was mixed on this series by its conclusion, but this conversation lingered with me. In a TV landscape rife with men avenging murdered and violated women, you rarely hear a man talk with this kind of holistic despair about the phenomenon. Whether or Bill or Darby are the more evolved in their understanding of violence is left up to the viewer’s interpretation.

When Alexander McQueen killed himself I was living in Downtown Los Angeles, slowly emerging from what had been the worst year of my young life thus far. I remember reading the news and being driven out of my apartment by a sudden urge to walk. I headed up Spring Street in the morning before the pathetic little hipster boutiques of the gentrification-resistant north end were open. It would have been a Saturday. In my memory the streets were wet with one of those frigid Los Angeles winter rains that had left the sky stingingly clear and blue above the roofs of the darkened loft buildings. I was in a daze. The world that had killed this man that I did not know but had felt tied to and changed by, as so many had, felt impossibly bleak. And yet, at this point, I knew I had decided to keep living in it. My face was wet and I blinked against the light I had been so rudely dragged back into.

This week it is -22 degrees in Iowa City. The wind chill is -40. We are told not to go outside, that exposed skin can be frostbitten within 10 minutes of exposure. I am watching a lot of YouTube clips of McQueen shows and slowly exiting what has been the worst year of my young life thus far. I had a dream the other day where I gave away my dog, because, I reasoned in the dream, he had given me enough happiness and it was time to let someone else own him and thus be made happy too. Immediately I regretted this decision, and spent the rest of the dream searching for him in vain, cursing myself and my shortsightedness. Because, I realized, love and beauty are also ambient. They are not means to an end, means to some imagined stasis we call happiness. We have to live alongside the things that make us feel good, which is easier said than done. We have to press up our hands against our contentment and not fear it, let it overtake us and make us stronger. This has been shockingly difficult thing for me to learn. It was so much easier to lie down with violence.

The posthumous retrospective of McQueen’s work at the met was called “Savage Beauty.” That interpretation of his body of work never quite sat right with me, but indulge me as I try to re-interpret it to my liking: In his two or three years before his death McQueen made liberal use of an engineered printing technique he’d developed. Using patterns from the natural world and his eye for tailored cuts, his highly structured dresses and jackets became kaleidoscopic mirrored bursts of color that created an impossible dimensionality on the wearer’s body. They looked like butterflies, and they were the signature of Plato’s Atlantis the last show he staged before his death. In McQueen’s body of work I see both beauty and violence not as some wild thrashing thing slashing garments and flesh, nor as a mere state of being, but as the means of cracking open a confine. Of splitting a hardened cocoon and continuing on in a new body, no matter how boneless and weak it leaves you at first. This is the savagery: the uncultivated self and the sheer force and unruly optimism it takes to live in it.

January 14, 2024

[dontstopbereaving]

I don’t have a story

The podcast I co-host got sponsored by a new-wave bra company that champions body positivity and body diversity, and as part of our advertising agreement I had to order a bra from them. I was very interested and excited in this, because bra shopping has more or less been a non-question for me. Blessed with what would probably be a 36AA if such a bra was ever manufactured — I am wide and flat and should have been a swimmer, probably — the adolescent horror and thrill of suddenly having boobs to manage and shop for has never really been on the table. I remember so vividly, the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, staying with an old friend from middle school and hanging out in her bedroom. She was lying on her bed and reading a magazine and said, apropos of nothing, "ugh, don't you hate it when your boobs slide down to your armpits when you're reading?" I nodded, having no idea what she was talking about.

Anyway, this bra company didn't carry a 36AA, but after taking a quiz about what $68 expertly engineered bra would be perfect for me, I ordered whatever they recommended. It arrived wrapped in delicate pink tissue paper, and I took it out and held it up and felt my heart sink. I knew from looking at it that it would look ridiculous on me; trying it on confirmed that. They had a number to call where you could talk to a "fit specialist" and of course I did that, and some nice girl in the Bay Area told me that if that bra didn't fit me, they had a selection of leisurewear bralettes.

But I don't want a bralette, dammit! I am not a tween, and though they aren't much to write home about I do have breasts that must be managed. This company's advertising seems to trumpet the arrival of a "bra for every woman," and even within their progressive spectrum of what that means, I fell on the outside of it. The whole process carried a lot more gravity than I expected.

The bra arrived in the heat of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation firestorm, which had me on edge and moody all week for both the obvious reasons and reasons that I was more confused about articulating, or whether or not I should. The prospect of an attempted rapist and alcoholic being given a post in the highest court in the land is the most harrowing and torturous chapter of the MeToo world we now live in, and the stories from my friend and peers and people I don't know but follow on Twitter started being dropped almost hourly. Most women I know have been raped or sexually assaulted in their lives. The most visible and audible woman's experience right now is that of the victim; those with platforms and followings are being encouraged to share their story in solidarity, in order to shore up the most prominent, contested ones, to create a narrative that yes, this does happen, it happens all the time.

I don't have a rape story, and I don't have an assault story. In the past year, wondering why I don't has led me down a weird guilt spiral that inevitably ends with the re-realization that there's no reason that I don't. There's nothing I did right. It just didn't happen to me. This is disconcerting to me, in the context of a life where I have always felt left out of the things that supposedly comprise the experience of being a woman. It's not just the bra thing, though that's a useful metaphor. I've always felt left out of femininity, I've always had more male friends than female friends, going back to early childhood. Girls tormented me as a child, and as an adolescent, and as an adult; on the whole I have felt the emotional violence of other women more acutely than that of men. And yet, I know the latter exists.

Sometimes it feels like sharing one's own story of assault is the only powerful tool a woman can have against a patriarchy in its violent death throes, which often leaves me feeling useless in our social media-driven dialogue. The stories of sexual violence coming from women both famous and not, while harrowing, has also, to this outsider at least, appeared as a kind of global bonding experience. Which is really important for those who have been victims. But I want there to be a language for women to be advocates for each other that goes beyond "me, too" in its most literal sense. Because I cannot honestly say "me, too," and yet, nearly any woman I've ever been close with enough has told me about that time in college, or that date that went bad, or that time in eighth grade. I believe them, and I believe women I've never met before, not because it's happened to me, too, but because I know how the world works and I believe them.

I want to tell one story that is not a rape story, but it is a Hollywood story, and it's a story about a powerful Hollywood man. This story might not end the way you think it will!

When I was in college, a male classmate of mine wanted to cast a famous actor, let's call him Gary, in his thesis film. His dad had some connections, and I had gamely signed on to be my friend's AD, which meant when he went to a swanky event with the purpose of being introduced to this guy and hopefully turning it into a collaboration, he asked me to come along. I was excited, we were very young and to land this actor for a student film would be a coup; it felt like a bank heist. On the way over we were giddy and silly, "what if Gary says yes? What if he wants to do a feature?" etc etc. It was fun to at least be party to a young white man's Hollywood dreams on the cusp of coming true.

We went to the venue with his father. I expected that at some point my friend's dad would introduce us to Gary, and then let us take the lead and talk about this film my friend wanted to make. But my friend's dad didn't seem to know how to go about it. Maybe he didn't really know Gary at all. Who knows. My friend had also frozen up, and I remember sitting at the bar, my gaze going from this father and son, over to Gary in the corner of the room, who looked all too approachable. "You guys are too scared?" I asked incredulously. "Why don't you go over and charm him with your feminine wiles," my friend said. It was a joke, but of course it wasn't, and I felt like I had a lot to prove, so I went over and introduced myself to Gary.

I don't remember much about our conversation, I remember his eyes on me, and I remember feeling giddy and high with the power of his attention. I should maybe emphasize — Gary is extremely famous. You all know who he is and you probably love him. He has a pretty stellar reputation. I didn't have a particular thing for him, but after that conversation I remember feeling like I understood what real stardom was about. I had "dated" a minor TV star very briefly before that but this was on another level. Still, I was very mission-oriented, and made sure the conversation came back to praising my friend's script, and how awesome the film was going to be. I told him he had to see the film he had worked on with his dad, that had played at Berlin — Berlin! — so he could appreciate their genius. Gary seemed amenable to this. I had some little note cards from a Japanese stationary store in Little Tokyo on me, and I wrote my phone number down on one of them and gave it to Gary, who seemed beyond charmed. Then I went back to my friend and his dad, buzzing, but cynical enough to shrug. "I'm sure he'll never get in touch, but we'll see!"

We left shortly after. I remember wondering if this had been the plan all along, to throw me at Gary like in order to have an audacious, talked-about thesis film. I probably felt more flattered at the time than anything else to be considered worthy bait.

I remember where I was when Gary called my little Motorola flip phone — in my cubicle at the camera shop I worked at, probably reading Jezebel. I remember the surreality of his voice — that voice! — coming through the speaker. "This is Gary," he said. Duh, I thought. He wanted to know if I wanted to see a movie with him, maybe get dinner after. Ever the professional, I asked if we would talk about my friend's film. He seemed uninterested. I also, it should be mentioned, had a boyfriend at the time, and though I was starstruck I was not starstruck enough to just go to dinner and a movie with Gary with no pretense of artistic ambition on the table. I refused politely, but said that if he ever wanted to watch the film, I would get him a copy.

My friend, obviously, was tickled beyond belief by all this. This had become a secret extracurricular, a spy mission we would whisper about in between classes. My friend was adamant that we get Gary a screener of my friend's father's film, and soon I had negotiated an arrangement, with the stipulation that I now wonder about the legitimacy of, that I could not just leave it with him. I had to watch it with him, at his house, and take the DVD with me.

I remember driving up the winding hills to Gary's house, playing M.I.A.'s Kala extremely loudly to pump myself up. I remember being buzzed in at the gate and walking up a staircase through tropical plants and water features until I arrived at Gary's modernist, castle-like home perched in the hills. I remember how empty his home was, how sad it seemed. He asked if I wanted anything to drink, and I said, water, and he opened up his impressive Sub-Zero which contained a Brita pitcher and a lone tray of grocery store sushi.

We went to the living room, me clutching the little plastic DVD case like it was the one legitimizing thing in the whole room. I was there to help my friend, I was there to help my friend. I gave it to Gary, and he put it in the DVD player — shockingly, the DVD player in the living room didn't work. We would have to go to the one in his bedroom.

I don't remember if I could see right through this at the time, certainly by the next day I could. Gary put in the DVD in his bedroom entertainment system and then laid back on his California King bed, his lanky legs crossed over the fur throw. He held out one arm, beckoning me, and I pretended not to notice. There was a small ottoman at the foot of the bed, and I sat on it, hunched forward throughout the entirety of my friend's dad's stupid awful sophomoric Berlinale-approved movie, sipping on my water, being so good and professional and helpful.

Gary eventually turned down the opportunity to be in my friend's UCLA undergrad thesis film, no fucking shit. I never heard from him again. I wonder if what would have happened if I would have joined him on the bed, and if my friend would have had Gary — THE Gary, in his thesis film, and if it would have set him off on an exciting idiosyncratic career as a young auteur. How great that would have been for my friend.

I got a lot of mileage out of that story for many years — the time I went to Gary's house and he tried to get me to watch a movie with him in his bed. I played it up for laughs. I was certain that I looked like the cool person in that story.

A few things I appreciate a decade after the Gary incident:

Gary never tried anything with me. I sat on that ottoman, and there I stayed. I took the DVD with me when I left, he kissed my cheek, and that was that. Gary, in my experience at least, was a good guy in a Hollywood full of bad ones, and I was lucky.

My friend 100% tried to offer me up as bait to get Gary to be in his UCLA undergraduate thesis film, and so did his adult father, and this was funny to them.

Yes, I was good and drank water and sat on the ottoman, but Gary is a big person, and if he wanted to change that he could have. It wouldn't have mattered what I did right

Whenever I see Gary in a film — or in person, which has happened a few times because of my job — I get incredibly anxious and crazy feeling, despite the fact that he was good and really didn't do anything wrong — because I remember being in that weird empty luxurious house, and now I can look back and realize how young and dumb I was and how one of my young dumb male peers decided to use that to his advantage.

The MeToo movement has me reinterrogating events like this and others, where I was powerless but the worst didn't befall me. Why, why, why? It's a stupid question. Is there something about me that just doesn't attract violent men, socially or romantically? Is it my AA tits? My general left-behindness in all things popularly understood to be a part of the "female experience?" I've been so stupid, so many times, and experienced plenty of degrading shit that still doesn't fall into the category of assault and isn't something worth airing because it doesn't torture me; I don't have PTSD, it hasn't meaningfully disrupted my life. (My own brain does that on its own.) This is not the moment for non-stories like mine.

But I absolutely believe that there was nothing particularly game-changing that kept any of that from happening to me. And I understand the dynamics of a scene like that — where you're alone in a guy's house way up in the hills and he's the one with all the power, when you're alone with a guy in his car and he won't unlock the door to let you out, when you black out and find out a guy you thought was your friend was throwing himself on you in your absence. Any of those guys could have been rapists, and they weren't. Nothing about me or my actions would have changed that.

I have felt pent up with all of this for a year, as soon as it became apparent that the dominant dialogue among women would be sharing stories of trauma and violence. Because I don't have a tale of horror to peel off and lay before the reading public, but I have just a regular-ass life experience that absolutely corroborates all those tales of horror. It is not much — and I hope it stays that way. But I thought I'd share it.

[dontstopbereaving]

2015 writing by Emily Yoshida

“Blog posts”

January 28: Advantageous and the Sundance sci-fi problem

Sundance diary entry, review of my favorite film there.

March 11: The Modern Things: Björk Season in New York City

Bjork overload: MOMA retrospective, Vulnicura, Carnegie Hall. Crying and stuff.

March 15: Bodies electric: Ex Machina twists the history of sexy robots

Ex Machina review. Gynoids!

April 17: Unfriended is the first film to accurately capture our virtual lives

Review of Unfriended, which I loved very much.

May 18: Pixar's Inside Out plays with our emotions both effectively and recklessly

Review of Inside Out, which I didn’t much care for.

June 2: Entourage movie review: possibly the most harmless film of all time

Entourage movie review.

June 19: Everyone gets touched by darkness in True Detective's overpopulated second season

Review of noted television show True Detective. Pro Marty/Fukunaga bias.

June 29: The Where Are Ü Now video and the current cultural function of Justin Bieber

I watched a Justin Bieber music video and wrote about it.

August 3: Are humans allowed in VR storytelling?

Report from an Oculus demo. Against cute CGI hedgehogs, leaning in. Nobody read this, but I was quite happy with it.

September 1: Miley Cyrus just torpedoed her own career, and MTV helped

White hot burns all around.

September 13: The Date

A short story about love.

September 22: On Honeymoon, Lana Del Rey is in the director's chair

Review of Lana Del Rey album. The Weeknd, songs about men, female auteurs.

October 21: Tidal's massive Barclays Center concert was the live show equivalent of streaming music

Report from big weird concert.

November 2: Project Greenlight is over, but the world is still full of Jason Manns

I still carry my film school rage.

“Interviews”

Paul Feig talks women comedians, his love for streaming, and his new Yahoo show Other Space

Oh, what a pleasant man!

The director of Creative Control explains his augmented reality nightmare

Interview with director Benjamin Dickinson. The film is great and got picked up by Amazon, so folks will be able to see it soonish.

Talking to Heems about Eat Pray Thug, spiritual tourism, and skipping his SXSW panel

He got mad at me on Twitter afterwards, but I thought and still think it was a great talk.

Getting to the thrash point: a conversation with Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never

One of my favorite interviews ever.

That’s what I did this year!

[dontstopbereaving]

Verge Fiction: The Date

"I always try to live my life like it's a movie," Marcus said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm a responsible person; I pay my bills and walk my dog and try to be a good friend. But I think it's really important to have a well-curated life."

I wrote this short story at the website of my employ. Please read it and despair.

[dontstopbereaving]

An excerpt from a feature that will never seen the light of day

I spent the majority of the month of May working on a 4,000 word reported feature about PC Music. I probably should have just gone for the non-reported thinkpiece version like everyone else did, because then I could have published it before GFOTY went and put her foot in her mouth, altering the narrative around the group and rendering my piece irrelevant and outdated.

I am not going to publish the piece probably ever, but I disagree with people who say there’s no value in writing about potentially problematic people/”empty” art. We’re usually trying to figure out something else about the world via them.  

Whatever! Here’s a part that I feel is still #relevant, even if PC Music is “so over.” Also, this piece by Aimee Cliff is good.

Events like the Red Bull Music Academy have become a growing reality of the music industry. Twenty years ago, the idea of lining up for such a blatantly sponsored happening would have been reprehensible to any self-respecting music fan, but contemporary culture consumers have had to get comfortable with the likes of Bud Light and McDonalds providing them with the kinds of experiences once relegated to obscure, underground venues. Hangups over artists "selling out" started to seem terribly square sometime around the rise of file sharing; perhaps it was a subconscious form of music industry reparations. If we were going to steal albums from the artists we otherwise claimed to support, we could at least let them collect a check from a Nissan commercial.

Now we barely blink an eye when we hear "alt-pop" bands like Best Coast on a Windows ad, much less when Nicki Minaj turns on a Beats Pill in her latest music video. And if you attended RBMA sets by critically respected musicians such as A$AP Rocky and FKA Twigs, both artist and audience are partners in a kind of mutual denial of the corporate entity that brought them together. Nobody’s doing anything so tacky as shouting out their sponsors from the stage — such blatancy would probably be counterproductive to the authentic, trustworthy vibe Red Bull is trying to build.

Not so at Pop Cube, where, after an hour of anxious waiting, Cook finally stepped out of the Hummer wearing a head-to-toe Red Bull branded jogging suit. He could later be seen in the DJ booth chugging a frosty can of Yellow Edition with fellow producer Danny L Harle. "Not all the Red Bull Music Academy Festival events were that … Red Bull involved, you know?" Cook says later. "And you know […] the way some presented it was maybe a little bit ashamed. Whereas, I think by us embracing it, it’s just made it so much more enjoyable."

This is said with a complete absence of irony, in a way that apparently caught his sponsors, as much as anyone else, off guard as much as anyone else. "I think an important moment is when some of them talked to us and realized we weren’t trolls," Cook says. "And that we actually care about what we’re doing and we’re not a pure comedy prank."

PC Music’s enthusiasm for such corporate shilling is, on the surface, far from radical. But in an era when brands trade on authenticity and altruism — when Red Bull genuinely wants you to believe that they are curating a bunch of amazing shows with zero self-interest — there is a kind of transgressive shock value in watching an as-yet still underground character like Cook so willingly embrace the role of corporate ambassador. Brands latch onto artists for their credibility and capacity for distraction, but at Pop Cube, PC Music shone the spotlight right back onto the brand, as if daring to be corrected.

[dontstopbereaving]

Hot Chip - Love Is The Future

HI EVERYONE

[dontstopbereaving]

Going to Donut Friend with my best friend Skrillex

I read this last night at Words & Guitars at HiFi, not even aware at the time that it was very current. I didn't give it an introduction or title when I read it, but it is probably a work of fiction.

The leftover heat from an unthinkably hot afternoon rises up from the sidewalk as Sonny and I make our way to Donut Friend. It’s been a long day at work, and I check my phone instinctively — no new notifications, thank god.

I’m about to slide it into my back pocket when Sonny plucks it out of my hand with a friendly, yet mischievous grin. “Let’s make this a no-phone hang,” he says.

I’m about to protest, but then I turn to him, and faintly see myself mirrored in his glasses in the neon lights of York Blvd. I smile back. “You got it,” I say.

We walk into Donut Friend, and its packed. The air conditioning feels like a revelation on the back of my neck. Sonny hurriedly pulls off his glasses, but it’s too late, two kids have already started pointing and whispering.

Sonny turns toward me in an effort to hide his face.

“Do you want to go?” I ask. “We can leave whenever you want to. Or just tell me what you want, and I’ll get it while you wait in the car.”

Sonny sighs, and doesn’t say anything right away. “I just want to get a donut with my best friend like a normal person while I’m in between residencies.”

“Then do that,” I say. “You’re still my best friend, and you’re still totally normal.”

And so we wait in line, like two normal people, or like one normal person and the famous DJ Skrillex. As we peruse the menu (I go for the Jets to Basil, Sonny gets Rites of Sprinkles) I sense the eyes of our fellow customers wandering to me as well — with our pale complexions and nearly identical glasses, it’s easy to mistake me for his older sister. I’ve known him for so long — since we were kids, way before From First to Last — sometimes I forget that we aren’t.

“Where to?” I ask as we leave Donut Friend, in between gooey bites. “Beer?”

Sonny shakes his head, mouth too full to say anything. He never wants a beer.

“Well, there’s a liquor store across the street. I’m going to get a six pack. You’re free to have some if you want.”

“Do you really need to, though?” Sonny asks. “I mean, to have fun? Why can’t we just go back to the loft and watch Adventure Time or something?”

“I’m not getting wasted, Sonny,” I say maybe a little to sternly. I know he comes from a completely different place when it comes to drugs and alcohol, and he’s probably seen stuff on tour that I couldn’t even imagine. But sometimes I had to remind him that we were two separate people. “You know, when you’re not here, I go out with my other friends, and I have a drink or two, and I’m totally fine.”

I can still feel his eyes on me, judging, as I cross the street and walk into the store. I pick up a six pack and as I wait to be rung up, I start to think of all the things he does that I don’t necessarily approve of. I’ve been supportive, and protective, an oasis of normalcy for him as his life has gotten more complicated, as the world has demanded more and more of him.

“I’m totally watch Adventure Time,” I say before I’ve even finished crossing the street. “I’ve just had a long day, and I would like to have a drink.”

“You keep saying that, that you’ve had a long day,” Sonny says, downing the last of the Rites of Sprinkles. “What was so crazy about it?”

I start to think about how to explain, but think better of it. “Internet stuff. You wouldn’t care.”

We get back in the car, and Clarity comes back on the stereo at max volume, just where we’d left it on the drive over. Suddenly that nostalgia for the songs of our adolescence doesn’t feel so appropriate. I turn down the volume and skip forward a few tracks.

Here

You can be anything

Anything that scares you

I think that scares you

We make our way toward the 110 in silence. Crushing silence. Finally I can’t keep it inside anymore. “I don’t like you spending so much time with Wes,” I say, before I can stop myself. I wait for him to respond, but he doesn’t, so I charge on, despite my better judgement. “I think he’s a really shitty person. And you know he has ghost producers doing half his tracks. He’s using you for your authenticity.”

“I thought you liked ‘Dirty Vibe’,” Sonny says, a little wounded.

“I love Dirty Vibe! CL and G Dragon are great on that track! And a one-off collaboration is fine. But now it’s a whole thing and I…” I trail off. If I keep talking, I’m going to sound jealous, and that’s not going to help either of us.

“I just don’t like the way he appropriates dancehall culture. It feels really gross. You can’t see his live shows and not think they’re gross.”

“You wrote a piece about this, didn’t you?” Sonny says, now turning toward me accusatorily.

“Maybe I did,” I say.

We’ve reached a stoplight. Sonny’s leaned against the window, staring out at the long, empty stretch of Figueroa that’s in front of us.

“Can I have my phone back?” I ask.

He hands it back without a word, to my surprise, and maybe to my disappointment. He doesn’t care about no-phone-time anymore. And he’s leaving tomorrow for Croatia and now I’m afraid he’ll leave mad. He’s never left mad.

I turn it on, keeping an eye on the light as I open up Twitter. And I immediately feel my heart fall into my stomach.

“You’ve got a green,” Sonny says.

I don’t say anything. I just hand my phone back to him so he can see the tweet, and step on the gas. He reads it aloud, slowly, half in disbelief.

“This is why women shouldn’t be allowed to write about music. Their tits get in the way of the keyboard and they can’t see what they’re typing.”

Neither of us say anything for a moment.

“I can’t believe he fit that into 140 characters,” Sonny finally says.

“Yeah, I dunno.”

“This is him?” he asks, as if the blue verified star wasn’t right there for all to see.

He scrolls through the rest of my mentions as we get on the freeway. “Whoa, Buzzfeed already picked it up,” he says. “Diplo goes on misogynist rant against female blogger.”

I feel ill. All I wanted to was spend a quiet, normal evening with my best friend, and the music industry blogosphere was closing in on all sides.

“What did you say?” Sonny asks.

“It doesn’t matter what I said!” I blurt out. “He shouldn’t be talking to any woman like that!” I feel like every fiber of my being is on fire. It’s that narcotic effect of a post blowing up, only it feels more like an overdose. I feel detached, from Sonny, from the world. The suburban lights of LA float up in every direction, and I feel like I’m in space. All I want to do is go home. My mentions may be blowing up, but I am alone.

“No, you’re not.”

Had I said that out loud? No — I was positive I hadn’t, and as I glanced over at Sonny his smile confirmed it. I knew he had gotten pretty high up back when he was still in Scientology school — OT3, I wanna say, but I’d never seen him use his powers until now.

He placed my phone on the console, then put his hand over my hand on the steering wheel. “I’m still here with you.”

I promised I’d see this again

I promised I’d see this with you now

And for a moment in the red of the taillights, as the Jimmy Eat World song swelled I saw my face and my glasses in his glasses, and I knew it was true.

Sonny took out his phone, and a few seconds later, placed it on the console, on top of mine. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just make out the tweet.

“Hey @diplo. Don’t be a dick. @emilyyoshida is my best friend.”

The skyline of downtown rose up before us, shimmering in the summer heat, familiar, loyal, full of promise.

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we're doing the requests now

we're doing the things we think will please you the most

at least for the next four minutes

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The Fish, The Couch, Grantland, Los Angeles, and New York

I got to the apartment and there were dead goldfish. Like tons of dead goldfish, in glasses and tumblers. Some were still alive, and were fighting through the mass of corpses and bob-bob-bobbing at the surface of the water. I couldn’t look at them so I stepped over a mass of empty beer cans and spilled Himalayan pink salt and grabbed a couple of Tecates and drank them on the front steps as the sun went down. Then Miles woke up and started playing 60’s girls groups on the turn tables and we threw away all the cans and swept the floor and then everyone else woke up and eventually someone cleaned up the fish, and then we got in the car and drove to Malo and drank margaritas and ate tacos and everyone was happy.

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I never wrote about what happened after that night, do you even want to know? The fish were transferred to the alley behind the apartment, where they stayed for a few weeks. All of them eventually died and then were left to rot in the sun, resulting in a not-great smell every time we went out to get the car. Pretty soon kids or drunks or whoever walked down that alley off of Vermont Ave. smashed all the jars, and the shiny dried up fish corpses were scattered and flattened along the asphalt. We had to reckon with the consequences of the initial senseless act of filling the living room with goldfish (not my decision, I’d like to make abundantly clear) for at least a month.

Self-portrait, Netbook camera, Fall 2011

I lived on the couch in that apartment for two months while I freelanced and looked for jobs in Los Angeles. I agreed to pay for utilities and for cable (so that I could watch the shows I was recapping for The A.V. Club) and to shut up put in my earplugs and deal with it when people were partying til 6 in the morning. This wasn’t some random drug den I Craigslisted; this was my best friend’s house, and I didn’t mind it so much for a while because we were both in the throes of some deeply chaotic proto-transitional shit and now we could at least attempt to have each other’s backs. I was also just grateful to be back in Los Angeles, the city I love and know best.

That was three years ago to the day, not that time is making much narrative sense to me now. I mean, six months after that — after the fish, and the couch, and another friend of mine throwing a half-full can of champagne at my head with real malice (left that part out earlier because it didn't pertain to the fish, but yeah, it was a weird night) — I was signing a contract with Grantland to come aboard as a culture editor, chatting with Bill Simmons about The Hills and sitting at a desk right next to my original blogging idol and then co-editor Mark Lisanti. Life is full of surprises!

I was still a straight-up fuckup when I started working at Grantland, something that I was forced to grow out of pretty much right away. Granted, I was an extremely hard-working fuckup, which I can recognize now. But at the time, well … people talk about impostor syndrome; what I had at first was more like armed robbery syndrome. There’s a degree of that anytime you are shown respect you don’t think you deserve (especially if you’re a woman, they say.) But this was more than just respect and a paycheck; I was a part of a cast of characters and minds the likes of which I had never been granted membership to before. Not very many sites get away with what Grantland gets away with, not many writing and editorial staffs earn the right to get away with it so fully. I had no option but to hurry up and try to assure my colleagues that they hadn’t made some grave error in hiring me, and in doing so I at least got to a place where I no longer could call myself a fuck-up honestly.

What can I even say about how important the past two and a half years have been? David Jacoby let Molly Lambert and Tess Lynch and I have a weekly free-association pop culture powwow and put it up for strangers to listen to. (The outpouring of messages after we aired our finale have literally been making me ill with gratitude; I have read them all, thank you.) Dan Fierman and Sean Fennessey let me write 5,000 words about Myst because I asked. Mark Lisanti let Rembert Browne and I wrote 8 million words about Les Miserables because we asked. Robert Mays and I raged to Skrillex in the Sahara tent while ostensibly on the clock. Chris Ryan introduced me to Zomby's twitter account, which, no offense, is perhaps a greater gift than all the others combined. This site has been my life, for better or for worse. Sometimes people on Twitter ask about what that Grantland life is like, and as the years have passed I’m less able to answer because it’s harder and harder for me to remember a time when I was not a part of this staff. The truth is that I don’t have much to compare it to, besides the fish and the couch (and the startup I got fired from in Seattle because I refused to tweet links to our content to Adrienne Maloof.) That’s both a good thing and a bad thing, and a lot of the reason why I decided to take the position at The Verge. There are so many ways of working and being and I think I owe myself the chance to check some of them out.

Maybe that doesn’t look so drastic from the outside — one large coastal city to another, one media outlet to another — but it’s a pretty big deal for me. We’re going to be creating something from near-scratch at The Verge, which is something I’ve never done on such a public platform, but I’m the kind of person who likes learning how to do new things, so I’m really excited about it. I’ve also —have you heard? — never lived in New York, never been in physical proximity to the “media community”; I’ve always considered myself a bit of an outsider in this [gestures vaguely] world because I never set out to pursue it intentionally. I mean, I started blogging about TV and writing sexy fanfic in the spring of 2010 because I didn’t have enough money to go out and I had to find some way to pass my time when I wasn’t going door to door for the Census. In retrospect, I feel as though I had wandered wearily into a strange room after years of looking for the exit, leaned my weight on a panel on the wall to catch my breath, and fell down a secret passageway which I haven’t quite found the end of yet. Shit's crazy, but the best I can do is stay curious and enthusiastic wherever it leads me.

And now I’m going to answer some questions people have been asking me on Twitter:

What exactly are you doing at The Verge?

I’m going launch/edit/curate their entertainment vertical (which doesn’t really exist right now.) I will also be writing in some fashion, but probably less than I did at Grantland.

Why does Girls in Hoodies have to end? Can’t you do it long distance like Chris and Andy do?

Nah, because we are now owned by separate media conglomerates and everything we think and do now exists under different corporate umbrellas. I can’t do an ESPN podcast, Molly can’t do a Vox podcast. We could maybe do a homegrown podcast but we haven’t talked about it in a concrete way yet.

Will you have a podcast at The Verge?

I have no idea. Maybe!

Will you be recapping The Newsroom at The Verge?

Will I be able to get The Scientific Lifestyle at my local Two Boots?

I am told if the demand is high enough they’ll consider inaugurating it! C’mon, let’s band together, fellow dairy-averse meat eaters!

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Dungeon of drama

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Visit Original Link

Edith Frost — "Cars and Parties"

Rarity from the ancient hard drive and my ancient radio show

Because emo week starts here

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Visit Original Link

gangsta boo 4 president

[unbornwhiskey]

So if “manufactured” is unfair, what is the right metaphor for Britney’s relationship to the pop machine? Scanning the pop culture of the late 90s gives us a better possibility: mecha, the Japanese anime genre where beautiful, tragic youth fuse themselves to sublime, state of the art machines. Britney is not the machine’s puppet; she’s its pilot.

Tom Ewing, “Popular: Britney Spears - “…Baby One More Time”

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Correct

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Nagisa Oshima, Cruel Story of Youth (1960)

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MY FAVORITE MISHEARD LYRIC

Actual:

I was gonna spend the night, coulda been okay

We were gonna talk all night, till I went away

I hear:

I was gonna spend the night, coulda been okay

We were gonna talk all night, till it went away

Til I went away connotes some kind of concrete real world obligation, Georgia will eventually need to go somewhere else, as people generally do. Til it went away connotes something else, some undefinable thing that can only be exorcised by talking. I've always heard the latter, I always sing the latter.

:)

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The Lifestyle Trilogy

It turns out that I like to write emotional essays/fanfic about the lifestyle brands of white female celebrities. So I made some images on Photoshop and collected them here for your enjoyment.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin, Perfection, and Disappointment

(March 26, 2014)

When it was first launched in 2008, Goop was widely understood to be Gwyneth’s expensive housewife hobby, an idle brag and the next logical step after marrying a rock star, having two beautiful children, and voluntarily withdrawing from show business. But the timing also coincides with Paltrow’s recovery from postpartum depression after the birth of her son, Moses, and is just as transparently a redirection of energy after a period of genuine emotional devastation. It’s her Hameau de la Reine, its excess (and asceticism) underpinned by darker realities.

The Preserve Girl: Decoding the Mystique of Blake Lively’s New Lifestyle Brand

July 24, 2014

If the Preserve Girl’s boyfriend suggests they visit a museum or see an art film, she demurs, asking “Why does society tell us that the only real art exists inside, on a wall?” When they change plans and drive downtown to see the street art mural they read about on Thrillist, she stays in the car. “Don’t worry, I can totally see it from here,” she reassures her boyfriend. “It’s so visceral.”

Staring Into the Eternal Bliss of Lauren Conrad's Wedding Photos

September 18, 2014

Lauren Conrad is part of the reason why we don’t need romantic comedies anymore — particularly romantic comedy heroines. How could we do better than the love lives of pseudoreality stars, particularly the high-gloss, ultraproduced world of The Hills? Though the show has been off the air for four years now (and LC hasn’t been on it for five years), that is the primary text of the Lauren Conrad experience; all subsequent ventures, i.e., her non–Adam DiVello–produced life, are sequels. We’ve followed the arc of her twenties, we’ve witnessed her heartbreaks and losses, we’ve been conditioned to root for her. Lauren Conrad’s wedding, and whatever comes next, is an afterlife of sorts, which is perhaps why reading about it is so soothing.

[rcjohnso]

LA

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mi