Gossip is the new pornography

In one case yes, said Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic Regina Hackett. Writing on her PI blog (since taken down but Google cached here) about her art critic colleage at the Seattle Times, Sheila Farr, Hackett wrote (with the bitchy title “Seattle Times art critic signs off. When was she on?”):

After the Seattle Times eliminated her job, art critic Sheila Farr declined to stick around as an arts reporter. Her self-congradulatory sign off ran in the Times on Sunday, here.

Suffice it to say she’s the opposite of James Brown, the hardest working man in show business. What did she accomplish? By doing so little, she tanked her job. The decline of newspapers can’t be news to anybody who works at one. She performed as if we were in the old days, when jobs were a given. She turned her position into fat, and the Seattle Times is on a diet.

Acccording to her, she wasn’t a good fit for a newspaper anyway. (Thanks for taking the job away from somebody who would have been.)

Wrote Farr:

When I began writing about art 20 years ago, I never aimed to become a staff writer at a daily paper. The hit-and-run pace of newspapers is not my default mode, being naturally more inclined to research, contemplation and working my way to the core of things.

The core of things? Where is the review of hers that gets to the core of things? I want to be gracious here but can’t. She failed her newspaper, the arts community and readers. Now there’s an official hole where her unofficial hole used to be.

From TechFlash via Slog.

I had just picked up a copy of Eric Weisbard’s 33 1/3 on the Guns ‘n Roses double album Use Your Illusion and was drawn to this part of a sentence on the back: “with ‘alternative’ as dated as hair metal…”.

There was a debate on Line Out this week about whether or not The Stranger is an “alternative” newspaper because they offered a pair of tickets to see Britney Spears. Now, I’m in favor of giving away Britney tickets in general and to me in particular but this “debate” was interesting because a) I thought both the term “alternative” and rockism were dead by now and b) because something I said was republished on Slog and in the Letters to the Editor section. Am I automatically a cranky old man now that I’ve written a “letter to the editor”?

Here’s what I said:Jesus Christ. We’re rehasing the poptimist/rockist argument because The Stranger has a pair of tickets to give away!?! Plus, I thought all of this indie hostility towards Britney ended when Pitchfork approved of “Toxic”.

Now, what’s alternative and what’s not is not of concern to me. I think the term had its funeral when a former (middle-aged, white) manager told me he listens to all kinds of music: “rock, country, alternative”. I’ve never concerned myself with what is “alternative” or “underground”, only what is “good” (to me) - when I write album reviews, I only ask “why did I like/dislike this record? That’s why I call myself a “poptimist”; authenticity or being different is irrelevant to me.

Still, though, I admire the rockists because they are, at least in theory, fighting the good fight. With newspapers downsizing and laying off critics right and left, editors are not sending their reviewers to cover Deer Hunter or Fuck Buttons shows when Hillary Duff or Fergie is in town, for better or worse.

Like I said in my comment, this is a stupid argument to have over a pair of tickets to be given away (I get asked two or three times a week by publicists to give away tickets to shows). Rockists are becoming the cranky people who write letters to the editor, the Republicans of indie rock.

From Gawker:

Yes, there’s going to be a book about Facebook’s creation, adapted for film by Aaron Sorkin, bestselling author Ben Mezrich confirmed. But it won’t have lots of sex and cooked Koala, per a Gawker report.

Those were the best parts!

Mezrich wrote the book behind the blackjack movie “21.” In May we obtained and excerpted Mazrich’s Facebook book proposal, which said Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook founders started the site to get into a secret society and get laid. In the proposal, one founder ended up sleeping with a Victoria’s Secret model; he and Zuckerberg also ate Koala on a tech executive’s yacht.

Harvard alumni magazine 02138 later reported that Mezrich’s Facebook book deal had melded with West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook movie deal.

Mezrich Sunday gave the Boston Herald the scoop about his Facebook writing, confirming the book and Sorkin projects, and issued a non-denial of our original report:

“What was in Gawker - that was not all truth. That’s not what the book is about.” “What is Gawker even doing writing something about me?” he says.

Mezrich’s isn’t distancing himself from our post so much as his own proposal. And no wonder: As we wrote at the time, it seemed to be riddled with errors, like saying Sun Microsystems’ CEO had a yacht, and that Facebook went from zero to ten million users in two months.

The London Guardian has an interesting story about musicians being upset at their music being used as a means of torturing “enemy combatants”. It says:

Amongst the songs most used are: Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Eminem’s White America, AC/DC’s Hells Bells and the Sesame Street theme song. One of the reasons for using loud music in this way is that it leaves no marks on the body.

Binyam Mohamed, the British resident held in Guantánamo Bay, who was tortured by having his penis slit with a razor blade while detained in a secret jail in Morocco, said that the constant loud music made him feel that he was losing his sanity. He told his lawyer and director of legal charity, Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith, that while being hung up and deprived of sleep “there was loud music. [Eminem’s] Slim Shady and Dr Dre for 20 days … plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.”

Some prisoners have said it can be even worse than more traditional methods of physical torture, including waterboarding. The UN and the European court of human rights have already banned the use of loud music in interrogations.

Of course, I’m against torture 100% of the time but if Heart was unable to get John McCain and Sarah Palin to stop using their song “Barracuda” because the campaign paid a licensing fee, what chance does David Gray have to stop the government from using his music for torture? Ask them to pay a licensing fee and hope in this economy that expense is too great? Wait for Obama to take office and hope he puts an end to torture as policy?