Stupid Stories About Famous People

• DOWNLOAD | CONSOLE “Starpower” Mono, 2006

ONE

“Hey, it’s nice to meet you,” she said.

“But I know you,” I replied. We were standing outside in the sun, backstage at the Warped Tour when we met.

“I don’t think you do.”

I asked her if she had ever lived in New York. She said she didn’t, but that she spent a lot of time there. I asked her if she had ever lived in Chicago or San Francisco. I’ve lived there, too.

“No and no,” she said, staring at me curiously.

And then it hit me. “You used to date Pete from Sick of it All, right?”

She looked at me as if to say, Please stop. So I did.

My friend Toby walked up as she slid back into the catering tent. “You really don’t know who that was?” he asked. He wore a mischievous look.

“No idea.”

“Juliette Lewis!” he screamed.

I thought Toby was going to explode with the kind of gotcha–satisfaction that only really makes sense on tour. He proceeded to run off a list of at least a half-dozen films — Cape Fear! Natural Born Killers! What’s Eating Gilbert Grape! — none of which I’d ever seen.

“If you ask me,” I shrugged, “she still looks like Pete’s ex.”

TWO

We were both having a moment when we left the studio that day. Zack was in New York to record a song with the legendary KRS-One, and by some twist of extraordinary good luck, he invited me to come along. I’d never been behind the scenes for a proper hip-hop recording session before, and for the most part, I felt pretty isolated from the whole thing. Everyone was nodding their heads with quantized precision and yelling, “Aw yeah!” at precisely the right times; if you had told me the scene had been choreographed, I might have believed you.

When KRS-One arrived, it was as if Jesus himself walked into the studio. We all stood up to greet him, and he appeared in front of each and everyone of us — shaking hands, making eye contact, firmly establishing his presence. I remember thinking that his hand was twice the size of mine, and that he had to be, like, twelve feet tall. I also remember thinking that the man’s voice was so encompassing it seemed almost pointless to give him a microphone.

KRS-One did all of his tracks in one take. Neither artist really knew what the other was doing, so we were all hearing KRS-One’s chorus for the first time: “You claim I’m sellin’ crack, but you be doin’ that / The Last Emperor, KRS-One, and Big Zack!”

“Aw yeah!” everyone screamed.

So when we left the studio that day, Zack and I were having a moment. We walked south on Broadway, almost speechless. Our verbal communication, for several minutes, consisted of little more than giggles, sighs, or the occasional Fuck until, finally, Zack broke the silence.

“Seriously,” he said. “How do you go about telling KRS-One that you don’t want to be called Big Zack?”

Photo: Danielle Scott

How to Make it in America: The Music Journalist Unit

At some time last week, I received this question from the Tumblr Ask feature:

About two years ago, I (like you) decided to go back to school after an extended absence. An absence of six years to be exact. During that period, I came to the realization that I wanted to pursue a career in (music) journalism. Which doesn’t seem like a great idea right now, but I digress. My question is: As someone who was a music journalist, do you have any words of wisdom or advice for someone like me?

Thanks for your time,
Michael

I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle this question on my own, so in the spirit of internet collaboration, I sent an instant message to my friend Trevor Kelley and tried to hash out a real-time reply. Trevor, like myself, is a recovering music writer whose work has appeared in Alternative Press, Spin, Paste, and others; these days, he is one of the editors for MySpace Music. He’s also one of my best friends whose opinion I greatly respect. Here’s how we covered — and veered — from the topic.

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What the Pitchfork Tumblr Controversy Really Means

The way I see it, there were two major lessons learned today:

1. TUMBLR BLOGGERS CAN BE JUST LIKE REGULAR BLOGGERS

Because the internet is a race, and everyone wants to win, we will immediately take a side, and then flip-flop on our position all day as newer evidence clears or incriminates all of the parties involved in new and fascinating ways. It’s like there always has to be an evil wrongdoer in every disagreement, and if there isn’t, we make one up. Apologies to David Karp and Ryan Schreiber, but apparently, someone’s gotta go down!

The reality of situation is probably much closer to this totally imagined conversation between the disgruntled parties:

TUMBLEDORE: Dude, that was my blog.

KARP: It looked abandoned to us, and you know what? Maybe we messed up. It’s possible that we got super excited to have Pitchfork on board, and maybe we jumped the gun.

SCHREIBER: We’re not a shitty corporation trying to buy up domain names, Tumbledore. I hate that it went down like this because, I swear, if your Tumblr looked like an active site we would have never even bothered. I mean, we were Pitchfork Media for nine years because Pitchfork.com was already taken. I think we could have lived without the Pitchfork Tumblr.

KARP: So wow. This all got blown out of proportion, huh?

ALL: Yeah.

2. YOU GOTTA STOP USING ONE-WORD PROPER NOUNS FOR YOUR BLOGS AND BRANDS

We’re fighting over the word “Pitchfork,” which, last time I checked, is also the name of a clothing line, a saloon, a steak fondue restaurant, an investment education program, a sheep and llama ranch, a website design company, and a self-described “English Country Barn Dance” band.

It’s just not that good of a word, people.