MIA

i thought it was funny

shut up

love you too Jess

http://www.linuxbochs.net/phpBB2/files/stop_posting_1_115.jpg

no thanks

age and wisdom

can we get back to "truffle fries" now?

This thread is making me want to give war a chance.

so, MIA is like the clash with more colorful tops?

Pretty much.

If you go back to the NME/Melody Maker reviews of the second Clash album, you actually see pretty much the same arguments [nabisco] is making about casual use of revolutionary violence. It's Joe Strummer's Red Brigade shirt all over again.

nabiscos essay is v smart and i agree with it, but can pitchfork not afford em-dashes or something

I once asked Nabisco himself why Pitchfork's style is "blah blah-- excuse me-- blah blah" rather than "blah blah -- excuse me -- blah blah" and he said it had to do with line breaks (you wouldn't want to split one of those double hyphens), but yeah I don't know why they don't just use em-dashes.

i knew you'd be with me on that, jaymc

MIAdashes

this drives me insane.

trying to keep up with everybody's great jokes?

somewhere between lack of em dashes and m.i.a.

btw this week's Talk Of The Town section finally makes clear that in the New Yorker's style guide, 'douche bag' is written as two words.

new yorker's style guide is pretty wacky though, right? every issue i come across some new word that has umlauts, apparently. like just last week: "trüffle fries"

Yeah their umlauts crack me up. There's probs a dedicated thread for NYer style I suppose.

I love their tenacity with the umlauts, like they're worried people will read reentry rather than reëntry and freak out.

REEN-tree

COORD-inated.

"what in the hell does 'kewperate' mean!?"

It has something to do with noted devil dice artist Coop.

i LOVE the nyt diaeresis, really wish more publications would follow suit

Ha, Jaymc, that explanation basically comes from asking Ryan why it's that way -- I think it's a question he's answered a lot. As I recall, the answer goes:

(a) when he started the site, you couldn't count on browsers handling real em-dashes, hence the double hyphens
(b) if you spaced them out -- like this -- some browsers would wrap the line between the two hyphens, so it'd be like

blah blah blah -
- blah blah blah

(c) so he ran them up against the first word, to fix that

And I guess eventually it just became the kind of quirk you run with? I admit, at this point it'd be kinda weird to me to read Pitchfork and see real em-dashes.

hey the site didn't have videos of indie bands rambling on about their favorite tacos back then, either. GIVE US EM-DASHES.

ah since you're here nabisco, i liked your piece, but i still take issue with the "everyone realises that m.i.a. isn't a sophisticated thinker" line - i mean we do, on ilx, but most mainstream media outlets take her persona at unquestioning face value - she says she's a Political Artist with a Serious Message and mostly she gets reported as such, and the message itself or its presentation or most pertinently the actual LACK of message in her material is rarely interrogated. (the reasons for this are pretty interesting - i think a lot of arts editors and even music writers still feel a real need to legitimise pop artists by reporting their "serious"/political sides.) hirschberg wasn't "exposing" m.i.a. to music writers, she was writing for a general audience under the impression that m.i.a. is a sophisticated political artist.

that is all!

"she was writing for a general audience under the impression that m.i.a. is a sophisticated political artist"

Who? They believe what?

lol wtf Lex

most mainstream media outlets take her persona at unquestioning face value -

newsflash - most mainstream outlets take EVERY pop star's persona at unquestioning face value

Lady GaGa is WEIRD fyi!

I am still trying to figure out exactly who this audience is, Lex. If you're talking about rabid M.I.A. fans, that probably is an even split between jaded old people who see the pattern in her incoherency that's been played out multiple times of the course of pop/rock music history (The Clash, Morrissey, Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and KRS-One all come to mind, let alone more fringy people like Diamanda Galas) and nicheseekers who are going to uncritically love her until she makes a musical misstep or becomes too popular to be a sign of nichedom. If you're talking about people who like "Paper Planes", I would wager a fuckton of money that most of them have no idea and don't care about what her political stances are.

lex OTM, actually.

I think nabisco's "everyone" should be read as "everyone who cares".

All those people who have been basing their entire understanding of geopolitics on MIA lyrics can now thank Lynn Hirschberg for blasting the scales from their eyes.

i don't think lex was talking about rabid mia fans actually

and i think there's prob a decent amount of casual/paper planes fans who have an impression of her as a serious political artist.

y'know I've never really understood that phrase - scales? over eyes? what's that about?

don't mind me

xp

I don't even know what a serious political artists is.

shakey read yr bible

How is Diamanda Galás politically incoherent?

Bible in vague incoherency shockah (yes I am familiar with the passage ref Saul's blindness)

well, denigrating someone's cultural tourism and thievery by being really fucking racist is kind of incoherent in my book (scroll down to "Diamanda vs Timbaland")

I don't even know what a serious political artists is.

Leni Riefenstahl

Leni was pretty incoherent.

oh well lol if youre asking us to explain some weirdness from the bible. but scales over eyes always sounded really gross to me.

@call all destroyer Really? My impression is that most people are so overwhelmingly cynical about politicised musicians - far more so than at any time in the past - that it's hard to believe anyone is taking MIA super-seriously on that level. More the case that they like the music and don't much give a shit if the politics are scrambled. I just don't know who Lex is talking about.

short answer is "college students" but really that only lasts for like 18 months