pitchfork

xpost -- Most people in general aren't paying attention to 9/11 (except now as an anniversary-related news item) or said two wars either.

Never forget.

No, but I'm sure 9/11 and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan altered people's news consumption habits greatly, and those habits sink in. Most people I know on Facebook, for example, spend more time with newspapers and opinion pieces.

It's not that I hate Pitchfork or find it dull, it's that I use it more as a consumer than as someone who consumes music opinion in and of itself.

I think it's an ongoing habit of a lot of people to look at things like pop music, and pop music press/criticism, and have this furious epiphany that it, let's say, "merely supports an existing consumer culture" -- as opposed, I guess, to being a bold, radical, revolutionary critique -- which to me is the biggest, strangest DUH thing in the universe. It's called POPULAR music! It exists in a space that's sort of between being a entertainment product and being fine art! This is a lot of what makes it great and interesting and gives it the potential to be really fascinating! What's maybe been harder for people to wrap their heads around is the idea that pop writing exists in a similar space between, you know, consumer/entertainment reporting and really seriously committed criticism. (And the market is mostly for the former of those two things.)

wait was mount cleaners serious? i thought that was a john maus joke above.

Most people I know on Facebook, for example, spend more time with newspapers and opinion pieces.

this is called "growing up", yo.

Who the hell is John Maus?

a meme from a little while back

you missed this one, Whiney:

The truth is that I inherited expensive tastes and moved to an expensive city, and sometimes I get cranky about not being able to buy what I want. But when I don't feel like reminding myself of these things, I can listen to indie music.

i bought the n+1 issue for the juggalo article, as well as to see if there were any letters printed about the evils of the ipod article from the previous issue.

still can't browse old reviews. I'll keep checking back periodically til they stop getting that wrong.

― he's the deej, i'm the hipster (kkvgz), Monday, August 29, 2011 11:29 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

By the way, there isn't some blindingly obvious way to do this, is there? I've asked before and received no response.

go to reviews and start clicking back through the pages. here's 1999:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/601/

I'm more interested in the good old days when you could browse alphabetically.

Although that is pretty cool.

Ha! I rather like this, CAD! If you enter in random page numbers to the URL, you come up with all kinds of weird historical contextualizing music knowledge. El-P's Fantastic Damage was reviewed in the same week as Silkworm's Italian Platinum. Sparta's Wiretap Scars and Sleater-Kinney's OneBeat. It sort of has the effect of going back in time to record store visits of yore and looking at the employee picks.

yeah it's actually pretty fun

Just ... while we're on the topic, did anyone read Beck's n+1 piece about rap and Losing My Cool? That one's all online, and has the same odd quality of reading really well, sounding incisive and authoritative, and then having these massive bizarre gaps and wrongnesses in thinking.

lol u guys read pitchfork

h3lp us, we read pitchfork

POST THIS THING ONLINE, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

N can you link that?

looking forward to nabisco stop tip-toeing around beck and just opening fire in indie music critic beef extravaganza 2011

http://nplusonemag.com/authors/beck-richard

Richard Beck?

http://nplusonemag.com/express-yourself

September 2010 article

totally thought this was gonna be Beck (Hansen) :(

Me too... No otm for Nabisco

agree w/nabisco's estimation tho, that article is odd

Ha, no "beef," the guy's an amazing writer and really perceptive -- there are just these amazingly huge pitfalls in thinking certain things through, I guess. And those gaps become especially annoying when you happen to be writing in a very high-handed tone. I'm tempted to try and enumerate everything that's incredibly weird about that hip-hop article, but it's probably not that important and anyway, this is the Pitchfork thread.

For me, not playing Ocarina of Time until now has been the ultimate exercise in abstinence. As a kid, sex takes on the status of myth, written from overheard shards of older sibling chatter, glimpses from late-night Showtime movies, and the burbling of our own adolescent bodies. Until you have it, all you know about sex is that you want it, and once you do, the sky will color over in sublime hues of gold and lavender and the world’s impoverished will dance together on a floor of regenerating sandwiches. Or something. Point is, sex is supposed to be pretty much the best thing ever. Just like Ocarina of Time. So how does the reality fare? This 30-year-old virgin of Hyrule aimed to find out.

I insert the game card, gently, into the slot of my Aqua Blue system. As I walk over to a red chaise lounge the system slips out of my fumbling hands, falling onto the carpet. I flashback to my first kiss, in my parent’s garage—It gets better the more you do it, she told me—and with that in mind, I begin my quest.

srsly

This 30-year-old virgin

obv the pertinent phrase

is that from the Pitchfork Kid A review?

i wrote something on spec for kill screen and they kill-screened it :(

not enough personal sexual confessions i guess

ugh

the day i made love to metal gear solid: hardcore fucking solid snake

to me it reads as if the author is trying to write in this 'New Yorker'-ese--it doesn't flow naturally, though it gets better as the piece goes on

lots of passive voice, too

that's a good desc of p4k writing in general. trying to write in new yorker style when you can't actually write

i wrote something on spec for kill screen and they kill-screened it :(

they didnt want my piece abt 'sakura wars', dating and the 'ideal woman' either

the juggalo article seemed a bit Nathaniel West-ian

Please tell me that ocarina of time thing isn't real

it's an actual game, yes

It's better than sex.

http://pitchfork.com/killscreen/17-everybodys-doing-it-how-playing-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-as-a-30-year-old-reveals-its-magical-adolescence-of/

I think back now to the day I bought Ocarina of Time 3D. When I came home I felt a surge of excitement; I was finally going to experience this long-cherished title. I held the glistening package in my hand, expectant and ready. Then I saw my live-in girlfriend on the bed, much the same. I set down the plastic Nintendo box. Here was another Low Spot to explore. The mysteries of an imaginary kingdom could wait.

holy

When I was young, my house abutted acres of forest. One area in particular took on an aura of magic. It was called The Low Spot. After raking leaves or scooping dog poop, I would gather this debris in a wheelbarrow and push onward to the end of the woods. There, a dozen paces in, was a natural pit, a recess deep into the ground, capable of swallowing whatever found its way into this damp maw. I would roll toward the edge and tilt the wheelbarrow up, letting the compost tumble and fall into The Low Spot. Every time I came back, the trench seemed even deeper. Maybe it was growing. Maybe I'd be next.

Was his dog Clifford??????

a natural pit. a recess deep within the ground.

Twelve years later, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time released for the Nintendo 64. It was immediately heralded as one of the greatest games yet conceived. Peer Schneider’s review for IGN64 began with this declaration: “The new benchmark for interactive entertainment has arrived.” I remember a friend popping the gold cartridge into his system; I don’t remember much about that same friend for months, so enraptured was he by this new polygonal world. When it released in 1998, I was almost 17. The main conceit, that you were an elfish naïf destined for greatness, an anonymous boy growing into adulthood while slashing monsters and questing for rubies, didn’t resonate with me. Maybe I was too old already, hung up on swatting baseballs for my high school team or trying to look cool while standing in a parking lot. Maybe I wasn’t old enough, not yet matured beyond all that surface grandstanding. Maybe it was all the other stuff resonating in me, the jittery fluids coursing through my endocrine glands. I was more concerned with saying hi to Katie M. in French class than with finding the three Spiritual Stones. I already had two, and damned if I knew how to use them.

THIS IS JUST... NO

. Of course, any game we play (or book we read, or film we watch, etc.) will be flavored by our unique circumstances. But this particular journey, taken at this particular stage of life, seems less accepting of a player’s real-life projections. The first time I see the dark lord Ganondorf, his elongated nose and sharp features remind me of my brother-in-law. A cut scene explaining the creation of the Triforce, the Zelda series’ most important relic, resembles too closely a plot-line from Superman 2. Princess Zelda appears slightly mannish. Had I played Ocarina when it first came out, I doubt any of these distractions would have pierced the game’s fiction.

dude

omg

reading kill scrn kinda gives me some insight into the deep well of rage that whiney and strongo have access to