You don’t realize how much of your sense of self is bound up in how you use your time until you have a lot of it.
Max Read in Milling Time.
Tag: theawl
The Internet Has a Problem(atic) – The Awl
Not only did “problematic” become popular because it suits identity politics and sounds smart, it’s also highly shareable. “Problematic” bundles urgency, seriousness, and debatability into a single vague word, which is great for both sound bytes and tweets.
A Decade Later, Whither the Metrosexual
The men’s care industry killed metrosexuality by co-opting metrosexuals’ grooming habits and repackaging them as masculine and paternal. Same goes for the renaissance of old-school men’s shops, where conditioning skin and softening hair is neither “metro” nor “narcissistic,” but “classic,” and “quality.”
Kanye West and White Women | The Awl
I haven’t heard the album yet.
Why We Shouldn’t Treat Rap As Poetry | The Awl
Consider this proposition in reverse to see how absurd it is: For my graduate thesis, I am going to give Calvin Trillin a bunch of half-assed instrumentals and have DJ Drama help him put together a Gangta Grillz mixtape, and then we’ll evaluate him alongside Gucci Mane and Cam’ron, and other rappers who have made Gangsta Grillz mixtapes. That would be awesome, but it would not provide any more insight into the how and why Calvin Trillin does what he does. It would simply provide me the opportunity to take someone else’s work, put it in a different context, and call it something different.
Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library | The Awl
Who is the Greatest Diva of the Last 25 Years? – The Awl. “While Aretha pretty much broke every song she ever performed, leaving it smoking on the stage, never to be touched again, Whitney broke our goddamn National Anthem.” (via)
Mark Larson 