Let Them Have Cheesecake →

Rachel Syme, writing for Matter on Medium:

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West wanted to marry at Versailles. They made a request to the French government: Let us wed like royalty, in the palace of the Sun King, among the gaudy gardens where Marie Antoinette swished around in satin, where a grand hall of mirrors will reflect back our image, over and over, infinite selfies giving way to infinite likes, for as long as we both shall live. Their request was denied. The French still have their standards.

Terrific, thoughtful pop culture writing. I say it all the time—love them or hate them, the various arms of the Kardashian clan are the vestiges of what we all collectively refer to as The American Dream.

Figuring Out Kanye West’s ‘Greatest Song of All Time’ →

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Casey Johnston, writing for Matter on Medium:

In the spring of 2004, a girl on my high school lacrosse team wearing her uniform of a kilt and polo shirt dropped into a seat next to me on the bus on our way to a game and said, “Here, you have to listen to this song, it’s so funny.” It was “The New Workout Plan.” There, I had the whitest possible introduction to Kanye West.

The College Dropout, Kanye’s first album, was released 11 years ago, and I never could have guessed how he would evolve over the next decade, how integral he’d become to how I live. Kanye is not just content or an artist, he’s a mindset and a way of being.

It’s funny: Kanye is known for his bombastic overconfidence, but so much of his music is about laying bare his insecurities. He has a lot of modes: He’s arrogant, emotional, clever, regal, desperate, dazed, dismissive, self-assured, self-aware. A few months ago, I decided I wanted to find a systematic way to process him, his body of work, and what he means to me.

There are album reviews, which is how Kanye is usually processed, but they don’t show him fully in context. Ranking also doesn’t work , for reasons mentioned above: He’s changed too much and his work is too varied. So I made a bracket, and through this bracket, I’ll find my favorite song. Theoretically.

I’m pretty against pop culture brackets as a thing (they’re starting to go away, thankfully, having been usurped by oral histories) but this one intrigued me because a. I’m always intrigued by anything KW-related; b. a woman wrote it; and c. I love reading stuff on Medium.

She did a pretty good job. My only quibble is that, in her quest to make sure she didn’t over-represent The Present Kanye tracks, she wound up with some early-round head-scratchers (‘RoboCop’ over ‘Mercy’?!). But by the end, two of the final four are two of my all-time favorites, and the winner is one of those two, so I can’t complain.

And on the web design point—read this thing on a computer screen. Awesome pictures, gifs, and audio samples of every song.

How We Learned to Kill →

Timothy Kudo, in a New York Times Opinion piece:

When I originally became an infantry officer, increasing my Marines’ ability to kill was my mission, and it was my primary focus as I led them to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, as a young lieutenant, I had faith in my Marines; I trusted them and looked up to them. But in the back of my mind, I always wondered whether they would follow my orders in the moment of truth. As the echoes of gunfire reverberated and faded, I received my answer. Yes, they would follow me. I also received affirmation to a more sinister question: Yes, I could kill.

A must-read for anyone who has an opinion on war, politics, or the military (read as: everyone).

Kanye Performs ‘All Day’ at the BRIT Awards

All Day BAL by YardieGoals

After watching this about fifty times, I’ve got a couple of thoughts:

1. Only Kanye West takes the “flamethrower” metaphor and says: you know what, fuck it—let’s just use the real thing.

2. With this performance, Yeezy also sets the new record for Largest Stage Posse in Hip Hop History.

3. Apparently, Kanye isn’t done with his Verging-On-the-Edge-of-Something-Threatening-Super-Grimey-Reggae-Choruses phase, which I, for one, am thrilled about.

4. Keep a close eye out at 1:31 and 1:48 for Taylor Swift, who apparently polished off Terence Howard’s Oscar’s Molly water before the performance.

5. At 2:31, Lionel Ritchie.

6. 2:35 and Taylor Swift is just, like, hearing colors and tasting sound.

7. I guess it goes without saying, but, wow, as usual, Yeezy isn’t done.

Bonus: “Like a light-skinned slave, boy/We in the motherfucking house” 😮

/via Pitchfork

What Gary Shteyngart Learned From Watching a Week of Russian TV →

Gary Shteyngart, The New York Times Magazine:

You might be wondering why I left my home and family and started watching Russian drag-queen parodies. I am the subject of an experiment. For the next week, I will subsist almost entirely on a diet of state-controlled Russian television, piped in from three Apple laptops onto three 55-inch Samsung monitors in a room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. (If I have to imbibe the TV diet of the common Russian man, I will at least live in the style of one of his overlords.) Two of the monitors are perched directly in front of my bed, with just enough space for a room-service cart to squeeze in, and the third hangs from a wall to my right. The setup looks like the trading floor of a very small hedge fund or the mission control of a poor nation’s space program. But I will not be monitoring an astronaut’s progress through the void. In a sense, I am the one leaving the planet behind.

I will stay put in my 600-square-foot luxury cage, except for a few reprieves, and will watch TV during all my waking hours. I can entertain visitors, as long as the machines stay on. Each morning I will be allowed a walk to the New York Health & Racquet Club on West 56th Street for a long swim. Vladimir Putin reportedly takes a two-hour swim every morning to clear his head and plot the affairs of state. Without annexing Connecticut or trying to defend a collapsing currency, I will be just like him, minus the famous nude torso on horseback.

Kudos to The New York Times Magazine for coming out swinging with their new design. Between the Knausgaard piece and the above piece, they hooked me back into my digital subscription. Also, all the David Carr reading I was doing made me feel a bit guilty.

My Saga, Part 1: Karl Ove Knausgaard Travels Through North America →

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New York Times Magazine:

When The New York Times Magazine contacted me in December to ask whether I would travel across the United States and write about my trip for them, at first I didn’t think of my missing license. The editor proposed that I travel to Newfoundland and visit the place where the Vikings had settled, then rent a car and drive south, into the U.S. and westward to Minnesota, where a large majority of Norwegian-American immigrants had settled, and then write about it. “A tongue-in-cheek Tocqueville,” as he put it. He also suggested that I should see the disputed Kensington Runestone while I was in Minnesota. It was on display in a little town called Alexandria, near where a farmer had claimed to discover it in 1898, and it could be proof — if authentic — that the Vikings had not only settled Newfoundland but made it all the way to the center of the continent. It probably was a hoax, he said, but seeing it would be a nice way to round out the story.

I accepted the offer at once. I had just read and written about the Icelandic sagas, and the chance to see the actual place where two of them were partly set, in the area they called Vinland, was impossible to turn down.

It says a lot about America, I think, that the most American piece of writing I’ve read in a while was written by a navel-gazing Norwegian. And this is only Part I.

Paul Thomas Anderson: From a Distance →

Jacob T. Swinney, Press Play:

The characters in the films of Paul Thomas Anderson share many similarities. They come from dysfunctional families, they are desperately seeking acceptance, they let their emotions get the best of them, and the list goes on. But a similarity that seems to especially stand out is a sense of isolation. Anderson's characters are adrift, looking for someone or something to connect with in their lonely worlds. This idea is expressed visually through the use of long/extreme long shots. We are often presented with characters lost within the frame, and therefore have trouble connecting with said characters--we become isolated ourselves. Here is a look at Anderson's use of the long/extreme long shot throughout his first six feature films.

His follow-up video should focus on PTA’s unique usage of close-ups. Character faces are always cut-off more than they should be and it always unsettles me—much in the same way the characters in the conversation are unsettled.

Once I find the time to see Inherent Vice, I’ll be writing a review of his career thus far, much in the same manner that I did for Stanley Kubrick.

The Dissolve’s Movie of the Week: 25th Hour

Spike Lee’s 25th Hour was the first movie that, after I watched it, I thought: am I crazy, or was that a terrific movie? It was the first movie I found on my own, took in, thought critically about, and trusted my instinct on. When I found out later on that others thought similarly, I was delighted.

So, of course, I was equally delighted today to see The Dissolve posting a couple of pieces about it. First, from Scott Tobias, we get a thoughtful review/meditation on it, The Ruins and Reckoning of 25th Hour; and second, a conversation between Mike D’Angelo and Tasha Robinson in which they do a great job of hashing out some of the biggest discussion points of the movie.

There’s nothing explicitly spoiler-y about either piece, but I’d recommend having seen the movie before you read them.

Okay, Just One ‘Boyhood Was Robbed’ Post →

Dan Kois, Slate:

But sometimes the academy blows it. That’s the epochal travesty. It was an epochal travesty when Citizen Kane lost in 1941. When The Graduate lost in 1967. Cries and Whispers, High Noon, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction. In one truly awful stretch in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the academy blew it four years in a row, as Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. all somehow lost Best Picture.

And the academy blew it tonight, when Boyhood lost. This one’s an epochal Oscar travesty. This one hurts.

Okay, and just one snarky jab at Birdman—stop calling it a single-cut movie. It had plenty of cuts; they were just hidden.

Mark Harris, Before and After the Oscars

Mark Harris, Grantland, on 2/9/15:

Or maybe they just really love the movie. If this truly is an Oscar contest between Birdman and Boyhood, I’m not going to complain (much), regardless of the outcome. We have seen Best Picture showdowns — too many to name — between far less worthy contenders. And in a way, these two movies are perfectly matched. Birdman, after all, is a movie about someone who hopes to create something as good as Boyhood.

And, of course, Mark Harris, Grantland, on 2/23/15:

A year in which Birdman wins Best Picture is a year in which the industry’s top prize goes to a good movie rather than a bad one, for which let us give thanks. And a year, or 12 of them, in which Richard Linklater makes Boyhood brings us back to what we’ve known all along, which is that there are some achievements that do not need the validation of a statuette.

I’m too biased in favor of Boyhood to write anything that’s fair, but it’s the day after, and I’m still annoyed. Here’s my biggest gripe—there’s a sizable portion of the populace out there who in the next month or two are going to make the time to see the Best Picture winner of 2014. They’ll generate some cash and some buzz and their lives will be just a tiny bit more complete because of it. And it kills me that the movie they’re going to watch is Birdman, and not Boyhood. My metric for the best movie of the year (from back when I used to see a lot more movies) has always been the same—if all of the prints of all of the movies from a given year were all in the same room, and the room caught fire, and you could only save one to show to future generations, what movie would it be.

2014, you save Boyhood. End of discussion.