late june 29 2000
this is embarrassing to admit, but i'm going to go ahead and play my herb card here. friends is the only network show that makes me laugh out anywhere close to as hard as the simpsons. sometimes i think about that when i'm slumped on my couch watching the 7:00-8:00 friends-seinfeld hour on channel 11, and it makes me, well, sad. but if the writing's good, i don't give a feezy.
so yet another editing atrocity has beset me. in the brand new issue of the boston book review, my piece made the cover, which is like whoa. the piece in question happens to be about, drumroll please, hip-hop. and it's the first hip-hop-focused piece i've written for this particular publication. so far so good. i'm relatively happy with the piece, and at some point mention two people who figure peripherally in the book. these two people are kool herc and tupac.
now, you may not be b-boy deluxe, and you may even profess to hate hip-hop. this is fine, as i don't usually hesitate to express my distaste for the lion's share of quote indie rock. jarring=bad. digressing. but. even if you hate hip-hop, chances are you've heard of tupac. i don't even like his music much (though i recognize his eerie, almost preternatural sort of charism), but i know him. the other person, kool herc, happens to be the patriarch of hip-hop. he's the first dj to bring the huge sound systems to the parks of the south bronx. ergo, safe to say, two fairly important people on our hands here. do they deserve to a) have their names spelled correctly, or b) be misnomed and emasculated.
[before we go on: no, this isn't to spark off a whole discussion of hip-hop and gender and sexuality and power. thank you. --the eds.]
the answer is a. if you said "a," you get a cookie. it'll be in the mail shortly. if you said "b," you're the intern at the boston book review who turned kool herc and tupac into cool her and topaz. i am not kidding. every time i write about hip-hop, someone takes it upon themselves to paint me as an uneducated boob. an uneducated boob!
to recap: cool her and topaz. an uneducated boob! thank you.
p.
and yo. my full-on venture kneejerk.net is up and running, though not nearly full. go and getcha read on. for me.
props to darkcounter.com
and sitemeter