Nathan Rabin RIP 1968-2007

Talib Kweli
Some hip-hop is clearly destined to pass the test of time.
by Nathan Rabin

http://www.therandommuse.com/photos/uncategorized/flava.jpg

his back'n'forth on the simpsons movie was pathetic

Seriously.

sorry, the show not the movie.

Let's face it: It's much too late for The Simpsons to go out on top. But I like to think the show has gotten to the same comfy place that De La Soul occupies these days: They'll never reclaim the genius of their early, revolutionary work, but they're in a good groove, and they're still making relevant contributions to a pop-culture landscape littered with their acolytes and wannabes.

Can someone plz direct me to the pop-culture landscape littered with De La Soul acolytes and wannabes?

http://img9.mediabistro.net/blogs-mbtoolbox-original-nathan3-thumb.jpg
Malice and Pusha T's deep, rich, resonant voices and authoritative delivery could probably make "Ice Ice Baby" sound gangsta.

"I must concede that I don't want The Simpsons to end, partly for selfish reasons. When the last Simpsons airs, I'll feel like a big part of my childhood and adolescence has died with it. I'm not really ready to make that leap..."

Maybe he just means rappers who still put skits on their albums.

I'm inclined to give Rabin a break just because he probably wrote some classic Onion articles. And if he wrote this, then he can at least be funny about his own Simpsons fanboyism:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39346

Do the AV club writers have anything to do with the funny stuff? I had no reason to believe they did.

I dunno, I always just assumed that the AV Club was just an excuse for the people who write the Onion proper to write semi-serious pop culture crit, but I have no idea for sure since the Onion joke articles don't have bylines.

I don't think its any more likely than Tom Breihan writing political OpEds for the Voice. I also have a hard time believing an actual comedy writer would say "I think you've set your standards way too high. You stopped watching regularly because the show wasn't 'consistently funny all the way through' any more? Good Lord, what show is consistently funny all the way through these days? Even Flight Of The Conchords, a show I love, is fairly inconsistent. Some shows are gut-bustingly hilarious. Others are moderately amusing. And Conchords just started out."

in rabin's non-defense he was also responsible for

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28251

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/God-Gives-Shout-Out-Jump-C.jpg

plus I've seen a lot of rock crit freelancers in AV club (Matos wrote something, right?) and I know they aren't doing Herbert T. Kornfeld shit on the sly.

crazy Village Voice/The Onion comparison aside, you're probably right, just never really thought about it before.

Do the AV club writers have anything to do with the funny stuff? I had no reason to believe they did.

This is the impression I was under, too. There was an ad for an AV Club editor in the Chicago edition recently and it repeatedly emphasized that the job entailed absolutely no satirical writing.

"God's the ultimate playa, so naturally He's going to have some haters," rapper Ice Cube said. "But these haters need to realize that if you mess with the man upstairs, you will get your ass smote. True dat."

i have no problem believing that rabin does herbert kornfield

not enough Coup references

1. Devin The Dude, Waiting To Inhale (10)

2. Lily Allen, Alright, Still (10)

3. Little Brother, The Getback (10)

4. R. Kelly, Double Up (10)

5. Ghostface Killah, The Big Doe Rehab (10)

6. Fountains Of Wayne, Traffic And Weather (10)

7. Brother Ali, The Undisputed Truth (10)

8. Amy Winehouse, Back To Black (10)

9. Talib Kweli, Eardrum (10)

10. T-Pain, Epiphany (10)
tpain

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Common, Finding Forever

Median, Median's Relief

Evidence, Weatherman LP

Chrisette Michele, I Am

Big City, The City Never Sleeps

t pain is a little out of left field, altho i guess its just a continuation of his r kelly thing

Big City, The City Never Sleeps

never noticed this -- awesome

ha he voted for t-pain, that's pretty awesome

2008 saw the emergence of a brash new strain of hipster hop, as an exciting new crop of buppie rappers with indie-rock attitude and old-school swagger made a mark on a stagnant scene. It was a banner year for acts like The Knux, Kidz In The Hall, and especially The Cool Kids, a breakout duo that walked a fine line between charmingly brash and outright obnoxious. The Bake Sale is the most irresistible blast of muscular hip-hop minimalism this side of Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, though the Chicago duo was less concerned with documenting the drug game than bringing back the spirit of '88. (Rabin)

^i even like cool kids to an extent but this is crazy pills

http://djdocrok.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/oh-snap.jpg

I see my friend's Wikipedia edit still stands:

July 2009 saw the release of Rabin's Scribner memoir "The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture"[4], a project that found its genesis partly in the enjoyment Rabin took in tending to and caring for his own Wikipedia entry.[5] The book uses pop culture as a springboard to discuss its author's tragi-comic adolescence as a guest of a mental hospital, a foster family whose patience and generosity he jokes "knew only strict, unyielding boundaries" and the Jewish Children's Bureau group home system as well as his career with The Onion and disastrous stint on "Movie Club With John Ridley". The book ends with a chapter about Rabin's unsuccessful audition to fill in for Roger Ebert as a guest critic on At The Movies. Scribner will also be publishing a book version of "My Year of Flops" in 2010. [6]

wtf this is terrible news

So apparently Nathan Rabin put out a call on Twitter for people to host readings by him in their homes. And a friend of mine volunteered. And so now Nathan Rabin is supposedly reading at her house. (I'm invited, but it's this Saturday and I've already got plans.)

GHOST TWITTER

"Nathan Rabin is Reading at My House" doesn't really have the same ring to it

The Ghost of Nathan Rabin is Haunting My House (My House!)

im not making a joke btw im voicing a persistent complaint of mine

The Onion A/V Club is so wild. Like I'm sure even people like Ann Powers and Rob Harvilla and Maura Johnston and probably anyone this side of SF/J couldn't possibly get as many eyes on their writing as the A/V Club stuff gets. Like the big "important" Fennessey/Nitsuh/Keleffah articles we pass around here dont have a fraction of the comments/eyes they have on some of the most basic listicle ish

the question is, do bay area gangster rapper dudes know about the onion a/v club...

their music writing is inessential but the interviews are great

the question is, are dayo's lazy zings funny to anyone but him

& the answer is no

yeah i was gonna say they put out a pretty good amount of music content but the overwhelming majority (and where most of the hits come from) is more general pop culture stuff, and it's seemed like album reviews have taken up a smaller and smaller amount of real estate on the front page over the last couple years. xpost

im not at all surprised they have such a huge readership, absent allmusic guide they were p much the only critical writing i used to see around

The A/V Club's comments section is the absolute dregs

^^ yes (i mean, first! (i mean, canceraids!))

i like to imagine Nathan Rabin someday finding this thread, coinciding with Ethan's return to ILM

Like the big "important" Fennessey/Nitsuh/Keleffah articles we pass around here dont have a fraction of the comments/eyes they have on some of the most basic listicle ish

I detected a distinct AV Club influence in Pitchfork's unedited LCD Soundsystem data dump this week.

Though I'd assume people are coming for the comment-box afterparty in the AV Club rather than the blather above it

AV Club articles are getting to be like the SEMINARS at a gathering of the juggalos nowadays

the aesthetic range on offer in their CURRENT REVIEWS section is p "..."

i had no idea that the a/v club was a big thing... weird.

there does need to be some kind of juggalo-like term for people whose defining trait is knowing every line of dialogue ever spoken by Milhouse Van Houten (xpost)

Haha OTM.

I detected a distinct AV Club influence in Pitchfork's unedited LCD Soundsystem data dump this week.

― da croupier, Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:16 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's otm

their music writing is inessential but the interviews are great

Rabin's interview with Ghostface was one of the most hilarious disastsers I have ever seen. iirc it went mostly like this

Onion AV Club: so what are some of your favorite old soul artists
Ghost: [silence]

there does need to be some kind of juggalo-like term for people whose defining trait is knowing every line of dialogue ever spoken by Milhouse Van Houten (xpost)

THRILLHO

hahahaha

AVC: What do you think is the biggest problem with hip-hop today?

GK: A lack of originality, that's it. Everybody's coming out the same.

AVC: Do you think that's changing? Is there anyone coming along right now that you're excited about?

GK: No, fuck hip-hop. I ain't feeling that shit right now. I don't even listen to hip-hop. I just do this shit because I gotta feed my family.

AVC: What do you listen to?

GK: I listen to shit. I listen to old music, man.

AVC: Like soul music?

GK: Yeah, soul music.

AVC: Who are some of your favorite soul artists?

GK: [No answer.]

Ugh, Nathan Rabin.

Pretty sure that dude edits his own Wikipedia page.

You know, I think what the AV Club has been good at catering to is an audience of middlebrow pop-culture fans whose sensibility coalesced in the 1990s (around the period when the Onion itself seemed mega-smart and amazing) -- they've really stuck with that audience and sensibility, so I'm never surprised by the size of the readership. I don't mean it as an insult when I say it has that precise thirtysomething mildly-geeky thing down, like married guys in big-city suburbs in their offices IMing each other about Pixar movies and the Flaming Lips. The same audience as the Independent Film Channel, which currently runs loads of 90s sketch comedy, Portlandia, and the Onion's news show. (I say "guys" because there's something very 90s college guy about it.) It's like if Richard Roeper / Ben Mankeiwicz types, Stiller/Garafalo types, Nick Hornby, and a few Pitchfork types all rolled together into one thing, sensibility-wise, and attracted America's soon-to-be equivalent of 50 Quid Man.

oh those poor dears, they'll live and die never knowing about the avalanches

yeah IFC's been very shrewd about buying up basically every TV show that had anything to do with Judd Apatow from 1992 to 2002 and rerunning those around the clock

ugh just about everything rabin does is awful, hip-hop or no

he's going thru every simpsons episode, writes three humorless paragraphs of summary offering no insight

he's going thru every now! that's what i call music (american) cd and it's shit, not as bad as the new "this was pop" (i think) feature tho

not sure why he has the biggest profile of the avc writers

he is the textbook definition of "monkeycheese"

My Year of Flops rules pretty much across the board.

Yes the comment section is abysmal, but which comment section isn't? If I had a blog or newspaper or something, very first thing I would do is shut off comments. Who cares what some anonymous fuck thinks about an article.

(love ilx tho, but this is a message board, totally different)

Oh and the music reviews are definitely bad, but I sort of prefer them tacitly admitting "hey we're kind of boring and probably going to be way into the next National album" instead of Pitchfork pretending like they're ahead of the curve or something when really they are just psyched on the new National album. I do like the film reviews which seem to be pretty generic and fair and usually helpful.

AV Club's music arm has always felt like an afterthought compared to the film/TV stuff. The writing's average at best and their tastes make NPR look cutting-edge.

just reading his piece on julia phillips http://www.avclub.com/articles/silly-lil-show-biz-book-club-3-is-julia-phillips-h,9397/. he strikes me as having some seriously unpleasant issues with women.

That last Nabisco post is so OTM.

definitely. i'm impressed that they've managed to make it work, financially. but it feels hermetic in a not-very-healthy way.

That last Nabisco post is so OTM.

― jaymc, Monday, August 1, 2011 7:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I know. I kind of what to start a thread of like "100 things in every Onion A/V Club commenter's home"

1. Muppets box set

2. Hipster Puppies book

(sorry)

3. Nathan Rabin - The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture

Just kidding. Nobody bought this.

err, I did (kindle edition, even) and I recognize myself way too much in Nabisco's description :-(

I wouldn't frowny-face about that -- I'm guessing a lot of why the description rings true is that I'm basically describing friends of mine after college!

am i being super contrarian to think that its really not a big deal that dude wants to write about his experiences w/ 90s rap & that this is a little of an overreaction?

http://100hundredthousandmillion.tumblr.com/post/24214720622/boy-the-earth-used-to-talk-to

i know this is somewhat ironic considering how i arrived @ this board by arguing w/ a personal list ned made, but the fact is you'd only want to read nathan rabin's rap thoughts if you're already in the cult of nathan rabin's writing, anyway.

i also have a problem w/ the way race is used here, as if there aren't plenty of black ppl who are like "hip hop died in 1999" as well. whiteness comes into play more imo in trying to make objective, state-of-the-art claims that argue about the accuracy of your vision of history over others, less so in the simple fact of speaking to your tastes

not that rabin's piece doesn't have some wince-worthy lines about being white or w/e but, idk, maybe im getting old but i feel more like a live & let live sort of thing -- like, i feel like we already 'won' the battle & mainstream & street oriented rap is considered worthy of coverage, to the extent that rabin felt the need to come at this from a pretty clearly personal angle

no shots at rabin, but between MCA dying and Ween breaking up, I'm really enormously burnt on reading white dudes' experiences with everything right now.

i also have a problem w/ the way race is used here, as if there aren't plenty of black ppl who are like "hip hop died in 1999" as well. whiteness comes into play more imo in trying to make objective, state-of-the-art claims that argue about the accuracy of your vision of history over others, less so in the simple fact of speaking to your tastes

yeah..."lol white ppl" is Tumblr's favorite "I get to opt out of unpacking what I disagree with" trope these days. which is kinda cool with me insofar as you really can't have too much of white ppl being made more aware of how their privilege informs their thoughts/opinions/tastes, but less cool with me in how I think it gets used a lot, i.e., by other white ppl looking to score playground points

^^^yeah very true

Yeah, when I read that my first thought was that that general worldview isn't unique to white 30-something dudes (although many of the specifics of Rabin's are), but I agree with most of the rest of what the author of that post has to say.

the picture and first graf are classic tho

it still amazes me that a thread titled "[semi-prominent music critic who doesn't post on ilx and is very much alive] RIP 1968-2007" has not produced the slightest bit of controversy, confusion or response from outside ilx in 5 years

other than the handful of confused initial responses itt, i mean

fwiw im obv much more sympathetic to alex's worldview when it comes to rap shit, i guess nathan just struck me as being completely predictable & maybe i should be more upset that his worldview is so 'normalized' but i feel like his perspective isn't really thought of as 'cool' so it doesn't have the weight it may have at one time. i mean, he even has to frame it as, 'so, i guess i'm completely missing the boat on everything that began after a decade ago, but....'

i guess it also seems like there are more pressing issues around rap discourse right now that strike me, although i'd have to think a bit about how to articulate what they are more specifically.

- definitely something about how daily blogging/filtering of massive amounts of content & rapid deadlines has made it hard to spend time really speaking to the shape of rap & spending time w/ music

- i know a lot of rap industry types are mad at 'hipster press' whereas ive been mad with both 'hipster press' & 'rap press' but find that hipster press has at least not abandoned criticism that is a little more nuanced than 'we are against this'/'we are in favor of this.' the rap press's uncritical 2chainz boosting vs. completely unconsidered lil b hating, for example. there's so much to talk about & unpack in this conversation b/c things are so much more complicated than the dichotomy suggests, tho -- cool chasing is something that happens on both sides.

- something about the authenticity chase, b/c for critics & readers, white & black, hip, otherwise, it really is about chasing authenticity of coverage -- people want to know that what they're reading about is 'real hip hop,' and that means for many white writers, for example, following noz's arguments & just basing your ability to drive conversation on a tremendous knowledge base. i feel like at some level, this must have a distorting effect; basically, imo, there aren't enough voices in the conversation, and a few random critics at the top end up driving discussions, because ppl look to those who speak authoritatively and many people are afraid to speak authoritatively about their experiences with rap, preferring it be left 'to the pros'

idk i need to work on articulating these ideas better

There might be a lot more value— more entertainment value, but also more actual enriching-the-critical discourse value— to a multipart series in which Nathan Rabin forces himself to strap up and listen to all the lauded post-’90s rap records he can’t get into

i think this is probably the thing i disagree with the most lol. i would rather not read nathan rabin do this. i mean, a lot of this is rhetorical since he hasn't written anything yet. & maybe i don't want to read anything he writes, or maybe he'll have something interesting to say about nice & smooth. i dunno! but, i feel like knowing his writing, an attempt to write about post-90s rap he can't get into would probably not be very good or interesting

idk it turned out pretty well when we did it with l0u1s jagg3r

lol touche

i do find the premise of the rabin thing to be self serving in a really egotistical way

I just realized I've been conflating Rabin and Patrin for years even though I've met the latter on multiple occasions.

well, dude's made his life writing about this stuff & has a bigger readership than you or i, why would i begrudge him writing something about what he cares about? i mean, im all in favor of making fun of it esp if it includes painfully un-self-aware clunkers like "Though I was and remain painfully white," ("We're so lame!" /homer voice) but the idea itself is only self serving if you dont realize that he's 'earned it,' to the extent that he's built a big audience that apparently cares what he thinks about rap music.

xp to jordan

yeah i get that -- it's no different than a memoir in that respect -- still kinda puts me off tho

i do find the premise of the rabin thing to be self serving in a really egotistical way

― fapper don (J0rdan S.), Saturday, June 2, 2012 4:17 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

$10 says rabin wrote the entire thing as an excuse to use the headline "hip-hop and you do stop"

i mean the thing abt the internet is that his piece isn't really taking up oxygen that could go somewhere else. if you can write & attract an audience, you can write & attract an audience. I mean, sure, the onion av club is paying him, but i think that w/ the onion av club, the audience & the writer at this point are in a fairly balanced symbiotic relationship -- no one on ilx could just get hired by the av club one day & present a project like this. he's got a loyal readership

now, if everyone starts linking to it all over or calling it the defining hip hop writing of a generation, thats something else

I've got my first piece of biographical writing ever coming out this month and I'm thinking of pulling the plug on it entirely just because the world doesnt need any more "white dude has life changed by rap" essays

^^^^this is stupid!!

yeah, i guess i can't get past my own biases in terms of viewing this thru the prism "he's got the audience, he earned it!" -- objectively that's right, but my eyes are still doing backflips in my head right now

i guess i'm put off by the fact that he's so willingly preaching to the choir -- i guess this is his wheelhouse subject but idk it's just feels very unchallenging from both the writer's and audience's perspective -- maybe that's bullshit tho

an attempt to write about post-90s rap he can't get into would probably not be very good or interesting

I stopped reading it after a while, but he had a series a while back where he intentionally tried to get into country, and there was some interest in seeing a total neophyte discover and appreciate a new genre. Obv that isn't the same thing since there is rap he likes, and iirc the AVclub also did a series where he (i think) listened to all the Now That's What I Call Music comps and that was often condescending and stupid.

I've got my first piece of biographical writing ever coming out this month and I'm thinking of pulling the plug on it entirely just because the world doesnt need any more "white dude has life changed by rap" essays

― rock the swagon and g.o.a.t. it (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, June 2, 2012 3:29 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^this is stupid!!

― littledotheyknow (D-40), Saturday, June 2, 2012 3:30 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to clarify, whether the writing is good or bad or illuminates the subject for readers is what matters. if you find you're talking to a white reading audience then it might be a bad idea, like, 'as a white guy, this is what i got out of it...' but if you're trying to shed new light on an artist through personal experience that's completely valid & valuable

whiney does have a point though that MCA's death kind of opened the floodgates for that stuff. i mean obviously beasties deserve their place in history and you can't take anything away from them but a huge % of remembrances about them are basically "they opened my eyes to a whole genre of music [that i have not explored much further beyond them]"

thankfully i've missed everyone talking about how ween changed their lives

i do find the premise of the rabin thing to be self serving in a really egotistical way

its also pretty appallingly written

Genre exploration often seems to be defined by the dumbest motherfuckers out there. How many people have had their view of metal permanently shaped by Chuck fucking Klosterman, after all? Also, Rabin's attempt to explore country was if possible even worse than the intro to this hip-hop thing. He got fixated on novelty acts and one-hit wonders, skipped over some towering figures in the genre, and the last few entries were about as phoned-in as it was possible to be without just being a bunch of Wikipedia block-quotes and YouTube embeds. (And there were a shit-ton of YouTube embeds.)

The Onion A/V Club is so wild. Like I'm sure even people like Ann Powers and Rob Harvilla and Maura Johnston and probably anyone this side of SF/J couldn't possibly get as many eyes on their writing as the A/V Club stuff gets. Like the big "important" Fennessey/Nitsuh/Keleffah articles we pass around here dont have a fraction of the comments/eyes they have on some of the most basic listicle ish

― Slag Surfin' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:37 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still think we should talk about this. The Onion A/V Club has probably the biggest audience for "music writing" outside of SFJ and their pieces never really "rank" in our circles

I’m guessing the AV Club’s editors wouldn’t green-light a series “exploring” how rock’s best years are behind it,

Hahahahahaha oh boy

doesn't AV Club publish way less music content than they used to? album reviews used to be as frequent as movie reviews, now they seem much more sporadic and perhaps even less varied. maybe even fewer musician interviews and music-themed features, although not as big a difference as w/ reviews.

Yes now they are about writing 2,000 word essays about every single episode of BJ & The Bear.

i couldn't get past the first paragraph of this so i don't have much to say (lol i do but i shouldn't), i'm just bothered that p much every hip hop article/review on AVC is written by rabin, he's basically their de facto hip hop writer, but he apparently doesn't like it anymore. and i've had way too many conversations w white doods talking about how hip hop used to be so 'important' and 'political' as opposed to what it is now, and why the hell did this need to be written? AVC is popular cause their writers never write anything remotely challenging to their base.

(let's also not lose sight of the important fact that his writing is dreadful, because it is)

i like rabin fine when he's doing something kind of fluffy that rewards his tendency towards levity like 'my year of flops' or whatever, but yeah on music he's basically ilm indie rap strawman incarnate

actually has he been enthusiastic about any rap in particular the last couple years? seems like most people w/ his disposition have shaken off the "no good new hip hop anymore" thing and embraced the new bloggy shit or at very least are satisfied that el-p or mos def or whoever is still making music, in a way rabin might be unique in not giving a shit

AVC is popular cause their writers never write anything remotely challenging to their base.

This is kind of silly. I see the site more along the lines of, I dunno, a debate club of otherwise likeminded people than as some flame-throwing perch. It's kind of the apotheosis (or an apotheosis) of geek culture and stuff, minus (to my sensibilities) the snobbery attendant to so many other collections of armchair and semi-pro experts (like Ilxor, bless us all!). In a lot of ways it reminds me a lot of early internet, when content was driven by enthusiasm rather than conflict.

Anyway, AVClub is and has always been far more comprehensive in scope than your average website, and if it tends to play it safe I think it does so in the pursuit of thoroughness. I don't know how much it rates as a music site, but its coverage of film, comics, television and the like is really strong, and on the personal front, some of their first-persony things are actually quite good (like the recent stroll through REM history, or the occasional debate over cultural blindspots).

yeah i mean it's a big site that puts out a ridiculous tonnage of content, it contains multitudes and there are as many things they do well as there are things we can gripe about.

but that 'scope' though. it's telling to me that they have so many writers covering so many different things but the actual range of opinions/personalities is so little that their hip hop writer is a guy that doesn't listen to hip hop.

and don't get me wrong, i check the site every day and i used to be a big fan, but now i just stick to the news feed (o'neal is the best writer they have) and the occasional inventory. the film/music reviews are so small they barely skim the surface of the material and mostly serve to explain the grade. the TV coverage has the opposite problem, and for some reason single 23 minute episodes warrant vanderwerff screeds 3 or 4x the length of the film/music stuff. that's just weird. having that huge a scope is a problem when the writing staff is being stretched out to cover every little piece of pop culture. it lowers the standard for everything.

i have to compare it to stylus, which was so surprisingly good with its film coverage. i imagine if they expanded into television and books and comics and then put up four additional articles a day, their standards would've lowered too.

My answer arrived in the form of the Depression-era cockney bootblack who tags along after me during my daily morning constitutional. "Mister, mister! When are you going to favor your readers with your impressions on the lesser, later films of Mister Paul Mazursky? That would be ever so delightful, Mr. Rabin, sir!" he inquired eagerly, his face covered in soot, his grubby little hands blacker than a landlord's soul.

"Soon enough, young man, soon enough," I confided gently with a twinkle in my eye. Admiring the young man's pluck, I flipped him a shiny Indian head nickel, then delivered a swift kick to the keister for annoying me during my pre-dawn ramble. I hereby dedicate this essay about 1991's Scenes From a Mall to that scruffy fictional street urchin. Here's looking at you, kid. Now get back to work.

this guy is SO TERRIBLE

His piece on Joe Eszterhas's Mel Gibson screed was great.

http://i.imgur.com/AePrTHU.png

it's not a 'humble brag' exactly... what is it...?

a brag

right up there with

http://i.imgur.com/6KIEVMi.png

on the shoulders of giants

Are these headlines excerpted from a website where hacks make unremarkable confessions?

Because I could totally get in on that.

"I once received death threats from Shed Seven."

How's that?

"I Invented Sex"
This goes out to the beautiful girls. Which one of y'all goin' home wit trigga?
By Trey Songz

"Garry Shandling blocked me on Twitter the night Steve Jobs died."

"I Petted a Bodega Cat Today"
By Forksclovetofu

"Garry Shandling blocked me on Twitter the night Steve Jobs died."

― socki (s1ocki)

lol i remember this

still blocked fyi

i get that celeb RT's are this weird new form of autographs but shandling wasn't really doing that, it was just another weird manifestation of insecurity and ego, as if larry sanders was a watered down version of him. fwiw i think he also blocked tom scharpling for rolling his eyes at him rt'ing some gas station attendant in alberta complimenting him for his performance in what planet are you from or whatever. don't try to stand in between that man and him loving ppl loving him.

http://i4.tinypic.com/2uxu5gz.jpg

a treasure trove

"moddafokka"

jpeg is also proof if proof be need be that racists will never understand the purpose of apostrophes

Bush sounds?

i get that celeb RT's are this weird new form of autographs but shandling wasn't really doing that, it was just another weird manifestation of insecurity and ego, as if larry sanders was a watered down version of him. fwiw i think he also blocked tom scharpling for rolling his eyes at him rt'ing some gas station attendant in alberta complimenting him for his performance in what planet are you from or whatever. don't try to stand in between that man and him loving ppl loving him.

― balls, Monday, July 21, 2014 11:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in my case i clowned him for RTing someone manually RTing him

haha good lord

hahaha NATHAN RABIN of all the people in the world coined that phrase?

I am at a loss trying to come up with rap songs that feature bush sounds

thats_the_racist_joke.jpg

did Rabin really tweet that? It seems kind of out of character

:55 into this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjPQAE7vABg#t=52