Nathan Rabin RIP 1968-2007

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