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- D'Angelo and the Demons of the New Minstrel MovementSeptember 4
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Spin Magazine's piece covering the rise and fall, and perhaps second rise of D'Angelo has been lingering in my mind for weeks. As you might expect, I was a fan of D'Angelo's from the start.
And that's true even though I was clowning him when he got arrested. To tell the truth, I hadn't quite realized just how far the man had fallen. If you look at the comments on my post from three years ago, you can see that even then people were saying they just wanted the man to get well so they could hear more of his work. ?uestlove articulates the challenge here better than anyone, though: "The new minstrel movement in hip-hop doesn't allow the audience to believe the artist is smart."
It's a particularly striking observation given that Spin's look at D'Angelo mentions in passing how that tension between art and commerce has affected so many of the acts I love. The world of R&B success demands either heaven or hell -- you either become a preacher and lose all of the sexiness and swagger that made you co
- A Pre-History of the Google BrowserSeptember 1
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Today, in a surprisingly botched announcement, Google announced Chrome, their upcoming open source web browser. The subject of a Google browser is something I've opined on a few times over the years, but Jason Kottke's compiled an even more comprehensive overview of the conversations a few of us have been having for almost seven years.
If that's up your alley, you might want to check out:
- Stories and Tools, which at six years old is a little dated, but offered up some thoughts on the presentation of web applications that I thought connected nicely with the Google Chrome comic book.
- Google and Theory of Mind, about Google's great weakness in the insularity of the company's culture.
- Google Web History - Good and Scary, which at the launch of Google's Web History feature examined some of the implications of the new tracking system.
- The Circle of (Web) Life, which described a cycle of web businesses supporting each other, based on Google's support for Mozilla.
- Me and Your BicycleAugust 20
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My friend Mat Honan amused and beguiled you a few months ago with Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle. As is the course of such things, he got a book deal for his efforts, despite having been responsible for the onslaught of unfunny ripoffs of the site which followed his success.
But, I take some very small satisfaction in this whole thing because Mat very graciously credits me (both in the book and in conversation) with having helped spread the word about his site. It's just another in the long string of goofy web memes for which I have become an unofficial ambassador. It's a good thing there's no Hell, or surely I'd rot in it for all that I've done.
At any rate, Mat's quite an entertaining and engaging interviewee, as evidenced by his recent stint on Internet Superstar, and as there's a totally gratuitous and flattering mention of me at about the four-minute mark, I felt obliged to link to it here.
You can buy Mat's book at Amazon and other reputable booksellers near you.
- Nine Years, and a New LookAugust 18
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Last month marked the ninth anniversary of me starting this blog, more or less continuously updating since then. As I begin my tenth year here on dashes.com, I've made a few changes around the site.
First and foremost, there's a new look to the blog. My incredibly talented coworker Jim Ramsey created the basic theme, which I made a little bit uglier and naturally added some purple to. (Movable Type users can grab the Mid-Century template set upon which it's based.) I also owe a debt to Joi Ito for taking the original photo from which my little icon is based. There are more changes to come, but even at this half-complete stage, feedback is welcome.
Second, I finished something I've been meaning to do for ages, two new listings:
Both of these archives are exactly what you'd expect, with the Best Of featuring a number of my posts that I've been most proud of over the years, including some that were less popular but that I thought were worth featuring. There's also a more extensive list of all archives, organized into a calendar or by tag.
- What was that about lists?July 23
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I forgot to mention one point when I was blathering about lists earlier this week: The easiest way to get on them is by asserting, truthfully or not, that you don't want to be on them.
Behold, my incredible mancrushworthiness, from an entire list of the mancrush-worthy. Or something.
It's nice to be called nice, but it's even better that people wrongly believe that I am nice. Thanks, Eliot!