So last night, Idolator, the ipod shuffle in Nick Denton's digital-chic media ensemble, had a launch party five months after the fact. Proving that money buys you the right to use the word "Launch!" whenever you like. Plus, since it's a blog they can just backdate the timestamp and ... HA! Incidentally — the name Idolator? — no one knows how to pronounce it, including Denton, but the consensus appears to be that it rhymes with "I'll holla at her." After reading the flyer and seeing they were being particular about numbers (let us know if there's a plus-one? Um, did you say "open bar??!!?"), I rounded up all my friends (2), and decided to venture over international waters to see how crazy white people hold it down in The Slope. After the jump find out how many times I kissed Deadspin editor Will Leitch, what the I'll-Holla-At-Her editors think about hip hop, and how many assimilated negroes it takes to form an African tribe.
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Upon arrival with TAN2 (whom some of you may remember from a recent Guy's Night Out), we immediately started swilling ketel-and-crans like, uh, I don't know, like it was an open bar and we were the only two thirsty alcoholic black guys at the party. Ahhh, it's not funny cause it's true. After a couple drinks to "normalize" I spotted EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Heather and lead editor Alex Balk. Alex, who whenever he sees me shakes his fist at the heavens and curses his luck (I think that's what he's doing), voiced his approval of the "First Responders: The Oscars" video posted earlier that day, then asked about my column, or lackthereof. Here’s a little Gawk inside info: in the past week I’ve probably sent Balk five emails on the “status” of my column. The funniest aspect about moneylancing for Gawker is I swear all the editors are like the guy from Memento. If you didn't talk about it on IM in the last twenty minutes, no one knows anything. Either that or they have some weird psycho-amnesiatic response to
As we are genetically predisposed to doing, TAN2 and I quickly detected the smell of negro musk and spotted TWO MORE assimilated negroes hidden amongst the Caucasian weeds. Like the cliché-negro-stock-characters we are, we quickly made friends, yet somehow it didn't seem at all ironical when I-AM-NOT-AN-INTERN Heather asked us to gather like some band of African tribesman for a shot around the watering hole. I didn't see Heather organize another "group picture" the entire night. Of course us assimilated negroes just laughed it off, then clicked-and-grunted about the old motherland before sticking our spears into a nearby wildebeest.
At some point I was able to mosey on by the stars of the show, the two editors of Idolator: [uh, hold on one sec, I have to go to look up their names ... wiki, no ... ok, I'll just go to their site ... scrolling down now ... should be showing up ... any second ... OK, got it!] Brian Raftery and Maura Johnston. After some pleasantries, I cut to the chase quickly with both of them, "Yo, what the fuck is going on with the hip hop coverage???" Although with my assimilation-translation machine it probably sounded more like, "So I notice when you guys do hip hop posts, you don't get much response. That must make it tough to sustain coverage. What do you think about that?"
Both looked at me like, “duh, we totally knew you were going to ask that, TAN!” and then gave fairly thoughtful responses. Unfortunately I was too drunk to remember the details, and could actually care less about hip hop (outside joke!), but I remember feeling satisfied, and confident that neither Maura or Brian would be getting filed under "Cracka Crackdown" anytime soon. Yay! Stereogum on the other hand? Jury's still out ... they could still very well meet the infamous CC aluminum bat.
Around this time the place got very packed, and on a Tuesday night that meant "peace out" time for TAN was fast approaching. Over the course of the rest of the evening I got to kiss Will Leitch about three times, lavish praise on Jim Cooke (who did the graphics for Ghetto Pass and Negro Bowl), and meet the editor's assistant who assigned me the rant I'm doing for Penthouse (it's a doozy!). But the night really belonged to Nick Denton's ipod shuffle, Idolator. It was a crazy and festive affair, totally appropriate for a site that's clearly going places (on Denton's lapel!). In fact it was so much fun I barely noticed that the barely audible music playing sucked. Eh, who cares about music anyway?
Idolator, All About the Music ... If Only It Were
I can assure you as a regular reader of Idolator (and as one of the three people besides his mother who can actually name "Brian Raftery" as the editor), I am somewhat pleased with their hip-hop coverage. Considering it is a mainstream-oriented site, at least once a week they please me with some late 80's, early 90's hip hop classic that takes me back - Nice N Smooth, Das EFX, Onyx, et al, get some love.
ReplyDeleteIf you have any connects over there: I keep urging them to do a post about a) Self-Destruction b) Scenerio (Remix) and/or c) Nine - Whatchu Want.
Make it happen, Negro.
I like that you have a designated "peace out" time. I have a pass out time, but I never know when it's coming.
ReplyDeleteMaura, the eye-DOL-a-tur editor, is smart, interesting, stunning--all the above. We didn't go to their party because we were watching the Rangers beat the Habs in person. It was painful for CR.
ReplyDelete