ChrisMohney.com

Gawker Is Dead-ish

I admire Carla Blumenkranz's long essay about Gawker in n+1 for attempting to summarize the website's history and predict its future. Or rather Gawker's lack of a future, as it's clear from the title alone ("Gawker 2002-2007") that the essay is meant as a funeral speech. I like this one more than I liked the New York article on Gawker, which admittedly had different goals. What I chiefly admire is Blumenkranz's ability to keep her knives sheathed for at least two thirds of the essay -- a thoughtful recounting of Gawker's progress from Elizabeth Spiers through Chorie Sicha's first stint to the beginning of Jessica Coen's tenure. You know the knives are there, of course, and they are gonna come out, but it's still an unhurried read almost free of judgment.  There's some good meat here, as no one (that I know of) has troubled to really plumb the Gawker archives with this kind of eye. But then the knives are drawn, and the judgment must be rendered, and the focus goes soft, scratchy, and self-righteous. 

Choose Your Robot

At left, a "Simroid", or dental training bot designed to warn of painfully inept oral technique. The Simroid also "has a sensor on the breast area that keeps track if it has been touched inappropriately." At right, "Kaori", a RealDoll sexbot. Kaori's "oral cavity is as snug as the doll's other entries," and she has no hangups about inappropriate touching.

Why Is Gawker So Mean?

They're just jealous, is all. That's the thesis of the widely undigested New York article on Gawker by Vanessa Grigoriadis. Of the small number of substantive mainstream pieces about Gawker, Grigoriadis's comes closest to attempting something interesting. But in the end -- or really, by the first section break -- it's hobbled by the need to make anyone care about Gawker who isn't already invested in Gawker, emotionally and/or professionally. The thesis about Gawker serving as an outlet for "the anxiety and class rage of New York's creative underclass" is backburnered in order to bring up scads of background, then resurrected as a convenient (and mostly visual) metaphor ... angry mobs gathered around allegorical "tumbrels" are mentioned twice, as a way to describe Gawker's audience and commenter population. To viciously paraphrase, Gawker and its readers and commenters just want to have fun tearing down successful or prominent journalists, celebrities, socialites, et cetera, because such people don't deserve public approbation or even anonymity if they do something stupid. From there, Grigoriadis can't help widening her scope and widening it again and again and again, until we're viewing the vista of Modern Success through the prism of Gawker and vice versa. This landscape of topicality has led to many who otherwise might really dig (or dig into) the Gawker article finding themselves unmoved about its generalities. I can sympathize, as it's very tempting when writing about Gawker to write about what Gawker means, man. I can barely restrain myself from going there, even when just writing about an article about Gawker. But instead of considering what Gawker means, I'd rather dwell on something which has always seemed obvious to me, even though it's trotted out all the time as an imponderable: why Gawker is mean.

Just to Clarify

Yes, the trip was on purpose. My sense of humor is just that juvenile. And no, I didn't "push right by" the girls at the door checking names. I was invited, if you must know, like all other principal editors. But the idea of clipboard girls at a Nick Denton party is so fundamentally alien and weird, I didn't even realize what they were doing at first. But then I turned back and submitted to their authority, the always charming Kaila gave me the nod, and off I went to a wonderland of sponsored vodka, odd Mexican (?) sponsored beer, and unsponsored but nevertheless savory meatballs.   

Bury me with my knives when I die, boy, you hear?

Because I run a phenomenally successful website, I get lots of fan mail, or what insensitive people refer to as "spam." Today I received a very personal missive that read:

I was just browsing around your site.
Would you consider adding a link to us on your website?
We have over 4600 knife products with one of the largest online knife selections in the world.
http://www.bladecrazy.com

I would love to hear back from you,

Ken Burks
Knife Enthusiast & Professional
BLADECRAZY.COM

I was intrigued to visit Blade Crazy Dot Com and learn more about knife enthusiasm as a profession. Which of course led me to the associated Blade Crazy Blog, whose current top entry is entitled, "In the event of your death, what will happen to your knives?"

I Have the Largest Porch in All Manhattan

Our UES apartment is pretty large, but I've always complained that we don't have a balcony like all the higher floors. Who's got the balcony now, bitches? That would be ME: 20,000 square feet of elevated outdoor space -- complete with trees! -- courtesy of the bridge scaffolding now encircling the building just below my window. Sure, by next week it'll be covered in dust, chemicals, and high-pressure hydro backwash, but meantime I'll be grilling out with all the new pals I met at the Jimmy Buffett concert last night. Suck it, Brooklyn.

Microhumorous blog terminology

quipsand, n. 1. The phenomenon of protracted blog comment threads taking on a repetitive, suffocating tedium, as each commenter attempts to riff up an even wittier bon mot than the previous hundred(s).

Herky Jerk

Riding a crosstown bus this weekend, I was standing in the aisle and gripping the rail above. A well-dressed young man in a suit walked up adjacent and grabbed the rail as well. He was listening intently to his cell phone but not saying anything. Suddenly he jerked his head sharply backward, then pressed the phone back to his ear. I watched him obliquely for a moment, and his whole body jerk-thrashed even harder -- enough that I and everyone else nearby shrank away in apprehension. Then he was calm, still listening to his phone and otherwise appearing undistressed.

Another jerking motion, this a short open-handed jab with his phone arm, and then a little heel-toe kick. And then another full-body spasm. It looked like an ongoing seizure, but his face was wrong for a seizure victim ... he was clear-eyed and intent on his phone, and he looked more irritated than frightened or stressed. Right after another head-twist, he started barking into the phone, "Sir! Sir! ... Excuse me ... No ... No, sir, I can't wait! ... No, excuse me, I can't hold any longer! ... No, I've been on hold too long already! Sir ... ah ..." another long pause, punctuated by more spasms and more fuming, as he listened to the phone where he had obviously been placed back on hold.

What to do? Did he need some kind of emergency medication? Should we get the bus driver to stop, call this guy a cab to the hospital? Should I get ready to put my belt in his mouth to prevent him biting off his tongue? But then the person on the other end of the line came back. "Hello! Yes, finally! No, I can't hold. OK? Now? Good. Now, I want the sake special roll, and the crunchy salmon roll, and a side order of seaweed salad. And I want to pay with American Express." Then the man  kicked his foot again, as if in furious triumph.

Death Cat for Granny

A cat that predicts the deaths of nursing home patients? Hah, silly weird news from the AP wire! No, actually, the New England Journal of Medicine. Guess they got tired of trying to cure cancer and stuff. Supposedly, "Oscar" has successfully predicted (or caused) the demise of 25 people by curling up next to them within hours of their expiration. There's almost too much creepy crap to parse in this story (or "story"), but here's a sample

Doctors say most of the people who get a visit from the sweet-faced, gray-and-white cat are so ill they probably don't know he's there, so patients aren't aware he's a harbinger of death. Most families are grateful for the advanced warning, although one wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure.

Give me your tasty soul, human! That scene is only slightly more disturbing than the straight-faced treatment Oscar's getting in the press. Don't you people know that you're just increasing his dread power?

The $23 Million Mediabistro Sale, Explained

Re: Web Site for Job Seekers Is Sold.

$10 million for the Mediabistro classified ad I responded to in 2003, which led to renting half of a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side for $650. After seeing many horrible apartments for much higher rents, I met with the leaseholder, ran out and bought a bottle of wine, then returned and used said wine to convince said leaseholder that I was the right guy for the room. Several longtime New Yorkers nearly strangled me in jealous rage after they saw this place and heard what I was paying. It wasn't glitzy, but it was big and clean and comfortable, and my roommate was great and did not axe-murder me, nor I her.

$7 million for the first Mediabistro mixer I went to, hoping to scare up some work and contacts. Became depressed at the revelation that I was the one people were hitting up for work, despite the fact that I worked for a small publisher based in Alabama.

$4 million for the second and final Mediabistro mixer I went to, where I scared away the few people I spoke with after I mocked the proceedings as a crush of sweaty desperation. Ran into my roommate, and we got drunk.

$1.5 million for charging me $350 for their Resume Revamp service, which probably did serve as an improvement on a resume template I'd been using from whatever version of Microsoft Word was popular in 1994. At the university press job I landed soon after, the publisher complimented me on my resume. He was also about 9,000 years old.

$499,999 for then-editor Elizabeth Spiers running my egomaniacal story of getting my first job at Gridskipper. She said she couldn't pay me but promised to give me a year of free AvantGuild membership. She quit Mediabistro soon after, and I never got my free year of AvantGuild. Burn!

$1 for having to go through four different Mediabistro functionaries to completely remove my embarrassing and outdated Freelance Marketplace listing.

Congratulations! Feather boas for everyone!