Dope Penmanship

I’m torn on this issue of the world, and journalism, moving toward “Free.” Mostly because many of my writer friends are losing jobs because of it. Malcolm Gladwell, author and cultural critic, reviewed Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price for The New Yorker, basically arguing against the theory that Free is good. Anderson is the Editor of Wired.

Priced to Sell
Is Free the Future?

When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer. That’s the magic of Free psychology: an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars. In the case of YouTube, the effects of technological Free and psychological Free work against each other. [The New Yorker]

Thanks to Michael for sliding me this link. Sasha is one of my favorite writers, with a great critical voice. “Diva” aside, Beyonce is a voice of this generation.

The Queen by Sasha Frere-Jones

Young black female singers rarely get past the red rope and into the Genius Lounge—the moody, the male, and the dead crowd that room. But with or without co-writers, Knowles does remarkable things with tone and harmony. The one time I met her, backstage at a Destiny’s Child concert in Peoria in 2000, she talked about listening to Miles Davis and Fela Kuti—affinities I didn’t know how to process until I heard “Apple Pie à la Mode,” from the following year’s Destiny’s Child album, “Survivor.” It’s a slinky song, something of a throwaway, except that Prince or D’Angelo could easily have done the throwing away. Who else in the stratosphere of R. & B. pop plays around with the conversational voice like Beyoncé? Who feels comfortable with adding so much unexpected, generous harmony to a trifle about a delicious crush? Anyone else with “Apple Pie à la Mode” in the bag would flip over backward, buy a retro-glam outfit, and construct an entire side project around it. Knowles simply kept moving. [The New Yorker]

Destiny’s Child “Apple Pie A La Mode”

Undecided” by David Sedaris (via Jezebel)

All the writers out there will appreciate how this story uses an anecdote to capture the absurdity of being undecided in what looks like such a clear-cut literally-black-and-white presidential race. Being a Libra and consummate Indecisive (I entered college Undeclared), I get wanting to make the best decision possible on even the simplest of things, i.e. paper or plastic. But unlike the Democratic primaries between Barack and Hillary, Barack and McCain are very different. Very. Physically, ideologically, policy-wise…

When doubting that anyone could not know whom they’re voting for, I inevitably think back to November, 1968. Hubert Humphrey was running against Richard Nixon, and when my mother couldn’t choose between them she had me do it for her. It was crazy. One minute I was eating potato chips in front of the TV, and the next I was at the fire station, waiting with people whose kids I went to school with. When it was our turn, we were led by a woman wearing a sash to one of a half-dozen booths, the curtain of which closed after we entered.
“Go ahead,” my mother said. “Flick a switch, any switch.”

Among my 10 or more subscriptions, The New Yorker isn’t one of them but soon will be. I’ve heard good things.