bloggers

Emily Brill Is "The Ultimate Narrator"

Hamilton Nolan · 08/21/08 03:26PM

Emily Brill, the daughter of media mogul Steve Brill and the "hardest" "working" heiress on the interwebs, is simply exhausted! Commenters made some snide remarks about her latest blog post on the edgy, underground world of rich kids trading their meds with each other. You anonymous online detractors just don't understand the drama of Emily's life. Try to imagine surviving her grueling schedule-the nonstop stress of being a professional blogger. Narrate for us, Ms. Brill:

McCain campaign blogger retracts Dungeons & Dragons crack

Jackson West · 08/20/08 05:00PM

Michael Goldfarb, one of the propagandists working for John McCain's presidential campaign, has discovered an unknown third rail of politics: Dungeons & Dragons. Attacking critics who suggested McCain plagiarized a touching anecdote about his observation of faith in prison from Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Goldfarb suggested, "It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement."Which of course only served to date a campaign already easily portrayed as old and out of touch — the kids these days play World of Warcraft in their mom's basement. (I'll be playing D&D on a sunny deck in Truckee this weekend, but I'm old). Goldfarb has since apologized, probably once he realized how many Republican-leaning libertarians have a velvet bag of polyhedral dice tucked away somewhere safe: "This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American." Still, it's a little late, as the mockery has begun online in earnest — Wired asks readers to submit McCain-inspired non-player characters for consideration.

Why The Weightlifting Fetish?

Hamilton Nolan · 08/19/08 04:57PM

Weightlifting is a relatively obscure sport. But all the intellectual media types love Olympic weightlifting! Slate! The Times! And more of the Times! Today we applaud German Matthias Steiner, who became the World's Strongest Man with a clean and jerk of 569 pounds and a snatch of 447 pounds. By comparison, I once permanently injured my shoulder snatching a 50 pound dumbbell. Which is to say, the media is scared of being beaten up.

Posh Convention Candyland For Bloggers

Ryan Tate · 08/19/08 04:58AM

It's bad enough that 500 bloggers are wasting time and energy "covering" the pointless media spectacle of the upcoming political conventions. Can't tightly-orchestrated pageantry and vacant messaging be left for the television networks and political trades while top bloggers find important actual news that would otherwise go ignored? Apparently not. But the bloggers are making themselves look even more silly and co-opted by accepting a package of goodies, and an embarrassingly nerdy one at that. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Blog-Drunk Drew Kerr Vows To Spam Way To Top Of PR World

Hamilton Nolan · 08/18/08 03:22PM

Drew Kerr, the carrot-spewing former Radar flack, has seen his firm Four Corners Communications shrink to essentially a one-man shop in the past year. But the savvy Kerr, who specializes "in online and offline media" (that covers it all!), knows how to get good PR for himself in these lean times: by crushing PR bloggers from bigger PR firms in a "blog competition" and then bragging about it while spamming his contacts relentlessly for more votes! Kerr's spamtastic bragadocio, featuring a haughty dismissal of megafirm Edelman, after the jump-join his quest for PR blog domination!! PRWeek (my old employer) is having a tournament of PR blogs, and the PR blogosphere hasn't been this excited since some shit happened with Apple's PR department about some gadget one time, probably! Thanks to his campaign of vote-trolling spam, Kerr's spitballed blog about license plates and delis defeated PR tech nerd/ Edelman blogger god Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion, and Kerr is taking the opportunity to tell Edelman-the Wal-Mart-flacking superfirm that surely makes Kerr's annual income in about an hour-that they suck the big one:

Please Welcome Crowdsourced Attack Ads

Pareene · 08/18/08 01:03PM

Nothing makes us prouder to be Americans than knowing, at least, that we are free. Free specifically to post insane allegations against any media or political figure accusing them of conspiratorial scurrility on YouTube, where it will be viewed by millions of our fellow crazies and followed up by response videos even less grounded in any sort of observable reality. So you can imagine how thrilled we are that this post-modern citizen campaign work can now be showed on real tv right next to T. Boon Pickens windfarm fantasia and Obama clubbing with Paris Hilton or whatever. It's all thanks to Saysme.tv, a new service that allows your average man-on-the-street the chance to have his 25-second commercial aired in various local cable markets for a tiny, tiny fee. Listen to Saysme.tv's chief executive on how this is all about freedom:

Working On Tucker Max's Movie: No Morons Allowed

Hamilton Nolan · 08/15/08 12:12PM

Pussy-smashing brew-guzzler and occasional blogger Tucker Max is hard at work on the Shreveport, Louisiana set of his comedic masterpiece film debut I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. The ideal situation would obviously be for Tucker to produce, direct, star in, and cater the movie himself, but due to demands on his valuable time he's forced to take on lesser mortals as his assistants. One of whom, surprisingly, has now quit in disgust and forwarded along his story to us! After the jump, the sad tale of woe, abuse, and poop. But Tucker has a warning for you haters: "I didn't get where I am today by being a moron.": The young man was a Tucker fan, and quit a real job to go be a paid assistant on the set of Tucker's film, where we pick up his experiences:

Local TV Reporters Smoke On The Mic Like Smokin' Joe Frazier

Hamilton Nolan · 08/14/08 03:34PM

One awkwardly rapping local television reporter might be written off as a crackpot. Two might simply be a coincidence. But six different videos of TV reporters breaking into rhyme? It's a trend that has spanned decades, but has only recently been teased out into the open by the hard work of YouTube skimmers. Complex puts together a definitive list of this painful but hypnotic media meme. We've included just one example for you after the jump: an apparently 17-year-old traffic reporter from North Carolina delivering her morning traffic report in the form of a spasmodic (drug-fuelled?) freestyle rhyme. Let's battle, girl:

Tucker Max's Awesome Guy Hall Of Fame

Hamilton Nolan · 08/13/08 02:23PM

"Fratire" practitioner and pussy-pulling machine Tucker Max is best known for a handful of stories about himself on his blog that all-upon close inspection-involve getting drunk and chasing girls and are really not that interesting. But as an author with a well-developed voice, he sometimes ventures further afield, into stories about himself doing slightly different mundane things. But Tucker's never been able to understand the difference between being a charming asshole and being an actual asshole, and he is the latter, despite what he may think deep down. That's why he writes things like this long three-year-old message board posting about meeting an FBI agent whose tales of killing Mexicans land him in the Awesome Guy Hall of Fame! Tucker seems to have some latent fear of Mexicans, mane. Enjoy: The scene: Tucker is sitting next to an FBI agent on a plane, swapping stories:

Mediabistro Scared Of Competition

Hamilton Nolan · 08/12/08 04:48PM

Once upon a time, media bulletin board site Mediabistro had a talented, anonymous ad blogger called Agency Spy, who got good dirt and the occasional undeserved murder rap. The original Agency Spy left to start her own blog a couple months ago, but earlier today she put up a post saying the site was grinding to a temporary halt. Why? Because, Mediabistro multimillionaire founder Laurel Touby said, MB was enforcing a noncompete agreement against her! Seems pretty petty, Laurel, considering you're the second-richest internet media woman in New York now. The $23 million Mediabistro machine can't compete with one little alumnus? Tisk tisk. [Adscam, The Brief]

Dane Cook Pleads For A More Manly Movie Poster

Hamilton Nolan · 08/12/08 03:13PM

Dane Cook doesn't like the poster for his new movie! And to be fair to the unfunny and petulant comedian, it is terrible. The average heterosexual male would decline to see this movie based solely on the poster, even without knowing Dane Cook was in it. But the average heterosexual male who found themselves living Dane Cook's life would probably let it slide, secure in the thought that despite being (probably) Tucker Max's favorite entertainer, he was starring in movies with Kate Hudson and had a stable of college groupies. Dane Cook, however, took to his MySpace page with a 10-point letter of complaint about how the poster makes him look. Dude, you're totally making yourself sound like a metrosexual:

Newspaper Chain Launches Blogs, Borrows Our Pay System

Pareene · 08/12/08 01:10PM

The wee free newspapers of nutty Christian entrepreneur Philip Anschutz (the DC, Baltimore, and San Francisco Examiners) have announced an exciting new method of paying content-providers: based on the page views those content-providers accumulate! The Examiner umbrella brand has launched what looks like 1,000 new blogs based on every possible topic one could blog about (with plenty of overlap), written by, who knows, hobos and bored high school students, and all of them will be paid between $2.50 and $10 for every 1,000 views they attract to their pages. Do you want to be an Examiner? Here's how!

Tucker Max, Businessman

Hamilton Nolan · 08/12/08 12:23PM

Tucker Max: blogger of beer and sluts, writer and producer of one of the least funny comedy movie scripts since Illegally Yours, and asshole in a dozen different ways. The most ridiculous of which is as the boss of his own mini-empire of blogs! And since last week, we've heard from several of his former Rudius Media employees, who expound on the gentle pleasures of working for one of America's foremost purveyors of racist poop jokes: He's a cheapskate. Last week we noted how Tucker scoffed at a former blogger who wondered why he only made $82 for six months of work. Other employees tell us the standard pay for Rudius bloggers is somewhere in the $80/ quarter range, with one noting "I got just a tiny bit more than that when my site was doing really well." Sweet. So Rudius must be making a lot of money. You work hard for the money. One Rudius employee was ordered by Tucker to move to a different, more expensive city because Tucker thought that they could better do their job elsewhere. Once the employee had gone to the trouble of packing up and moving and finding a new, more costly apartment, we hear, their pay was reduced to almost nothing. Which seems like the standard Rudius pay rate, now that we think of it. He's not popular with publishers. We hear that at least one book agent quit working with Tucker because he flaked out on book proposal deadlines. (Not true? Email us!) He's not popular with the bloggers that work for him at Rudius. The emails we've received from disgruntled bloggers alone are ample evidence of this. He attracts bloggers he's interested in with the promise of writing for a wider audience-though, as you can tell by their pay, not necessarily more money. But when bloggers tire of Rudius and leave the fold, we hear, they are bizarrely wiped from existence in Tucker Max's world:

Times Takes Edwards Scandal Info From Blogger Without Credit

Hamilton Nolan · 08/11/08 03:24PM

Yesterday the New York Times ran a story about the John Edwards affair, detailing the circumstances behind the meeting of Edwards and Rielle Hunter in a Beverly Hills hotel that ended up getting the ex-VP candidate caught by the National Enquirer. The story includes various bits of background info on Bob McGovern, a new-age friend of Hunter who set up the meeting. Just about all of that background appears to have been taken from a post more than a week earlier on Deceiver.com-although the Times didn't credit them at all. That's stealing. Full comparison of the Times story and the blog info, below: Deceiver, July 31:

How To Keep Employees Happy, By Tucker Max

Hamilton Nolan · 08/08/08 02:40PM

Blogger mentor Tucker Max runs a blog network called Rudius Media that is badass, bro. Earlier today we mentioned that one former Rudius blogger once worked for six months only to receive a check for less than a hundred bucks ($82, to be exact). Now that blogger, Brandon Woods, has helpfully forwarded us the email chain that ensued after he emailed Tucker-very politely, we might add-to ask how the hell he came to be paid such a paltry sum for half a year's work. Tucker Max's reply to him (which he also forwarded to six other people) is below. And, well, yea:

Orwell: Original Blogger

Pareene · 08/08/08 01:40PM

What one blogger could give both Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan a massive, unrepentant for former support of the Bush administration hard-on? No, not Wil Wheaton—George Orwell! Orwell's son and some other guy are going to reprint Orwell's diaries, on the internet. In daily installments. Like a blog. Starting tomorrow. OMG! "The first entry, from Aug. 9, 1938, will appear online Saturday, exactly 70 years after Orwell wrote it." Wow. Can we leave comments? "First! (English socialist to have misgivings about Stalin!)" (See what we did there?) Finally America will learn Orwell's top ten all-time most awesome rules for effective English writing ever! (Never use one superlative where three will do.) [NPR]

The Tucker Max Asshole Allegation Roundup

Hamilton Nolan · 08/08/08 12:07PM

Tucker Max, the "bet I can fuck this one-eyed chick in the bathroom after consuming 13 warm Coronas, bro" blogger and moviemaker-whose classic comedy movie script we excerpted for you this week-seems be an unpopular fellow, judging from the emails we receive around here. Considering the fact that he has built an "empire," ha, upon the stated foundation of being an asshole, it's not surprising. But it is getting a little hard to keep up. Today, we're going to give you a quick roundup of the various accusations against the man that have poured in to us. None of which are confirmed! Much like Tucker's own writing, they're just shit on the internet. Although several do seem to be in character for him:

Words Of Encouragement

Hamilton Nolan · 08/07/08 01:50PM

An email last year from cinematic and literary savant Tucker Max to NYC blogger-about-town Cajun Boy: "Your writing reminds me of that girl at the bar that at 8pm, you think is OK but don't look twice at, and then only think about again right before closing time if you don't have anything better. It's better than most, but not something you'd go after. But keep working at it dude, it takes time to develop a strong voice." Yes, you'll get there one day, dude. [Cajun Boy]

"What it is like to date Tucker Max"

Hamilton Nolan · 08/07/08 10:18AM

You, the public, recently got to preview portions of the horrific (currently in production!) movie script for I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, written by "Dude, I did 12 shots of Jamesons and totally puked on that chick's tits" bro-blogger Tucker Max. The primary question that arose afterwards was, "What kind of girl would go out with this asshole?" Well, ladies and gentlemen, we (purportedly) have an answer-with all of the "whores," bad sex, emotional manipulation, fried chicken, drunk driving, and, uh, other bad things that you would have imagined: A tipster forwarded us the following text, which they say is an entry that was deleted from Tucker Max's ex-girlfriend's blog. We don't follow the man's love life closely enough to know whether this is true, but the blog does have Tucker Max listed as its contact person. Portions of this post have been floating around the internet for some time now. That's our disclaimer. Now here's the alleged Tucker Max love experience:

Tucker Max Seeks 'Large-Titted Woman Who Is Turned On By Being An Object'

Ryan Tate · 08/06/08 12:51AM

Yesterday, while we were bravely posting traumatic excerpts of the script to Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, the brah-blogger's peeps sent out an electronic casting call for the film. Perhaps we judged Max too harshly, unaware as we were of the high acting standards to which he will hold whoever plays "Jade," referred to in the script as "The Large Titted Woman Who Is Turned On By Being An Object." To look at the cast being assembled, one can't help but conclude that Beer In Hell will be a shoo-in for a coveted Best Feature Film Involving Midget Blowjobs Oscar. Here's what they're looking for in the way of exotic dancers (emphasis from the original, naturally):