Jeff Chang, whose Can’t Stop Wont Stop I just can’t recommend enough for anyone interested in the history of hip hop, has a great piece in the LARB on rap music and the 1992 LA Riots. The LA Times also ran a compelling essay on Toddy Tee, N.W.A. and other prescient west coast MCs, the forefathers of what became commercial gangsta rap.
I work nine to five and ain’t a damn thing changed
Indispensable Squares
"Nobody there but dirty old men who spit tobacco juice and try to look up your skirt." The city square is one of the biggest architectural differences between the United States and Europe. Over at The Daily Beast, George Packer takes a look at plazas/piazzas and makes a case for why America needs more.
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
The word “whom” appears “just 53 times out of every million [spoken] words,” according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This does not bode well for members of future generations – some of whom may be fond of formality.
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New Quarterly Conversation
A new issue of The Quarterly Conversation covers Gaddis, Müeller, and the Nordic masculinity of Per Petterson, among other topics.
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Best of Full Stop
Sure, you could look ahead to the happenings of 2012, but that's only half as fun as recapping Full Stop's 2011 "Best of the Blog" archives. (Part 2 here)
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Area Woman Makes the Best of It
What do you do when McSweeney’s rejects your humor piece? You could, like most people, slink off and write something new, perhaps after a quick look at the site to get a better sense of what they’re looking for, or you could write a new humor piece about getting rejected by McSweeney’s. At The Nervous Breakdown, Rachel Pollan takes the latter route (with a cameo by the movie Swingers).