With a piece as awkward and poorly realized as this, it's hard to know even where to begin-- one feels like the gourmet food critic at a free casino buffet, each neon-lit steam section of lard-coated Frenchbread pizza, pitifully cold "hot" wings and possibly fatal under-iced shrimp demand their own uniquely grotesque attention. Why, in 2003, does he pander to the sickeningly ironic? Why even attempt the self-referential, in a format so attractive to the indolent and trend-hungry that it's already been done there a thousand times before? And why, for Christ's sake, on the very website where all the earlier Pitchfork scavengers at least reached postmodernism's corpse before it was just the dry, greasy bones being artlessly propped up here. These supposed "journeys" into the writers creative mind (where, as even Joyce wrongly thought, we apparently think without correct punctuation) are as uninsightful and lame as diaryish writing-about-writing can be, and a truly awful dramatic exercise between forgotten early-90s novelty rappers "Kid'N'Play" comes off as wholly unmoving even under the low, ironic standards of this sort of dialogue. Honestly, why do it?? Is he flailing in the ultimate impotence of the worried music critic, cowardly preempting his own inevitable criticism?? Is he that much in love with the ugly mental voice of his own feeble writing process that he feels he must proudly share it with us all, instead of actually working to produce coherent journalism? Or, as I suspect is probably the case, is he simply incapable of any coherent product, unable to produce anything in the proper, accepted form, and so resorts to this self-satisfied mishmash of uninformed genre dabbling and faux-confession. Perhaps the author believes that in the present enviroment of near-inescapable postmodernist criticism he can provide some definitive statement by reheating that same old dish once more, but the horse having been long-dead already doesn't make one's self-conscious flogging any more interesting. An utter failure. -- Mullah Omar
K: What is this? Is this the Eminem song?P: Yeah."Drips".K: Do you actually like this?P: Yeah, of course I do... what, do you?
Okay, just got home, a few hours before my deadline, and once again it comes down to this-- is Obie Trice worth an actual paragraph?? Fuck, I honestly don't know if I can bring myself to plod through it. Right, okay, so: "Got Some Teeth" (track title) is the single (background information) with a bouncy, cartoonish beat (does that tell you enough?) by Eminem (identifying the producer, important), though Obie's (truncuation of artist's name) jokey rhymes (lyrical content) come off as sub-Eazy E (reference to previous artist who "did it better"), especially considering (ooh! burn!!) he's meant to be the "clown" of Shady/Aftermath (I am not fooled by this artist's marketing).
K: I dunno, I just don't really, I don't like that, offensive shit, you know. Whenever something is like, all dirty and misogynist, I just think of Marcus, you know, how he liked all that...P: Yeah this isn't a Marcus thing, it's just really funny...K: Well, that's what he said, like all the time, isn't it? "Oh, this rap stuff is so fucking funny, it's fucking hilarious!!"... It shouldn't bother me still, but it does.P: Yeah but you seem to use him as an excuse to not like any real hiphop... sorry, not "real" but you know what I mean.K: No, it's like, I just can't give in to that part of myself, I know thats dumb but it seems like a betrayal to, the music and, like, to us, and just everything is...
Look, I know this is unpleasant but it's easy enough to ignore, it's not the lead review, you don't care about Obie Trice, it's not the end of the world. Eventually it'll creep down the page and by next week no one will ever think about it again. Really, there's no false humility here. I know how bad it is. It's really bad. If you're reading now, and thinking about becoming a music writer for Pitchfork or anywhere else, my only advice (after "just don't") would be: Always Write About Yourself. Go on!! Write about how you're writing that review, about how your bitchy editor doesn't understand you, about the media format of the website or free weekly or whatever. If the article is due that night, write about the tail of the "Q" in the fucking font on your word processor. Make up terrible dialogues between characters and have them repeat discussions you had earlier that day. Why do I suggest this? Because I'm not a real writer.
P: Did I tell you I saw Marcus downtown today?K: No, oh... Christ, what was he doing?P: Well, I dunno, he was with... they were just, I mean, she, you know...K: Fuck, don't tell me that! What were they doing?!P: Just, like, walking around, I said hi, but I don't really know either of them that well...K: Yeah, Jesus, that's just... I fucking, ugh...P: Yeah I know dude... I didn't mean to bring it up. I just think maybe, going back to what we were talking about, maybe you just can't get into more of the sort of, like, perverse stuff, just for now, because of... it's too soon, you know, like, for that kind of playful, sexualized stuff...K: You're right. I'm going to die alone and unloved.P: That's not what I said! We should just talk about something else, how was work today?K: No, I'm serious, I really am.P: Kid, how am I meant to take these requests... no, these outright CRAVINGS for sympathy, considering your absolute refusal to offer sympathy to anything else in the world?K: ....
It always seems so disposible, but so what if it is?? Why should we aspire to, as Lawrence Sterne said, "swim down the gutter of Time"? (thats right you assholes, not Brent DiBenzino nor Barth nor Barthelme nor Thomas fucking Pynchon-- Tristam Shandy invented the pure horror of neurotic, self-referential writing!! He's stuck a novel called Tristam Shandy!!! It collapses into a descending spiral of self-reflexive bullshit!!! It's NOT FUCKING FUNNY!!).
P: Okay, so the whole point of art, and subsequently criticism, is to have faith in things you wouldn't normally, I mean, suspension of disbelief is cliché for a reason, right? And look at America now, George Bush as dumb-but-honest, George Bush as strong-willed hero... the place for cynicism is fucking politics!! Ignore the "machinations" of the record industry, please!! Believe every spoken intent of the artists, wrap yourself in their lyrics, you critics need to reserve that spiteful, precocious cynicism for reality!!K: Why do you keep awkwardly bringing George Bush into our conversation?P: I dunno, why do you keep awkwardly bringing Obie Trice into it?
Empty, grey sky. Dawn. Fiat lux. A lone plane gently soars acros FUCK This is the worst thing ever written by anyone!!! What the FUCK was I thinking?!!? "Intentionally bad" my ass!! Snide mimicry doesn't work as satire!! Is this supposed to be fucking Swiftian here, my lame, empty jabs at unpaid internet music critics?? I can't mock anything, who the hell do I think I am by trying?? Oh God... what if this means I really just wanted to write a genuine, sincere postmodernist PFork review?? With like, quotes from Samuel Beckett's LiveJournal, and pulpy Amazon explorer scenes, and lame gears-turning exposés of how I'm writing the review!! Fuck!! This is like the final sad recognition of my talentless hell, I may not actually be a good writer but I sure am good at hedging bets and second-guessing myself!! My flirtation with intellectual laziness has turned into a entire fucking affair!!! Wait... what if I let the self-hatred just become another caked-on layer of bad postmodernism?? And instead of a miserable failure... it would be a spectacular failure... a GLORIOUS failure!! And then, oh God, and then, by letting my readers in on this revelation, and using corny, quasi-religious words like "glorious", it would be even WORSE than before!! I am so, so sorry.
K: Hold on, does he really think it's that important? Ethan P did "unedited" once!P: Yeah, and it fucking sucked.
