It’s all fun and games when you’re covering celebrities, when you’re reporting on gossip — essentially, when you’re saying shit that can’t be fact-checked, that can’t be proved or disproved, the kind of things you can chalk up to “an unnamed source.” That’s fine; that’s all well and good.
Where Perez exposes himself is posts like these; where unresearched bits of prose (namely,“the Dap-Kings and Sharon are releasing their own album”) reveal him as, well, not much of a journalist — he leaves his comfort zone, he covers topics he shouldn’t be covering, and in doing so, he looks foolish. Because, if you’re going to write about something, are you really (really) that busy drawing spooge on photographs of questionable original that you can’t look Sharon Jones up on le Internet and learn that this isn’t a first album — it isn’t like the Dap Kings sang backup for Amy Winehouse, got noticed, and got an album deal, which is how he makes it sound — but rather, this is the group’s third album? Third album.
Really, it’s not so hard. (That’s what she said.) And that kind of slapdash journalistic work — in front of an audience of millions — bothers me; with readership comes responsibility. Of course, maybe expecting a sense of responsibility from someone who generates pageviews from blatant clickbait is a mistake on my part; but people keep telling me he’s such a smart businessman. Shouldn’t he be a smart journalist, too? And even if he is one or the other or one but not the other, shouldn’t he be smart enough to Google “Sharon Jones Dap Kings” and do one quick fact check before publishing content?
So I’ve fallen victim to the whole Facebook thing, and seeing as I’ve never really gotten the whole social networking thing before, I’m not sure why I started all of a sudden. (I do know that I must have instantly made the whole thing uncool when I sent a friend request to my 19-year-old niece.)
I can’t help but look for old, familiar, high-school era names on Facebook. So far, I haven’t turned up a single soul from my graduating class. Of course I’m not even sure why I’m looking — it’s half a decade since I’ve laid eyes on any of them, much less spoken to them. But it feels so weird — no one, not a soul is online using the Internet, when it’s something I’m using nonstop, day in and day out. Which makes me wonder … have I disappeared, or have they?
This is obviously fake; the Apatow crew is well known for producing LOTS of faux viral clips (remember Michael Cera playing Seth Rogen’s part in ‘Knocked Up’?). I really, really wanted to post this on the work blog, but the language is just too coarse for that audience. Here, it’s fair game. Enjoy.
Needless to say, I can’t wait to see Superbad this weekend. And, also, I have thoughts about Michael Cera that are not befitting a woman of my age. Which is OK because I know I’m not the only one.
I grew up going to bingo nights in local church basements with my mom and grandmother (Saturdays at St. Anns; Thursday at St. Pauls); when I was younger I’d bring coloring books and crayons and a Walkman and cassette tapes (oh, Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack, you were such a winner) and I’d help the workers collect the cardboard games at the end of the night and they’d give me a silver dollar, which I’d then use to buy a piece of homemade cake or maybe a flimsy cardboard tray of pierogies if it was still early enough and the ladies who ran the kitchen hadn’t sold out of them all. When I was old enough I’d convince my dad to give me $10 to play and I’d make my mom promise to pay me my $10 back if she won, and she’d call me a little huckster. I made Scott make me that same promise, only 20 years later it’s a little more than $10, but we didn’t win shit. I think I might have impressed him (or saddened him) with my knowledge of four corners and postage stamps and letter Ls and letter Ts and small frames and coverall and kites and oh, I was set so many times, but we didn’t win shit. It was a soupy summer night and it was nostalgic and bittersweet, current and thrilling, all at the same entwined moment; at one point, suddenly something made sense — so this is why I like to gamble so much. When the games finally ended at 10:30, we were bleary eyed and fidgety from caffeine, and while the other players likely went home, we repaired immediately to the nearest bar, where we drank wine to calm our nerves and discussed timeline, budget, and strategy for our next trip.
So I think a lot of people sort of know, by now, that I currently write for two blogs; this personal all-about-me blog, and a really cool corporate blog; and anytime I’m leading the charge on the corporate blog, the front yard of this blog tends to get a little overrun with weeds. That kind of happened this week, and sometimes that’s a bummer, but this week I wrote one of my favorite posts ever on the corporate blog, so I don’t mind so much. That post is essentially a legitimate conversation I found myself having with a friend over drinks the night before, and it made me realize that blogging for (part of) a living and having that kind of freedom is pretty nice, even if the other corporate people probably wish I’d lay off the animal clips a little bit. But anyway, a big part of the corporate blog is me, and my voice, so if you like it here, perhaps you will like it there. That is all.
