There are plenty of reasons to dislike Moby. Purveyor of insipid and treacly music predestined to shill products targeted at the wallpaper-reading set (though that might be shooting a little high). Proprietor of insipid and self-consciously cutesy food establishments (I’m surprised we haven’t be subjected to McTeaney’s, a meat-free sandwich shoppe staffed by earnest underprivileged youths, or those that simply self-identify as such). Self-indulgent rich kid from Connecticut who transplants himself and postures downtown chic as badly as Liz Phair used to (at least she decided to make no bones about her reality). Highly public and doctrinaire vegan. Hell, vegan, period.
Today we can add ruthless businessman to that list, if reports are to be believed. I don’t — or, more particularly, don’t care, and the energy invested in not caring, somewhat equal to the effort required to skirt his officious Rivington Street mini-empire (as it juts further out into the sidewalk than any other business on what is a fairly narrow street), is a source of resentment itself. So something happened at some organ in the Moby empire. Wringing of hands, deployment of snark, blogged rebuttals. The makings of a sitcom plot based on bloggers courtesy the wubbie, circa 2007.
But if being intentionally twee, ‘stylish’ or willfully obscurant got you banished from the Lower East Side, it would be pretty desolate relative to the rich tapestry we have today. So revamp or no, mass firings of communal love-in, what Moby does is of little concern to me, but the episode certainly underscores how much blogging has become like the news crawl at the bottom of CNN. Sure, you in the back row, you’re saying “What, you just noticed?”
Well, no, but the Gawker standard of 12 posts a days seems to have infected other outlets. Add to the proliferation of real estate blogs (the Timesweighs in, a Browstoner party gets written up in Talk of the Town — maybe my second anniversary party, comprising me having a glass of rye on the couch and generally hating, which, believe it or not, is distinct from most other nights, which involve bourbon and a desk, will get covered as well) and a story like this suddenly has legs. Well, 30 minutes thereof.
Why this is a perfect squall situation is because later in the afternoon I noticed that Jack Abramoff pled guilty in return for an agreement to testify. And even though most of our well-known blogs take a pass on politics, there would be, one assumes, enough related interest for it to turn up somewhere. Getting my information through RSS, NPR streams, and a couple newspaper sites, I knew about the Terror at Teany (which occurred roughly contemporaneously with the Abramoff announcement) several hours earlier. If I subscribed to the right blogs, I doubt there would have been a gap.
But it rankled because, aside from being the easy target of just about everyone, Moby is ostensibly (like the other LES celebrity bar owner, Tim Robbins) a political ‘activist’. But I couldn’t think of a single thing he’s done (aside from turning up at some part for Outfoxed — a fact I gather from some dusty remnants of an Observer article). Not like Ralph Reed, the conservative charlatan who seems to pop up just about everywhere (and, I found out today, is running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia). Granted, Reed is a political operative and Moby is a bad singer, but his coffee shop contretemps is what holds our attention? When they say grass roots organizing is how political change is achieved, this is not what they are referring to.
This isn’t some clarion call for blogging standards. I’ll leave that to the more capable. But even as we all stand in thrall of real estate prices, either drunk on the direct benefit it brings us, seething at the good fortune of others, or simply overwhelmed at the absurdity at all, it is crucial we don’t lose site of the fact that macro and micro economic and political events still have the power to interrelate and change things.
I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about this year. Scope out an editorial calendar, try and make this a more rigorous enterprise. I haven’t come to any good conclusions. But I know I’m not going to write about Teany. At all. Except this once.
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Contempt in a Teapot.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Moby. Purveyor of insipid and treacly music predestined to shill products targeted at the wallpaper-reading set (though that might be shooting a little high). Proprietor of insipid and self-consciously cutesy food establishments (I’m surprised we haven’t be subjected to McTeaney’s, a meat-free sandwich shoppe staffed by earnest underprivileged youths, or those that simply self-identify as such). Self-indulgent rich kid from Connecticut who transplants himself and postures downtown chic as badly as Liz Phair used to (at least she decided to make no bones about her reality). Highly public and doctrinaire vegan. Hell, vegan, period.
Today we can add ruthless businessman to that list, if reports are to be believed. I don’t — or, more particularly, don’t care, and the energy invested in not caring, somewhat equal to the effort required to skirt his officious Rivington Street mini-empire (as it juts further out into the sidewalk than any other business on what is a fairly narrow street), is a source of resentment itself. So something happened at some organ in the Moby empire. Wringing of hands, deployment of snark, blogged rebuttals. The makings of a sitcom plot based on bloggers courtesy the wubbie, circa 2007. But if being intentionally twee, ‘stylish’ or willfully obscurant got you banished from the Lower East Side, it would be pretty desolate relative to the rich tapestry we have today. So revamp or no, mass firings of communal love-in, what Moby does is of little concern to me, but the episode certainly underscores how much blogging has become like the news crawl at the bottom of CNN. Sure, you in the back row, you’re saying “What, you just noticed?” Well, no, but the Gawker standard of 12 posts a days seems to have infected other outlets. Add to the proliferation of real estate blogs (the Times weighs in, a Browstoner party gets written up in Talk of the Town — maybe my second anniversary party, comprising me having a glass of rye on the couch and generally hating, which, believe it or not, is distinct from most other nights, which involve bourbon and a desk, will get covered as well) and a story like this suddenly has legs. Well, 30 minutes thereof. Why this is a perfect squall situation is because later in the afternoon I noticed that Jack Abramoff pled guilty in return for an agreement to testify. And even though most of our well-known blogs take a pass on politics, there would be, one assumes, enough related interest for it to turn up somewhere. Getting my information through RSS, NPR streams, and a couple newspaper sites, I knew about the Terror at Teany (which occurred roughly contemporaneously with the Abramoff announcement) several hours earlier. If I subscribed to the right blogs, I doubt there would have been a gap. But it rankled because, aside from being the easy target of just about everyone, Moby is ostensibly (like the other LES celebrity bar owner, Tim Robbins) a political ‘activist’. But I couldn’t think of a single thing he’s done (aside from turning up at some part for Outfoxed — a fact I gather from some dusty remnants of an Observer article). Not like Ralph Reed, the conservative charlatan who seems to pop up just about everywhere (and, I found out today, is running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia). Granted, Reed is a political operative and Moby is a bad singer, but his coffee shop contretemps is what holds our attention? When they say grass roots organizing is how political change is achieved, this is not what they are referring to. This isn’t some clarion call for blogging standards. I’ll leave that to the more capable. But even as we all stand in thrall of real estate prices, either drunk on the direct benefit it brings us, seething at the good fortune of others, or simply overwhelmed at the absurdity at all, it is crucial we don’t lose site of the fact that macro and micro economic and political events still have the power to interrelate and change things. I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about this year. Scope out an editorial calendar, try and make this a more rigorous enterprise. I haven’t come to any good conclusions. But I know I’m not going to write about Teany. At all. Except this once.