When I was in high school, I had a crush on this MTV guy. I’m not going to set off his Google alert, but suffice it to say he had glasses (oh, did he ever!) and seemed like the kind of nice Jewish boy I’d like to talk about literature and the news with while snuggling. After high school, I kind of forgot about him, but when a mutual friend offered to bring me to his birthday party a few years ago (’09), I took him up on the offer.

When I arrived, my crush was rather drunk, but still charming. I shyly introduced myself. He made a self-deprecating joke about how old and lame he was, which I appreciated. He wasn’t as cute as he’d been in my high school fantasies, but he was still cute. And he still had the glasses. After that, he told our mutual friend he was “interested” and we emailed back and forth a little bit, but he kept canceling on our plans because he was busy doing impressive TV stuff. Whatever. Eventually, I gave up and began dating someone else. (Someone who was very bad for me, and to whom I wasn’t speaking by the time SXSW 2010 rolled around). Several months went by.

It was around this time that I wrote a piece about Terry Richardson that ended up becoming somewhat infamous. Immediately after I wrote the piece, I went to Austin for SXSW, so its fallout did not hit me as hard as it might have. By the last night of the festival I’d shaken off most of my paranoia that people were staring at me and gotten down to the serious business of seeing how many free Dos Equis beers my friends and I could slam at the Vice party.

I felt someone grab me from behind. Suppressing the urge to punch blindly, I turned around. It was MTV guy.

“Hey Jamie,” he said. “I liked your piece on Terry Richardson.” I wanted to ask him what he had liked about it (was it my brave stand against fashion royalty or the fact that I got naked and performed a sex act in it?) but I didn’t. “Thanks!” I replied. He went on: “You’re not afraid to sell out yourself or anyone else. That’s real journalism.” Tell me more about how dubiously awesome I am, I thought, and he continued like he’d read my mind.

I don’t really remember what we talked about, but I remember thinking it was going pretty well. We were having what I hoped was witty banter and he kept bringing me drinks, and I was twirling my hair around my fingers and laughing at his jokes. I started doing that thing girls do sometimes where they accidentally let their boobs brush up against you. (If a girl does this, fellows, she’s serious about wanting the dick.) At one point he said he thought I was “trouble” because I’m a writer and might write about him, and I just kind of smiled and said that, yes, I have been known to do that.

Dude wasn’t at all like I thought he would be. He had the cocksure swagger you probably need to have to convince people to put you on TV, and a “masculine adult New Yorker with money” taste in things like food (fancy meats) and shirts (APC?). He wasn’t nearly as nebbishy as I’d hoped, but this kind of only made me want to sleep with him more, because he’d probably throw me around and not cry afterwards.

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• So Many Hot Guys, So Little Time
• News Alert : MTV’s TRL Is Canceled!!!
• MTV News Highlights Brooklyn Music Scene
• Former Real World Cast Member Is Suing MTV Over Alleged Sexual Assault
• A Discussion Of MTV’s Hater Baiting New Show, ‘I Just Want My Pants Back’

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You may have noticed that on every site you log on to — from Anthropologie to HuffPo — there’s the option to share, like, or comment on an article using your Facebook. On many, you’ve already been helpfully logged in. This is Zuckerberg’s ideal: One identity broadcast across every website and digital community that you frequent. It’s like when you first got a Facebook and filled in your favorite movies and TV shows, but now it’s pulled from your online history.

It’s a little overwhelming, and yet it makes some sense. Users are more accountable and more authentic in their interactions. It’s like the adage “actions speak louder than words”, because you know who’s making those actions. But what about people who are comfortable saying the words but don’t want their name attached to them? Poole’s image board 4chan, despite its reputation as one of the Internet’s most depraved places, allows its users to sign in anonymously or under a screen name. Poole compared their freedom to being an innocent kid, willing to experiment because s/he isn’t held to possible failures. It encourages interaction in a “completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way.”

Exploring the fandom world under a pseudonym was incredibly freeing for me, both when I started out (age 12) and as I’ve started to ease back into that world. When I was younger, I could try new styles of writing; if I failed, there was very little accountability. Considering my young age when I began, I learned a lot about sex from reading and writing fanfiction — but I’m hardpressed to tell you what my screen name was, to protect whatever naive writings I put on the Internet.

In fact, I just linked my LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net profiles to my Gmail — because it’s a nice confidence booster to get the occasional good review on my Blackberry — and yet I’m still wary that someone can connect those silly fan interests to my real life, and that I will somehow suffer if that happens. It doesn’t help that even LiveJournal has a Facebook Connect button now.

Online craft marketplace Etsy recently had a privacy breach, where a new function called People Search publicized buyers’ history on the site and on Google. The main backlash came from people who thought they were buying sensitive products like extra-large dildos anonymously; but if they had even “liked” an item, it showed up attached to their name in search results. Etsy has since fixed the problem and automatically set all history back to private, but it still shows how easily our covers can get blown.

Related posts:

• Video: The Return of 4Chan’s Most Controversial Resident, Boxxy
• Gallery: The Best 4Chan Memes
• Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is a Facebook Event, and You Are Attending
• The Facebook Fan Page for Jenelle Evans’ Mom Barbara Is Hilarious
• Fear Not Facebook Stalkers: WaitingRoom Is Here

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What? No really, what? Some nutcase hanging around SXSW was spotted wearing this vegetable mass on his head — which is already weird — but add the two iPhones that stand in for his eyes and you’re at WTFF-level weirdness (an extra F always makes the point more dramatically). Alert your local cryptozoologist: America’s dumbest human has finally been tracked down.

(via Dumb as a Blog)

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(Photos via Pitchfork)

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Joe Nicolosi‘s reimagination of Super Mario Bros.

1. The gritty indie aesthetic.
2. Bowser as a yuppie who sneers, “Your princess? She’s in another castle.”
3. Mario’s sad face.
4. “You goomba!” “I don’t know where she is!”
5. Makeshift levels that incorporate mini golf castles, go karts, and what looks like a game of DDR.
6. The inclusino of real turtles. (But they better not have gotten hurt!)
7. All of Mario’s power-ups are drugs.
8. Sewage pipes!
9. “I feel so small.” “Let me take a turn.”
10. The final image.

Related posts:

• Video Flashback: Mario Brothers TV Show
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• Video Game Review: Russian Nesting Dolls Go Adventuring in ‘Stacking’

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Anyway, here’s a video of Tig Notaro, the current sole woman of the bunch, doing her “no moleste” joke which I remember completely dying over at a comedy club in LA like 4 years ago:

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Rohin Guha reports from the music scene at SXSW in Austin, Texas. In his latest music discovery, Rohin tracks down an interview with hip-hop artist/rapper K.Flay.

Before stepping out into the world as a forward-thinking rapstress, Illinois-raised K.Flay whiled the hours away in the Stanford libraries. Which explains well her effortless versatility demonstrated on MASHed Potatoes, a mixtape where she spits rhymes over everything from The Gossip to the Black Eyed Peas. K.Flay’s eclectic approach to hip-hop–one that finds muses in NBA players and literary heroines alike–is what makes her one of the unlikelier names on the SXSW bill this year.

Tell me about MASHed Potatoes. How did you figure out which songs you wanted to sample and mix?

MASHed Potatoes was a cool way for me to release something that showcased my production style as well as my songwriting. In terms of picking the tracks, there were two major factors I considered – whether the beat had some dope sections I could sample and whether the song had I title I could mess with thematically. There were a few tracks I thought of sampling immediately, like “Vans” and “Supa Dupa Fly,” but the others just sort of popped into my head.

Many songs on MASHed Potatoes have very forceful, pronounced percussion sections–is that typical of the music that inspires you to write? Why?

I love songs with a strong kick/snare pattern. I listen to a lot of UK hip-hop, and that’s such a huge part of the grime style. On Dizzee Rascal‘s “Boy in Da Corner,” the snare is basically slapping you in the face. The first time I heard it I was like, “Ouch that hurt,” but in a good way.

Who were some of your childhood idols growing up? And who are some of your inspirations now?

As a kid I was a gigantic Chicago Bulls fan. So I pretty much idolized the whole team, from Michael Jordan to Tony Kukoc to B.J. Armstrong to Horace Grant–who had the best plastic eyewear on the planet. But seriously, that 72-10 season still blows my mind. Right now I’m inspired by Margaret Atwood, one of my all-time favorite authors. What’s so cool about her is that she writes everything–novels, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and children’s books–and her ideas are so original and crazy.

Who–dead or alive–would you collaborate with if you could?

I would give my right testicle to record a track with Jimi Hendrix.

Where did you grow up? Tell me about growing up and how you got to the point where you knew you wanted to make music.

I grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. My father taught me to play guitar as a kid, and he and I would jam out to Simon and Garfunkle, Del Shannon, the Beatles, Dylan, all that awesome 60′s and 70′s music. In college, I got into hip hop and started recording tracks on a whim, as something fun. But the more I performed and recorded, the more I realized that this is what I love to do.

How do you decide what you’d like to write about?

Usually, I create the basic skeleton for a track–drums, bass line, synth–and then see what kind of vibe I get. I try to let the music dictate my subject matter, but once I have a concept, I build the rest of the beat around that idea. I almost never sit down and say to myself, “I want to write a song about puppy adoption.” What happens is I create a sixteen-bar
loop and then say to myself, “That sounds like a song about puppy adoption.”

Is this your first SXSW showcase? How do you feel?

This is my first showcase, so I’m definitely excited. I was in Austin last year for the festival, but I was mainly just roaming the streets, eating Cuban food, and soaking up the music. It’s nice to be here in a more legit capacity this time around.

Which performers are you hoping to see?

I’ve decided to adopt a laissez-faire policy at SXSW this year, so I don’t really have a plan of who I’ll be checking out. The plan is to be plan-less and see where that takes me…

K.Flay rounds out her SXSW set with a final show tonight.

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Rohin Guha reports from the music scene at SXSW in Austin, Texas. In his latest pop-music discovery, Rohin tracks down an interview with the mysterious and enchanting Elizabeth Harper, aka “Class Actress,” a singer we should get to know before she gets too famous and starts winning Grammys and stuff.

Born and raised in Southern California but currently residing in notorious New York hipster enclave Williamsburg, Class Actress, aka Elizabeth Harper, has managed to strike a neat, but intriguing balance among a broad range of sensibilities. On her debut EP, Journal of Ardency, Harper not only walks a tightrope over electronica, indie rock, and bubblegum pop, but also manages a different balancing act too. She tempers East Coast ennui with West Coast whimsy and creates a collection that serves as proof of her love of music — as both fan and artist. It’s this same joie de vivre that made her the most logical performer to open for British pop singer Little Boots’ American dates recently and one that now makes her an excellent fit in Austin this week.

Growing up, what did you listen to?
I loved Madonna, I loved Depeche Mode’s David Gahan and Martin Gore. I loved jazz. Bossa Nova, too–those were the vocals I wanted to emulate. Soft, pretty, jazz-like vocals.

Speaking of Madonna, you were presented by the New York Press as a Brooklyn-based incarnation of Madonna. What do you think of that kind of label?
It’s rad! You’re a woman on stage. Let’s face it–people are looking at you for that reason. So you might as well embrace it. And that you’re sexy and have that sexuality. Rather than play up the awkwardness.

But you don’t see that as problematic?
I don’t think that’s an expectation. I think it’s something that if you feel free — if you feel sensual — then you might as well let it go. I think that if you try to be sexy then you’re not going to be sexy. That’s the antithesis of sexiness. When people are dancing at a club, they feel sexy. They move in a certain way. They dress in a certain way. It’s a free feeling. That’s what I feel on stage. I think if you’re a performer and you can embody that feeling being out and feeling kind of like your avatar-self, I think you’re doing OK.

Your music tends to be very diverse. What kind of music do you try to avoid listening to?
I’ve been through every stage of music. Nirvana at one point and Blur. I played guitar for a long time. But I never got into emo. I don’t think the whiny boys in tight T-shirts were ever my style.

How did Journal of Ardency come to be?
We had these songs ready to go. And then we thought to put out the EP. We wanted to put five songs first to get people interested in the music to get people interested in the press on that. Also to give a little taste of what the album’s goign to sound like.

Who are you looking forward to seeing at SXSW?
I want to check out Neon Indian, Grizzly Bear, and the Dum Dum Girls.

This being your first SXSW showcase, how are you feeling?
I’m so excited! I had dreams about it last night. I can’t wait to go there and tear it up.

Class Actress has several shows lined up as part of SXSW.

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Casey LaBow

Read our original post on Casey and Ryan for our first impressions of Ry’s new lady. (We can call him Ry because he is our future husband.)

(Photo: WENN.com)

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