The Anti-Blog Blogger

Flattery Is The Best Imitation

2004-09-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

We were quietly sipping poorly mixed Vodka Collinses at The Maritime Hotel, wondering how our friends down at Mynt in Miami Beach were coping with four hurricanes. No, we don't mean Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. Rather, we mean those awful drinks high school kids order when they first obtain fake ID. Apparently, someone near and dear to us has a taste for them and has made an ass of herself, stumbling next door to Rock Club and picking up a something more than a cheap thrill. Darling, be sure to take your medication since it will make the symptoms subside.

Meanwhile, in Gotham, there appears to be a pretender to our Throne of The Amusingly Bored. Someone has started a blog called "Some Blogs Are Better Than Others" and proceeded to attack the very same bloggers who received our barbs last year. When our South Florida office called in to report this act of forgery right under our toes, we knew we had to act. Clearly, this was a big incident since the Miami office was more concerned over this than treating social diseases. But the question is, what to do (besides recommending Valtrex)?

Shall we go on the offensive and regain our place in the sun? Or do we sit back, quietly enjoying retirement, and ask the deejay at PM to turn the music up higher so that we can drown out the sounds eminating from the mouth of the Russian Flavor of The Month? Thus far, we choose the latter. However, be warned: Once we sober up (and we know we made this threat a few months ago but never had the impetus to do anything about it), there will be hell to pay.

Our First Comment...

2004-06-21T19:46:00.001-07:00

Our first comment was on this site no less and came from someone pretending to be the late President Martin Van Buren. Why and how someone would take the old Knickerbocker's personality is beyond us. Sadly, one of us is quite clumsy and deleted this brilliant contribution to the Internet's literature.

Anyway, Marty posted a comment asking us if we were Whigs ("Are you a Whig?" to be precise). In response, we'd like to say we like everyone from Catholics to Freemasons so the answer is probably no. Now please stop this nonsense and take on another personality. Try referring to yourself in the plural, for instance.

Don't Make Us Come Back

2004-06-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

We thought we were going to close down for good.

We had a lot of fun reviewing blogs and offering our not-so-humble opinions. However, it was taking WAY too long for some of us to read all the nonsense out there. Plus, one of us really wanted to impress a guitarist who tendered us a death threat. When that rock star's email address was posted by our staff for all Christendom to see, the negative effects on this particular contributor's non-existent dating life got in the way and we decided to hang our chappeaus.

Some of us were enjoying our retirements at The Shore Club in Miami Beach, where we would engage in inane conversations with models on their downward spiral of sex, drugs, and being squired by club owners. Others were spending their evenings negotiating the perilous journey from Da Silvano's to PM, all the time trying to avoid inane conversations with models trying to find someone to finance their downward spiral of sex and drugs.

Then the Internet called.

It said "Help us, Anti-Blog Blogger! Now the comments on blogs are becoming stupid! Save us!". And with that, we searched our closets for our masks and capes and began our patrols once more, only this time we are focusing on the comments of each entry.

"It's a lot of work", one of us grumbled. And so it is. But we're almost up to the task. We don't like the fact that this will take away prime drinking time at Mynt or Serafina's. So, before we begin, we're going to issue a warning to the masses: If you don't stop with arrogant, self-righteous comments on equally absurd blogs, YOU will be targeted.

Don't make us do it. This time, it's going to be brutal.

Goodbye, Cruel World

2003-08-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

We were putting the finishing touches on our best entry yet: a whole three-paragraph lashing of the most behind-the-times music site ever -- not RollingStone.com -- but worse, Earlash. Sure, it's not a blog. But we were having fun. And, we were quite proud of our literary accomplishment. Then the little Michael Hutchence in our brain said: why not just end it all right now? We had promised we would go out before our peak and we think we would've reached it with that post. So none of you will get to read it. Instead, we'll let you imagine what we had to say. And if your blogs are any indication, your imagination is quite limited.

Now is the time when we say goodbye. As is our practice, our work is not done and we're damn proud of it. We're also proud of the comments you emailed us, good and bad. We're even proud of the message board thread about us. Why? Because at least it got you to reflect on what it is you are all doing. Someone out there is reading your work. And someone out there is making fun of you to your friends.

There are many blogs out there worth reading. There are many more that are not. We definitely have favorites and this whole process has lead us to appreciate them more. We won't recommend any because that's your decision to make. Suffice it to say, the ones that are worth it are the ones that brought a dfferent opinion about what everyone else was reading not for the sake of being a contrarian, but due to the fact the individual writing it just saw the same thing differently. Simple enough, right? Wrong.

In music, for example, there are bands that have all the technical skills. They know every Velvet Underground and Ramones album inside and out. They buy all the right clothes. Even their name is just this side of hip. Yet when they go on stage, all they do is mimic someone else.

Then there are those bands that may not have all the technical skills. Maybe they listen to music that was embarrassing even in the 1980s to listen to. Maybe they don't wear aviator glasses or tee-shirts with ironic logos and maybe they even tuck their shirts in. But when they play, they add something to music that was never there before. Even if their sound is something familiar, they add something to it that makes it uniquely theirs. Eventually, someone will get to them to dress better, but that's just cosmetics. Though most bands are echoes, these are the bands that are the true voices. The bloggers worth something are the ones who can sift through the echoes and listen for the voices even if everyone else is doing otherwise.

In the marketplace of ideas, the masses are hip to all this to some degree and we should be thankful for it. That is why kids still worship talentless screw-ups while music know-it-alls end up working at Sam Goody trying to overwhelm novice musicians with jargon and eye-rolling. As a great man once said, "I don't care what key it's in, where it comes from, or where it's been. Just play the music."

If your blog was not the subject of a post, that doesn't mean we didn't think about writing about you. Especially you, Glamorama. But like many things in our lives, we just won't be bothered with it. Perhaps one day we'll return. Most likely, though, we won't.

In the meantime, let us hope we kept you on your toes. This is a new form of communication in many ways. Though we're no fans of terms like "responsibility", we think you should at least be aware that if you are going to subject people to your ideas, you should strive to do it right even if what you have to say is pointless.

A Grudgingly Half-Ass Kudos

2003-08-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

While we here at The Anti-Blog Blogger feel there's just too much to criticize for us to say something nice, every so often a blogger gets the right idea. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And yesterday was The Modern Age's broken clock day. When we first read curmudgeon Benjamin "Ben" Kessler's letter to the New York Press, our first reaction was, "How did Paul Sevigny scrounge enough cash for cocaine when Dana Giacchetto cleaned him out of his money?" Our second thought was, "What the hell is Paul Sevigny thinking by sharing coke with those two blabbermouths, Jasper and Audrey, knowing full well they will just write about it, causing everyone jonesing for Face Drano to wait by the stage at an insufferable ARE Weapons show just to glom some blow?" Then we got to reading The Modern Age's response to his email. We even had a brief chuckle over a line or two until we actually read the response and found out what we just did was so... 2002. The Modern Age not only did a good job mocking him, it also did a splendid job digging up his older writings and goofing on that, too. You did us proud, Laura. Just don't get to thinking we like everything else you do.

What Benji Kessler failed to understand is that blogging is journalistic karaoke. Sure, bloggers write about real events: concerts, parties, their cats dying... but does anyone really take them that seriously? Okay, maybe a few knife-weilding bands do. And, apparently, so does Benji Kessler. We run a whole Web site dedicated to writing about bloggers but only because they're fun to make fun of.

When we read Benji's rant, it brought to mind those NYU Tisch School of the Arts dramatic writing students who always think their work is far more important than it really is. They produce nothing in the world and their testimony to their existence after they are gone is the bullshit on paper or celluloid they leave behind. In essence, they are bloggers but with SERIOUS ego problems. They're always the counter-culture yet they whine that more government funding should go to the arts rather than to making sure our borders are safe so those menacing Canadians don't get any ideas. The world just isn't right because guys like Benji aren't in charge. Just ask them. Like every other person they know, they protested the war in Iraq and have stickers on their backpacks that say they hate the President. They're open-minded but you're not and therefore, they don't want to hear what it is you have to say. Just for kicks, try finding out how many people they know are, say, pro-life. We'll bet not one. And despite Benji's inaccurate charge that bloggers are lilly-white (what the fuck is Jasper, anyway? We can't figure that one out), we'll venture to guess that his social circle looks more like the cast of "Friends" than it does the DeGrassi-style diversity of Sea Ray.

Benji, you dumb bitch, you just don't get it. Nothing anyone does is free from outside influence. We are, after all, social urban dwellers and are thus almost completely captive to the tastes of those in society we are trying hardest to replicate. Even the tastes of the counter-culture are dictated as a socialized reaction to mass culture since counter-culture has social pressures to conform within it as well. Remember in the 1980s how you bought that leather jacket and got that mohawk so you could stand out from everyone else? Yet you would go to CBGBs and see everyone with the same jacket and the same mohawk. No one wore 14th Century knight's clothing and listened to klezmer music in that scene, now did they?

You think the clothes you wear on the cutting edge but only because of your social environment and marketing. The music you listen to that you think is free from Madison Avenue's hand is really the product of your social environment and marketing. The political ideas you have are really the product of your social environment and marketing. The news you read, the shows on TV you like, the indie films you watch at the Angelica all appeal to you only because of your social environment and marketing. Even your reaction to bloggers is a result of you conforming to your social environment.

Fact is, most of the bloggers out there were on the fringe of their social environments in high school, which is relevant given the youthful age of many of them. They found a voice in the indie music scene. Until then, no one cared what they thought about music or clothes or movies or whatever. All The Anti-Blog Blogger is saying is that no one still cares, either. But no one REALLY cares about whiners like you, Benji. Maybe if you had Paul Sevigny's cocaine stash, things would be different. And when you do, let us know and we'll be nice to you, too.

Oh, Beloved Progress!

2003-08-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to report that in the few days we have been in existence, a few blogs have taken notice to our, um, suggestions and will make some changes. As we write this:

1. New York Doll had her mommy read to her instructions on reducing the file sizes of her homepage photos and has reduced the loading time of her site.

2. Jasper has publicly admitted to his bias towards bands with women in them and has even taken the bold step of photographing an all-male band.

3. Divestar will soon give its header a Brazilian bikini waxing now that Jay Divestar has... uh... gracefully exited.

As for the person who emailed us with a story suggestion, we would love to do a review of bloggers' Friendster profiles. However, we do think they deserve a degree of privacy even if they sometimes tell us WAY too much about themselves. After all, none of them has threatened our lives. If any blogger out there would like us to review their profile, please submit your name by Wednesday at midnight EST. Since we like his/her style, we would also like to invite the person who submitted the suggestion to feel free to contribute ideas and/or reviews and comments to us. The same goes for the rest of you as well.

The Moonies' Media Empire

2003-08-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

We would like to meet the person who got to Jinners and said to her, "You know what the Internet needs? It needs 1,000 more blogs. Why don't you start them all?" We would like to then commit that person to an insane assylum to protect the public good. Worse, Jinners isn't just content to running an alarming four (!) blogs. Besides trying to brainwash the masses into believing The Walkmen are a good band, her goal is also to suck the time out of all the other bloggers out there so that they lose whatever it is that causes them to start a blog. Sure, in many cases, that's an admirable ambition. However, Jinners carries out this sinister plan with a tag board, perhaps the worst invention on the Internet since pop-ups. The tag board on her main site has become one big chat room of other bloggers who should either be writing on their own site or else not writing at all. And with many of them, we're hoping for the latter. We have concluded that the only thing worse than blogs is bloggers writing to each other.

More creepy is that the first thing that loads on Jinners' main site is a picture of her eyes in a "Big Brother is watching you" sort of way. Thanks to the fact that her Web site has an unneccessary amount of pictures on the homepage, it can take a real long time before anything else loads. You are left just looking at Jinners. We strongly insist from experience not to smoke pot or drop acid prior to visiting the page to prevent you from thinking Jinners is staring at you from the other end of the monitor.

Enough Plagerism Already!

2003-08-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, The Modern Age linked to an article about Dakota Fanning, that annoying girl from that Brittany Murphy movie. Then, as we perused ypersound today, we see a link to the same article. Likewise, when Divestar published a picture of two oragami figures participating in a sex act with "divestar.org" printed on their nude oragami bodies, The Jean Genie decided not to be outdone by... publishing a picture of two oragami figures participating in a sex act with "divestar.org" printed on their nude oragami bodies. At least Bidi linked all of her pictures to their original sites. Nonetheless, do we need to see the same thing on every single blog out there? It seems that whole cut-and-paste function is dangerous in the hands of a blogger. As your shop teacher would have said, "'Ctrl-V' is a tool, not a toy."

And Now The Threats Get Violent

2003-08-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Our policy here at The Anti-Blog Blogger is to not reprint email addresses to us. We do have one exception: Terroristic threats. Below is a good example of a terroristic threat. In fact, if we were the prosecuting kind, we would forward this off to the FBI and let them handle it. Instead, we're going to let you comment directly to the author yourselves. Congratulate him/her if you wish. That person is the same author of the previous email posted earlier today:

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 13:31:12 -0400
From: XXXXXXX [Ed: Since this was originally posted, we subsequently found out who it is and one of us has made a very sorry attempt to hook up with her. So sad.]
To: TheAntiBlogBlogger@yahoo.com

I'd like to knife you in a dark alley.

More Hate Mail!

2003-08-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes an email just says it all. Here's what we woke up to this morning:

"Seems like you guys have spent lots of time doing research on a bunch of sites that you consider to be "a waste of time." Do you see the silliness here?
Some of the web sites are dumb, don't get me wrong, but then don't read 'em. For those of us in bands, web sites like Divestar and Jenyk are the modern day equivalent to zines where we can get a little support and hopefully get more people to hear our music.
So what's your problem? Are you frustrated musicians? Did you try to start a
band with Carlos D before Interpol and he turned you down? Or maybe your blog isn't as cool as everyone else's and you are a tad bitter. Whatever. Get off it already.
Signed,
a musician that Jo ACTUALLY KNOWS!!!"

Well, that put us in our place.

The Results Are In!

2003-08-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

And the survey says... you're all masochists and you want us to keep writing about you! Heck, some of you even think we're pulling punches. We did not receive one call to take down the site and, quite frankly, we're upset about that. Keeping a blog fresh on a daily basis is the sort of thing people with a lot of free time on their hands can do and we're.... Okay, maybe we should get a life. That most of the votes came from bloggers leads us to believe this is some sort of punishment.

We're intrigued at the idea that all three Divestar girls (past and present) voted to keep us going. That includes Stella, who stayed true to form by voting twice. Our success in uniting all three of them, even for one brief moment, leads us to say, "Hey, George Mitchell -- get out of the way, bitch!"

Soviet Panda was able to put down his juicebox long enough to cast his vote in the affirmative before returning to a very important episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Why Panda even invited us to take aim at him but admitting to liking Ambulance Ltd sums it up for us already.

We promise you one thing, though: This site will hopefully come to an early end. As George Costanza pointed out, you should always leave on a high note. We plan on leaving before our mission is complete. After all, none of you would hear from lead singers that Ian Curtis and Jeff Buckley were their influences if those fallen men lived and continued down the inevitable road towards sucky music like The Strokes or Interpol are doing right now.

Get ready for more posts this coming week. That means you, Jinners.

Mailbag for the Scumbags We Are

2003-08-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

We have concluded that nothing ruins a hangover's buzz quite like being called malicious. Last night, shortly after we published our review of Divestar, we received a message written in crayon and including the heading "Ms. Griffin's Class" saying we had gone to far. Seeing that we may have touched a nerve somewhere, we changed our entry. Specifically, we had made reference to a blogger with Enron-style accounting prowess. While we may be bitches, the purpose of this blog was not to get too personal. A couple of sentences were cut -- a practice we do not want to do regularly since it may compromise the openess of this site. However, when we're wrong and have crossed the line, we strive to jump right back behind the line before anyone catches it.

Apparently, though, it was too late. This morning, when we woke up (well, one of us at least), there was an email describing us as "malicious". Let us be clear here. We do not wish what happened to the Divestar kids to happen to anyone except to Gawker. And we have made a note that Jay Divestar left the Divestar Organization on amicable terms, throwing to pot speculation that Jo Divestar was about to become the subject of her own E! True Hollywood Story special.

The tone of the emails we received caused us to reconsider The Anti-Blog Blogger. The purpose of this was to lighten things up in Blogland, be it bloggers or the people who read them. But are bloggers ready to accept a little ribbing every now and then or are they too sensitive and fragile? As we are big fans of reader feedback, we pose this question directly to you: Should The Anti-Blog Blogger continue at all? Let us know by midnight EST tonight. If we get enough "no" votes, this site will be taken down at once and quietly disappear.

Divestar... or Deathstar?

2003-08-23T23:33:00.000-07:00

Speaking of warfare and murder, what's Jo Divestar's problem? Apparently, she's trying to edge out J-Lo, Barbara Streisand, Whitney Houston, and Liza Minelli as the most difficult woman to work with in show biz... wait, bloggers aren't in show biz; they just THINK they are.

First was the ousting of veridicality-challenged Stella Divestar. Then we find out that Jay Divestar is out of the picture as well. Hey, Jo "Diana Ross" Divestar, get over yourself already. You're taking this whole "I AM Divestar" way too seriously. Definitely, you are going to have to drop the ".org" from your address. ".disorg" is more like it.

Also, Jo, you're not going to innoculate yourself from us. None of you bloggers reading this will. Trying to give us compliments, though all true, will not save you. In fact, maybe if you threw a few compliments to your former blogmates instead of people you don't know, perhaps you wouldn't be doing it all by yourself now. But then again, isn't incessant fawning over people you don't know the raison-d'etre of the whole music blog scene?

One more thing, Jo: pubic hair. Shave it. Not on yourself (though, hey, we won't stop you if you do) but on your site. Specifically, the top graphic. While it must have seemed all cutesy to do it on your graphics program it looks, well, hairy. When we read your site, we think of Madonna's Playboy photos. It's just not cool. (We need to thank a reader for pointing this out... but we won't.)

Jenyk -- the Blog with Blood on Its Hands

2003-08-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

Some blogs can be accused of being boring. Others can be accused of wasting valuable time. Jenyk takes it to a whole new level: warfare and murder.

Someone ought to call the Defense Department on that blog and send its proprietor, Jasper, to a rat-infested prison on Guantanamo Bay. In a sick and twisted plot to score with the opposite sex, Jasper has apparently stolen our fighting forces' night vision equipment for use on his camera. All this just to take pictures of bands that have one thing in common: they all have at least one woman in them. Think we're kidding? Take a close look at the pictures on his site. Odds are, most of the bands are heavily representing the xx gene. The sole exception to that is Elefant and given the mascara pretty-boy Diego Garcia puts on, they might as well count for having a chick in their band, too.

Look at the evidence:

-- As of now, Jasper has 308 sets of band photographs.
-- The US has lost a total of 273 soldiers in Iraq since the start of the conflict.

-- Some of the 9/11 terrorists were based of Jersey City.
-- Jasper is based out of Jersey City.

-- Al Jezira had questionable reporters on the ground in Iraq.
-- Jasper lovingly photographs questionable band El Jezel.

Coincidence? We think not. As he uses night vision equipment to make mediocre female musicians seem attractive, American soldiers are dying with no back up. When will the murder end, Jasper? When you get laid? Must we wait so long? Stop the bloodshed, Jasper!

Hallelujah!

2003-08-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

Kudos to TMFTML for recognizing the sad fact that Jeneane Garofalo should be put down in the "Former Comedian" category on Hollywood Squares. As well, he broke the news to us about Jenna Jameson's new book. We can assure him, however, we still won't be reading his blog when he gets back.

Ultrasnore

2003-08-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

Just when we thought it was safe to go on the Internet, Spin Magazine's Ultragrrrl decides to punish us with her own blog. On it, we get to read about... Ultragrrrl. To the exclusion of everything else. Wait... maybe she sometimes writes about other things. Okay, she really doesn't. In this week's postings, we were surprised we didn't read, "There was a bombing in Iraq today and I thought to myself, 'Is today a good day to go to the beach? Because it's, like, way too hot and I don't want to get a sunburn.'" The past couple of weeks have read like one long AA session where there's only one alcoholic and she falls off the wagon every three days. What's particularly sad is that she's depriving a therapist in NYC enough income to buy a new BMW every year and is instead posting her sessions on the Net. Who's gonna pay us $150 every time we read it?Thanks to a photograph on the site, we at least learned the diminutive Ultra is a little over 5 feet tall and can expect a call from either Joan Jett or Joyce DeWitt for stealing their haircut. For shame!

New York (Plays With A) Doll...

2003-08-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Would someone be so kind as to tell New York Doll that her site still takes about an hour to load? At first we thought it was slow servers based out of her kindergarten class at an Upper West Side elementary school. Upon further investigation, we found out it's because she doesn't shrink the size of photos to a more manageable file size. She wasted a full 69kb alone on a photo of that Gary Dell'Abate/Baba Booey look-alike from Blue Sparks which adorns the homepage. We know that New York Doll has been too busy to notice this as she has been preparing her newest artwork consisting of macaroni, a paper plate, and fingerpaint. Would the next person who passes by the monkey bars at her playground inform her of this so she can correct it? Thank you.

Welcome, suckahs!

2003-08-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first blog that does nothing but criticize other blogs. No one likes a talentless critic. However, talentless critics now have a place to go: they start a blog. So we here at The Anti-Blog Blogger figured we might actually become the first derivative blog on the Net. After all, we're talentless critics ourselves, even more so than the talentless critics who have their own blogs. No doubt, a few of you will start your own versions of this site. Soon, we'll have the Anti-Anti-Blog Blogger in our midst. In the meantime, sit back in your place of unemployment and enjoy!