BLOGERATI PARTY

throwing a soiree but not everyone's invited

In concept, I'm not mad at the new Huffington Post Blog which brings together dozens (and I do mean dozens) of different pundits, public figures, celebs, etc. to join the greatest blog cluster f--- in the history of group blogging. It's meant to act as a Left-y corrective to some of the more Right leaning blogs out there with the #1 target being The Drudge Report (aka one of the worst designed content sites in the history of the internet). Politically, I'm always game for any attempt on the Left to try to reclaim some valuable ground in the culture wars.

So far, it doesn't look like the Huffington Post is going to achieve that victory.

#1, and this is so glaring that it stares you dead in the face, THP is overwhelmingly white, male and post-boomer/pre-Gen-X. Not. A. Good. Look. It's stunning that Arianna would have been so lax in failing to offer a more diverse selection of opinion-makers. If I wanted to know what 40-something white guys think about the world, all I'd need to do is open any newspaper, magazine or TV channel and voila.

#2, there's far, far too much content and very little of it is worth reading. That's a reflection of the blog world in general (Poplicks not excepted): everyone has something to say but very little of it is worth hearing. What THP has done is collect all these inane opinions by presumably smart people and make them available on a single site. I suppose this has the advantage of allowing you to only click once to close the window on so much wasted content rather than having to do it across 40 open pages.

Maybe the issue here is one of organization - if THP were designed better, perhaps by categorizing the content of the posts or the posters, then people would have an easier time navigating the site and finding content they'd actually want to read rather than being drown in so much blogahherea. I suspect (hope) that someone at THP will realize that they have a huge content management problem on their hand and quickly find some solutions. Otherwise, THP, I suspect, will go down as a provocative experiment, but ultimately, a failed one.

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MEANWHILE...

Gangstarr = No More?. At least that's the rumor. Not that I thought Gangstarr would go out with a huge bang, but after The Ownerz quietly came and went, the demise of one of hip-hop's greatest duos does seem rather anti-climactic. What I want to know is where Primo has disappeared off to. Considering that he was once the underground's #1 go-to beatmaker, he's been conspiciously quiet for the last two years. Just Blaze has filled in that vacuum nicely but Primo's sudden vanishing is still odd.
(credit: J-Smooth)

MTV's Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums. As with all list-making, MTV's selections are entirely open to debate and critique (and no doubt, people have hardly wasted any time in doing both). All things said, the consensus list between MTV's different staff members reads conventionally with few surprises. I do think putting Tupac on there is pure pandering to populism especially given the glaring omissions: Wu-Tang, BDP, ATCQ, De La Soul, etc. On the other hand, a Top 10 list is far too small to be able to be truly inclusive of every album worthy to be in consideration. Top 25 though? Perhaps.
(credit: Spine Magazine)

Tough week for penguins. In New York, two gay penguins are causing a ruckus while in San Francisco, chlamydia from an infected sea gull kills a dozen penguins. (Just for the record, this wasn't a result of inter-special slutting around - avian chlamydia spreads more easily than the human VD variety).

Name that font. Now this is what the WWW was created for: WhatTheFont.com. Or maybe this: Knightcite Bibliography Maker.

Last but never least: squirrelploitation. Doesn't the name Superbushsquirrel sound quite risque? Instead, you get stuff like this:

Now THIS is what makes the WWW so amazing.
(credit: Derek Wong)

--O.W.