nathan scott

jaycaspiankang:

I woke up this morning and read Lydia Kiesling’s review of Tao Lin’s Taipei and now I am — fuck it, I’ll just say it — REALLY FUCKING ANGRY that something so irresponsible could be published on an influential site like The Millions.

Angry enough, at least, to FJM it.

For those unfamiliar with…

nehrujackets:

This is my favorite video on the internet. 57 minutes of Jason Derulo singing his own name. An early favorite moment is at about 30 seconds. Enjoy! 

-Himanshu Kumar

theculturewhore:

Last Fall we met the boys behind the band Filligar at Gramercy Theater. Last week they came back to the big apple to rock the crowd once again. Below, you’ll find the concert in a series of GIFS.

The band is about to drop a new record, Hexagon, and we caught wind that they would also be…

xennedy:

90s Jon Snow

Pucillo - Square Roots

Malevich - Black Square

Grouplove - “Ways to Go”

Titus Andronicus - A More Muppet Union. This is my favorite song and this is my favorite TV show and it’s all coming together.

I made it, guys.

This is excellent.

christophermonro:

“I love you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I had some fun this weekend drawing up the characters from my favorite Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom.

I’m starting a new job today for FTW, which is a new sports website run by USA Today. I grew up a big sports fan and I’m excited to get a chance to write about them. (I’ll post something longer soon about this decision…but for now, that’s the news.)

I’m leaving Thought Catalog partly because I’m not sure the protocol with publishing other places and also because I want to fully dive in to this new gig. I have a tendency to spread myself super thin and I wanted to jump into this new opportunity with a full heart and mind. (I promise I’ll still write occasionally though, when I get the A-OK and I have a free minute.)

Thanks so much for reading. I’ma miss all you guys. 

While I’m feeling all sad and nostalgic, and because a couple people asked—this is my favorite thing I ever wrote for Thought Catalog. It’s also pretty much my Thesis Statement of Hope for the Internet.

This will be my last article for Thought Catalog for a bit. (New writing job starts Monday…news on that to come.) Thanks so much to Stephanie, Brandon, Chelsea, Ben, Nico, Mags and the gang for all the love and support and making me feel like part of something special. 

Saw Yeah Yeah Yeahs this weekend and forgot how perfect this song is. JESUS.

inbetweensubtleties:

Joelan’s Beach Fale, Savaii, Samoa

My boy can take photos.

If I had any more coherent thoughts on this, I’d probably post it on TC or wherever, but for now, this will have to do.

First off, for those who don’t know, DFW’s “This is Water” speech was actually a commencement speech given at Kenyon College back in ‘05. I found a transcript of the speech online in ‘06, read it about 25,000 times, and ended up getting the words “this is water” tattooed on my left arm.

Now, here in 2013, the speech is getting traction again. To be honest, for the most part I’m delighted. I like that a larger audience of people is hearing the message. I love the idea that maybe I won’t have to explain the tattoo to every single person who sees the inside of my bicep. 

Still, some things about the whole shebang made me feel a little icky. I’m probably overthinking, but that’s sort of my thing, y’know?

For one, I don’t love the whole decision by the makers of the viral video to just pick and choose what elements of the speech they liked the best. One huge point of the speech is all the tangled thoughts, the audience’s bizarre reaction when DFW discusses the yuppies in the SUVs (they cheer to make fun of these people, when DFW is specifically asking the audience to find it in their humanity to empathize with these people, and there is a magical, awkward moment when he CHASTISES the crowd for their reaction), the messy things that make a speech a speech. That’s not what the makers of the video want. They want slick visuals and a smooth message that fits neatly into a virable-video length.

(Speaking of which, their decision to shoot the grocery store segment in what is clearly a NYC-frou-frou Whole Foods sort of destroys the very point he was trying to make with the grocery store part of his speech, no?)

Secondly, the fact that this video got its most traction on Gawker is spectacularly ironic, in that Gawker is our generation’s leading peddler of the hip, ironic detachment and sniping negativity that DFW spent pretty much the entire second half of his life waging a war against.  

(I won’t even get into Gawker’s decision to call the video “inspirational,” which is a bizarre word in and of itself, especially since the speech, when you boil it down, is really a depressed man’s best attempt at advice on how to not kill yourself. And then a few years later he killed himself. Alas.)

Mostly, I guess I feel ickiness at the further deification and smoothing over a brilliant but fucked up guy who was sort of an asshole and slept with a ton of women and broke up a marriage and then killed himself. (And I fucking love DFW and I’m saying that. I’m a fanboy. I’m all in.) But he wasn’t smooth. And the idea of this slick film capturing his speech, shot on its DSLRs and edited down for timeliness, just gives me the willies. 

I wrote about Sixpence None The Richer’s “Kiss Me” and I think committed libel against Freddie Prinze Jr. probably.

shoutsfromthebalcony:

Nate: Matt. MATT. MATTY. THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. After a month of stern glares and meandering subplots and terse discussions and Don cheating on his wife for the three hundred and seventy fifth thousand time…something happened. SOMETHING FUCKING HAPPENED. HALLELUJAH.

What happened?…