JUST FOR THE RECORD
This has been a bizarre week. Over here, it's been raining all kinds of hate.
Thanks to what I can only describe as a half-funny, half-horrifying smear campaign being conducted by one very determined blogger with a grudge, I find myself in the ridiculous position of having to assure people - including good friends of mine - that I have NOT been sending out racist emails to anyone. I'm sure said grudge-bearer is cackling with glee at the success of his libelous endeavor and even I have to admit that his week-long Bash-A-Thon has had moments of brazen brilliance. Alas, some of his followers aren't quite as clever as they've used this as an opportunity to unload rather ugly, anti-Asian comments made both here and elsewhere. It's ironic actually: I haven't called anyone a "n*****" but I have people call me a "faggot" and a "chink." All this over taking someone off my blog roll.
(By the way, if you're just tuning in and have no idea what the hell is going on - consider yourself lucky.)
Anyways, that isn't the only craziness going on around here. I had a very nice conversation with hip-hop producer Camu Tao of SA Smash yesterday afternoon after both of us found ourselves the target of an elaborate but juvenile practical joke. Someone claiming to be Camu called me - on my home # no less - the other night to complain about a negative review I had written about SA Smash in URB. Faux Camu proceeded to dole out the standard "I don't like negative reviews, you're taking money out of my pocket, blah blah blah" rant that I've gotten from other indie rappers but what's funny is that I've never written on Camu or SA Smash before and Real Camu never even knew who I was until this incident sprung up. You can imagine both our confusion.
One wonders why anyone would go through all the trouble of claiming to be Camu in particular - not that he's not worthy of clonage - especially since they were too lazy to fact-check that I've never wrote on him or his group to begin with. In any case, Real Camu and I had a very good laugh about the whole thing. Five minutes on the phone with him and it was instantly obvious that he'd never be that kind of dude who would harass writer over a review. In fact, Real Camu has even more of a vested interest in knowing who's pretending to be him, especially when they're putting words in his mouth and potentially creating problems for him because of the subterfuge. If there wasn't a mad rapper before, there is now.
By the way, let's just consider this again: someone claiming to be a real rapper calls me up to complain about something I didn't write.
Forget about raining hate, it's raining crazy.
Good god though - stuff like this makes EVERYTHING so much better. I don't even watch The Daily Show religiously, but Stewart is genius on this clip from his appearance on CNN's Crossfire, not only managing to embarass the two hosts but raising some genuinely important issues around media responsibility and partisan politics.
(credt: Jay Smooth)
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