And MeFi Recommends?
April 4, 2006 10:04 PM   Subscribe

McSweeney's Recommends. <-- some are serious, some are funny, most are entertaining (assuming you are easily entertained). Posted here mainly because I wanted to see what MeFites could come up with (as in: MeFites Recommend).
posted by spock (27 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: there must be a better way to do what you are trying to do



 
Metafilter's Recommends:
Metatalk
Where FPPs like this, and their authors, are mercilessly trashed. And trashed. And trashed some more.
posted by mullacc at 10:16 PM on April 4, 2006


Metafilter
Where people don't even wait until the second comment to start shitting in the thread.
posted by baphomet at 10:17 PM on April 4, 2006


No thank you.
posted by argybarg at 10:18 PM on April 4, 2006


Metafilter recommends deletion.
posted by Falconetti at 10:29 PM on April 4, 2006


Not Saying Anything, If You Find That The Saying Of Something Nice Is Beyond You

Remember when your mother told you this? She was right.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:29 PM on April 4, 2006


This seems like something that would go over alot better on MetaChat.

But I will second the recommendation for Olbermann's Countdown.
posted by fenriq at 10:32 PM on April 4, 2006


Screened porches
Protection from bugs and rain while still getting the benefit of the fresh air.


haha
posted by null terminated at 10:36 PM on April 4, 2006


MetaFilter recommends:

Not publishing the flotsam of masturbation sessions online. Fuck McSweeney's and Eggers.
posted by DaShiv at 10:44 PM on April 4, 2006


a2m pornography.
posted by I Love Tacos at 11:01 PM on April 4, 2006


Whoah, tough crowd. Fuck it, I'm quasi drunk and about to go to bed. I recommend Calendula deoderant from Tom's of Maine. It's one of the few deoderants that doesn't make my armpits break out in a rash, and it smells nice (according to my wife).

I also recommend steak.
posted by jefbla at 11:59 PM on April 4, 2006


All of you suck. I, too, am going to bed.
posted by Tlogmer at 12:39 AM on April 5, 2006


Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain
This 1983 kung fu fantasy epic features special swords, evil babies, and an old man with long, superpowered eyebrows. His name is "Long Brows."


Seriously - you've got to see this movie. It's fricking nuts!
posted by wfrgms at 12:44 AM on April 5, 2006


Fuck McSweeney's and Eggers.
posted by DaShiv at 10:44 PM PST on April 4


Why? They publish a lot of good work by a lot of good writers, and I admire Eggers's charity work. I mean, if you're not going to back up such an infantile comment, fuck you.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 12:53 AM on April 5, 2006


I admire Eggers's charity work

I admire Médecins Sans Frontières charity work much more than I admire Eggers'. does it mean that if MSF starts a lame literary magazine I have to like that, too?
posted by matteo at 1:33 AM on April 5, 2006


MeFi Recommends Making this an Ask MeFi Thread Instead.
posted by mrbill at 2:39 AM on April 5, 2006


'Chilling the fuck out
Chilling the fuck out is the way to go, actually. Just take a couple of deep breaths and go for a walk. Exercising is a good idea, too.'

Quoted for emphasis.
posted by slimepuppy at 2:55 AM on April 5, 2006


spock, what is it with you and mcsweeneys anyway?
posted by Gator at 3:08 AM on April 5, 2006


MeFi recommends that people think twice before posting. That applies for poster as well as commenter.
posted by Acey at 3:27 AM on April 5, 2006


Firstly, spock, thanks for the link. I hadn't been to McSweeny's for ages, and that was a decent way to kill 5 minutes at work (my own rule of thumb for MeFi so A+++ would read FPP again etc.).

Secondly, I knew exactly how this thread was going to go before I read it, and if I could be bothered to work up any emotion, that emotion would undoubtedly be a faint sense of depression at the somewhat predictable level of kneejerk nastiness here nowadays.

Thirdly, I recommend:

Rubicon by Tom Holland, a complusively readable history of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic. Containing vivid portraits of the personalities that dominated the Republic, Sulla, Crassus, Cato, Pompey, Caesar, Holland has a novelist's eye for detail. The sequence detailing the final fall of Crassus is one of the most poignant things I've read in years. The book manages the trick of both bringing home the otherness of Rome, while also slyly pointing out contemporary references without distracting from the main argument. (Me, I love the fact that, after Hannibal, Rome banned Carthage from maintaining elephants of war and sent inspectors over there to make sure they weren't maintaining any massive weapons of destruction).
posted by Hartster at 3:44 AM on April 5, 2006


if you're not going to back up such an infantile comment, fuck you.

Way to conflate intensity of expression with juvenility, Optimus Chyme. But I was quite explicit: the piece was insufferably self-indulgent, a clever LiveJournal piece writ large while propped up against the edifice of McSweeney's. Hey, look at the musical reference I can throw together alongside shilling my friend's new work and, let's be wry here, Diet Dr. Pepper! Was my criticism unfair? Well then, before I'm shouted down by the imminent throng of AHWOSG fans, I'll have it again: fuck McSweeney's and Eggers.

Why not? We've done Eggers before on MeFi, and his admirers here are legion. And I myself freely admit that McSweeney's puts out good content with some frequency (the exact frequency being, of course, a contentious topic) were it also not a front for one of the most shameless logrolling operations in all of publishing. Some will say well, of course, but don't hate the player, hate the game. And yet there it is, still. And there are also some who think Eggers is a fraud, some who think he's overrated, some who think he's a miserable craftman who's ultimately unreadable, and really, who knows which side will be right five, fifty, five hundred years from now? But when it comes right down to it, anybody who has even an ounce of connection to or interest in contemporary literature knows that yes, there are indeed some -- many, in fact -- for whom their sentiment about this topic is expressed most concisely as, quite simply, fuck McSweeney's and Eggers.

And I don't dislike the man. And I even occasionally like McSweeney's. But Eggers's brand of hyper-irony is so safe it's downright cowardly, and McSweeney spends so much energy parodying its own literary pretensions that far better men than I have wasted gigatons of ink trying to assail the redoubt that it has built upon AHWOSG's success. Do I want Eggers to be the archetypal writer that my generation will be identified with? No, but I'll also not waste my time making a doomed assault against that edifice myself. Instead, I'll explain my earlier intensity of expression: I've had enough of he and his kin's "Medium Funny" to last me my lifetime, and I'll use my contempt of it to maintain my own place for the genuine, a little garden if you will. So when a listless "entertaining (assuming you are easily entertained)" McSweeney's item gets posted here on MeFi yet again, I find that the most appropriate response to be -- yes, indeed -- fuck McSweeney's and Eggers.

I'd like to think of it as a rallying battlecry, the barbaric but futile yawp of my generation. And thanks for asking.
posted by DaShiv at 4:02 AM on April 5, 2006


The McSweeneys bashing is really, really well-deserved. I rushed into the thread with my claws out, but the folks who got here before me said it really well.

fuck McSweeney's and Eggers.

Indeed. And fuck people who keep paying to watch Dave Eggers masturbate.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:21 AM on April 5, 2006


If I cannot love, I must hate.
posted by flashboy at 4:23 AM on April 5, 2006


Not Saying Anything, If You Find That The Saying Of Something Nice Is Beyond You

Oh give it a rest, Heidi.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 4:26 AM on April 5, 2006


So, McSweeney and Eggers are famous, then.

Huh. I'd never heard of them before this post, and found the linked post to be mostly amusing and in some parts actually funny.
posted by slimepuppy at 4:46 AM on April 5, 2006


I'll second Hartster's recommend of Rubicon by Tom Holland. Very much worth one's time, even if you're not a history buff.
posted by darkstar at 5:39 AM on April 5, 2006


Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Great book. A page-turner plus more.


Spot on. Best book I've read in a long time.
posted by graventy at 6:18 AM on April 5, 2006



posted by spock at 6:20 AM on April 5, 2006


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