By: Ben Johnson
 |
| I Googled this picture of a guy from Pitchfork so this wouldn't just be text |
First of all, Condé Nast is a
company, like I think a big company. Of some kind. I’m gonna have to Google
that. It feels like a thing I should not need to Google, seeing as how I write
things often and sometimes do so for money, but I live my life in a way that
suits me, and that means just not knowing certain things that would probably
only make me upset.
I think Condé Nast has like a CEO or
a President or an Editor with maybe a funny name who maybe I am supposed to
have formed an opinion about by now. Oh wait, are they the Vanity Fair company?
Okay, yeah, they’re the magazine
company that does The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, among others. Oh okay. None
of the bigtime people involved have funny names. I think just the company
itself has a funny name. I think I got Condé Nast confused in my brain with
Elon Musk, who is a dude. It seems like, to the extent that they might be
people, Elon Musk and Condé Nast would be friends. But one of them is a dude
and one of them is a company. Condé Nast is the company.
Pitchfork Media is that music
website that I used to read like 10 years ago, back when I gave a shit about
music but didn't have any better ways to find out about it. It still exists, and it still is a music website. Probably.
Wait a minute. My co-Bozo Kelly
asked me to write about this even though by now it has been revealed that I am
not qualified by any measure that includes having a remote interest in the
subject at hand. I bet it’s because she is actually involved in both the music
and publication industries, and therefore must not say anything derogatory or
inflammatory or even mildly opinionated that can be traced back to her, and
also she might think it would be funny to have me do this.
How about this.
In the extremely unlikely event that
Condé Nast is out there Googling stuff like “Kelly From Total Bozo Said A Bad
Thing About Condé Nast Buying Pitchfork” + “Ruin Her Career Tips” and ends up
here:
Hello! My name is Ben Johnson and I
would like to write about music for money, or possibly about another subject
for one of your other publications. This would be very easy for me to do, since
as a writer I am quite accomplished at faking my way through almost any subject
matter, and also I am a frequent user of money.
The following are samples of things
I could conceivably write:
“The new Rihanna album came out
today and parts of it are great, and parts of it aren’t so great, but Rihanna
is great, in general, even though some of the things she does both in her songs
and in her personal life are kind of vaguely troubling, but that is really none
of my business.”
Or:
“Miley Cyrus is actually very good:
a seven part essay in which the word ‘intersectionality’ is both misapplied and
overused (and then a whole long thing that reads like repurposed grad school
homework but makes some good points)”
Or:
“The newest thing is some band from
Brooklyn that you NEED to be listening to because they’re skinny and they look
good in leather jackets and for some reason you’re afraid of dying without ever
having a sex threesome and knowing about stuff like this seems like the right
path to be on in order to accomplish that.”
Or:
“This latest album by Bruce
Springsteen is worth discussing, which I will gladly do right now.”
Or:
“A 2,300 word rumination about the
inner workings of streaming music services that’s so boring it could contain an
entire middle section that just says ‘joob jooba jooba goob joob,’ and nobody
would ever notice.”
Or:
“Congratulations Condé Nast, Who Is
A Company And Not A Person, On Your Recent Purchase Of Pitchfork Media, And On
Continuing That Website’s Legacy Of Stiltedly Highbrow Payola-Reeking Objectivist
Gatekeeper Style Reportage On Music Industry Micro-Trends Which Affect No
Actual Humans.”
Or:
“Who am I kidding, I’m currently on
hold with a temp agency, which actually suits me okay.”
