me as a denizen of crazy townshippe

I spent yesterday at the VMAs’ forum at Radio City Music Hall, aka Atlanta Outpost, where Piotr & I interviewed literally 42 people in six hours: the pop-journalistic equivalent of speed-dating. I was running on no food, six or eight diet cokes and a neverending stream of people. My mind is still spinning from the spectacle. Highlights:
Piotr and Al Franken somehow parlaying a conversation about politics into a “moment” between two Deadheads reminiscing on Jerry’s best solos
Bryan Barber (director of Idlewild, “Aint No Other Man”) describing Christina Aguilera to me as “This generation’s Barbra Streisand”
Piotr and I getting super fan-dork on Lil Wayne, who is like 4’11”, but we couldn’t help it, it’s fuckin Lil Wayne. He gave us bits on the Carter III, his amazing lyrics on Outkast’s “Hollywood Divorce”–he was genuinely pleased, almost humble, that Dre put his verse first. The only other time I had to check my hyperbolic self was while interviewing Hype Williams, when I was like, “Since Belly is one of the greatest-ever translations of music to cinema…” as an intro to a question.. then like, “I’m sorry, I’m obsessed with your movie, specifically the first fifteen minutes synched to the a cappella of ‘Back to Life’.” I did ask him what’s up with the split-screen in all his new videos, he was like, uh… it’s a filmic device.
Johnny Knoxville and Hulk Hogan are totally BroFFs.
DJ Drama doesn’t program his own HTML.
Clipse “support XXL” [Pusha laughs].
Anthony Mackie, star of Half Nelson (which you should see asap). He, himself, was a highlight. Smart, articulate etc.
Photos coming soon, maybe more once the shit is actually transcribed.
After it was all over, walkin back to the office down fifth ave, we randomly saw Cee-Lo just standing on the street like, checking out business-casual ass or something. I found it ironic that most of the suits probably had “Crazy” on their iPods but were just doing the new york rush hour hustle right on by. Cee-Lo Green! Soul Machine!