2002-11-08 - 2:46 p.m.

Dudes in my office are standing on Aeron chairs and holding their balance on cubicle walls, cross-talking and giggling (giggling, like girls!) about Wes Anderson movies. I want to go over there and talk about my favorite lines, about how one of the writers I edit plays tennis with Wes (he got namedropped in Tenenbaums), about how I passed him on my way to the Whitney once, about how my man Joegood tried his damnedest to get us all into Bottle Rocket at a housesittin' house party but failed. Turned out to be a good night for Joe anyway, I believes.

I get too excited about stuff sometimes. Chill out, man. Fanboy. But what's the point of life if you can't get giddy and giggly sometimes?

Not much doing this way, thanks for asking. Might have to check out Diamonds tonite. Might have to see 8 Mile--why not, right? Gotta stay in Brooklyn for that one. Or go uptown. I appreciate running commentary for certain flicks.

Elana's coming in this weekend so I'll have to try to remind her what a rockin' city she ditched a while back. Not sure how I'll accomplish that, though. Maybe by going to 8 Mile? Uh...somehow I doubt it.

Oh also, here's what's pissing me off about the media coverage of that particular Detroit-themed movie: ONE The voiceover guy in the trailer puts the accent on the wrong syllable. Thus, eight MILE instead of EIGHT mile as any Detroiter would say. I half-expected someone somewhere to make me cringe with a mention of DEEtroit. (It's duhTROIT, duh.) TWO Dammit, stupid writers. 8 Mile is not a neighborhood. That's the most common mistake. The Times committed it in Sunday's magazine article about Eminem, but check out this graph from today's: "8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County. (The joke is that Oakland County is home to both the megastar white rapper Eminem and the parents who are most afraid of his influence on their kids.)" No, the joke is that your fact checker failed to figure out that Eminem currently resides in the more working-class Macomb County. Some geographic descriptions of 8 Mile get even more inventive. Peep David Denby in the New Yorker this week: "The time is 1995, and Jimmy lives with his...mother...in a trailer park in Detroit, well within 8 Mile Road, the perimeter that divides the inner city from Detroit's affluent white suburbs." First off, I thought his mom lived in Macomb in the movie. I might be wrong; I haven't seen it yet. But are there trailer parks in Detroit? I think there's one right on the river that they're planning on tearing down. Second, that geographic description, hmm. Look at a map, Denby: 8 Mile's quite straight, and a straight line can never be a perimeter. Third, and this is a more general peeve of mine: what the hell is this inner-city shit? "Inner city" means almost nothing. It's a euphemism, plain and simple, for "all the shitty black neighborhoods in any given city, lumped into one neat little concept." People ask me if I'm from Detroit's inner city. No, I'm not. I'm on the northwest side. "So you're from the suburbs?" No. Idiot. Say what you mean.

Sorry about that little outburst.

Also, in the past year or so I've gotten really good at picking out beats. For example, "Ghost Deini" from GFK lays his voice over the drumbeat from "O.P.P." by Naughty by Nature. And you hear Eric B.'s beat from "Mahogany" everywhere. Just tooting my own horn here, don't mind me.