I Want My RSS

I have experienced one of those brief but powerful lulls recently, during which I catch up on admin and think up money-making schemes for my publication, like any other self-respecting journalist. It may, provided I can be suitably enthused by the subject matter, involve a few more posts.

The first, and most exciting, new development is the new Gawker Stalker Map, which shows real-time geographic information of celebrity sightings. It is yet another of those cute little mash-ups of the google maps source code that enables you to find the locations of infinite variations of take-out food on Manhattan, but still shows vast swathes of the OECD as fuzzy green.

What do we think of the Gawker Stalker map? Well, it enrages PR people, and makes celebrities nervous. So far so good. But it could, as the Bloglord Felix suggests, be used as a sort of Nuremberg Files for the young and fabulous. A real stalker's ultimate resource.

Well, if you go to Felix' post you can read an anguished and incoherent debate with myself over this problem in the comments (um, sorry). I'm still not sure that it's ever going to be a large and coherent enough resource to provide much help to your common or garden stalker. More importantly, I've always suspected that a good half of these sightings are poor look-alikes (I have a colleague particularly prone to this).

But the point about New York providing the anonymity that people crave is well taken. I can't help but think that in this debate, as in many of Felix' posts on Gawker Media, that there's a hankering after a more civilized age in New York media. Which makes him the Obi Wan Kenobi of blogs.

While we're on a roll, a quick belated note about the party at Nublu on Saturday. I have not encountered such a pleasant crowd for a while, and the guy at the door was a true gentleman. The DJ was also vaguely fun, and you could almost picture Basquiat in the corner staring goofily at some heroin addict female.

The band was kinda arresting - Kudu was their name. The programmer/DJ/sequencer chap paired a Yankees cap and a sports coat. The lady wailed huskily. I heard Veba and Moloko. Cutesome, I think , heard Portishead, and demands that I hunt down their single EP forthwith.

Should I post some Kudu, some Veba, or maybe even some Flaming Sideburns (not remotely space blues, I've just been listening to them a lot of late)?

No, instead I shall post the first ever new wave song I have danced to. This Saturday last.

Medium Medium - "So Hungry, So Angry"
Buy "Hungry So Angry" here. 4 left, so don't go, um, unsated