My weekly collection of new and notable books for your pop culture pleasure and edification: #ReadMoreTweetLess.

One of my favourite journalists Matt Taibbi finally articulated a core concept I’ve been circling but haven’t fully been able to express. He’s writing about journalism…in newspapers and on tv and he says in his book Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another (on page 137):

Leaving high school makes it difficult to pass notes to a girl you fancy. You can’t approach a cute lass in the supermarket with a note that says: WANNA GO TO THE SPRING FLING? above a Yes checkbox and a No checkbox. It…doesn’t work.

“We never just thought we were supposed to wait our turn,” Kevin Durant said. “We always wanted to go and take everything.”

These are Kevin Durant quotes from 2012. They didn’t win that year but the philosophy is sound.

Smell Ya Later 2015! Let’s Get It On 2016: The Game Is Afoot!

Sammy Younan

Girth Radio Presents…

I can’t remember how Portland’s XOXO Festival came into my life…it’s only a couple of years old. Maybe twitter? I wanna go one year…SXSW in many ways has jumped the shark. And we don’t have anything like this in Toronto (maybe start one? Complain or Create can’t do both…). The conference feels like Portland, s’what I’d expect that city to be like: bit like Seattle with more Nike.

This ESPN Kobe Article:

What’s the evolution of the interview? The conversation?

What’s the next iteration in how we celebrate, authenticate, legitimatize and authorize our favourite Cultural Contributors?

We used to gaze up at the stars with awe and wonder….
We struggled to reach the moon and paid in full the high cost to befriend the cosmos.

You know how right before you drift into dreams this one profound definitive conclusion will suddenly reveal itself, kinda like the Invisible Man who as it turns out was there the whole time? Sometimes it feels like the Wonder Years Narrator only this time, you can hear his insights! (That sure would have saved Kevin and Winnie lots of heartache while also developing any number of fascinating paradoxes in the space–time continuum). That’s…an embarrassing amount of nerd references in just a couple of lines. Right, moving on then…