That Cribs episode with Redman back in 2001?

It was real:

It’s rare, but sometimes less is more in hip-hop. That’s always been the case for Redman, who appears literally covered in dirt on his second and third album covers, and who has spun a career out of rhymes about “grimy shit” and dressing “bummy for low profile.”

All of which made him the least likely subject imaginable when Cribs premiered on MTV in 2000. Next to the shameless bourgeois excess of his rap contemporaries like Jermaine Dupri and Master P, both of whom made appearances on the show, Red’s duplex in the farthest reaches of Staten Island — “De La Casa,” as he calls it — was a momentous outlier. Though the clip first aired in 2001, it remains burned into the collective pop culture consciousness, along with its images of his gold plaques covered in soiled laundry.

Yet there’s been speculation over the years that the whole thing was faked. So we decided to settle matters once and for all, and called everyone involved. The verdict: it was real. And as the show’s creators, and Red himself, and his cousin, explain below, it took hip-hop’s proudest “stankin’ ass” to show everybody that a sense of humor trumps a platinum bidet any day, and that even in the land of gilded ballers, there’s still room for a funny dude who keeps his cash inside a shoebox to be king.

Amidst all the other episodes of douchebaggery and opulence, this episode was refreshing and now it’s a classic.

If you haven’t see the clip, shame on you.

Lindsey Green has a theory:

Here’s the theory: In Green’s post, “Where Don Draper Ends, D.B. Cooper Begins,” she supposes that Don Draper is about to pull his most daring identity theft yet—he’s going to turn into a real, historical figure.

“D.B. Cooper” is the pseudonym of a man who permanently skipped town in November of 1971 by skyjacking a Boeing 727 in the most Don Draperian way a man could skyjack an airplane. Clad in a suit and tie, Cooper handed a note to a flight attendant. She presumed it was his phone number until he whispered over to her, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

Very intriguing.

All I know is there are a ton of open-ended subplots and there’s no way they’ll all be tied up in last two episodes.

Knowing what what I know about Matthew Weiner, I can only assume this is all by design.

In case you forgot, the second Death Star was built by contractors.

Over at the New York Times, Logan Hill on last Sunday’s episode of Mad Men:

“That’s what the money is for” has got to be the “Mad Men” line I think of most often (especially on bad work days as a freelancer). And it’s the line I thought about at the end of the episode, as Don tried to rally the troops and everyone ignored his half-hearted speech about how this is “the beginning of something” and “not the end.” That beautifully shot scene, with the roar of the office drowning out the now-irrelevant executives — the five of them lined up, off-center, with Roger in a royal-blue double-breasted jacket, looking like an extra in basically any Wes Anderson movie — was a reminder that their employees’ fear and devotion didn’t derive from their genius. It came from the fact that they were signing their employees’ checks. That authority? That was what the money was for. They sold it.

This isn’t a beginning. This is the end.

We’ve known this for a while. The show is not going to end on a high note. The ‘good old days’ are over. I just wish the show would stop meandering into dozens of subplots. Add to that the fact that the action-packed episodes of Mad Men have been getting fewer and farther between. I’m tired of watching Don nap on his office couch.

Netflix Ups the Stakes With Big ‘Beasts of No Nation’ Deal (via ParisLemon):

“As Netflix gets bigger, it will be harder to economically outbid them for any title,” says media analyst Mark S. Mahaney, with RBC Capital Markets. “They have the largest indie audience. They have the largest arthouse audience. They have the largest teenage werewolf audience. That puts them at a real advantage.”

Achieving top-dog status is costly. Tony Wible, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott, estimates that Netflix will spend $5 billion in programming next year, more than anyone save ESPN. It also eclipses the $4.5 billion that rivals Amazon, HBO, Starz and Showtime are estimated to have shelled out in combined spending in 2014.

The question you have to ask yourself: Are you a creator of content or a creator of tools that distribute and connect and if you’re a creator how are you going to distribute your content?

See last post.

via Subtraction

These idiots deliberately bending their iPhone 6’s reminds me of this old Tom Green skit:

There are no guarantees.

Prevues Of Coming Attractions

Over at McSweeney’s, Mike Lacher gives us Client Feedback On the Creation of Earth:

9 – Re: “mankind.” Interesting take on the brief here. Big pain point is that mankind is coming across as largely made in your image. As you hopefully recall from the deck, our users are a diverse group (slide twenty-seven) and we definitely want to make them feel represented (slide twenty-eight). Afraid that if our users see fleshy bipedal mammals positioned as “ruling over” the ground and sea (if we’re having sea), they might feel alienated and again less willing to convert into brand evangelists. Let’s fast-track an alt version with mankind removed. Doable?
This is a brilliant piece but almost too real for me.
It makes me sad when I think back to how many client projects included real emails like this fake one.
Clients can sometimes suck ass.