Rich Juzwiak is the author of the pop-culture blog FourFour and blogs full-time for VH1, contributing to the VH1 blog and Celebreality blogs at vh1.com. WEEKEND questioned him about the biz.
Q: What does FourFour mean?\nA: "The house or disco beat is four emphasized beats equally emphasized per measure, so it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom -- as opposed to a hip-hop beat, which is more off beats, you know, a varied emphasis. So the thing is, initially I had planned to write more about house music than I do, although I do still give it some time. I really do listen to it a lot, so I do carry it with me even if I'm not writing about it."
Q: How did you get into celebrity blogging?\nA: "I studied journalism and did freelance and I still do freelance a little bit, but not as much as I wanted to, and the job that I had wasn't, it wasn't really creatively stimulating, so I kind of felt myself wasting away, really. It was kind of a last-ditch effort in kicking my fucking ass and getting myself going."
Q: Are there any other bloggers that have inspired you?\nA: "Fresh from Crunk and Disorderly -- I would love to procreate with her just to create like a sassy child. She is just absolutely amazing, I mean, seriously everything she does is brilliant and witty. She is infuriatingly underrated, I think. I wouldn't say she inspired me as much as she inspired me to not give up on mankind, I guess -- that there are smart people in the world who write blogs, about pop culture, about pop-culture news. She's pretty much my hero, really. A huge inspiration is Television without Pity. I recap because of her. Entirely. I mean, the reason that I do the format that I do it in is because her text-based recaps are so great that there's nowhere else to go. I said, 'Well, why don't I make them more multimedia as a component?' because if I were just to write it up, like she does, there's no way I could compete with her. She's a genius. There was one point where I was like, 'She's my favorite writer in the world,' and I haven't really strayed from that. She's one of my favorite writers in the world, I think. I absolutely adore her."
Q: What is the Celebreality part of your job? \nA: "I do the VH1 blog, too, so my job has expanded to being a little bit more pop-culture-generally oriented. So when I started, I'd be writing about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears all the time, and if you've noticed, I don't write about those people on my blog because I don't find them particularly interesting. It's tough for me to have to do that, but now we have this other girl who's awesome, who covers like all of the mainstream, as hard as entertainment news gets. So I'll write about secondary stuff, like hip-hop and R&B people, and today I posted about the Amy Winehouse performance from last night, so it's fairly awesome because it lets me pick and choose from the not-so-obvious pop culture that I'm interested in. But a huge, huge part of it is the Celebreality stuff, which I love."
Q: Is there anybody who you can't stand? \nA: "The hardened rule of blogging is not to talk shit about people, so, yeah, I wouldn't publicly. I mean I could write post after post about stuff that infuriates me, about people and their sense of entitlement or celebrity or importance, that they have a stupid blog that apparently people read ... But with that said, I feel like I have been ripped off a little bit. At the end of the day, I really am just a blip on the Internet. But something which gets under my skin so much, because I'm really hung up on manners, is when people don't credit or when they don't even have a link up, you know? It's like, 'You've clearly seen my shit.' I know that sounds really immodest, so let it be known that I'm talking about isolated incidents, maybe once or twice that it's happened. It's like, 'You've clearly seen my shit, you're clearly banking off it, can you like throw me a fucking link to be like, you inspired me or whatever?' It's really disingenuous and slimy and there are particular people that turn my stomach because of that, you know?
Q: What's the best part of your day job?\nA: "I think the best part of my day job is the interactions I have with the talent, especially when they send me to the reunions. It's like stepping into this alternate universe -- there are some really one-of-a-kind personalities, people that I wouldn't meet or associate with normally that I get to talk to. A huge part of my job involves not laughing in people's faces as they're talking to me. And I don't mean that snidely. There are just so many people that I get to talk to on the phone or in person (who) have these larger-than-life personalities, they're just absolute characters. So I love that."
Q: Why did you decide to start blogging about your pets?\nA: "I'm really obsessed with my cat ... There's definitely an entertainment aspect to it, in that I'm creating something that is meant to entertain ... So really, writing about Winston, the whole point was just to celebrate the fact that I have this amazing cat that acts like he's from outer space. It's like nothing I've ever witnessed in a creature before. Underlying everything about Winston really is, I hope, what comes through is just a love of animals ... I really don't ever want to post something that's gratuitously cute. You know, just a random picture of him? I want there to be some sort of angle there, because it really is kind of a wack thing to do, to write about animals. It's like showing off your pageant child, or your child, period. There's a component of lameness there that's very unappealing."
Q: What's the most challenging part about your job?\nA: "The terrible thing about my situation is that my day job requires brain power. It's not some brainless thing, it's not something where I'm punching numbers repeatedly, where I can come home and unleash. I'm thinking all day, so when I get home I'm often just exhausted from that alone. And I can't just put up something half-assed"
