Editors Blog

Mark Hoppus Responds to SPIN Editor's Blog

Ellen Carpenter's plan to prevent a blink-182 reunion enraged fans -- and possibly Mark Hoppus himself.
blink-182
blink-182

On his website, blink-182 singer/bassist Mark Hoppus responded to something I posted in a blog yesterday. I had blithely suggested that his band receive a slice of the economic stimulus package so they wouldn't have to reunite and release one subpar album.

Hoppus was adamant: "More like SEVERAL TERRIBLY subpar albums," he corrected me.

Here, I must take issue.

Blink-182 are well above par. As scores of their outraged fans were quick to remind me, this band does indeed rock -- and did for twelve years and seven albums. My (light-hearted) suggestion was not prompted by the quality of their catalogue, but the shotgun-wedding looks on their faces when they announced reunion plans onstage at this year's Grammy Awards. Shifty body language, monotone speech, and daunting medical bills do not augur a labor of love (as opposed to the vibe I got two years ago when I interviewed an infectiously enthusiastic Tom DeLonge about his second Angels & Airwaves album).

Still, blink fans seem more than psyched enough to make up for such minor misgivings. (Particularly the guy who threatened an "official" boycott unless I offered a formal apology -- although it wasn't clear if it was supposed to be made to him or the band.)

If such outcry can be considered a mandate, I propose we amend the stimulus package and re-dedicate blink's share of the stimulus package to some other worthy cause. Like Elton John's Jane Austen-era sci-fi movie Pride and Predator. Period costumes and animatronic aliens aren't cheap, you know.

Comments

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Fentoozler

Making a joke about a casualty isn't something I'd call funny, but hey, I guess at least SOMEONE has the same type of humor as Ellen does.

P.S. Calling the majority of people in this category "uneducated trigger happy morons" isn't really getting you anywhere on the Mature meter.

And don't get me wrong, you can laugh around the "water cooler" with them all day for all we care.
If you really think about it though, you may not be the only one with a "logical" opinion :)

Don't be so ignorant.

badarticleellen

"It's dumb ignorant people like you Ellen that are the tumors in society. Attack those that have done you no harm to try and sell an article. Tell me.. do you write your articles with a crayon? Spin used to be a magazine about music, about bands and their stories. When did it turn into a gossip magazine where writers write thier opinions and not fact. Had I known this was a teen people magazine in disguise i would have cancelled my subscription years ago. Go to hell Ellen."

The almighty truth right there.

If SPIN knows what's good for them, they'd get rid of crap writers like whoever this Ellen (profanity) person is.
This is NOT a gossip magazine.

SPIN, it's bad writers like Ellen that ruin you. Ellen is a good example why there is hatred in society. People hating other people because they think someone actually cares about their opinion.

Ellen, with your poor humor about the plane crash, and just your downing of the Blink182 Reunion in the first place, you should at least try to be Mature and apologize for your statements that's concerning Travis's injuries, and just hating for no reason in the first place.

P.S. Keep all your opinions to yourself, you're ruining SPIN Magazine.
Your opinions are not wanted.

Good luck at erasing your hate mail in your Inbox. :)

Cyle

Ellen,

You're a bad writer.

And please do keep this in mind, this is a Fact, not an Opinion.

ShannonHegedus

Can you Get Me Some Of the Crack YOU are on plz?

blinksah

i just wanna know why you'd make up something like "Travis needs money for his medical bills." like where the **** did you pull that from? he is like cadillac's mascot, he has about 45% of his body tattoo'd. do you know how much tattoos cost? and i guarantee you they aren't from some little **** shop in downtown LA. i have a tree on my neck, it's about 3 inches by 3 inches...just black, completely colored in...it cost 100 from a regular tattoo shop in old town scottsdale, arizona. i have another tattoo on my hip, referring to blink's reunion...it is 5 characters long, black and just outlines of letters/numbers. that cost 120. it's about 3 inches long and an inch and a half tall. i got it done at the same place. now tell me how much you think each individual tattoo of his cost? i bet the filled in word "cadillac" in their nice font, going down from his pectoral to his hip on his right side cost $1000 if not more. and don't even forget about the tip. so you think travis is worried about medical bills? i'd also like to know if you've seen his house or seen his ****en nice custom, orange county drums? and his expensive zildjian cymbals? i highly doubt he's worried about medical bills.

and as far as tom goes, when they broke up he had sh!t written for blink's next album. blink had been touring for two years, causing tom to miss his wife's pregnancy and his daughter ava's birth/beginning of her life. he wanted to take some time off the road to be able to spend time with his family. since blink was becoming so successful with their self-titled/untitled album, mark and travis weren't so accepting...i mean if i were in a band that is becoming intensely successful, travelling all over the world to make fans cry their eyes out because they're within a mile of their heroes, i'd wonder why the guitarist/vocalist wanted to end it. but tom was mad because mark and travis said there were going to be repercussions if tom wanted to put his family first, make his family his top priority. tom said in start the machine (an AVA "film") something like "nobody can tell me how important my family is. that's ****ing bull****".

and for mark, according to tom, he was upset about the boxcar racer project because it was tom and travis in it and mark was excluded. and as tom says in start the machine after telling a little about the blink breakup and the boxcar racer project, "a band is like a family and everyone is so insecure. the break up was like going through 3 divorces at once"

travis's accident got everybody talking again. i read somewhere that they liked writing together and they liked recording together. they were best friends. they probably didn't seem ecstatic on stage at the grammy's because that was the first time since 2004 that they were on stage together.

MarkDelong

I just called and cancelled my subscription to spin i have had for going on 5 years now. I will not renew until there is an apology or this dumb b@tch is fired. Its dumb ignorant people like you Ellen that are the tumors in society. Attack those that have done you no harm to try and sell an article. Tell me.. do you write your articles with a crayon? Spin used to be a magazine about music, about bands and thier stories. When did it turn into a gossip magazine where writers write thier opinions and not fact. had i known this was a teen people magazine in disguise i would have cancelled my subscription years ago. Go to hell Ellen.

kimbob

You, Ellen Carpenter, are a dumbass.  First of all, you're an ignorant asshole.   Travis needs money to pay for medical bills? Are you aware of Famous Stars and Straps? How about Wahoo's? Yeah I am so sure he is strapped for cash after suing the company responsible for the airplane crash...   Tom Delonge is strapped for cash? Have you heard of Loserkids.com or Macbeth Footwear or how about ModLife?   Mark Hoppus is strapped for cash? He has produced tons of albums for numerous artists...Im sure that makes him what $1 an hour, huh?  The members of blink 182 aren't just making money off of royalties of their past endeavors...They have investments and I am sure they are not 'strapped for cash'. I will bet that blink 182 will outlast the magazine of SPIN, what is your guys' CPM?    Atleast they will have investments and a job to go to when print media has become obsolete.  I know I wont be picking up an issue of SPIN until you are obsolete. 

Still210

Haha you rock Ellen!!! They should have broken up after dude ranch!

HeartAttack

Aaron never responded to my comment.

...that's what I thought.

SPIN - please, please, PLEASE get competent writers; ones that know when to quit while they're BEHIND.

Vito Cajones

I really think a simple apology followed by admitting you hadn't done your research would have been accepted by all of us. Instead you poked more fun at a tragedy and tried to make a joke out of our responses. I can understand what you were trying to do. You saw how Mark Hoppus cleverly made a joke out of you and your "blog" while still getting his message across. What you didn't seem to get is that Mark has the rare ability to make humor out of something while still coming off as genuine. He's just that smart and that funny. You on the other hand are not that rare combination of smart and funny, and certainly not clever enough to use that approach to turn this around. Look, I would never hope for anyone to lose their job, but I will not buy Spin magazine again until one of the following happens. Either you admit your mistake and release a sincere apology to Travis and his family for making light of the tragedy they have been through. Then you apologize to Blink 182 and their fans for taking your responsibility as a journalist lightly and not bothering to do your research. Or, Spin magazine admits their mistake in hiring such a mediocre journalist and releases you.

ohDANGman

Ellen Carpenter. I think I love you. Marry me please?

Yours Truly,
Paul. <3

paulwangler

.

thms91

Wow this Ellen women is very dumb
Spin should protect itself and stop her from writing for a while

and if not, she is just making a disgrace of herself

ilovepets

It's funny how she thinks that it may have "enraged" Mark...

Can't she tell sarcasm when she sees one?
Or was she being sarcastic about it,and maybe I can't tell sarcasm...hum...I guess we'll never know...

Anyway...it's still pretty funny she thought that! Even funnier than her jokes about a plane crash! (sorry..."medical bills"!)

But the good thing that came out of this "article" is that we know now they're planning to make several more (terribly subpar) albums! Can't wait for the most anticipated subpar album of the last 5 years! \O/

bdpope88

Win.

blink one eighty sam

just so you know, i signed up to write this comment, and will never post again.

did you do any mild research for this part of your article? both articles even...

it's pretty clear that if you google or do any sort of research on the blink break up, tom is considered the bad guy who started it all. do you think he's gonna look normal onstage with mark and travis when he probably feels like everyone wants to rip his face off?

further research into the grammy show would let you know that blink was required to read only what was given to them.

i don't know if it was my job to write b/s articles about anything, i'd at least come clean and do some research in my APOLOGY.

it's called class, and SPIN has none.

HeartAttack

@ Newbarryaaron:

Honestly, I'm getting the feeling that you either a.) work for SPIN or b.) are ridiculously dedicated to mediocre "articles" fueled by angst-pumped wannabe journalists, and are possibly one of them yourself, simply defending your kind. The truth is that the articles have been quite insensitive. The writer takes numerous stabs at things like medical bills (as mentioned) and takes no real regard for reality. Perhaps you and the writer of the article(s) were expecting classical Blink-182 dick jokes and vulgarities at the GRAMMY'S and were sorely disappointed when no such event unraveled? Perhaps you expected three people that have been best friends for 20 years to simply never talk and make music with each other again?

I don't know what you expected - but what happened was three people became friends again and began doing what they love the most again - together. The only thing that spoils it a bit are people like you and the writer of these half-assed articles who take serious situations that you KNOW will cause a stir due to their nature, and wait for a reaction. Ya know, just like a 12 year old girl who begins some garbage rumor in junior high. She's crying for attention. It must feel reeeeal special having Mark Hoppus reply to and reference your blog, eh article writer? *Roll Eyes* Get over yourself, and stop writing subpar articles as desperate pleas for the limelight.

newberryaaron

Still chuckling.

newberryaaron

It's serendipitous, your statement; at least to me. You are calling Ellen insenstive while hurling obscenities at him, it's quite humorous actually.

newberryaaron

In Ellen's defense, nobody on this forum is a writer for Spin Magazine, a highy respected magazine that if you'll notice doesn't cover bands like Blink-182 often; they have a specific demographic most of which exist within some form of educated or mature listening audience and that in itself could explain most of this. Secondly, the biggest problem with Blink-182 has very little to do with anything they actually create; it's their fans that ignorantly suggest someone be fired over a simple blog post. If you'd read carefully, though the risk of it going over your heads has been pinned down and proved, Ellen speaks of Blink highly in this second reference towards the band. Nothing Ellen said about medical bills was a joke, and nothing Ellen said about the band suggested they weren't grandeur. I'm very serious, the SPIN staff are probably getting a kick around the water cooler at the outcry of idiocy from the majority of you. It was difficult for me to laugh because I was thinking to myself how unfortunate it was that people seriously didn't understand what Ellen was trying to say - then again, you're not writers; apparently, you aren't much of thinkers either. To conclude, I enjoy Blink AND A&A, it's just unfortunate I exist in this category with an accumulative of uneducated trigger happy morons.

bdpope88

Ellen must be who blink-182 is talking to in their song "When you ****ed grandpa." It would explain a lot.

bdpope88

Your still not fired?!? Another drunken tangent?!?
You're... actually retarded. Maybe you should iono, do some sort of research sometime? I'm surprised anyone still reads SPIN. Have fun driving SPIN into the ground =).

You_Suck

Again with the medical bills thing? NOT FUNNY. Like Zach said 4 people died and Travis nearly died too, yet you act like he is off getting a face lift or something stupid and think you are funny (which you are not) by making a weak joke and then trying to repeat it as if it would be funny the second time around? You are a writer .. can't you write better than that?

Also you act as if you can just backpeddle and trash something else to get BLink fans on your side? Wrong. Blink are back and we don't need you to try to put a damper on awesomeness that comes with this band.

Blink is beyond all your critical bull and beyond SPIN magazine.

boxcarspawn

I'm not trying to be defensive for anyone, but maybe you should get some of that money to keep you occupied and off your computer spewing half-ass "articles". It seems your one of the many cynics in the music world who have lost touch with the true importance of music. It's obvious SPIN as a whole is disconnected with the real magic of music. Hell, you sued a band for having the name spin because of possible confusion among consumers. I hope your consistent readers can decipher the differences between a magazine and a performing rock band.

You people are obsessed with the main stream and too busy concocting a 7 best dressed of 2008 list to go beyond anything but Hollywood crap that shouldn't even really matter. Also, on your most influential albums of the past 20 years where were the Decendents. The album "Milo Goes To College" revolutionized pop punk to this day... anyway... I'm just saying.

zach_moore

you wish mark hoppus gave a flying (insert profanity here) about your article. and for real quit it with the travis medical bills B.S.. your full of it and your not even close to being funny. 4 people died in that plane accident. you cant casually make fun of some one and bring up an event that killed 4 people. they were real. and travis is real. so i fail to find the humor in travis's medical bills. i think you should retract that statement. you insensitive (insert profanity here)

im sure travis is hurting for money considering he owns fsas.

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