Kabir Akhtar (born January 11, 1975) is an American television director and editor, who won an Emmy Award in 2016.
He ran the website (also known as "toolshed") from 1994 to 2016; it predated many popular sites, including mainstays Yahoo!, Google, and YouTube.
[9] In 2008, Radar Magazine praised Akhtar's work on the first season of Tracey Ullman's Showtime series State of the Union as "slick editing, [with] skillful use of stock footage.
[4] Akhtar has also been a featured speaker at industry events held by the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, SAG-AFTRA, and Avid.
[29] When Akhtar created a section of the site for fans to discuss their interpretations of Tool's dense lyrics, Keenan became an occasional reader.
[35] That same year, MTV renamed Tool's music video "Stinkfist" due to offensive connotations, and the lyrics of the song were altered.
In response to the overwhelming number of emails sent, Matt Pinfield of MTV's 120 Minutes expressed regret on air by waving his fist in front of his face while introducing the video and explaining the name change.
[28][36] Akhtar has been a repeat guest on the Australian nationwide radio network Triple J, appearing on segments of The J-Files, hosted by Richard Kingsmill.
[27][45][46] Although some of these sites are now defunct, these awards demonstrate a significant presence in the early days of the online music scene.
[48] Additionally, on the subsequent weekend's MTV series Week In Rock, Kurt Loder went so far as to refer to Akhtar as "some clown".
However, when the band (who are known to enjoy misleading the press) learned of the prank, they sent Akhtar a platinum copy of their then-latest album, Ænima.
[53][54] On April 1, 2007, Akhtar posted a note to The Tool Page, advising that the band's upcoming spring tour would be cancelled due to drummer Danny Carey's injured arm.
Though the post was a hoax, Carey's arm had been injured earlier that year, a fact that led some news outlets (including Spin Magazine) to run the story as if it were true.
"[60] Akhtar went on to take an interest in theater, working on several productions while attending both Lower Merion High School and the University of Pennsylvania.
[61][62][63][64][65] While a student at Penn, he was one of the architects of a prank which involved spelling out a highly visible message in Christmas lights across the front of the 20th floor of a campus building.