A House of Lies

It’s that time of year again:Redacted Breeze: Summer Songs...

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:53:29 -0500

It’s that time of year again:
Redacted Breeze: Summer Songs with neither “Summer” nor “Sun” in the Title

I guess you could play this at a party if you wanted to, but I didn’t necessarily go for high-energy songs. While it does build up to some energy, I wanted the majority of the mix to feel a little more sunburnt and water-logged, especially on what would be side B. The whole thing is probably more appropriate for a summer night. There are exceptions, of course, but I was reaching for songs that, for lack of a better description, don’t really go anywhere. Most of the songs establish a groove and just stay there, which is what I wanted. Because summer is sort of lost time. Anyway, I put it together with a 5-second crossfade—and the sequencing took me a long time, though I can’t really articulate the logic behind it—but feel free to do whatever you want with it.

"Riff Raff's Got a Record Deal: Making Sense of the Most Viral Human Being in Music"- David Shapiro- Gawker

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:10:56 -0500

"Riff Raff's Got a Record Deal: Making Sense of the Most Viral Human Being in Music"- David Shapiro- Gawker:

“But I realized, after finally meeting him and sitting in his presence, that Riff Raff is a product of Gatsbyesque self-invention—a dude who decided that Riff Raff was who he wanted to be and became it, and feels some combination of disdain and shame about the circumstances in his life that he couldn’t control that led up to him becoming Riff Raff. He’s like a superhero. Almost every autobiographical detail he gave me, even down to something as instantly discernable as his height, was a lie. Or a joke. Or both.”

THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIMEJerry MaguireAt a...

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:55:00 -0500

THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIME
Jerry Maguire

At a theater that no longer exists, I took in Jerry Maguire as the second entry of a Thanksgiving break double feature. (I wish I could remember what the first movie was…I can be so forgetful sometimes…) I saw it with my ne’er-do-well friend James, who prodded me into sneaking in since we were too young to buy tickets.

And I loved what I saw enough to download all the humanheadweighs8lbs.wavs that the AOL Entertainment Channel had. My Gateway was customized for months. Looking back on the film today, it’s still good—in its own self-serving, over-long way—but it isn’t the revelation it was to me then. Now I only seek out movies that respect their audience and are made with adults in mind, but I can’t underestimate the impact of experiencing a picture like that at a younger age. In 1996, a breakout year for independents, Jerry Maguire was the only traditional studio film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and I was led to believe it was the best that the system had to offer. Now I see it for what it is: a film slightly more accessible than Shine. (And with way more Wayne Fontes cameos.)

STARS/PERFORMANCES
- Actors Who Are Unquestionably Tied to the Decade- TOM CRUISE [+10]
Cameron Crowe’s third film as director starts with The Who’s “Magic Bus,” one of two Who songs in the first seven minutes*. TOM CRUISE narrates a voiceover that matches the intensity of the song, and he explains that his titular character is a big shot sports agent at a big shot firm with big shot clients. Most of these clients are famous athletes (and Ki-Jana Carter) who play themselves [+3].

But the movie also does that weird thing in which famous athletes are playing famous athletes—but not necessarily themselves. For example, real-life Brent Barry, winner of the worst dunk contest ever, tells a kid that he is, in fact, “Steve Basketball” or whatever, but that he can’t sign the kid’s card because it’s not the brand he endorses. We’re supposed to see that and decry the greed of the modern sports world, but I couldn’t stop thinking about why Brent Barry wasn’t playing himself. Or, if he didn’t need the real Brent Barry, why didn’t Cameron Crowe just hire an actor? He loves doing this. Later on, he casts Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and Glenn Frey in distracting bit parts. Because why hire a struggling actor who needs the work and exposure when you can give The Eagles more money?

Anyway, far be it for me to criticize a writer I actually admire—I named my site after a line of his—but Crowe’s opening voiceover is obvious enough to include the line, “What had I become? Was I just a shark in a suit?” [+2] So clearly, this is not a cinematic universe in which it’s okay to be a big shot agent.

I am from AOL’s TOS Department. Please confirm your account by typing your user name and password.

- Other Notable Actors- Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., Renee Zellweger, Bonnie Hunt, Jonathan Lipnicki, Jay Mohr, Jerry O’Connell, Donal Logue, Beau Bridges [+15]

So Jerry has a crisis of conscience and spends all night in one of his vapid hotel rooms—a “no-smoking” one [+1]—typing out a heartfelt mission statement on his huge laptop [+1]. Since CopyMax [+1] is open late, every worker at his agency gets a copy of this scathing memo that accuses them of soulless money-grabbing. Unsurprisingly, the higher-ups don’t like this, and they get his own protege to fire him. While Jerry makes a valiant effort to save powerhouse clients like Rick Mirer and Katarina Witt, he ends up striking out on his own with just one loyal employee, Renee Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd, and one loud client, a 5’10” receiver named Rod Tidwell [+1].

As Tidwell, Cuba Gooding, Jr. steals the movie as much as you remember, but his and TOM CRUISE’s performances are so big that they’re almost distracting. In some scenes, such as the “help me help you” locker room bit, they are upstaging each other in such a competitive way that the game-within-the-game almost becomes more interesting than the film itself. Had Crowe possessed the foresight to cast Jamie Foxx as one of Tidwell’s teammates, the camera would have exploded from the overload of self-important showmanship.

Cuba is pictured here with his motivation for Chill Factor.

At the same time Jerry is trying to repair his professional life, he’s embarking on a relationship with his colleague that makes him “feel like Clarence Thomas” [+1]. Their budding romance is complicated by: her adorable young son [+3], her disapproving sister, and the bizarre structure of the movie. They don’t actually pursue each other until an hour and fifteen minutes in, then they kind of break up twenty minutes later, until they get married in the very next scene? What saves it is that Zellweger nails the balance between the guarded protectiveness of a young mother and the restless whimsy of a woman in her mid-twenties. The tentative way that she gets involved with Jerry—combined with how hard she falls for him—really rang true for me. Since I haven’t been very funny so far, what if I were to tell you that Jonathan Lipnicki looks like this now?

And he keeps in touch with the little girl from Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire! ’90s bros sticking together! Crazzzy!

TECHNOLOGY/CULTURAL RELICS
- Could the Plot Reasonably Occur with Current Technology?
Yes [-10], but the life of a sports agent probably no longer depends as heavily upon beepers, fax machines, and answering machines [+3]. It is across these devices (and flip-phones [+1]) that Jerry learns Rod will have to play out his present deal—at great risk of injury—before he can secure a (still underwhelming by current standards [+1]) contract that would take them both out of a giant hole. Which leads us to a climactic Monday Night Football game, complete with old ’90s uniforms [+1]. Rod gets hurt, then is okay, then calls his family’s see-through telephone [+1] to tell them he loves them, then inspires Jerry to say “you complete me” to Dorothy. It’s all good. Show me the money.

- Hacking/Computers
As big shot as he is, Jerry doesn’t have any hacking skills.

- Other Technological Notes
I haven’t mentioned the Sega, Game Boy, cassettes, or off-white computer monitors [+4].

FASHION
Half-shirts, snapbacks, pleats, baggy sweaters, denim on denim, caricature t-shirts, and hair parted down the middle [+7]. On TOM CRUISE alone, we get double-breasted suits, olive-colored suits, and dad jeans [+3].

Time for a Who song. I wish I knew as much about anything as Cameron Crowe does about the redemption of self-centered White guys.

’90s FILM CONVENTIONS
“You Know This Is Going to Change Everything.” “Promise?” [+1]
Celebrity Cameos [+1]
Calling Any Black Person “Hootie” [+1]

Cliched DVD Chapter Titles (“Betrayed by Team Cushman”, “A Man of His Word”) [+5]
Female Reporters in Locker Rooms Being a Thing [+5]
Poster Is Just a Huge Close-Up of the Star’s Face [+5]
Catch Phrase [+5]
Traveling Montage [+5] (Bonus +1 for Character Playing with a Symbolic Toy Plane)
All Black People Have Huge Families That Get Together at Family Gatherings [+5]

OTHER
For the first part of the movie, Jerry is engaged to Kelly Preston’s Avery Bishop, and fond any thirteen-year-old was of her. She’s some kind of mountain climber important enough to be on a poster in Jerry’s office. She is presumably a client of his, if mountain climbers are important enough to have big shot agents. But then, when she breaks up with him, she’s working for the NFL Draft in some capacity? And later on, she seems to just be the hanger-on of some other person in the press box. It’s unclear who she is or what her job is.

Jerry Maguire ends up on all kinds of “best sports movies ever” lists, but Cameron Crowe didn’t shoot any of the football footage. It was all second unit. Just seems kind of cheap to me that it would be so highly regarded as a sports movie when its own director didn’t think the sports material was important enough to shoot himself.

Speaking of shooting, just after Janusz Kaminski’s opening credit as director of photography, there’s an amazing shot of the sun shining as it’s raining unlike any other I’ve ever seen. Nice.

I already criticized the film’s structural problems, but Bill Simmons also has an entertaining assault on its implausible third act timeline.

Jerry Maguire is based, in part, on a real-life agent named Leigh Steinberg. As this recent Sports Illustrated article attests, he’s…not doing so well.

+1

FINAL TALLY
I can make fun of this movie all I want, but you and I both know that it works. It’s great. You can judge movies, especially splashy studio movies, by the strength of their supporting performances, and every single one of the performances in this film—except for Glenn Frey’s—contributes to its perfect mixture of comedy and tragedy. Even if it only scored 84 points, Jerry Maguire is a movie worth watching again.

*- Although I’m sure Crowe edits in units of Who songs, not minutes or hours.

Killer Mike- “Reagan”from his album R.A.P. Music I...

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:31:00 -0500

Killer Mike- “Reagan”
from his album R.A.P. Music

I don’t remember the last time I literally gasped at a song, but I did on the last line of “Reagan”.

popculturebrain: Teaser: The Master - Oct 12 Directed by Paul...

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:51:13 -0500

popculturebrain:

Teaser: The Master - Oct 12

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Laura Dern.

"SNL Cast Timeline"- cabletv.com

Thu, 17 May 2012 20:15:36 -0500

"SNL Cast Timeline"- cabletv.com:

(I’m mostly including this exhaustive infographic—so exhaustive that it looked ugly when embedded—to come back and use it for my own research purposes. But enjoy.)

"Refresh: The Lonely Futurism of TLC's Fanmail"- Lindsay Zoladz- Pitchfork

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:27:00 -0500

"Refresh: The Lonely Futurism of TLC's Fanmail"- Lindsay Zoladz- Pitchfork:

“In 1999, I spent some time in front of a computer teaching myself HTML and Photoshop, and I would visit strangers’ personal websites to get ideas for new designs. These were the days when most websites had hit counters to measure their traffic, and I have a distinct memory from around this time of stumbling upon a site that promised to post the name of their 100,000th visitor. The counter was only about 50 hits shy, and somehow there was something exciting to me about acquiring this bit of micro-fame. So I refreshed. And refreshed and refreshed and refreshed. And then the counter said 100,000 and I took a screenshot of it and emailed it with my name to the person who ran the site. I had achieved what I’d set out to achieve. So why didn’t it feel that way?

In the 10 years since Left Eye’s death, we all got to be a little famous. The idea of ‘fanmail’— even the very word— feels quaint and outdated. The channels have opened up so that we all send it and— more importantly— receive it on a daily basis in some form, be it retweets or reblogs or likes. The fact that I took a screenshot of a hit counter just so I could see my name on someone’s website is now deeply embarrassing to me, because how can you even imagine a time when it was a thrilling novelty to see your name on the internet? One thing that even the all-knowing Vic-E could not predict is the democratization of celebrity. Which means fame now feels that much more attainable, but the catch is that we finally get to know all about that alone-in-a-crowded-room feeling that famous people have been singing about for years.”

I’ve been watching them for almost two decades, but I...

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:34:00 -0500

I’ve been watching them for almost two decades, but I still can’t decide if I like the patented Spike dolly shots or not. On one hand, they draw attention to themselves. On the other hand, they draw attention to themselves.

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years3. The Dude- The...

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:46:00 -0500

The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
3. The Dude- The Big Lebowski

The Coen Brothers are adored by critics for the same reasons any other filmmakers are, really. They work in adventurous, unconventional tones. They honor genres of the past that most people no longer care about. Their characters are both stylized and realistic. Money is often the simple motivation of those characters, but—as in Fargo or Blood Simple or No Country for Old Men—that money becomes irrelevant as the characters are enveloped by unforeseen consequences and moral confusion. In other words, the money becomes a MacGuffin halfway through, and critics like any filmmaker who can confidently use MacGuffins.

As critically admired as the Coens are, however, they have been commercially unsuccessful for one reason: Their characters fail. Dramaturgically. As in, they have simple goals that they don’t achieve. We are told that mainstream audiences prefer happy endings in which the hero triumphantly wins and changes in some way, so let’s compare that outcome to three (spoiler-rich) Coen endings:

1. The Man Who Wasn’t There: Our protagonist is executed by electric chair.
2. A Serious Man: A massive tornado appears to wash away our protagonists to confirm that we occupy an unjust and perhaps meaningless universe.
3. Barton Fink: Depending on your reading, either our protagonist is trapped with a fallen angel in his own psychotic hell, or he has merely hallucinated that same scenario, which still speaks to his unhinged psychological state.

Which brings us to the gonzo noir of The Big Lebowski, which has slowly become the Coen Brothers’ most beloved film, no matter how critics feel about that*. Some of the same viewers who would have asked for their money back after Miller’s Crossing have seen Lebowski fifty times. Because it moves quickly and is the Coens’ most broadly comedic entry, I guess that makes sense. But at the same time, it shares the shaggy dog circularity and ultimate futility that the rest of their work does. The team behind the camera didn’t really change its style or make anything more accessible to tell the Dude’s story. (In one of their most obvious homages, they basically updated the plot of The Big Sleep.)

Like most Coen protagonists, the Dude doesn’t succeed. He doesn’t find Bunny. He doesn’t get to keep the million dollars. His buddy dies, his car gets trashed, and he never finds a job. Just as he did in college or the Speed of Sound tour, he underachieves.

Lots of memorable characters fail though—Rocky Balboa, Jake Gittes, Atticus Finch, Charles Foster Kane—so it doesn’t seem as if that alone would make the Dude so enduring. And if lots of characters fail, then what makes the Dude “a man for his time and place,” one “who fits right in there”? Because there are also characters more emblematic of their times and places. (#2 and #1 on this list will be.)

I think the answer to that is that El Duderino—“if you’re not into the whole brevity thing”—is true to himself in every way. Take, for example, the way he dresses: the all-over print shorts, the v-neck white tees, the jellies. GQ would have a field day with him* if it weren’t for that caveat invoked by any fashion guru: be yourself. You couldn’t pull off that poncho, but the Dude can. And his ownership of his ethos (to use a word the film loves) not only excuses his shortcomings, it empowers them. He really doesn’t care what happens.

That isn’t to say that the Dude believes in nothing. He resents the nihilists in the film because he does have passion. It’s just that his passions—White Russians, bowling, driving around—are the simple pleasures that more ambitious people don’t appreciate.

It’s pretty comforting to be with someone incapable of feeling embarrassed. We never pity the Dude because he doesn’t pity himself. And we don’t blame him for his failures because, by the end of the film, we see them as he does: inevitable, objective changes. Strikes and gutters. One of the first images of the film is a tumbleweed dissolving from the organic desert landscape into an overhead shot of the L.A. freeway. That might not be what was supposed to happen to the Old West, but it did happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s telling that the Dude’s a pacifist, and his foil, Walter, is always lamenting the spilt milk of Vietnam, the textbook, irretrievable American failure.

Thus, if “aggression will not stand” and “fuck it is your answer for everything,” then Jeff Lebowski really is the embodiment of your brand of existentialism. Relinquishing control of your life is its own kind of control, and that’s a difficult idea to get across while also having a great time for 117 minutes.

We love the Dude because he embodies, effortlessly, a peaceful, fluid way of life in the face of people who are literally and figuratively paralyzed. So when the Dude famously says that he “abides,” the word choice is important. He doesn’t “remain” or “continue” or “acquiesce,” since those are intransitive verbs. Even if he doesn’t finish the sentence, he has to abide by something, and that something is his own transcendent, all-embracing spirit.

*- Initially, they were pretty ambivalent about it. The Big Lebowski is the definition of a movie that found its audience slowly. When it came out, critics were irritated that it wasn’t Fargo 2: Stay Frosty.
*- For all I know GQ might love Lebowski’s fashion. Aztec prints are on trend.

popculturebrain: Trailer: Argo - Oct 12 (via...

Tue, 08 May 2012 20:35:06 -0500

popculturebrain:

Trailer: Argo - Oct 12

(via /Film)

Y’all know that, going forward, Affleck is probably going to be one of our most essential storytellers, right? How many people are—with great skill—making serious, splashy movies like this for adults? I can count them on one hand, and most of them are much older than he is. Plus, he and Matty still owe Castle Rock two scripts! Look it up!

Best of April 2012 Spotify PlaylistSome of this stuff—the Big...

Sat, 05 May 2012 18:10:00 -0500

Best of April 2012 Spotify Playlist

Some of this stuff—the Big K.R.I.T. mixtape, for example—came out way before April, but I put it on here anyway. And keep in mind that I haven’t listened to Jim Jones’ Vampire Life 2 mixtape…yet. So all of this could easily be replaced.

Jai Paul’s hesitant but controlled coo “Jasmine” was my favorite song of the month. Because he whispers or intones the lyrics, it’s easy to pigeonhole it as a soft song, but that would be forgetting the lush hum of its bottom end. It actually sounds more dynamic with each listen.

I loved the Lotus Plaza and Suckers albums, but I probably became more obsessed with Future’s Pluto. I didn’t even like it the first time I heard it, but I’ve since become fascinated by his ability to tightrope around five or six melodies within one song. When he falls, it’s even more captivating than when he makes it all the way across. Each song is fueled by a sort of danger that the whole thing is going to unravel in front of you. On one hand, he can conjure the emotion of something like “Turn on the Lights”, using autotune to increase the raw and lost quality of the song instead of using it to distance himself from it. But elsewhere on the record, he can master a more bullheaded (but still accomplished) street song like “Same Damn Time”, and that versatility makes him even more impressive.

A few critics have pointed out that Pluto seems indebted to Lil’ Wayne’s 2008-era Luv Sawwngs experiments, and I have to agree that something like “I’m Single” or “Prostitute Flange” is a reference point for Future. Along with the Chief Keef mixtape, which takes Waka Flocka Flame and adds even more clenched-teeth menace, it goes to show that hip-hop’s web of influences is starting to move very fast.

"With Friends Like These: A Friends Oral History"- Warren Littlefield- Vanity Fair

Sat, 05 May 2012 17:14:00 -0500

"With Friends Like These: A Friends Oral History"- Warren Littlefield- Vanity Fair:

I can’t say I was ever a huge fan of Friends, but I loved this piece because it reveals that, even on one of the biggest shows in the history of TV, everything boils down to personal relationships. There’s a passage in which Littlefield, former president of NBC, recounts running into Jennifer Aniston at a gas station and, after a heartfelt discussion about her future, dedicating himself to casting her in the show. Beyond that, NBC executives specifically scheduled TV movies they knew would get high ratings against Aniston’s CBS show, ensuring that it would tank and release her to Friends. TV is a dog-eat-dog world, but only when it isn’t busy being protective and loyal.

"Lookin’ out at the world through my window pane, Every day has many colors ‘cause the glass is..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:15:46 -0500

“Lookin’ out at the world through my window pane,
Every day has many colors ‘cause the glass is stained.
Everything has changed but remains the same,
So once again the mirror raised.
And I see myself as clear as day,
And I am goin’ to the limits of my ultimate destiny,
Feeling as though somebody somewhere is testin’ me.
He who sees the end from the beginning of time
Looking forward through all the ages:
Is, was, and always shall be.”

- MCA, “B-Boy Bouillabaisse (A Year And A Day),” from Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, 1989. Rest in power, Adam Yauch (1964 - 2012). (via rapquote)

Chief Keef and Riff Raff- “Cuz My Gear”I’ll...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:02:02 -0500

Chief Keef and Riff Raff- “Cuz My Gear”

I’ll put out my April mix later this week. Rest assured, any song featuring the line “diamonds dancin’ on my wrist look like a blank disc” will make an appearance. Mylanta!

From Pre-K through seventh grade, I attended a small Catholic...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:58:57 -0500

From Pre-K through seventh grade, I attended a small Catholic school that catered to the upper-middle-class. Especially in my younger years, it was an intimidating place far from home, full of people who controlled and confused me.

Every Wednesday, this school would send home “Childpost,” which was a charmingly pre-Internet clasp envelope full of announcements, permission slips, and other relevant information. The parents would take the papers—this is even how report cards were circulated—and the students would dutifully return the empty envelopes, their names neatly written in cursive on the front, to homeroom the next day.

I spent most of my childhood looking for something to read, so I would usually rifle through the papers before my mom saw them. The first page I checked was always the cafeteria menu, and, on one particular week, a Monday box simply read “Tribute to World Hunger”. Used to fish sticks and shepherd’s pie, I was confused and conflicted—by more than the complimentary word choice. I asked around about the mystery lunch without any satisfying results. In at least one way, for a half a week, world hunger—or the prospect of personal hunger—pre-occupied my mind. I was seven years old. I didn’t have a lot going on.

On the Monday in question, I entered the cafeteria in single-file with the other second graders, near the front of the line because of my last name. I didn’t smell anything familiar. When I got to the front, I was handed a cup of rice and a cup of broth, and the principal guided us to our seats before I could register any complaints.

Once everyone was seated, he led a prayer dedicated to a) people of the Third World who were hungry and b) the brave soldiers of Operation Desert Storm. He then told us what these two cups in front of us were. You see, this was a normal lunch to children in Africa. (And, of course, we knew Africa was a continent, but we talked about it as if it was some city/state of mind.) This probably underwhelming portion was all some kids got, and we should consider ourselves lucky as a result. We didn’t have to eat the meal, he said, but we did have to think about it. For a few minutes, we were going to sit there in silence and think about this rice.

My mind began racing. I didn’t want plain white rice, but what if this really was it? If it was, God forbid, my entire lunch, then I didn’t want to go hungry. What would the brave soldiers in the Persian Gulf think of me holding out for something else? So I mixed the two cups together and chugged, burning my tongue on the broth. I don’t think I was supposed to do that, since everyone else was still staring at the styrofoam.

The principal stared at me for a moment, then said amen. (We were still in prayer? Was that a tactic to keep people quiet?) Somewhat satisfied, he informed us that we could now get back into line for our “real lunch,” and the lunchladies unveiled hot dogs. One by one, the other students threw their cups full of rice into the trash and grabbed new trays.

It was the idea of sacrifice without any real surrender (but lots of denial). A can full of wasted food to remind us of the dangers of wasting food. Even at seven, I could see something wrong with that, but who was I to be self-righteous? I ate the rice with one gulp and would now get a second lunch, stuffed on a day that was supposed to be marked by hunger.

The school had the right idea but was misguided. I imagine the back-up lunch was a compromise to avoid angry complaints in Childpost, but if it was going to end like this, maybe they shouldn’t have done the experiment at all. If anything, I learned that day that even the authorities didn’t have all the answers. But they could catch me in their contradictory web.

Since then, there have been many times when, as an American White male, I’ve meant well but embarrassed myself by showing that I really have no idea what it’s like to be other and uncomfortable and poor, to step outside of the realm of my own experience. But it’s telling that I’m still confused about what this is all a metaphor for. Was I right to have eaten the rice? Would it have been more wrong to throw it away? I knew that I felt something more enormous than hunger that day, so was that the point of it all? Was it enough to acknowledge how wrong all this was? My White guilt sprouted with a vengeance, and I haven’t really worked beyond the question facing me since then:

What am I supposed to do?

"Our 'White People Problems' Problem: Why It’s Time to Stop Using 'White' As a Pejorative"- Noel Murray- A.V. Club

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:49:00 -0500

"Our 'White People Problems' Problem: Why It’s Time to Stop Using 'White' As a Pejorative"- Noel Murray- A.V. Club :

“There’s an element of ‘comfortable white folks picking on other comfortable white folks’ to a lot of the Girls criticism (though not all, I hasten to add). As other critics have pointed out, the hue and cry over the whiteness of Girls may be covertly about something else, especially given that shows like Bored to Death and How I Met Your Mother haven’t been so intensely scrutinized. Some of the Girls nitpickers seem to be funneling their issues with other aspects of the show—the depiction of privilege, the emphasis on women, the youth of its creator—into the race question, where their objections will seem less reactionary and more righteous.

I repeat: This is not the case with every column (or tweet, or blog post) criticizing Girls for being too monochrome. For the most part, this line of attack is completely legitimate. But that’s the big problem with the eruption of ‘too white’ as a putdown: It turns real complaints that deserve a fair hearing into part of the nagging buzz of self-satisfied snark that pervades our culture today. There are too many people who disingenuously gripe about how ‘white’ something is when they’re really trying to say that it’s not brassy or badass enough for their taste—that it’s salmon, not a buffalo wing.

So here’s the challenge to all you people who toss around ‘white’ as a synonym for ‘lame’ on the Internet: Suggest alternatives. Name a movie, a TV show, a book, a piece of music, or anything that meets your standards for non-‘whiteness.’ I’m not baiting you here; I’m asking sincerely. If you’re really interested in encouraging diversity, do so in a positive way, by calling attention to some valuable work that’s flying below the radar. Tell us to listen to Charles Bradley, or seek out the films of Ramin Bahrani, or read the comics of Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim, or appreciate the nuanced depiction of the black middle-class on the much-missed TNT drama Men of a Certain Age. Light the way instead of huffily trying to snuff others’ enthusiasm.

Unless of course you’re only race-baiting to score points and make yourself look cool. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? I mean, only a terrible human being would exploit centuries of struggle against oppression and marginalization just to get out of seeing a Wes Anderson movie.”

nedhepburn: In 2009 Kodak announced that they were to stop...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:55:28 -0500

nedhepburn:

In 2009 Kodak announced that they were to stop making Kodachrome film, one of the most distinctive types of films ever created, because the company could not afford to keep up with the digital camera market.

Steve McCurry – the photographer who shot perhaps the most famous Kodachrome image of all time – was given the very last roll of Kodachrome film. This is frame 36 of 36 – the very last photograph taken with Kodachrome film – taken in a cemetery not far from the Kodachrome factory.

You can view the full gallery of all 36 photographs taken with the last roll of film here.

pushinghoopswithsticks: Mad Men Bittorrent Edition From...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:20:07 -0500

pushinghoopswithsticks:

Mad Men Bittorrent Edition From artist Conor McGarrigle comes fantastic glitch video art is made from an episode of Mad Men incompletely downloaded from the internet via bittorrent.

Video comprising one episode of Madmen incompletely downloaded from the internet via bittorrent. The video has been linearly edited, no digital effects were used and all jump cuts and repeats are in the corrupted file.

The video captures an episode of the popular TV show in the act of being shared by thousands of users on bittorent. The video simultaneously acts as a visualisation of bittorrent traffic and the practice of filesharing and is an aesthetically beautiful by product of the bittorrent process as the pieces of the original file are rearranged and reconfigured into a new transitory in-between state.

Resurrected via James Bridle’s new-aesthetic tumblr. [via]

Notes on a Lost Art: Meatloaf- “I’d Do Anything for...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:14:39 -0500

Notes on a Lost Art: Meatloaf- “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”

1. If we have to choose between the truth and an easily-digestible story, we choose the latter every time. For example, I was listening to an oldies station at a Dairy Queenlast week—yep—and the Bee Gees’ “Love You Inside Out” came on. I enjoyed my Oreo Cookie Jar Blizzard for the duration of the song, and, as it faded out, a DJ informed me in a bumper that the song went to number one in June of 1979.

It’s a silky song, so I wasn’t surprised that it was a hit. But if you were to believe the narrative handed to people who weren’t alive back then, you would be surprised by the date. Supposedly, there was one night in 1977 in which the Sex Pistols and Ramones coordinated a guitar-string strangling of disco music, and nothing was ever the same again. The disposable plastic of disco burned up in the anarchic zeal of punk overnight. Haven’t you seen that Detroit Tigers game when those people burned all of the records?

Except that’s not what happened. A hundred influential people in New York listened to punk and wrote about it for the next twenty-five years, but everyone else in America didn’t care. As late as the summer of 1979, the Bee Gees were still replacing Donna Summer on the Billboard charts. Despite what every alternate history of popular music would have you believe, my mom still doesn’t know who The Clash were.

And I’m worried that people born in the ’90s believe Nirvana did the same thing to cheesy pop music. While hair metal and over-produced pop were all over your radio in the months leading up to 1992, the media would have you believe that Nevermind hit, and the authentic vitality of grunge replaced all of the trash. Except that’s not how it happened. In suburbia, cheesy pop music never went away.

2. In 1993, pop music wasn’t original, and it wasn’t even my own. I had a Nirvana CD and a Pearl Jam CD, but I was actually more interested in Aerosmith and Meatloaf, two artists that my parents had listened to twenty years earlier. If this repackaging isn’t proof that the record companies were doing whatever they wanted, I don’t know what is.

3. Michael Bay directed this video. I don’t know how it took so long for me to mention that. Michael Bay directed this, and it already has all the hallmarks of his style. It’s long not because it needs to be, but because length suggests some type of importance. Its fog, filters, lens flares, and deep focus photography* suggest a heightened (expensive) cinematic touch, but that approach is in service of something laughably derivative and bone-headed.

4. Because that’s what this Beauty and the Beast/Phantom of the Opera inspired schlock is: bone-headed. Take the prologue, in which our hero evades a cadre of police by…entering his garage. “Sorry, boys. Round ‘em up. We can’t go into the creepy guy’s haunted garage entrance. Let’s go look for some other criminals who don’t have garages.” But it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s a parable.

5. Let me see if I can unpack the narrative to this epic. Phantom Meatloaf evades the cops who are chasing him for some reason. Phantom Meatloaf sees a pretty girl in the field by his haunted mansion and leaves a dreamcatcher near her. Phantom Meatloaf becomes obsessed with her through a crystal ball. Uninvited, pretty girl starts hanging out and taking baths at the haunted mansion. Phantom Meatloaf doesn’t do anything about it. The cops (From earlier? From much later? At the haunted mansion at all?) are inspecting a crime scene. Pretty girl writhes around a bed with other pretty girls who are kissing her neck. No one ever explains who these girls are or why they’re there—are the cops investigating missing lesbians? Phantom Meatloaf smashes mirrors, which looks cool and, you know, suggests a destruction of his own fractured psyche. Phantom Meatloaf makes pretty girl levitate with some machine powered by his voice. I guess they’re in love now. Then the cops come in, all, “Are there any pretty girls consensually levitating here?” Those cops find the dreamcatcher, which no longer has any type of symbolic import. Pretty girl kisses Phantom Meatloaf, which turns him into regular Meatloaf, and they disappear onto a motorcycle riding off into the sunset. Okay. Cool. Want to make a movie about Pearl Harbor?

6. Jeffrey Oescher and I argued endlessly in his parents’ van about whether or not the lyrics said, “sex and drugs and rock and roll” or “sex and drums and rock and roll.” I argued against the improbable redundancy of the latter, but it turns out we were both right. On the actual record, Meatloaf prays to the god of sex and drugs and rock and roll (Jim Morrison?), and on the radio edit he reveals his affinity for, like, Echo & the Bunnymen by revealing that drums and rock and roll are mutually exclusive.

7. The Wikipedia page for the song states that Meatloaf’s video makeup took two hours to apply, and it still looks terrible. I love hearing reports about people sitting in a chair for hours at a time for completely underwhelming results. No one has really earned that whole “OMG wake up at four in the morning for make up” thing since Rick Baker’s work on The Nutty Professor.

8. On the third or fourth time the song should have ended, we get a female voice for a duet coda. In the liner notes of the album, this voice is credited mysteriously to “Mrs. Loud,” but Mrs. Loud was too fat for Michael Bay or something, because she was replaced in the video and on tour with someone more photogenic. This replacing-the-singer was a thing in the ’90s. C&C Music Factory did it for their “Everybody Dance Now” video too. But I’m just imagining the phone call to that poor woman: “Uh, you’re not good-looking enough to go toe-to-toe with Meatloaf. How are the kids?”

9. “Some days it don’t come easy / Some days it don’t come hard / Some days it don’t come at all / And these are the days that never end.” Lyrics.

*- Daniel Pearl was the director of photography for this video and, weirdly enough, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was notable because its look was so spontaneous and un-cinematic. I guess four days with Michael Bay will make you question everything that made you great.

"Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"- Stephen Marche- The Atlantic

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:12:00 -0500

"Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"- Stephen Marche- The Atlantic:

I hate alarmist titles like that, but the ideas within are more sophisticated than any other essay of this type.

“And yet, despite its deleterious effect on health, loneliness is one of the first things ordinary Americans spend their money achieving. With money, you flee the cramped city to a house in the suburbs or, if you can afford it, a McMansion in the exurbs, inevitably spending more time in your car. Loneliness is at the American core, a by-product of a long-standing national appetite for independence: The Pilgrims who left Europe willingly abandoned the bonds and strictures of a society that could not accept their right to be different. They did not seek out loneliness, but they accepted it as the price of their autonomy. The cowboys who set off to explore a seemingly endless frontier likewise traded away personal ties in favor of pride and self-respect. The ultimate American icon is the astronaut: Who is more heroic, or more alone? The price of self-determination and self-reliance has often been loneliness. But Americans have always been willing to pay that price.

Today, the one common feature in American secular culture is its celebration of the self that breaks away from the constrictions of the family and the state, and, in its greatest expressions, from all limits entirely. The great American poem is Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The great American essay is Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.” The great American novel is Melville’s Moby-Dick, the tale of a man on a quest so lonely that it is incomprehensible to those around him. American culture, high and low, is about self-expression and personal authenticity. Franklin Delano Roosevelt called individualism “the great watchword of American life.”

Self-invention is only half of the American story, however. The drive for isolation has always been in tension with the impulse to cluster in communities that cling and suffocate. The Pilgrims, while fomenting spiritual rebellion, also enforced ferocious cohesion. The Salem witch trials, in hindsight, read like attempts to impose solidarity—as do the McCarthy hearings. The history of the United States is like the famous parable of the porcupines in the cold, from Schopenhauer’s Studies in Pessimism—the ones who huddle together for warmth and shuffle away in pain, always separating and congregating.”