Old Media Dies Hard
We haven’t been terribly impressed with our own Inquirer’s attempts to stay current in this digital age, which add up to taking one print reporter and having him blog about all of the others. Far more striking is the Washington Post’s “remix” section, which invites technologically gifted readers to “mash up” the Post’s content into new and perhaps more relevant forms. The results so far have been mixed—there’s a fairly blah color-coded map of which continents the Post has covered, as well as a “tag cloud” with various keywords of various sizes. But we applaud the effort of opening the door wide open to readers’ ideas and predict great things to come.
A Walkman For the Eyes
As if music videos could become any more influential, the day when there is no such thing as a tune without visual accompaniment may be on the horizon.Regular, ordinary commuters are downloading music videos from message boards and watching them on the subway with the help of their portable PlayStation gaming devices. They’re also ripping And 1 hoops videos and illicit DV captures of 50 Cent’s new movie. Give it a few years and paying Blockbuster and Netflix for the right to watch a movie may seem as inane as paying cash for a CD at the record store.
ESPO Says: Books are the New Trains
As a student at our own University of the Arts, young Stephen Powers spent a lot of time under the El on Frankford and up on Ridge Avenue. It was there, on the facades of various cash-for-gold outlets and pawn shops, that he happened upon the blocky bright red and yellow signage style, a moment as significant as Sir Isaac Newton getting beaned on the head with an apple. He has since deployed the technique in the service of a Tylenol Ouch zine, and now, his own graphic novel, “First and Fifteenth,” a chronicle of a pudgy super hero patrolling the streets of New York. This is further evidence (if you needed any) that the greatest talents of our age are born and trained in Philadelphia. New York’s just where they go to be bought and sold.
This Week’s Pre-Trend: Metrospirituality
Longtime Droppings reads know that a Pre-Trend is a trend that’s either very, very early in its adoption cycle, or maybe just pretend—made up by one of the numerous trendkilling trendhouses that get paid to churn out a new trend each week. The latest Pre-Trend we’ve run across is Metrospirituality, as trumpeted by the following press release…
>A kinder, gentler post-Yuppie, metrospirituals treat the earth and native cultures
>with respect, connect with their inner source and inspiration, test their body and
>expand their mind with ancient physical practices and do it all with serious style.
>Whether you are a Hollywood star, Wal-Mart shopper, fashionista, or Filene¹s
>basement-dweller, chances are you already know or even lead the life of a
>metrospiritual. Virtue is a key feature of the metrospiritual lifestyle, and those in
>the fold expect it not only of themselves but also from the companies to which they
>give their business.
Turns out these crazy Metrospirituals prefer Whole Foods to Acme, Machu Piccu to Prague, home altars to sweat lodges and tea salons to espresso bars. Problem is that all this New Age garbage has been around since the 1970s. Apparently all it takes to coin a new trend is combining a hot prefix with an old consumption pattern. No need to make any fine distinctions or new observations. Next they’ll be calling the fat drunk from the corner bar a Metroflatual, who prefers NFL to opera, Hormel’s chili to gourmet sushi, and sleeps with women but relates to men.
The Best New Way To Get People Staring At Your Crotch
Living in a city, you’re going to randomly run into a few folks who are flashing a lot of cash. There’s the greasy hot dog vendor taking his paper bag of singles and quarters to the bank. There’s the skinny dude on the subway with the airbrushed Scarface t-shirt hanging down to his knees, carrying his thick roll of twenties. And then there’s you, with your wallet full of expense receipts and credit cards.
Anyone who’s held five or more $100 bills in their hand know that these puppies have serious juice. They’re about as close as our godless culture gets to a secular idol that can make passersby stop and stare. This effect is magnified by the Money Buckle, which retails for $45 but bears a frighteningly realistic semblance to a wad of Benjamins bound up with a rubber band. Get yours know before the Secret Service takes these out of circulation.
The Queen of Retro Mac Design
The challenge of design is to take a complicated concept and illustrate with as cleanly and simply as possible, even if all you have to work with is 125 black and white squares. Therefore we must tip our hats to Susan Kare, creator of the original Macintosh icons. Long before the days of the rainbow spinning disc, Kare came up with the visual language that old computers use to say “I hate you”—the bomb with the lit fuse, the clock with the hands that spin and sometimes freeze up on you. This lady even drew the very first New York, Geneva and Chicago fonts, the control panel, and best of all, the game Solitaire, all for the very first Mac. We’re amazed by her achievements as well as her humble, down to earth website—she clearly deserves a shrine, and some royalties from more recent pixel artists like eBoy.
The Great Fresca Makeover Debate
Which design cliché should we apply to Fresca’s new packaging? Is this a case of “a fresh new spin on an old classic” or “don’t mess with a good thing”? Is this citrus drink a classic like the Ford Mustang, ripe for reinterpretation? Or is it like Hamlet, suffering at the hands of those who would tweak it past the point of recognition? The answer is clearly Mustang. Flavorwise, Fresca was always ready to hang with Diet Coke, Sprite and the rest. It was just that dowdy old can with odd yellow fruit blossom shapes that made everyone think it was their private end-of-the-supermarket-aisle discovery. Now Fresca’s all like “I’m a serious, modern drink with a stylish contemporary label and two new flavors—peach citrus and black cherry.” We’re all, “you go, girl!”
Love is War, And War is a Joke
Back in 1911, war was a game with rules, sort of like Capture the Flag but played with mustard gas and bayonets. It had a beginning, middle, and end. There were two sides staring at one another from across the field, who grappled with one another in the simple cadences of attack and retreat.
It was, in other words, a lot like love.
So what better way to dispose of one’s old wedding ring than to melt it down into a bullet? Isn’t that what break-ups are all about, transforming the cirle of eternal union into an arrow of violent purpose. If you’re feeling really burnt, you could actually put powder in the thing and take out your broken heartedness on a tree stump or beer bottle. Or wear the thing as a keychain, earring, necklace, or other trinket. Even if you don’t know the first thing about smithery, these folks will do the melting and the pouring for you.
And while we’re on the subject of high-fashion and deadly weaponry, check out the art of Peter Gronquist. This kid makes AK-47s out of the Burberry plaid, Chanel tanks, and best of all, Pac Man hand grenades. Art these days is all about smirking, and if you can smirk at war, you can smirk at anything.
All Hail Queen Hong
It’s no longer enough for art to be cute and workmanlike. It also needs to look like a frame from a story board, with a plot, you know? Characters. After all, it’s not like you can just keep drawing the same fluorescent Space Monkey over and over again, like thirty space monkeys a day, and expect them to sell five years from now. There needs to be a setting, some kind of context. That’s why we like Seonna Hong and, more generally, illustrators who become fine artists. They’ve actually got the discipline to tell a story and put something across to their audience, instead of hiding behind color fields and shapes other intangibles that you need a book to get anything out of. Hong paints cherubic, fleshy little dumplings give make us think of kindergarten, the bean growing in its styrofoam cup, and the importance of holding hands and sticking together, but there’s always some weird creature of threat looming in the periphery, which saves her work from being saccharine or precious.
Will Satellite Jedi Bring the Force Back to Radio?
They say no form of media really takes off until it’s adopted by at least ten percent of the population, which means this holiday season is do or die time for XM and Sirius, the world’s first two satellite radio systems, which have been losing money hand over fist as they sign up talent and try to woo new subscribers. Sirius dropped $100 million to nab Howard Stern from Infinity, claiming that they’ll make that figure back every single year if just five percent of Stern’s rabid fan base follows him to his new satellite outpost and is willing to pay twelve bucks a month in subscription fees. Will satellite radio work? We think so, mostly because current radio offerings (NPR being one notable exception) are as bland for their listeners as they are juicy for advertisers. We’re also persuaded by the Wall Street Journal article below, wherein the writer describes how listening to dirty jokes on his way to work every morning changed his life. When gauging the pull of new media, never underestimate the explanatory power of a well-told anecdote from a reliable and intelligent source.
This Woman Snores Like A Duck
Cleveland: The Land Where Bears Are Made Of Cardboard
Louisiana Government Loves Themselves Some Halle Berry
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