what i’m making: tortilla española and shaved brussel sprouts with fresh walnuts and pecorino. spanish wine and belgian beer to accompany.
Inflated furniture.
“Inflatable luxury twin sofa” by unknown.
TWB, inflated wood bench by Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay.
Plopp, inflated metal stool by Oskar Zieta.
Apollo, inflatable chair from Quasar
Machete, box office proceeds and ballot box forecasting.
I’m about halfway through Inglourious Basterds and spent some time yesterday thinking about the forthcoming Machete. Both are perfectly wrought genre pictures, of so-called Jewsploitation and Mexploitation, respectively. With an important difference: the former is set in another time and place and the latter is set right here, right now.
The historical pulp or -sploitation genres are intended as cathartic entertainment, as a way of remembering and thus healing a past violence, rather than as propaganda that aims to incite future violence. (Blaxploitation could not have preceded the Civil Rights movement and less so the Black Panther Party.)
Given the broader historical narrative in which these revenge fantasies unfold, they are also incapable of escaping irony. Even when its producers and/or audiences cling to its surface meaning, like someone suffering from nightmares might pull up a blanket, the subtext remains: a festering wound that will not be healed by being dressed up.
For this reason, the most beloved pulp films are seldom naive: to balance the scales of justice, everyone must pay, including the audience.
Consider, for example, the Westerns of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah. Among other pleasures, the Pilgrim-sploitation movies gave the descendants of the dirt-poor immigrants who conquered the American West a chance to take their final revenge on both nature and the Native American nations they had to battle – and often lost to. But while making a gesture of healing old wounds, such movies often opened new ones.*
Which makes me wonder: is America ready for Mexploitation? I hope so.
*Sadly, America is still waiting for the Native American-sploitation flick. To the victor go the spoils. Casinos notwithstanding.
Weaving as a way of life: the global corporation.
There are crafts worth doing for the process alone, never mind the product. Weaving together the different strands of our lives is one such process which is rewarding in and of itself – and, let’s face it, once that product is shipped the lights in the factory get turned off.
Weaving is how we create rich art. A blind focus on one thread can make for a bigger splash of color but not necessarily a bold one.
Choreography, weaving, uniting and synthesizing: these are the master crafts. The ones that bring together disparate threads, movements, thoughts. This is not just a concern for personal growth but for organizational growth and competitive success.
Ultimately any company that is not in pursuit of the truth is not in pursuit of excellence in their craft. Consider the world’s most profitable businesses. I can think of no exception to the claim that they are the most focused on capturing and incorporating the best insights of their diverse workforce as well as the needs of their clients and suppliers.
Case in point, most of us are familiar with the monolithic plastic exterior of Apple products. But underneath that candy coated shell is a teeming ecosystem of companies that produce very distinct and carefully crafted components. Each its own complex ecosystem of workers, suppliers, aspirations, conflicts, etc.
These seemingly fractal organizations made up of organizations made up of organizations are the cutting edge of our civilization. A form of weaving and collective wisdom unprecedented for its richness.
if climate change brought “cold” summers to LA, would the culture change?
LA today (63° F) feels as cold as an SF summer – where it’s not much colder (58°F).
if temperature impacts culture (amount of outdoor seating at restaurants, use of parks, fashion, average caloric value of typical lunch), how long would it take for the culture of los angeles to change given a 5° F degree cooling over 25 years?
we have computers, software and data to calculate that, right?
A modern Easter story; rebirth in Butte, Montana.
Radiolab has produced a startlingly beautiful story of hope and the awesome complexity of life. It involves abandoned mines, toxic waste and geese. It should be told at Easter.
Sadistic government-funded experiment helped create a domestic terrorist?
Ted Kaczynski, The Unambomber, was once a 17 year-old test subject in a sadistic psychological study performed at Harvard at the bequest of the precursor to the CIA.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been brought up more often in recent years.
From Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber as discussed by the recent Radiolab episode “Oops”.
music: mastodon’s “the last baron”
because it was released on iTunes as an album-only purchase, i’d not heard Mastodon’s The Last Baron until today.
it is by far one of the most ridiculously well executed songs of the genre. whatever that genre might be.
previously: jesus christ pose by soundgarden. and, i’m told, rush. also, meshuggah and the raymond scott quintette.
Irony is a private channel.
what is irony but a private channel? requiring context is a way of filtering your audience, for whatever reason.
Role playing.
In a few years, if technology and media companies continue to innovate at their current breakneck pace, entertainment will finally be as interactive as it was in 1599, when the Globe theater was built.
I was reminded of just how much we misplace the past while watching a YouTube clip of Andy Kaufman performing his Great Gatsby bit on live television and in front of a live studio audience in 1978.
It’s a routine which cannot work without a live studio audience and one which would be much less effective were it not also broadcast live to an even larger television audience. Yet neither could it be done without recorded media.
In a way, it’s still state of the art interactive television. (What difference would IPTV make other than allowing the viewers at home to groan and heckle along with the studio audience? I’m sure they did when this show was first televised.) The skit’s lasting effect comes from its script which requires audience participation in order to affirm the almost tyrannical power of the broadcaster: she or he who controls the stage. Both the studio and television audiences are trapped.
The ways we can transmit information today are certainly different and its these technical permutations – of one one to one, one to many, many to one and many to many – which we often mistake for the cutting edge of media. (Especially within the confines of consumer capitalism, where changing business models have very serious implications for the political economy.)
But the real novelty is and always has been who can say what to whom.
Consider the true story of a husband and wife who were born into slavery and escaped by her playing the role of a white man (free) and he her slave. Their escape lasted several days. Can you imagine that performance?
Our modern freedoms are rooted in ancient rituals of performance. Who commands the nation’s attention, what is permissible speech, these are the questions which change society. Whether we interact via papyrus or electronic packet is almost immaterial.
We hope for liberation from the past via increased access to an ever widening stage, perhaps longing for a play without distinction between audience and performer. But freedom for all depends on who gets to play what role not the dissolution of roles altogether. The laughter at the end of Kaufman’s bit is proof positive that we are bound to role playing the passive and active.
New scripts will change the media industry far more than new set top boxes.
possible alternative reality games involving celebrities
you, the protagonist, are accidentally emailed the login / confirmation email intended for someone who is quite famous. you become his/her doppelganger. it’s your choice whether you become the celebrity’s guardian angel or a shadowy trickster. you can alternate between both poles.
the objective is to interact with the celebrity’s environment (his/her business contacts, press, friends, family) just enough to create changes but not so much as to get caught. perhaps, to reunite the celebrity with their true love. (e.g., you can be a Cyrano de Bergerac.) or to be cast in the right movie.
you monitor the impact of your moves over time by following the popular / celebrity press. if you’re caught, the game is over. there is no restart.
alternately, you are emailed the the login / confirmation for the account of a celebrity’s manager. thus, you are given the role of his/her adviser. but thousands of other players are emailed the same access. the game aggregates all of your input, providing an actual celebrity with either the average input or the ranked input of those players whose choices have been most valued / successful in previous rounds. the crowd sourcing of choices.
randy brown built himself a motion picture in the shape of a house.
some people express their freedom via clever movements. the player or dancer who makes a great move. others express their freedom by what they build. a great play, a great house.
architect randy brown’s own house in nebraska.
to think that the money spent to build this space could have been used to build an approximation of a traditional mansion; a fortress that directs the inhabitant’s eye inward, to furnishings. a giant price tag writ in the architectural language of pre-democratic societies.
instead, Brown, like other contemporary architects, has created a series of spaces that engage the inhabitant’s sense of place and of what it is possible. it’s like being inside a movie rather than a mausoleum.
Rolling Stone strikes back, via the New York Times.
David Carr for the NYT tears into Time and Politico for posting the PDF of Rolling Stone’s explosive profile.
The last graph starts with this protest:
“This is not about our slow-footedness on the Web, but our right to publish on a schedule we chose. To me, this was really a transitional moment,” said Mr. Bates of Rolling Stone.
Payne: “I don’t see any future for whale species except extinction.”
Biologist Roger Payne’s conclusion must be proven wrong, whether by altering the status quo or funding multiple independent studies that find the truth is less horrifying.
Reading and writing as a natural process.
Hypothesis: all forms of writing are based on natural forms — they are a transcription of our landscapes: mountains, trees predators, prey, caves, clouds, rivers. The Greek alphabet, the Roman alphabet, Sanskrit, Chinese ideograms are all sketches of nature.
This is the claim made by Mark Changizi and his colleagues at Caltech, as referenced in the recent New Yorker story by Oliver Sacks “A Man of Letters.”
Sacks quoting Changizi: the shapes of letters “have been selected to resemble conglomerations of contours found in natural scenes, thereby tapping into our already-existing object recognition mechanisms.”
You navigate a text. You get lost in a book. You follow a trail of words. You forge a path through prose. All of these metaphors may be quite literal.
Even our literature is a “natural” process. Our literary mazes so many gopher holes and rabbit burrows.
Music: the new Foals is not like the old Foals but it might be better.
For your pleasure: Foals 2 trees. I would gladly buy this song again and again.
Loving and sweet, it’s a little gem. It reminds me of Elliott Smith’s Independence Day with Foals’ lively precise drumming and contemporary guitar work in full effect.
We played out the first Foals album and while it’s still a welcome blast of energy some of its youthful moments are less compelling to me. This new release adds some depth to the mix; literally and figuratively. It’s a welcome if at first disconcerting departure.