Posts Tagged Under ‘Culture’

Quick Hits

• Back in my New York days, it seemed that every time you turned around, someone was praising the independent, gritty spirit of 1970s-80s New York, the culture that produced hip-hop, tagging, Reggie Jackson, Taxi Driver, CBGB-OMFUG, The Warriors and other art inspired by the city’s crushing, nigh-bankrupt bleakness. While I acknowledge the period as one of the truly great creative eras in the American scene, one that I think I can explore forever, the nostalgia to me seems to overlook the big, fat suckitude of crime, urban decay, poverty and a general pessimism that pervaded New York in the 1970s and 80s. Does anybody really miss this? John Carpenter didn’t make Escape From New York because it was a great logical leap from reality. People suffered greatly in those days.

  But let’s assume that you believe despair breeds the greatest art (I tend to agree), and you’re an urban hipster who craves the dangerous, anything-goes spirit of the 1970s. There’s another town out there for you long past its mid-century glory days; one with miles of burnt-out dwellings, a suburban population that’s afraid to go downtown, weak political leadership and an economic death spiral to boot. Plus, it’s been this way for a good three decades, so it’s not likely to have changed by the time you arrive.

  So what I really want to know is, why isn’t Detroit seeing a nostalgia-driven hipster influx?

• Esquire magazine (to which I have a subscription; I hit my news/business base with The Economist, my sports base with SI, and my man-of-the-world, well-read, how-to-buy-suits-I-will-never-afford base with the big E) had the cover line this month “Can a white man still be elected President?”

  Sometimes, one can take provocative cover taglines a little too far from reality, to the point that the reader says, “Man, they are trying way too hard to get my attention.” Then, to take a journey of rhetorical absurdity that’s hemispheres beyond that, one can write, “Can a white man still be elected President?”

• The more President Bush’s approval ratings drop, the more I fear what the government might do in the name of “Hey, we’re hated lame ducks anyway.”

Out.

Hung, Then Tried, Then Shot?

I agree wholeheartedly with this guy:

Inner City Pressure

We all just want some muesli. That’s why “Flight of the Conchords” is phat.

Random

• I’ve got a little Short Bus from Filter playing on the iTunes right now. What happened to industrial rock? There was a glory era from about 1992-1999 or so, and then it really faded away. Nine Inch Nails are still around, but they just don’t have the prominence they used to have. I blame Clear Channel Communications, because why not.
• There really aren’t many people who are happy with the direction of the United States at the moment. Whose fault is this? The media? The Republicans? The President? The Democrats? The military?

  I feel like our wise commentators are afraid to call out the common cause behind all of those: the citizens of this currently misguided nation. Because in our society, the people are the ones putting their government in place, consuming the media and shaping the economy, and I just can’t help but think that most peeps have been pretty derelict in their citizenly duties.

• Speaking of that, I gotta read this.
• Luckily though, you readaz are bright people. So I know you’ll go check out Slate’s new video magazine, Slate V, when it launches soon. Help a blogga out: I’ve been working like a mug to get this thing ready to go on a really tight deadline.
• It’s not quite new anymore, but I still think Dirty Jobs is one of the best cable shows in years. Watching a dude get all mudded up and covered in sludge for the sake of good television has a great, dumb appeal, but to roll Gompers-style for a minute, I gotta give it up for the matter-of-fact, highly popular, non-preachy throwback glorification of the American worker in this age of obscene fetishization of the horded wealth of the few. I didn’t like when Mike Rowe shilled for Ford, but otherwise the show is a high-quality effort to remind us bourgeois slobs that societal consumerism doesn’t come easy.

  Also, I like to watch people smash things.

I’m out.

Paris Hilton’s Jailing is a Worthwhile News Story

High horses are one thing, readaz, but reality is anutha.

My journalism education came from the mother of all ivory-tower purist j-school institutions, that being the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. We were always taught that what matters in the media world is ethics, proper sourcing and the pursuit of objective truth without fear of those controlling the money or the power.

Tru dat; I can’t belittle that sentiment because the shred of a hopeful idealist in me still clings to it. It’s why I went into my chosen profession. But being in the real-world media market has taught me that two other things are just as important, and possibly moreso: a proper business model and a sense of cultural relativity.

That’s why, despite the usual cries of “Look at this garbage the media pushes on us,” media peeps are right to flog Paris Hilton’s arrest, jailing, release and subsequent re-jailing.

The lede from this story in the New York Times perfectly summarizes the knowledge I’m about to drop. This story is important because it’s a collision of the two aspects of the media that we learned in college: spinach and ice cream. (Quick explainer, and thanks to Prof. Craig LaMay for the well-named concept: Spinach is politics, foreign affairs, policy, science and economics, a.k.a. the stuff that’s good for citizens but they hate to consume. Ice cream is sports, fashion, celebrities, lifestyle and entertainment. We all enjoy it, but it makes you into a fat slug of a citizen if you consume it in more than moderation. Most of the ice cream could be construed as “chick crap”, but dudes, you need to stop lying to yourself about this “glory of human endeavor” bull and admit that sports coverage is the exact equivalent in frivolity.)

In the Hilton story, we have a direct trump of ice cream by spinach: Paris, embodying the frivolity obsession perhaps more than any other human ever, clashes against the spinach-fueled legal system and ultimately loses. The story here isn’t something normally in the realm of valid disgust with the media like “Paris Hilton insulted Lindsay Lohan’s genitals,” but instead is a larger lesson on eating only the ice cream of life: we have here the real world (jail and judges) ultimately proving more powerful than the celebrity world, which while built up in popular culture to the point that it seems to float above the real world on a cloud of great importance, proved in this case to be a defeated paper tiger.

Cynics up in this piece will note that the judge had no choice but to take harsh command of the situation: Al “I’m all up in everything, everywhere” Sharpton and John Edwards publicly questioned Hilton’s release, as did commentators and public moralists everywhere. (Holla back, New York Post.) This backlash represented the other side of the country’s celebrity-obsession duality, that being the part that wants to burn these muthas down and force them to live in the same world as the rest of us, instead of lifting them up high like we do otherwise. Regardless, the end result is the same: the subjugation of the celebrity world’s greatest “I’m rich, I do what the hell I want, and I’m famous for it” icon at the feet of the real world.

That is the type of story that symbolizes the clash of cultural paradigms. And paradigm clashes that are so easily embodied have sociological significance. Significance = media organizations should get their coverage on.

Say what.

Trent R.

Anybody heard the new NIN album yet? Opinions? I know a lot of it’s available for listening online, but I haven’t made the time yet.

Also, I once saw Trent Reznor at the Pittsburgh airport. He got his own bags after flying up from New Orleans on the same flight as Lil’ Stack. Here’s a quick list of other interesting people I or my bro have seen on planes or in airports:

Your call.

• Joey Porter
• Lil’ Wayne
• Barry Melrose
• LL Cool J
• That guy who thought King Arthur invaded Iraq

Sadly for LL and crew, none of them will ever top the time I made the scene with Heather Graham. In that quarter-second of eye contact at that Guggenheim art-collectors’ ball in 2004 that I wasn’t actually supposed to attend, I’m telling you: connection.

Sopranos: Bout to Be Over

• My theory based on the preview of next week’s show is that Patsy Parisi is the double-agent from Phil’s crew. His son appears to be the one firing a gun in one of the frames, and it makes sense that the son would also inform on just when he’d be bringing Meadow to the restaurant. I’m callin’ it.
• I liked this episode’s simultaneous display of how the Tony and A.J. both face the effects of their mental illness, but at the same time go too far in letting it as a moral shield for anything else they do. I think the last two episodes will somehow play up this angle even further, in that no matter what’s up in your world, you’re still the one responsible for your own good or bad actions.
• When my uncle told me about “biting the curb” as something that used to go down in Detroit in the 1960s, where he grew up, I thought that was just some crazy tall-tale stuff. But now we have two pop-culture uses of it. Thank you, American History X and The Sopranos, for giving my teeth that ill psych-out not once, but twice.

HBO: Anything on the Horizon?

Yo Internet.

So does anybody out there know if there’s some quality programming coming down from HBO with the quickness? Not only did Rome and Deadwood end this year, now we got to worry about the end of The Sopranos and whatever show they’re going to get to replace that. That leaves me solely with Entourage, meaning the only dramatic show I watch anymore is Lost. (Which has picked back up again after a punked-out fall half-season).

Being that Big Love doesn’t do it for me, and I don’t know offhand of any new show ideas, what does anyone else know is coming? And if nothing, what should be the next topic? I’d like to see HBO’s take on a media workplace, personally.

Bar Songs Worthy of Hate

3. “Don’t Stop Believing”, Journey - Yes, I do like this song. You like it too. So do your twelve friends. So does that annoying bar chick and her husband-hunting friends. So does the guy who says “bro” who’s just here to “cut loose with my boys”. These people indicate that the Journey trend has become way too popular to be ironically ahead of the game anymore. Sorry, Kevin.

2. “Living on a Prayer”, Bon Jovi - Again, I like this one. It brings back phat memories of Dance Marathon and Northwestern. Except that all those DJs who feel the need to pause the track during “whoaOOOOH! LIVING ON A PRAYER!” make me relive it a little too often, so hearing it all the time makes me feel like that dude who hangs around the college campus just a little too long after he graduates. And I am not that dude. I follow the “one visit after departure” rule very strictly here, Internet. Respect that.

1. “Sweet Caroline”, Neil Diamond - I don’t like this song. At all. In fact, I’ve hated it since I was a kid and my parents rocked “Oldies - 3WS” back in the car-radio day. Neil Diamond isn’t even a very good singer. Singing onomatopoeia doesn’t hold much of an appeal either: verbalized sounds aren’t lyrics, homes. If I go to a bar and the DJ rocks the track-stop for this one too (he’s probably already done it for Bon Jovi), I’m future-skipping that bar with the quickness. Also, Red Sox fans: baseball is boring. Sorry to tell you.

Tonight I had TV dinner and a beer. I am 1950s mantastic. What.