There were 199 entries found with "minneapolis":
friday
Rick says a bunch of interesting things in his new column about whether you need to a be highly networked individual to succeed online. I especially relish how he ties geography into the conversation, alluding to a midwestern startup.
And many, many more hyper-social New Yorkers and San Franciscans make successful startups than antisocial Midwesterners. Or even antisocial New Yorkers. These are things you can control. You can move to San Francisco. Better yet, you can move to New York. You can go to meetups. You can go to conferences. You can email investors. You can go to classes at General Assembly. It's in your control. Or, you can stay at home in the Midwest, reading TechCrunch and talking about how it's all rigged and an insiders game.
This will frustrate my friends in Minneapolis -- those dozens of startups trying to compete at CoCo and other places. They're trying to create their own scene right now. Creative acts are becoming increasingly dependent on groups of people. Being part of a "scene" in music was undeniably important in the '80s and '90s, but now it's become as true for fashion, technology, theater, and nearly all creative arts.
It's an interesting dilemma building a company in the midwest: Your success is as much a factor of your peers' success -- the community's success -- as it is the brilliance and execution of your idea.
thursday
Fifteen things that intrigue me right now:
1) You Say You Want a Devolution? Here's an interesting thesis from Kurt Anderson in Vanity Fair: While there have been massive technological changes in the past 20 years, everything looks the same. That is, he suggests, if you looked at a random snapshot from 1991, the people and buildings and cultural objects would mostly look the same as today. So? Well, that certainly isn't true if you looked at 1931 to 1951 or 1951 to 1971. This is one of the broad cultural essays that "seems right" though I'm not sure why.
2) The .xxx top-level domain went live yesterday. You will know it when you see it.
3) Who's Afraid Of Lana Del Rey? I'm glad someone wrote this, but isn't the artifice of "authenticity" itself the bugbear to be slayed?
4) Fast Co Design. Fast Company has a design blog that tries "to bridge the fuzzy border between design and business."
5) New Walker Website. Waaaay back in the day, The Walker was one of the earliest organizations (and for sure, the first museum) to take up blogging, but the effort seemed to only get partial internal support. Last week, a site redesign revisited the idea of museum as a locus for content generation (or "idea hub"). Congrats, Schmelzer, nice work. (See also: The Atlantic and Artlog discuss the redesign.)
6) The Bitter Email Exchange between David Denby and Scott Rudin over the Review Embargo of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Rudin missed such a great opportunity to use a scathing Subject line!
7) Aaron Sorkin's New Project: Newsroom. People who say they aren't excited for this are lying.
8) Bjork's Favorite Recordings.
9) The Utne Reader to Leave Minneapolis. Sad. I used to have an office across the street from these guys in Loring Park.
10) JimRomenesko.com. Hello there, old timer!
11) Barney Frank's Best Insults.
12) Richard Lawson in Atlantic Wire. How fast did this become the best writing online? In just weeks, we've received thought pieces like When Fans Attack and movie reviews that read like the best of the New Yorker (so: Anthony Lane not David Denby), while still satisfying us in that off-hand impulsive bloggy way. (See also, this post on Gawker that isn't at all about Lawson but somehow the commenters turned it into a rally cry.)
13) The Trailer to Shame.
14) @FAKEGRIMLOCK.
15) Paste's 50 Best Songs of 2011.
tuesday
Five things that intrigue me right now:
1) Minneapolis Is A Startup Powerhouse! Sure, why not?
2) Lets Not Party Like Its 1999. All party reporting should be like Ricks.
3) Marc Maron Podcast. I finally listened to this over Thanksgiving. So good.
4) Those Pics of DiCaprio as Gatsby Floating Around the Internet.
5) YouTube Innovation. For the first couple years after landing into Googles lap, YouTube had essentially zero new product innovation, perhaps because they were busy fighting off lawsuits. But in the past year, numerous interface, design, and product changes have made it a surprising place of innovation perhaps the most innovative department in all of Google. One very small example: You can subscribe to feeds of videos that appear on your favorite websites, such as Hipster Runoff, Kottke, TMZ, and Cute Overload.
tuesday
Five things that intrigue me right now:
1) Jotly. So good. I almost dont want to tell you its a parody.
2) NYT on Reality Weekly. The amazing thing here is that no one thought of it before. It will be huge.
3) Don Draper at 84. I hope he looks more convincing than DiCaprio as J. Edgar.
4) Foursquare Badges Level Up. Smart. Its the little things.
5) Minneapolis, Mark Mallman. The amazing bit here is at 2:15 where Mark turns the city into a spaceship. (Also, Minneapolis people really like Minneapolis things, dont they? Its nearly as bad as Portland.)
(#Fun! I will try this for a week.)
monday
Songs about Minneapolis. Everything from Tom Waits' "9th & Hennepin" (yes) to Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street" (probably) to Janet Jackson's "Escapade" (well, sorta).
tuesday
It's Minneapolis week at MTV2, and here's a 19-track video playlist that includes Tapes 'n Tapes, P.O.S., The Replacements, Brother Ali, and Dylan. (Why they chose that claymation Replacements vid is a mystery though.)
monday
P.O.S. is a Rhymesayers (i.e. Minneapolis hip-hop) act who deserves to break out -- listen to his most recent single. His Mercury Lounge show last month was packed with midwest refugees, but I've been trying to convert the coasties. His background is in hardcore, which he brought with him when he crossed over several years ago. All of this would suggest that covering Pearl Jam's "Why Go?" in his basement would ultimately be the worst mistake ever, but it's surprisingly great. [via]
friday
Everyone is doing their predictions for 2009 right now, and everyone who isn't is claiming that the future is too bleak or complex to predict. What you see below takes both perspectives into account and says: fuck it, let's have fun with this.
However, don't mistake this satire as an empty gesture. If not literally true, I believe most of predictions below in some metaphoric sense. In other words, to hell with the Black Swan!
So here we are again -- playing Nostradamus in media, technology, and pop culture -- with 36 predictions for 2009:
- Hatahs. 4chan digitally antagonizes an entire race of people into self-inflicted genocide.
- Facebook. By the middle of summer, you realize that you're logging into most websites via Facebook Connect. You get a creepy feeling in your gut about this, but it's so damn convenient.
- Politics. After a freak caribou attack injures Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sarah Palin joins The View.
- Newspapers. At least three major daily newspapers cease to exist. The most likely members of the carnage: the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
- Yahoo. Fuck it, Lycos buys it.
- Twitter I. Facebook finally buys Twitter, but only after a price war with Google ramps it up to a ridiculous nine-figure valuation. Unsurprisingly, this is Twitter's big plan "to make money."
- Twitter II. But seriously, just like those stories in 2001 about people who [shock!] make a living off of blogs, the "Twitter professional" will somehow become a reality.
- Twitter III. A major news event happens that no one live twitters. NYT writes three stories (Styles, Tech, and Media) about this phenomena, quickly dubbed "Twitter Shock."
- Starbucks. After trying everything else imaginable, they introduce a new "buffet" option, which is a surprise hit.
- Daughter Moguls. In the most convoluted assassination plot ever devised, Christie Hefner, Shari Redstone, and Elisabeth Murdoch join forces to commit triple patricide. Vanity Fair dedicates three eInk covers to the incident, with heads that morph from father to daughter.
- Magazines I. Some rich kid on the west coast launches a magazine called Charticles, which consists only of... yeah. Choire Sicha commits suicide in his St. Mark's apartment by paper cutting himself to death with the debut issue.
- Magazines II. Monocle raises its newsstand price to $1295.00.
- Magazines III. Doy, of course Portfolio goes under. The final cover story is mysteriously about cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney.
- Gossip Girl. In the Christmas '09 episode, Chuck and Blair finally fuck again. The recession ends.
- Subscriptions. Against all seeming rationality, several new online subscription publications show up on the scene.
- Where The Wild Things Are. You know what? The movie actually does suck. Gen X icons Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers are pilloried by a millennials who claim old people just don't get it. They're kinda right.
- New York Times. After Brian Stelter notices that David Carr has refriended Jayson Blair on Facebook, the New York Times asks Carr to take a drug test. Upon failing, he returns to Minneapolis to run City Pages, which ends up being the last remaining alt-weekly at Village Voice Media.
- Online Video. Something's gotta give. Two of the "big" three -- Revision3, ON Networks, Next New Networks -- cease to exist by the end of the year. And when 23/6 and Funny Or Die expire on the same day, Alley Insider's headline is "Funny Or Dead In 24/7." Normal people have no idea what any of these things are.
- Terrestrial Video. Something's gotta give. One of the "big" five is morphed into a cable outlet.
- Daily Beast. Tina Brown uses her consulting role at HBO to pitch a reality series about her own website. No one thinks it will go into development, but then Aaron Sorkin and Mark Burnett sign on. Julia Allison and Arianna Huffington are super pissed.
- Tina Fey. First woman knighted. Now Oprah's pissed too.
- Google. They do a lot of stuff that no one expects, but the surprise application of the year is some sort of mashup between three core Google products: Reader, Chrome, and Docs. Oh, and maybe Android, just to make this pshit sci-fi.
- FriendFeed. Not only does your mom still has no fucking idea what it is, but your friends don't either.
- Publishing. 49 books are published that chronicle the end of publishing.
- Music. Proving that fake stuff always wins, Lonely Island's album debuts platinum -- the only album to do so this year.
- Lara Logan. Dueling February covers of Parenting and Playboy.
- Gawker Media. Nick Denton predicts armageddon, using copious Excel graphs to elucidate his point.
- Mad Men. After negotiations break down with AMC, a rumor floats that a movie is in the works. It is eventually released in 2012 on the same day as the Arrested Development movie.
- Diablo Cody. Released in September, Jennifer's Body becomes the first young adult movie since Heathers and Clueless that resonates with grown-ups. While you try very hard to think of a new reason to hate her, Diablo casts Sasha Grey in her next film. Backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash-to-the-backlash ensues.
- Words. Webster's Dictionary names undershare word of the year.
- Online Media. Trying to take advantage of cheap labor, hundreds of "me too" small startup publications launch. They will call themselves "online magazines," but they will be blogs.
- Microsoft. They! Will! Suprise! You! (Actually, no they won't. You hear this every year. Their online version of Office will be begrudgingly cool, but it will have one severe flaw that renders it unusable.)
- Apple. After Biz Week's "Is The Innovation Over?" story appears, Steve Jobs retires at the end of the year, surprisingly citing health reasons.
- Education. 37 percent of the people you know go back to grad school.
- Digg. It does not get bought and Kevin Rose does not go on a date with Jennifer Aniston. Every boy in the Valley weeps at a shared realization: their sense of worth is over-valued.
- Rupert Murdoch. He dies in a freak yacht accident. Sumner Redstone, Padma Lakshmi, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Rachel Sklar, Hoobastank, and Shaquille O'Neill are also on board, but all survive. Foul play is suspected, and an investigation reminiscent of the board game Clue ensues. A rumor spreads that Murdoch's cryogenically frozen brain is in an Anaheim basement next to Walt Disney's frontal lobe and the Arc of the Covenant. Michael Wolff sells his next book, The Brain Eaters, for $10 million. 17 people buy it; 4 read it.
Previously: 2007 predix | 2006 predix
sunday
After exchanging blows for the last two years (2006 | 2007), Seattle and Minneapolis TIE this year for most literate city.
thursday
Of course I'm going to link to this: Kottke grabs a picture from 1956 of the first mall, Southdale in south Minneapolis which is still around.
sunday
In early 1997, the alt-weekly in Minneapolis, City Pages, wrote a profile of writers at The Onion. Unless you were from the deep midwest, you likely never saw this profile, and even more likely, you didn't yet read The Onion. But that piece has somehow become the model for an endless stream of Onion profiles ever since. This seems to have culminated this weekend with the mother of all profiles, a sprawling 7,000-worder in the Washington Post Magazine. If you've read the other profiles through the years, this one will reveal nothing; if you haven't, it's now the official definitive account of the paper's editorial process. (It could have dedicated some of those words to being more of a business story.)
sunday
In a NYT profile by David Carr, Charlie Kaufman reveals, among other things, that he worked in the circulation department of the Minneapolis Star Tribune in the late '80s.
friday
My final post from RNC for Radar: Chad Hurley At The Google/VF Fete. Excerpt: "On television, political conventions looks like infomercials. In reality, they are like summer camps. They're like the Super Bowl without the game, or like SXSW without the bands. But everyone watches the big game for the ads, and uses music as an excuse to rub bodies. Conventions will always exist. You can't uninvent anything in politics."
tuesday
My second dispatch from RNC for Radar. Discussed: Sammy Hagar, First Ave, Diablo, and urine.
saturday
You never see the word "anarchist" in print, unless the Republicans are in town. Police are raiding houses in Minneapolis right now, rounding up activists who police say have criminal intent (with buckets of urine and machetes -- medieval!). I'll be in Minneapolis/St. Paul all week, trying to track down all these crazies (bandannas and ties -- they're both just regrettable attire to me). Updates on Fimoc will be light, but I'll point you to other places I'm writing throughout the week.
wednesday
Here's an unexpected move: The Onion has launched a CitySearch/Yelp competitor called Decider. It's only available for Chicago right now. I've heard rumors that several of the local papers (now in 10 cities: NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, DC, Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, Denver, Austin) are performing poorly and some might be shut down.
saturday
NYT story on Unconvention, an attempt to do non-partisan political art around Minneapolis for the Republican Convention. That "non-partisan political" description may sound like a contradiction, and Eyeteeth has photos of confrontational graffiti showing up around town.
friday
David Carr does a travel piece about Minneapolis/St. Paul for NYT, but fails to mention where to buy coke.
thursday
NYT Mag just published a huge excerpt from David Carr's new memoir, The Night of the Gun. As I hoped, it's set in Minneapolis with lots of drugs. This is fucking better than a Hold Steady record!
wednesday
Of course I'm eager to read David Carr's new [oversharey!] book, The Night of the Gun. I'm very curious how much of it is set in Minneapolis...
wednesday
I don't get many chances at crossover links like this, so here goes... some of you from Minneapolis might remember Taavo Somer, the architect-turned-restaurateur who made a splash in duh big city with Freemans, which cited The Loring (RIP, sigh) as his primary inspiration. (If you've visited from the Midwest, I've taken you there, nostalgically. Taavo also did the whole "Morally Bankrupt," "Emotionally Unavailable," etc. t-shirts for Barneys, before your mom had a t-shirt line.) New Yorkers know him as the guy who also created The Rusty Knot and Gemma. Now that the table is set, the link: a new NY Mag profile of Taavo, the sorta thing that drives people like me crazy with the bleak feeling that we should be doing more.
sunday
NY Post: The Minneapolis Star Tribune is on the brink of bankruptcy. Yipe. I think everyone expected it would eventually be a one-paper town, but not that one paper. [via]
thursday
Minneapolis kids: The Daily Show will be in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention in September -- and you can reserve tix now. (If any editors are reading this, I'm looking for someone to send me back to write about the RNC. Interested? Please email me!) [via]
tuesday
The media roundup from my party at The Chambers in Minneapolis last weekend: photos from Chuck, video from Paul, and photos from me. Great to see all of you!
tuesday
Narcissism post... I'll be at ROFL Con in Boston on Thursday and Friday -- drop a comment if you will be too. Then I fly to Minneapolis on Saturday, throwing a party at The Chambers -- drop an email if you want an invite!
sunday
It's hard to imagine a city having a better year than Minneapolis did in 1984, when it witnessed the release of Purple Rain from Prince, Let it Be from the Replacements, and Zen Arcade from Husker Du. That kind of legacy is double-edged: it provides your community with respect and clout, but it also hangs like a heavy nostalgic fog to be lived up to. It can take a long time to recover from the burden of reputation, but this month could be Minneapolis' moment again as three big releases hit the street from Tapes 'n Tapes, Atmosphere, and Cloud Cult. My friend Ross sat down with all three to discuss their new albums, track by track. The music industry is indescribably different than it was in 1984 -- more fickle, more forgetful. Even though these three acts are releasing the best albums of their careers, they are in the uncomfortable position of hoping their audience has not moved onto the newest shiny thing. It's a paradox: once you have finally lived up to your community's past, you become it. I hope their audience remembers. (My pals Tapes 'n Tapes -- oh yeah, good band profile from Marsh too -- are in NYC this week for their record release party and a Conan appearance. More updates later.)
friday
Several months ago, my pal Steve did an interview with Diablo Cody in a Minneapolis magazine. Somewhat famously (to Minnesotans), he asked when Diablo was going to dump her husband, Jonny. It was a joke. Except Diablo sorta blew up at him. And, well, you saw this coming: they filed for divorce a month later. Awkward! But now Steve has broken the news that Jonny is engaged to a new girl, who was friends with Diablo. (Meta-disclaimer: it's incestuous city -- pretty much everyone in this post knows each other. Which is why only 2% of you probably care.) [via]
tuesday
Apparently, five seconds ago, the blogosphere discovered there are naked pics of Diablo Cody on the internet. Two seconds later, everyone in Minneapolis gulped, "Uh, where the fuck have you been? It's been my desktop photo for three years." Seriously people, you haven't even found the good stuff yet -- check my Treo.
tuesday
Tapes 'n Tapes tour dates. (Minneapolis: 4/10, Chicago: 4/11, NYC: 4/18, Brooklyn: 4/19, SF: 5/10, Seattle: 5/14.)
wednesday
Kottke started it, but I'll do it too. Cities I visited in 2007:
New York, NY
Seattle, WA
Minneapolis, MN
St. Paul, MN
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
Oakland, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Toronto, Canada
Vancouver, Canada
Portland, OR
Las Vegas, NV
Newark, NJ
Austin, TX
Columbus, OH
Fargo, ND
Bismarck, ND
Napoleon, ND
And a realization: Huh, I didn't leave North America.
thursday
FTW! Minneapolis won back its title from Seattle as the most literate city.
wednesday
This year proved again that when it feels like the entire goddamn world is going to hell -- that's a good time to throw a dance party. Whether you were fist-pumping for Maya's admittance back into America, chanting "We are North American scum!" at the club, or just jumping in giddy delight that Justice somehow landed an MTV Music Video Award nomination, it was a good year to dance in the streets, especially to these, my favorite albums of 2007:
1) Kanye West, Graduation
Take away his ego, and Kanye's music ceases to exist. That's because Kanye is one of a dying breed of artist, like a Bob Dylan or a Woody Allen or a Bjork, who create art out of sheer force of will and ego. Art and life aren't binaries for these people. How else to explain this album's sui generis cocktail -- a sampling of his mentors in dance (Daft Punk), street (Jay-Z), fashion (Louis Vuitton), and art (Murakami). And, I suppose, literature (Nietzsche), by pinching that particularly arch aphorism about surviving adversity. "That which does not kill me..." might suggest that Kanye's force emerges from some sort of Ayn Randian individualism, but it's more clearly the power that comes from treating your life as collage.
2) M.I.A., Kala
The '80s would have been much better if M.I.A. were around to squelch that wretched little phrase "world music" -- she would drop some street on those marketers. Although she would resist this, Maya has somehow emerged as one of the few relevant voices in the language of globalization: descriptive not prescriptive, street not studio, itinerant not stagnant, and most importantly, local not global. This is why I've written before that M.I.A. brings to mind Rem Koolhaas more than anyone else -- one can visualize her building little markets (songs) on the streets of Lagos or Sri Lanka or Kingston. That's what this album sounds like: all the streets in the world playing music at once.
3) LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
Though James Murphy's second album will fill your daily dance-punk requirements, it's the fifth track, the ballad "All My Friends," which stands out as the best song of the year. Pretty much the exact opposite of his glib underground hit "Losing My Edge," this song starts with a cold, repetitive keyboard line that's probably pinched from some minimalistic Steve Reich score. And it never really deviates from there, except by layering some lines about friendship, which becomes the song's theme -- not about a single friend, but about the celebration of friendship as a concept. "You spend the next five years trying to get with the plan / And the next five trying to get with your friends again" has been the mantra for a couple hundred 30-somethings who I know.
4) Justice, Cross
Even though they never released an album, one could call 2007 the year of Daft Punk. Between their Coachella appearance, their movie, and Kanye creating their first Billboard hit, Daft Punk was an invisible success story. And to complete the story, we could call this the best Daft Punk album in years -- and get away with it without too much guilt.
5) Mark Ronson, Version
Prepare thyself for a strange reason to like a musician: Ronson exposes the weakness of Pitchfork. The plucky music site has been an aggressive foe of Ronson and his entourage (Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen). The reasons for this are somewhat paradoxical, since the Ronson aesthetic -- let's call it "synthetic retro" -- is usually a Pitchfork touchstone. But beyond all that industry prattle, Ronson is one of the few producers who can put together a cohesive solo album of his own. Some might tire of the ska inflections on a few tracks, but then Winehouse's cover of The Zutons' "Valerie" comes along to make you remember that synthetic nostalgia is the best kind.
6) I'm Not There, Soundtrack
Of course you want to hear Sonic Youth cover Dylan. And Malkmus, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, and The Hold Steady, and Karen O, and two discs more of this.
7) Charlotte Gainsbourg, 5:55
Did Charlotte haunt you this year? Because she haunted me. And does she remind you of a long lost love? For me, she does. Are you glad that someone finally found something decent for Air to do? Yes, me too.
8) Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future
Fuck "new rave" -- this is "new Iron Maiden"! The album has enough arcane mythology to fill the new D&D manual. If you caught Klaxons in concert this year, you witnessed this strange spectacle: teenage kids dancing around on stage with a Mello Yello high, quoting Coleridge and Pynchon, and playing their instruments like they invented them.
9) Simian Mobile Disco, Attack Decay Sustain Release
Let's get this out of the way: there's a lot bullshit on this album. Some of these tracks are the worst offenders of the reductive, repetitive, retrograde kind of techno/house that gives the entire genre a bad name. But in those moments where humanity creeps in -- on "Hustler" and "It's The Beat" -- this turns into something like the best of Bjork's dance work.
10) Battles, Mirrored
What happens when you throw another "post-" in front of "post-rock"? Prog rock! No one expected this segment of the '70s to reemerge this year, but Battles at least added a little head-shaking to the shoe-gazing genre.
11) Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
When I forgot to bring my iPod on a trip to LA this year, I bought this CD to play in the rental car. And then I turned it up every time I started to fight with the girl who was traveling with me. I now know this album by heart.
12) Britney Spears, Blackout
Yep, above Radiohead. Why? Because while Radiohead is obsessed with dystopic futures, Britney actually is the future. Like one of those fake Japanese pop idols, Brit-Bot is the complete cypher that gets invented by producers and the media. This album is like a Wikipedia entry in which everyone -- The Neptunes, TMZ, whoever -- should get a writing credit. You may not like to hear this, but Britney is you.
15) White Williams, Smoke
Since no one seems up to carrying the mantle anymore, the title of The New Bowie could be passed onto White Williams. But more than pure retread, Williams rips '70s glam through a processor that admits the existence of disco, Beck, and laptop pop.
16) The Pipettes, We Are the Pipettes
This album caused my dorky friends in San Francisco to actually dance. For getting nerds to shuffle, some might say this album should be much higher on the list.
18) Prince, Planet Earth
Although I didn't make it back to Minneapolis to see him perform at First Ave this year (which was a blessing, because the cops shot it down in less than an hour), Prince put out the album that's aesthetically the closest to Purple Rain that we've seen in some time.
20) Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Is Is
If it felt like Karen O spent this year trying to figure out what people wanted her to be, this EP didn't necessarily contradict that. Even its title seems obsessed with self-definition.
21) Tomahawk, Anonymous
While we wait for Michael Patton to do something a little more digestible again (We! Want! Lovage!), he put out this strange Native American Heavy Metal album.
23) Bloc Party, Weekend in the City
Bloc Party have me hanging by a thread. I want them to have staying-power, but this could just be their last relevant album.
24) Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha
I think of this album as what happens when you mash together Chicago and Minneapolis. It has the sound of Drag City, but the aesthetic of Tim. Which makes sense, because Bird is from Chicago but the album with recorded in Minneapolis with some of its finest locals.
25) Thurston Moore, Trees Outside the Academy
You know how Beck tends to alternate between doing a rock/hip-hop album and doing a down-tempo/acoustic album? This is like the response to last year's rocking Rather Ripped.
And finally, here are some albums that I tried to like this year, but it just never happened: Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If..., Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's Some Loud Thunder, The Good, the Bad & the Queen's The Good, the Bad & the Queen, Air's Pocket Symphony, Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero, Timbaland's Timbaland Presents Shock Value, T.I.'s T.I. vs. T.I.P., 50 Cent's Curtis, Arctic Monkeys's Favourite Worst Nightmare, Amon Tobin's Foley Room, The Shins' Wincing the Night Away, The National's The Boxer, Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, Bjork's Volta, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Low's Drums and Guns, PJ Harvey's White Chalk, Jose Gonzalez' In Our Nature, Bruce Springsteen's Magic, Feist's The Reminder, and Les Savvy Fav's Let's Stay Friends.
Previous Yearly Music Roundups: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006.
sunday
Diablo in the Sunday Times, written by David Carr. It includes some mention of the bullshit criticism that's occurring back in Minneapolis in The Rake (from Rob Nelson, who I otherwise love, but I get the sense that maybe The Rake put in an order for a take-down piece). If you're following the story, the MNspeak thread where Diablo jumps in is fantastic.
monday
Bill Wasik (who you might remember as the Harper's editor who invented flash mobs) writes about how hype builds in the music industry. It's chock full of indie rock things that I write about here all the time: KEXP, Tapes 'n Tapes, SXSW, etc. (This link is dedicated to Matt, my hype-backlash ninja.) Update: Taylor questions Minneapolis' third-place ranking in the musical urban archipelago. He's wrong, but he's right about MSP getting its own big music festival (like, I imagine, Bumbershoot, Siren, CMJ, or Pitchfork).
sunday
I've been telling anyone who will listen to read Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks, so I'm glad the new guy at Kottke.org interviewed him. (Btw, since a few people have asked, the new guy at Kottke.org is Joel Turnipseed, the author of Baghdad Express and a resident of Minneapolis -- but no, I've never met him.)
monday
My pal Steve has launched Daily Mole, a Minneapolis publication similar to The Stranger's Slog, though not affiliated with a paper. (Steve was the longtime editor of City Pages, Minneapolis' alt-weekly, prior to the New Times debacle.) This looks like one of the most promising new local media sites out there right now.
saturday
Minneapolis, one of the best design cities in the world, gets a video architectural tour via Cool Hunting.
wednesday
The news broke here a couple months ago about Tay Zonday performing with Girl Talk at First Ave in Minneapolis. The show was last Friday, and Twin Cities Live has good video. [via]
thursday
My friends Matt and Margaret have relaunched Vita.MN (Matt's note). One year old as of today, Vita.MN is two things: a weekly publication from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and a website that publishes that content but adds in all sorts of social features -- lists, favoriting, friending, etc. For a daily paper, it's an amazing experiment. Oh, and here's Alexis' newest sex column.
monday
A couple Minneapolis stories: Marketwatch says it's the best city to start a new business and WSJ says Minnie has reached "critical coolness." Also, Minneapolis is listed as one of the cities in NYT's Styles story about young women having higher salaries than young men.
tuesday
Breaking: the trailer to Juno is out. Stars include Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, opens December 14. (Juno was written by Minneapolis pal Diablo Cody.)
monday
In one of those crazy stories where everyone seems to do the wrong thing, 19 people were arrested in Minneapolis this weekend at a Critical Mass event gone awry. Most interesting to me is the interplay of threads on MNspeak and MetaFilter. As my pal Marsh says, "Last night was a full-on dress rehearsal for the RNC. Both by the cowboys and the indians. The cops and the robbers.... next August is going to be ugly" -- that's when the Republican National Convention goes down in this very blue state. (Btw, between bridge collapses, blowjobs in airports, and cops clashing with biking kids.... Minneapolis can't stay out of the news lately.)
wednesday
Best cities for singles, according to one of those silly Forbes surveys: #1: SF, #2: NYC, #8: Seattle, #12: Minneapolis.
wednesday
You might have seen the NYT obit of Joybubbles, a savantish phone phreaker (made famous by a 1971 Esquire profile by Ron Rosenbaum) who recently died in Minneapolis. As Virginia Heffernan points out, those charming kids at Chasing Windmills had Joybubbles do a "guest-appearance" earlier this year.
friday
No updates here for the next few days, as I'm back in Minneapolis, avoiding bridges.
thursday
A very thorough post about citizen journalism during the Minneapolis bridge collapse.
thursday
My boys Tapes 'N Tapes were on Big Love last week.
thursday
By now you've heard of the tragedy that is the 35W bridge in Minneapolis -- a bridge I know by heart, above and below. To see a little lesson in how crowd-sourced journalism works, the thread on my old site, MNspeak, is pretty amazing.
wednesday
YouTube is about to invent its first music star. His name is Tay Zonday, he's 25, he's smart, and he's from Minneapolis. "Internet Dream" and "Chocolate Rain" will be huge.
wednesday
Wanna hear me rant about local media, the failure of community blogs, mainstream media, and anything else that'll come to mind? I did an interview with Minnesota Monitor (conducted by Paul Schmelzer of Eyeteeth). It's maybe only interesting to those of you from Minneapolis.
monday
It's pretty great that The Guardian let Craig Finn of the Hold Steady talk about his love of The Replacements and Minneapolis. Update from the comments: Craig talking about the Twins in the Portland Mercury.
friday
Slow update alert! I'm back in Minneapolis for a couple days (going to Geek Prom with Lux, who apparently now has billboards around town for her column -- christ, how fast things change in a year).
thursday
Man, the media scene in Minneapolis (my old hometown) is fucked up. Today, the Pioneer Press sued the Star-Tribune (that's right, two metro dailies -- remember those days?) because the publisher (Par Ridder -- as in the son of Tony, of the ersatz Knight-Ridder empire) left the former to become the publisher of the latter (which is pretty fucked up, though possibly not illegal). Within a year, the Strib has changed owners from McClatchy to some fishy media holdings company, while the PiPress has gone from being part of the Knight-Ridder war machine to being a McClatchy paper to being a MediaNews publication. (Oh, and a bunch of lay-offs and buy-outs in between.) Meanwhile, a major disruption at the very successful alt-weekly (hah! remember those?) caused the editor to leave. Add in the fact that there are four major monthly magazines (WTF?), four alt-weekly papers (that's counting The Onion), and the radio juggernaut known as American Public Media (MPR) -- does any city in America have this much media per capita? [via -- a Minneapolis media website I started!]
friday
My role as unabashed Twitter propagandist is now complete. In addition to the G4 Attack of the Show appearance yesterday, I was on NPR's Future Tense (along with my old Minneapolis pal Aaron) this morning. This time around, I describe the "existential anxiety" that Twitter creates. So there, it's not completely unabashed.
tuesday
My Minneapolis comrade Mark Mallman got a shout-out on Stereogum today for his new band, Ruby Isle, doing a electro-pop cover of "Teenage Riot". (If you Google "Ruby Isle" right now, the top result is still the Wisconsin mall that is the band's namesake. That's how fresh this band is!)
thursday
New Hold Steady video for "Stuck Between Stations," the song about John Berryman, who, for those that don't know, was a poet who threw himself off the Washington bridge in Minneapolis. But it's also the song with the best line of last year: "She was a really good kisser, and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian. She was a damn good dancer, but not all that great of a girlfriend."
tuesday
Chuck does The Onion iPod thing. The bit about Blackie Lawless is mint. UPDATE: here's his MPR Fakebook appearance in Minneapolis.
friday
Screening schedule for that Helvetica movie (trailers). Premiers at SXSW, hits NYC in April, Minneapolis in May, Seattle in August. [via]
saturday
Have I mentioned how weird it is to have your ex writing a sex column? Soon after I left Minneapolis, Alexis began writing Alexis on the Sexes for Vita.MN, the Strib's new alt-weekly tabloid/website (invented by Matt and Margaret, another ex, but now this is getting complicated). Lex's most recent column is on anal sex, which I'm just no-commenting myself away from by noting that this is rare fair for a medium-large daily. Savage love, indeed.
monday
There have been a few rumors floating around about Lady Sovereign's sapphic predilections, but the Minnesota Daily (that's the college paper of the University of Minnesota) seems to be the first to put it in print: "The real reason Sov made the trip [to Minneapolis], according to several eyewitnesses who saw the pipsqueak out clubbin', was for a little face time with someone supposedly named Andrea -- yes, as in a female, Andrea. And by face time, we mean more like sucking face (or snogging in Brit-speak)." [via]
sunday
Living a few blocks from The Walker's enviable sculpture garden in Minneapolis had spoiled me on the elision of public space and art projects (not to mention providing an impressive place to take girls on first dates). Much is being made about a similar project, The Olympic Sculpture Park, opening in Seattle this week, which happens to be less than two blocks from my current condo -- you can actually almost see into my window in the photo atop the Sunday NYT review. The Seattle Times provides beaucoup multimedia and an overview of the major sculptures in the park (the usuals: Kelly, Serra, Nevelson, Calder, Oldenburg, Smith, Bourgeois) while Seattle's best art critic, Jen Graves, notes in The Stranger that January is not the best time to open a sculpture garden. For out-of-towners: Bill Gate's step-mother, Mimi Gates runs the Seattle art scene as director of both the Seatle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum. The official opening is next weekend, after which I'll post some more thoughts.
monday
Playboy takes a shot at 10 Best Rock Clubs, which includes some faves: 12 Galaxies (San Fran), Empty Bottle (Chicago), Emo's (Austin), and First Ave. (Minneapolis).
tuesday
For the second straight year, Seattle just barely edged out Minneapolis as the most literate city. Suck it, homies.
sunday
Every year around this time, I attempt to summarize what's been happening online by publishing my list of the best blogs of the year [2002, 2003, 2004]. But I abruptly stopped last year because the list had become annoyingly redundant. Yes, dear blogosphere, after only six (or so) years of existence, you already have your canon, created either through fiat, power laws, or meritocracy -- you decide!
Sure, new sites break through (such as Techcrunch and Valleywag did this year), but a glance at the Technorati 100 shows that things aren't really that different than they were a few years ago. So do you really need me to prattle on about the significance of Kottke and Waxy, Romenesko and Gawker, Engadget and Scoble? I think not. Instead, this year I've gathered 30 blogs that you perhaps aren't reading.
Caveat: no human on the planet is qualified to do this, and the 500 blogs that I follow probably represents how many blogs are created in a second.1 On the other hand, this is not a list of esoteric blogs that you'll smirk at and never read again. I actually read all of these, because I think they're great.
And finally, please add your under-appreciated blog suggestions in the comments. Because really, aren't the overlooked ones the reason we're all here anyway?
29. TV Squad
Blogging about tv sounds hard -- you're always a day late, yet you're always a spoiler. This surprisingly good Weblogs Inc. blog finds the right balance between last night's TiVo and tomorrow's buzzed show. (See also: Television Without Pity & Tuned In.)
28. Ballardian
Sorry, this isn't actually J.G. Ballard's blog. As possibly the only science fiction writer who merits the adjectival form, Ballard is synonymous with technology, body enhancement, organic architecture, dystopia, car crashes, and other generally weird stuff. This blog is about those things, sorta. (See also: William Gibson's Blog & Bruce Sterling's Blog & City of Sound.)
27. T-Shirt Critic
I've got this theory that the t-shirt is becoming its own legitimate form of media -- informative yet dispensable. Probably the most frequent email query I get is "where do you get all those t-shirt links?" The answer is all over the freaking place -- but this site is one of the best. (See also: Preshrunk & iloveyourtshirt.)
26. Pruned
Ostensibly, this is a blog about landscape architecture, but it actually illustrates how any discipline has complexity and hybridity behind it, usually by gathering all sorts of random pieces of visual culture. (See also: BLDG BLOG & Things Magazine.)
25. Ypulse
You can count the number of people making a living by blogging on a couple of hands, but be sure to add a digit for Anastasia. If you think you know what teenagers are talking about today, you may reconsider after reading this blog, which tracks everything that the kids (Generation Y) are into. (See also: Agenda Inc.)
24. Eyeteeth & Offcenter
Through some bad twist of misfortune, I never met the multi-talented Paul Schmelzer when I lived in Minneapolis. But I've been collecting all the marvellous little spores he leaves behind on various sites around the interweb, including these two. (See also: Greg.org.)
22. Dethroner
Not that you care, but 2006 was a crummy year for the lad magazine. Could it be that the social internet is invading dude-ness too? This one-man site (from Joel Johnson, former Gizmodo editor, recently interviewed by Matt Haughey) is a good example of what one person can do in a niche topic. (See also: Daddy Types.)
21. Cute Overload
Yes, hipster, I know -- you, your sister, and your mom have seen Cute Overload. But have you bookmarked it? Have you returned to it every day just for some cheery bunnies? You have not truly experienced Cute Overload until it has become a ritual. I dare you. (See also: Flickr: Interestingness.)
20. IFC TV
Picking the best film blog is difficult. Luckily, picking the best one you perhaps aren't reading is easy! This link-heavy blog is the perfect mix of news and views on film culture. (See also: Cinematical & GreenCine Daily.)
18. Metafilter
Joke, right? No, not really, because I bet everyone reading this post has at one time or another given up on Metafilter. And unlike the time you gave up on Slashdot, you eventually came back to Metafilter. (See also: Ask.Metafilter, the real reason this site deserves to be here.)
17. videos.antville.org
You're going to see a huge surge of video link blogs this year, but this one has always stood above the others for good community contributions of quality music videos. (See also: ClipTip & Digg: Music Videos.)
15. Josh Spear
Cool Hunting and The Cool Hunter are, well, cool. But they tend to track international trends that seldom seem to intersect with your life. Josh Spear's cool hunting includes stuff you might actually be able to afford getting your hands on. (See also: NotCot.org.)
14. Data Mining
Yawn, right? Nuh-uh. Everything that's happening today in areas around buzz tracking, social media, geocoding, data visualization, and countless other subjects is tracked on this blog, where I consistently discover new ideas. (See also: Blog Pulse & Micro Persuasion.)
13. Make Magazine
Even though this blog is arguably pretty popular, I'm including the work of the indefatigable Phillip Torrone because the trend of life hacking and productivity really started to emerge this year. Make's philosophy is simple: anything can be DIY if you just figure out how to hack it. (See also: Lifehacker & 43 Folders & Life Clever.)
12. 3 Quarks Daily
3 Quarks Daily sets the paradigm for what a good personal blog should be: eclectic but still thematic, learned but not boring, writerly but not wordy. (See also: Snark Market & wood s lot.)
11. Screens
I've had a boyish crush on Virginia Heffernan's writing since her days as Slate's tv columnist. This year, she started this peculiar little blog for the New York Times, covering the cultural side of the internet video industry before anyone realized there was such a thing. She was the first mainstream media writer to snag lonelygirl15 as a storyline (which I -- still boyishly -- think she first saw here), writing in a cozy vernacular that you were surprised in the old gray lady. (See also: Lost Remote & Carpetbagger.)
8. Subtraction
An editor from The Atlantic who was doing a story on buzz-building recently contacted me about finding the source of a meme he saw on Fimoculous. He asked where I got it, and I said Subtraction, to which he replied, "that's what everyone else said too." A blogger's blogger, Khoi Vinh is the new design director at the NYTimes.com, which might sound high-brow, but his personal site has the quality you most desire from a blogger: curiosity. (See also: Anil Dash.)
7. Pop Candy
I'm as surprised as you that a USA Today blog makes this list. Beyond the cute Chuck Taylors in her pic, what makes Whitney Matheson better than the slew of other pop culture blogs out there? Simple: while everyone else is there to out-snark and out-upskirt-shot each other, Whitney seems to actually like popular culture. (See also: Stereogum & Amy's Robot.)
6. Future of the Book
Ostensibly about exploring the shift from the printed page to the networked screen, Future of the Book stumbles across a variety of new ideas along the way, such as creating a wikibook on gaming. Although occasionally windy, Future of the Books is on the precipice of something big. (See also: Read/Write Web & Smart Mobs.)
4. Information Aesthetics
I suspect we need a chart to explain why this blog is so great, because just saying "this blog tracks instances of data visualization" sounds like it could be a weapon to kill terrorists with boredom. But this site is essential reading for anyone interested in the ways that engineers and designers turn the messy world into a clear visual representation. (See also: Visual Complexity & xBlog.)
Thanks to Andy, Greg, Lock, Matt, Jim, Robin, Andrew, David, Ted, Matt, Karl, Andrew, and Chuck for their advice on this project.
monday
For me, 2006 was the year of inconsequential hype. Wasn't this the year of Snakes on a Plane? And what ever happened to Pearl Jam's big comeback? And weren't The Raconteurs s'posed to be the best rock band ever? And don't even get me started on what the bloggers were telling you to like. Whatevah, you were too busy watching Journey on YouTube to care.
Despite the odds, this was a pretty good year in music. I've got 21 albums to prove it:
21) The Coup, Pick a Bigger Weapon
No one realized it at the time, but Party Music was probably the most important album of 2001 -- but like everything else after 9/11, it had to be sublimated for a few years. Boots Riley returned this year to "laugh, love, and make love" -- while wearing camo. When the apocalypse comes, you know The Coup will be playing the soundtrack.
20) Peeping Tom, Peeping Tom
The cast of characters alone -- Norah Jones, Amon Tobin, Kool Keith, Dan the Automator, Massive Attack, Kid Koala -- make this a seductive record. But even after the novelty wears off, Mike Patton's obstinate weirdness and whispering/screaming vocals make this album continually engaging, if not terminally perverse.
19) Be Your Own Pet, Be Your Own Pet
This is the kind of punk rock that your pre/post-cool skater friend in high school liked but you didn't understand. Then she made a mixed tape for you with a noisy mess called "Fuuuuuuun" on it, and even though it included a wink to "Stairway to Heaven" you still didn't understand, but you adored her for playing a song called "Fuuuuuuun" -- I mean, how couldn't you?
18) Sparklehorse, Dreamt For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
I have no idea why people ignored this album, but I predict the hipsters will trackback to this release next year when DJ Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous collaborate on something called Dangerhorse (I'm not making this up). Linkous makes the kind of raspy pop static that everyone has forgotten is the reason that recorded music still exists.
16) Cold War Kids, Robbers and Cowards
The first four songs on this debut record are so ridiculously good that it makes you suspicious of their ability to maintain it, which causes you to unfairly judge them on the potential of future work that you've never heard, which is grossly unjust, but is also the strange state of music today.
15) Bob Dylan, Modern Times
He hates technology more than your grandma, but that's probably why he makes albums better than your kids.
14) Joanna Newsome, Ys
This will take a moment to digest: Diamanda Galas meets Bjork and June Carter Cash in a dark alley. They magically morph into a harpist who makes an album engineered by Steve Albini that has only five songs but is still an hour long. And yet you love it.
13) The DFA Remixes, Chapter 1 & Chapter 2
No one asked for another version of Fischerspooner's "Emerge" or NIN's "The Hand that Feeds," but you couldn't pick anyone better than DFA to reconstitute nostalgia as futurism.
12) Tapes 'n Tapes, The Loon
It's the strangest thing in the world to leave town and watch your friend's band explode like this. One second you're playing Katamari Damacy and listening to GNR, the next they're trying to get time off work to tour Japan.
11) Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
If you didn't know, fishscale is super-high quality uncut cocaine -- sparkly and glimmering like a fish's scales. This album is singularly obsessed with coke -- kilos and bricks, snorted and smoked -- all of it, in multiple different forms, which you can view as a metaphor of quality or race or economics... or not.
9) Girl Talk, Night Ripper
One ritalin-and-coffee-induced diatribe about how this album is perfectly of its time yet paradoxically timeless is more than enough.
8) Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Just when you think the dance rock thing has hit the windshield, along comes the best of the genre -- from a bunch of kids slamming on the gas pedal, no less. Two of the songs on this album include the word "dance," yet they're the least danceable songs on the album.
7) Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
The only thing that makes less sense than these old-timers writing what might be the most relevant love song of the year ("Do You Believe in Rapture?") might be the same fogies writing the best rock song of the year ("Incinerate"). "Do you believe in a second chance?" Totally.
6) The Streets, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living
At the beginning of the year, Mike Skinner was in rehab; at the end of the year, he was preparing to run the New York City marathon. This sums up The Streets -- slacking yet overachieving, a bad decision that always turns good, a big story yet a complete fuck up.
5) Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones
I'm likely rating this album higher than almost anyone else will this year, but it probably deserves even higher. Why do you all hate Karen O for wanting to make a Blondie record? Sometimes I think you're bigger than the sound, too.
4) Mickey Avalon, Mickey Avalon
Rock critics fucking hate Mickey Avalon -- my friend Missy thinks he's egotistical scum. But this is my kind of punk-rapping scum bag: he stylizes like Kool Keith, he narrates like Eminem, he snags the aesthetics of L.A. glam rock (but bi), and packages it all like Beck-on-meth-not-Beck-on-scientology. And despite that description, he sounds absolutely nothing like Kid Rock!
3) TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
Can you imagine the pitch to the record label? "Okay, we're gonna make a doo-wop punk album. But it won't sound anything like that. It will sound more like a lazy day in the Prospect Park. Oh, but you can sorta dance to it. Got it?"
2) Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
The second you heard it, you knew it was going to be the song of the summer. By the second bar, you could visualize the sin wave over the next couple months: the pre-buzz, the raves, the saturation, the backlash, the overhype, and the backlash to the backlash (because you read NY Mag too). It was a crystal clear moment, which so many will remember as defining the summer of '06, when everything seemed to have a thrilling predictability.
1) The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
During a year that I moved away from the Midwest, no other record could possibly top this list. I'm not sure what non-expats do with all the Lyndale, Penn, and Nicolet references (cross-check them to their Replacements records?), but this will always be one of those records that will be impossibly linked to my life in mysterious ways that make me equal parts sad and hopeful. Every time Craig roars "We walked across that Grain Belt bridge / Into a brand new Minneapolis," I wonder why every city can't be so lucky as to have such a perferct homage. And then I remember only one city deserves it. I miss ya, boys and girls.
This Year's Disappointments:
Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics, Emily Haines, Knives Don't Have Your Back, DJ Shadow, The Outsider, Thom Yorke, The Eraser, Beck, The Information, Outkast, Idlewild, Nellie McKay, Pretty Little Head, Lily Allen, Alright, Still, The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers, Beyonce, B'day, Bjork, Drawing Restraint 9, Peaches, Impeach My Bush, Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors, Prince, 3121, Kool Keith, Nogatco Rd.
wednesday
Khat is the new craze drug, yet one Village Voice writer can't seem to find the stuff anywhere. People talked about it in Minneapolis (the home to the largest Somali population in the U.S.) all the time, but it never seemed to be on the street either, probably cuz it sounds about as strong as caffeine.
friday
Those friends and lovers (difference? none!) back home are doing such cool stuff. Matt and Margaret launched Vita.MN, a social calendaring/entertainment site in Minneapolis a couple months ago. Then yesterday, the print edition of the site came out with a cover story from Alexis (who will also be a columnist). Meanwhile, Steve, Alexis, Cristina, Juan, Leigha, Paul, Johnny, and everyone at Chasing Windmills (and Chuck at MNstories) were profiled on MPR's Morning Edition for their pioneering videoblog work (which will also be featured on an upcoming episode of The Tyra Banks Show). And last month, Sarah became the music editor of City Pages. Wheh, nice work.
thursday
Our furry friend Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy (first mentioned way back with their first show at Creative Electric in Minneapolis) has spread the word to NYC according to a Village Voice story.
thursday
What's up with Amanda Congdon? At this moment, she's in Minneapolis, where she interviewed my best blog buddy Chuck Olsen about MNstories as part of Amanda Across America, a videoblog about her journey to L.A. (no Pacific Northwest stops -- I've already voiced my distress), where she will announce the deal she has signed with a network as a videoblogger.
wednesday
Fucking brilliant. You won't fully enjoy it unless you're from the midwest, but here it is: The Hold Steady Guide To The Twin Cities. It Google Maps all the Minneapolis/St. Paul references on Hold Steady albums. "City Center used to be the center of the scene. Now City Center's over. No one really goes there."
monday
A bunch of friends back in Minneapolis are characters in the new season of Chasing Windmills, a mostly-fictional ensemble videoblog. It's an interesting experiment, which I suspect will influence a lot of future developments in this area.
sunday
When did Diane Arbus become such hot material? When I was back in Minneapolis a couple months ago, I saw The Walker retrospective with Courtney and was really intrigued by it. Now, there's a movie, starring Nicole Kidman.
monday
Top Tech City? Minneapolis, according to Popular Science.
thursday
My bestest friends Matt Thompson and Margaret Andrews have launched a new local (Minneapolis) events/networking site: Vita.MN.
tuesday
Kottke rediscovers the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, which really is one of the coolest renovations America has ever seen.
tuesday
Added to the list of things I'm missing in Minneapolis: Google The Musical.
wednesday
Tapes 'n Tapes were on Letterman last night. Video not on YouTube yet, but Alexis uploaded the live coverage from the Hexagon in Minneapolis.
wednesday
Great. Now I have to hide my vintage bottle of Cristal, because if friends come over and see it, I'm a racist. On with the links:
MEDIA
The Nation's annual Entertainment State diagram.
MUSIC VIDEOS
Just forget you had a day of work ahead of you: Pitchfork's 100 Awesome Music Videos, with YouTube vids included.
'80s Music Videos.
Moz versus the paparazzi in "The Youngest Was The Most Loved" video.
Tapes 'n Tapes got video!
Flaming Lips cover War Pigs with Cat Power.
Sunday Bloody Sunday. Video of the year.
ARCHITECTURE
So in Minneapolis last weekend, I saw both the new Cesar Pelli library and the Jean Nouvel theater. L.A. Times has a good review of the latter. Those two plus the new Walker and new Michael Graves MIA expansion make Minneapolis the hottest architectural city of the last couple years. (UPDATE: Newsweek's "Design Dozen" drops Minneapolis as #1 in its Design City issue.)
WORDS
New Yorker on Timothy Leary.
FILM
Slate's profile of Keillor is gosh darn good.
Onion A/V: 10 Classic Movies It's Okay To Hate.
ONLINE
You saw Ze Frank in the Sunday Times, right?
T-SHIRTS
You Looked Better On MySpace.
Is This What Passes for an Ironic T-shirt.
KLOSTERMAN
Gnarls Barkley, NYT Mag.
Book cover to A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas is out. That's Chuck above the 'K'.
On the lack of influential video game critics in Esquire.
saturday
MUSIC - REMIX
MNstories has a couple videos of Mark Hosler of Negativland setting up his exhibit at Creative Electric in Minneapolis. Hosler has been hanging out in MSP for a few weeks now -- makes me miss home.
Excellent Daily Show segment on Mini Kiss versus Tiny Kiss.
Remix David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Who needs Axl when you have Fergie butchering GNR songs.
Blender: 500 Greatest Songs Written Since You Were Born | Rolling Stone: Most Excellent Songs Of Every Year Since 1967.
MySpace, the music video.
TV
The Lloyd Dobler moment for a new generation, from The Office finale: Jim says "I'm in love with you." Response: "What are you doing?"
ONLINE
On the page listing the NYTimes.com blogs, I see they've given Stanley Fish an education blog called "Think Again," but it's barred in behind Times Select.
Huh, even The New Yorker is getting into online video: Ken Auletta in conversation with Terry Semel.
25 Things I Learned on Google Trends.
LoveLines is an interesting little interface.
FILM
Scanner Darkly remix contest.
WORDS
Compare Kurt Anderson's good essay on plagiarism from last week with Malcolm Gladwell's equally good essay on plagiarism from last year.
MLA Maps.
sunday
BOOKS
I've been buying up "Choose Your Own Adventure" books on eBay for the past couple years, and now it turns out they're being reissued.
Back in Minneapolis, the new Ceasar Pelli library is opening, which could rival the Seattle Koohaas library. Alt-Text has some pics.
MUSIC
The new Gnarles Barkley video for "Crazy," from the album, St. Elsewhere, which comes out this week. It will be the best album of the summer. (See also: performing live on Top of the Pops.)
T-SHIRTS
Colbert Has Stones. (Buy the video on C-SPAN.org.)
TV
Best. Website. Ever. IsLostARepeat.com.
CBS launched Innertube, AOL has In2TV, ABC launched full-episode stream, MTV has Overdrive, Comedy Central has Motherload, and NBC.... the Dwight Bobblehead!
FILM
Syndey Pollack has made a documentary of Frank Gehry. Trailer.
The movie that almost got me sued has premiered in St. Paul. Back when the movie was being filmed, I published some exclusive photos of a sickly Lindsay Lohan from the set. She looks so much... less sickly now.
ADS
The new Apple ads, starring John Hodgman.
ONLINE
For the archive, Kurt Anderson on Web 2.0.
tuesday
Nearly a dozen years ago, Douglas Coupland published his third novel, Microserfs, at a moment where everyone knew the future was about to happen, but no one knew quite what it would look like.
After moving to Seattle a month ago to work on the campus depicted in the novel, I returned to the same book that many years ago intrigued this Midwestern twenty-something, to see how the world (and my perspective on it) has changed. I have several conclusions, which I'm aggregating for a longer analysis. In the mean time, I have gathered the notes that I scribbled in the margins of the book. Below is a mish-mash of observations about cities, companies, and Microserfs, then and now.
+ The basic plot arc of Microserfs is that an ensemble of 'softies quit their jobs and move to San Fran to create a new software start-up. They begin building something called Oop! (can this sound any more like present?), which actually is a pun off object-oriented programming, but is essentially a 3D modeling program which you can use to create pretty much anything. The idea is loosely inspired by Legos, but in the intervening decade nothing has been invented to compare it to -- until I recently saw Will Wright demo his new game, Spore.
+ Even though the inaccurate predictions are less numerable, they say more about the mid-'90s than the accurate ones.
+ The descriptions of Microsoft campus life -- right down to the soccer fields and hidden paths -- are still quite accurate. The detail that seems to have changed the most is the relationship of employees to Bill. He was apparently a Geek God in 1994, whereas now he's more of a beleaguered Yoda. It's good we skipped over the anti-trust days though.
+ There's a great observation early in the book about how Microsofties don't put bumper stickers on their cars. This is still startlingly true, and it gives campus a sort of post-political feel. Or at least as post-political as 20,000 Audis lined up in a cement parking garage can be.
+ Except for occasional baby pictures and markup boards, Microserfs don't decorate their offices. At all.
+ At the beginning of the book, Apple is at the top of the world -- the computer company that all geeks aspire to. By the end of the book, the boys from Cupertino are sliding into oblivion, rumored to be bought out by Samsung. How many times has Apple died and been resurrected?
+ Quick quiz: what was the subtitle of Coupland's first novel, Generation X? Bzzt. "Tales for an Accelerated Culture." So much for slackers.
+ Off-topic: Has anyone else noticed that Ginsberg's "Howl" needs an update? I'll take a shot at it: "I saw the best minds of my generation, destroyed by Aeron chairs, tattooed hyper fresh, dragging themselves though Ikea on Sundays looking for an angry futon." Perhaps this is where a Wiki could help. Wiki Howl!
+ It seems unfathomable now, but this book was published before Windows 95 even came out.
+ Know what else people forget about this book? It's written in diary form. And you know what else? Less than a third of it happens in Seattle -- the rest occurs in Silicon Valley, except for the second-to-last chapter which is in Vegas (at CES).
+ Microserfs places Seattle in opposition to San Francisco. While there is still a tension between the Emerald City and Silicon Valley, Seattle now posits itself in relationship to Los Angeles.
+ Since moving here from Minneapolis, I constantly find myself appending rows to a grid that I've drawn in my mind with two simple columns: Minneapolis | Seattle. When I decide which city has "won" a particular feature, checkmarks get added to new rows of the mental grid. Traffic, for instance, of course gets a Minneapolis check, while food goes to Seattle. Daily papers, Minneapolis; weekly papers, Seattle; malls, Minneapolis; record stores, Seattle; pizza, Minneapolis. I already have hundreds of rows in my micro-niche grid. By the way, Seattle's Ikea totally sucks.
+ I am convinced this book could not exist today -- not in its current form, as fiction. Our first-person culture would undoubtedly force it into a memoir. Or perhaps Scoble is the modern equivalent. Microserfs even hints at its historical future by being structured like a journal. We all speculate about how blogging is changing journalism, but one should ask if memoirs are doing the same thing to fiction, especially in light of Freygate. Exploring this, you see, is partially why I moved to Seattle, and I hope to devote more thinking in this space. To be continued...
friday
Traffic is to Seattle as weather is to Minneapolis. People love to talk about hating it, but they're all resigned to its existence. Alright, here are a few links:
MEDIA
So I'm listening to last week's On The Media via podcast, and I hear Bob Garfield start swearing at an FCC official. It's both really funny and really good. But I'm thinking, "This can't possibly have aired. This must just be on the podcast." But no, it turns out that it actually was broadcast. There appears to be no fall-out yet, but I can't wait until next week's reax pieces, which seem inevitable.
ONLINE
Digg Soundboard. Indeed.
MUSIC
Since earlier this week we linked to a Tom Waits dog food commercial, this week you get a Rolling Stones 1964 Rice Krispies commercial.
The first eight paragraphs of Melissa's Yeah Yeah Yeahs Spin cover story. Good.
Klosterman wrote a fake review of Chinese Democracy, but half the blogosphere thinks it's real.
SOCIETY
I became obsessed this week with NY Mag's "Up With Grups" story, which is effectively about aging hipsters. I basically took over a MNspeak thread with my theories.
monday
My life coach (Daily Show | NYT Styles) says I better get blogging again because not even Amanda reads me anymore. So here are some links:
FRIENDS
I have much to talk about, but first here are some updates from various Friends of Fimoculous:
Tapes 'N Tapes were on last week's Best Week Ever. After taking SXSW by storm (and landing an 8.3 on Pitchfork), last night they played the last show on this tour here in Seattle. They were awesome.
Diablo Cody was on Letterman last week. So best, go girl.
Michaelangelo Matos has exited his perch as the music critic at the Seattle Weekly to join the up-and-coming eMusic. For his final goodbye, he gives a farewell mixed tape to Seattle.
Waxy is still fighting Bill Cosby.
Elizabeth Spiers' DealBreaker.com launches on Wednesday. Interview.
Chuck Olsen interviewed Bruce Sterling.
Klosterman wrote an essay for the upcoming Criterion version of Dazed & Confused. His forthcoming book, Chuck Klosterman IV, is a collection of his previously-published work.
MNstories did a video of my farewell party in Minneapolis. That's really not me crying at the end.
TV
Whoa, did you know Andy Milonakis is 30 years old? According to The Times, he has a growth hormone condition. He's the Gary Coleman of our times!
In addition to VH1's Web Junk 20 and Bravo's Viral Videos, other upcoming projects include a show on USA based upon eBaum's World and a show on NBC called The Net With Carson Daly. In the future, everyone will create a viral video.
The first season of Wonder Showzen is coming out on DVD this week.
BOOKS
Which is more peculiar -- that Terry Gross' interview with J.T. LeRoy is online without any notation of recent events, or that J.T. LeRoy sounds so obviously like a chick in the interview?
Enter the ISBN number of a book into BarnesAndNoble.com and get a quote for how much they will buy it for. Cool.
I've been busy alphabetizing my CDs and running to Ikea for book shelves, so somewhere along the way I missed that Malcolm Gladwell started a blog.
Although I'm morally obligated to read every book even remotely related to the internet (especially if it has something to do with blogging), I haven't decided whether to dive into Kos' Crashing The Gate. The decent NYTBR review includes the first chapter, so maybe that's a good starting point.
FILM
[Insert Snakes on a Plane link here.]
Well, at least William Gibson liked V is for Vendetta.
A second Scanner Darkly trailer.
Bob Saget is friggin nuts.
MUSIC
Go read Douglas Coupland's "interview" with Morrisey, which is really an essay on the state of the interview.
Even Tom Waits once did a commercial -- for dog food, no less. It's especially interesting since he later sued Frito-Lay for impersonating him.
ONLINE
There's hope for all of us: Jason and Meg got married. Remember when they sorta spatted on Blogumentary?
Newsweek's cover story: Putting the 'We' in the Web.
You've probably read Danah's essay on why Friendster lost to MySpace, but here's the link anyway.
CITIES
The Top 15 Skylines in the World.
GAMES
One of the many things I like about Wired is that it truly is a magazine. That is, for all the talk about the death of print, Wired stories are the best example of the perfection of a medium that doesn't easily translate into other mediums. You can, for instance, read most of Will Wright's game issue online, but it's not nearly the experience that the magazine is. (See also: Wright doing a walk-through of Spore.)
GOOGLE
On the new Google Finance, you won't find this info: how much of Google stock that Google execs have sold.
FOOD
Every side-street around Microsoft campus seems to have one of those create-a-home-meal shops, so I'm not surprised to learn that Seattle is home to one of the biggest chains. From the NYT story: "The prototype, a kind of elevated cooking session among friends in a commercial kitchen, popped up in the Northwest in 1999. The concept did not take off until 2002, when two Seattle-area women streamlined the process so customers could make 12 dinners for six in two hours for under $200. That company became Dream Dinners, which opened a year later and now has 112 franchise stores, with 64 under construction." (Old MNspeak thread on the MSP-based versions.)
monday
Apologies for the navel-gazing nature of this post, but a lot has happened in my life lately, and since this is ostensibly a personal blog (hi Mom!), here are some notes on recent personal events:
+ At work, we recently launched this new little site: NBCOlympics.com. The winter games are in Torino, Italy in February.
+ Friends, family, and pretty much all of Minneapolis already knows this, but I've never officially announced it to the estranged readers of Fimoculous: After the Olympics, I will be moving to Seattle, where I took a new job at MSNBC.com. As you probably know, MSNBC.com is co-owned by NBC and Microsoft, so I'll be working on the Microsoft campus in a fun new capacity. I'll have more to say about it later, but in the meantime... Seattle, holla fo' me, yo.
+ I was hoping to make an exciting announcement on the future of MNspeak (my local citizen journalism site) by now, but we're still sorting that out. Soon....
+ The annual list of lists got some press attention again this year. A sampling: NY Times mention (text), WCCO story (video), WAMC interview (audio), Rocketboom mention (video), Rex Blog interview (text).
+ For City Pages' annual "Artists Of The Year", I wrote about Arianna Huffington (second entry).
+ I have an essay in the new book Digital Think from the New Media Institute.
+ Random quote in a Pioneer Press story about the effect blogging will have on the '06 political season: "I'm not sure those kinds of blogs are going to change anything in the world."
That's all for now. My '06 resolution: Make Fimoculous cool again.
sunday
Wouldn't it be fun to turn this into a Maureen Dowd blog for a couple months? Yeah, okay, maybe not.
TV
Arrested Development is going bye-bye. Steve Holt!
Rich people love The Apprentice.
Biz Week's interview with MTV's Jason Hirschhorn covers a lot of interesting ground, including Comedy Central's Motherload, MTV's Overdrive, and iFilm.
MEDIA
NY Mag's long look at Mike Lacey (New Times' exec editor) and the history of the Village Voice is the best piece so far on this whole alt-weekly skirmish.
ONLINE
WaPo does a conspiratorial Google rant, but it's also the first mention of Google's dream to make your DNA searchable. You read that right: "Sergey Brin says searching all of the world's information includes examining the genetic makeup of our own bodies, and he foresees a day when each of us will be able to learn more about our own predisposition for various illnesses, allergies and other important biological predictors by comparing our personal genetic code with the human genome, a process known as 'Googling Your Genes'."
Paris Hilton doesn't change facial expressions.
For the true nerd: digg vs. dot.
MUSIC
Madonna's new album comes out this week. Have you seen the video to the first single? Yowza.
New White Stripes video staring Conan, directed by Michel Gondry.
New Shakira video. NYT is all hyped on her this week: The Shakira Dialectic.
A large Wikipedia entry on Paul Is Dead.
FILM
NYT has a small item on the film Zizek, which I saw here in Minneapolis last week.
SARAH SILVERMAN
Even more: Rolling Stone | Slate | Newsday | NYT.
sunday
BLOGS
Yeah, Trump has one now too.
Comedy Central starts a blog, with links to videos.
Blogebrity: Kottke interview.
G.W. Bush: Podcaster.
FILM
Aeon Flux trailer, starring Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand.
The trailer to Doom would seem to suggest that movies based upon first-person-shooter games completely miss the point. See also: ItPlaysDoom.com.
Ebert gives his most-hated films.
Titles Designed By Saul Bass.
MUSIC VIDEOS
The new Green Day video is getting a surprising round of accolades.
New White Stripes video.
TV
Joss Whedon loves Veronica Mars too. See, I told you.
Engadget has pics of TiVo's upcoming download service. Looks like the first partner will be IFC, which is awesome because they happen to not be part of my Time-Warner cable package.
FOOD
NYT Mag is excited about cryovacking (sous vide).
I've been talking a lot again about trying to start a restaurant. I'm rather enamored by this idea to mix tv and dining, although it would play horribly in Minneapolis, which has the lowest tv-viewing rates per capita in the nation.
ONLINE
Rumor: Technorati about to be sold. Debate ensues on whether its to Google or Yahoo, while DataMining watches the rumor spread.
Rumor: Google and Apple to partner. Apple stocks rise.
Google halts Google Print. BoingBoing gathers some reactions.
Elizabeth Spiers and Danah Boyd were on To The Point for an episode on Google and security.
WORDS
NYTBR: Brett Easton Ellis reading from Lunar Park. Here's the review.
NYT looks at the change in books being stocked at airports (more smart non-fiction).
thursday
Am I a blog casualty? Heck no, I've just been busy over at MNspeak. You have to understand, we have Lindsay Lohan in town right now, and the whole state is a-twitter.
TV
Did you watch the first episode of Stella on Comedy Central? The promotion machine has been gigantic (I heard that somewhere here in Minneapolis they were giving away free Stella Artois to promote the show). Here's Slate.com's view. My thoughts: I didn't laugh once. Sorry guys, it's not even as funny as The Office remake.
WORDS
Suicide Girls interview Chuck Palahniuk.
ADVERTISING
How many burgers did that racy Paris Hilton advert sell? Almost none.
Nike apologized for their Minor Threat ad. But the ILM thread on this was quite good.
Ad-free versions of Gawker and Page 6.
ONLINE
Gothamist has a salacious interview with Washingtonienne. The best part is where she talks about her night out with Ana Marie Cox, and then says they don't talk anymore but suggests there's an off-the-record story to be told.
What happened to Suck.com? The full (very full) story.
Lately, I spend several hours a day reading what other dot-com media companies are doing (today, I read at least a dozen different articles on Yahoo's new My Web 2.0 ). It takes something like this NYT story to remind me of all the stuff that's happened in the last couple weeks -- and since that article yesterday there has been updates to Google Print, Yahoo's Map API, Amazon's A9, etc., etc. It's a crazy time.
I completely missed this... did everyone know that the new iTunes supports videoblogs too? Rocketboom on my iTunes, delish. And since you can charge for feeds.... could this be intro to micropayments?
FUNNY
Best. Blog. Ever.
The Onion: New Us Quarterly To Explore Celebrity Issues In More Depth.
FILM
The trailer for King Kong, which stars Naomi Watts and Jack Black, looks like outtakes from Jurrasic Park.
tuesday
Let me tell you a story.
The first couple months of college sucked. I was a pre-med student at a boring midwest state school who hung out with other boring pre-med kids from the midwest. It was like high school, except everyone wanted to be valedictorian. The best thing I could say about my doctor-to-be friends was that they were as exciting as organic chemistry.
One day, I accidentally walked into a dorm room where a couple slacker kids were on the floor playing Nintendo. Not even bothering to notice what game they were playing, I immediately focused on the poster hanging on the wall. It was a standard-issue Michael Jordan dunk shot -- the kind of poster that has no purpose other than to hang in a dorm room. Except the ingenious Nintendo players had taken a standard 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, cut a 3 x 3 hole in the center, taped it over the poster so that the hole highlighted one player in the fuzzy background on the bench beneath Jordan's splayed legs, and scribbled "Detlef Schrempf" on the poster.
I instantly knew that these guys were going to be my friends.
And now, let's have Chuck give his version:
I met My Nemesis in November 1990. I walked into somebody's dorm room to play Nintendo, and he was sitting on the bed, holding an acoustic guitar on which he could play only one note -- the opening note of Tesla's "Love Song." He was wearing a denim jacket, and he had used a black Magic Marker to draw the symbol for anarchy on the back. It was just about the silliest thing I had ever seen. We immediately became friends.
The first story is how I remember meeting Chuck Klosterman; the second is how he tells it in his new book, Killing Yourself To Live, which officially comes out today.
I'm not here to tell you Chuck is lying about how we met. For his last book, I did a point-by-point response to what he wrote about us, and he almost seems to concede fuzzy historical remembrances this time around by subtitling the book "85% of a True Story." Actually, I might be completely wrong about what really happened. In fact, "what really happened" is probably a useless concept when discussing drunken Nintendo battles.
(But just for the record, let's get a parenthetical in here. I am resisting the temptation to tell you the 15 percent that is inaccurate in his telling of our times together -- which you can hear for yourself in this MP3 of him reading from that chapter. But again, that's not what I'm here to talk about, because, for the most part, it's "true" (especially when you put it in quotes), and whatever isn't true is better this way anyway.)
Here's where I should tell you about the book. KYTL is basically a travelogue disguised as a memoir. First devised as an article for Spin, the ostensible narrative is Chuck travelling around America and visiting the places that rock stars died -- but that's all subterfuge for reflecting on various relationships and friendships from the past (and that's all subterfuge for reflecting on life and death). When he comes to Minneapolis (in theory, to visit the place Bobby Stinson died), the book recounts how a group of music critics (plus me, "someone who probably should have been a music critic") go to the Kitty Cat Klub, drink too much, argue way too much, go back to my house, drink more, climb on the roof, and nearly kill ourselves. And yeah, there's some stuff about the fist-fights we had in college.
Now that's out of the way, so let's get back to what I wanted to say. Look at the two different stories at the top of this page -- now ask yourself this: Which story is better? In college, this was the kind of thing that Chuck and I would have argued about for a week -- not just whose story is better, but what percentage of other people would think each is better, and who told the story most economically, and which story was more historically true, and if historical accuracy even matters, and who would play the parts in the movie of this story, and what Kant thought "better" actually meant, and so on. It was completely nuts.
But it was also probably the most important time of my life. Even though there were several occasions where I literally wanted to strangle him, nowadays my emotions about Chuck are pretty simple: I think he's funny, and he only occasionally pisses me off. As for "what really happened," it's all a blur, some of it intentionally so. But I now know this: I learned more about friendship from him than anyone else in my life.
But I can still totally kick his ass.
The link farm:
Buy the book
Listen to part of the book
Discussed on Stereogum.
On The O.C.
Entertainment Weekly review
KYTL being made into movie.
The Dessert Island Question.
Book Notes from Large-Hearted Boy
wednesday
It's about time we had some babies around here.
Today, Chuck Olsen and I are announcing a new site (still in beta!) that we are putting the finishing touches on. We present to you:
MNspeak.com
Twin Cities, All Day, All Night
What the heck is it?
It's a few things, yet it's also something very simple: a one-site stop for Twin Cities conversations about culture, media, politics, and entertainment. MNspeak.com's primary function is to answer these two questions:
1) What are people in the Twin Cities talking about today?
2) What is going on around town tonight?
So yes, it's a blog -- or partially a blog. But it's so much more! The left column works like a traditional blog (but with a community of participants). In addition, there is an events calendar, a community feedback device, a local blog/media aggregator, and sponsorship opportunities. And if all goes well, there will be more soon.
I've been working in digital media for almost a decade, and I've seen a website or two in that time. A "community site" could mean innumerable things to innumerable people (photo-blogging, topic-driven bulletin boards, etc.). But we think MNspeak.com has crystallized the possibilities down to a few essential features done well.
Perhaps the best way to describe the site would be to compare certain parts to sites that have influenced me. Here are some of MNspeak.com's main features, with mentions of sites that influenced the idea:
Writing -- No one realizes quite yet what a huge effect Gawker is having on the way we talk to each other. I'm respectfully describing the tone of MNspeak.com as Gawker Minus The Mean-ness. If that doesn't grab you, try Putting The Irony Back In Minnesota Nice. In other words, expect information plus attitude, but we'll try not to hurt your feelings, unless you're Norm Coleman or CJ.
Email Newsletters -- There is no Flavorpill in the Twin Cities yet -- and now there never will be! We are offering two simple email options -- an every-day calendar email and a week-day blog email. Click here to sign up.
Calendar -- If you've known me more than five minutes, you've probably heard my rant about the media sector that's really missing the boat on the digital publishing revolution: the alt-weeklies. I honestly believe CityPages.com is doing interesting work with Babelogue, and VillageVoice.com seems to be giving it the college try -- but the rest are trapped in the dogmatic slumbers of a weekly publishing schedule. The goal of MNspeak.com's calendar is not to compete with the gigantic comprehensiveness of an alt-weekly -- rather, it's to offer a clear resource for answering this simple question: "What's going on tonight?"
Participation -- We are so lucky to have one the leading "open-source journalism" thinkers in America in our city (don't let the scatological humor fool you!). Chuck's Blogumentary has been getting accolades wherever the film screens, and it's a pleasure to finally be working on a project together. We'll be adding in more voices to the site, so stay tuned for some surprises.
Aggregator -- The problem with blogs is there's just too much. Aggregators like Kinja are doing a nice job of condensing the blogosphere into digestible units. Our aggregator still needs some work yet, but it has the potential to be -- and I don't mean this hyperbolically -- the leading community news source in the Twin Cities.
Design -- Often cited by big media as the little site they wish to be, Lawrence.com is the "disguised" entertainment site of a daily Kansas paper, The Lawrence Journal-World. The design has gotten a little messy lately, but the general structure is something that pleases me. (There are rumors that many daily papers -- including local ones -- are considering similar sites. How much you wanna bet on them "getting it"?)
Interviews -- When I met Gothamist publisher Jake Dobkin at SXSW, I talked him out of launching a branch of his growing empire in Minneapolis. Actually, he mentioned some mumbo jumbo about "market size," and I knew he'd never bother with our mini-metro. Seriously though, one of our favorite Gothamist features is the interviews, which we plan to blatantly steal.
Business Model -- Oh, bring that up, will you? Yes, we're selling ads right now. If you'd like to advertise with us, click here. You'll be shocked how inexpensive they are. I can't reveal much more, but we're also talking about creating revenue opportunities for other Twin Cities bloggers. If you think about it, you can imagine how that might work. More on that later...
We're obviously excited about the site. Check it out, leave comment, sign up for the newsletters, take out an advert, check out the aggregator, and tell your friends.
friday
ONLINE
Eek! Someone stole my modus operandi for meeting girls and turned it into a website. At Consumating.com, you "show off your quirky personality with zany answers to our constantly rotating questions." It also has some nicely-executed tagging functionality that allows you to sort people by their interests. Ba-bye, Friendster.
The Guardian on how Yahoo just passed by Google.
FILM
Onion AV on Bad Scenes in Great Movies and Great Scenes in Bad Movies. Fun.
Ebert gives Sin City four stars. Enteratainment Weekly only gave it a C+. But Metacritic is clocking in at green. See also: Wired's profile of Rodriguez.
MEDIA
Those damn bloggers are killing Liz Smith. Finally, an answer to Jack Shafer on the good that comes from Gawker.
TECHTV
Engadget scores a beta peak at TiVo Desktop 2.1.
Couple new blogs: Chuck Olsen's Digital Television Blog and TVsnob.com.
FOOD
Slate.com reviews Applebee's. Contains interesting info, and nails the success with this scrap of analysis: "How did Applebee's and its heavily sauced pork chunks make it to the top of the casual-dining heap? By treating sit-down dining establishments like fast-food outlets."
LOCAL
INdTV is holding a contest that will give $15K to the best video submission. I hope the winners are these hip-hop kids who give Mark Dayton a bling-bling chain and get Walter Mondale spinning records. Excellent.
Someone please call the insider police -- the Minneapolis alt-media just jumped the whole damn ocean. Okay first, a strange Rake Mag blog post gushes all over Wonkette (who would stoop to such a low?!) and casually drops reference to publishing her pre-fame. Okay, whatever, right? But then Steve Perry (editor of City Pages) jumps into the comments to... get this... line edit a blog post. Guys, guys, take it outside!
Star Tribune and Pioneer Press stories on the death of Mitch Hedberg, a MN native. Some other resources: Metafilter thread | LA Weekly profile | Wikipedia entry.
See ya at the opening party for M-SPIFF this weekend? Good.
thursday
BLOGS
Rocketboom included the secrets to my blogging technique in a post a couple days ago. (It's toward the end of the segment.) You crazy vloggers! See also: some video of Chuck and I drunkenly quizzing Amanda about her role on The Restaurant at a strange house straight outta the movie Slacker in Austin at SXSW.
Anil pays tribute to Suck.com. I've been telling anyone who would listen that Suck.com doesn't get the cred it deserves. Everyone fondly remembers Spy and Might and even Inside.com, but I honestly feel that the attitude expressed in Suck was more influential than all of them.
ONLINE
Having crashed hours after launching, OurMedia.org is back online. And another social media site launched today: NowPublic.com.
MUSIC
Hey, Thurston Moore is in Wired. No, really.
Mashup: MIA's "Galang" vs Super Mario Theme Tune
Wired News story about the Decemberists releasing their newest video via BitTorrent.
This could pass for parody: Beck intereview in Elle. Sample questions: "So do you cry at movies?" and "If tomorrow you became a woman, who would you be?"
POLITICS
Don't ask why I have a Maxim subscription (it was free, honest), but I also stumbled when I saw the Bush twins.
LOCAL
Thoughts of a Dreamer, the LiveJournal of Jeff Weise. And the scary one: Weise posting on the Nazi.org message boards.
MBMA.net , Minneapolis Bike Messenger Association.
wednesday
This Is Not Really A Review Of Soul Asylum's After The Flood. And While We're At It, Please Ignore Any Perceived Attempts To Compare A Natural Disaster To A Music Scene, Because That's Just Silly.
Even though we naturally resist reducing our lives to simple anecdotes, we all have had one momentous event happen to us that comes to completely summarize our life, typify our personality, or recapitulate the rest of our existence. You might try to deny this, but I'll call you a liar, because most of the time you are like me and resent that this event happened against your will.
My event was a flood, and then a fire.
You probably have a fleeting memory of the flood and fire that hit Grand Forks, ND, in 1997. Maybe you remember the famous picture of an apocalyptic downtown, or perhaps the "Come Hell And High Water" headline on the daily paper, or possibly President Bill Clinton coming to town and crying on live television (Monica notwithstanding, the only time that has ever happened).
For you, this is a scrap from the memory dustbin of natural disasters (although maybe a prominent one -- for two nights in a row, it was the lead story on all three networks' nightly news). For me, it completely changed my life in ways that I still feel I have no control of. Even as I type this, I'm resisting the urge to tell you the story -- I've told it so many times that it now seems like taking advantage of a community's tragedy. So let's modernize the story by reducing it to bullet points under the heading "Strange Things that Happened to Me Because of the Flood and Fire of 1997":
Near the geographical center of North America, a scary stat. The largest evacuation of an American city in the 20th century -- over 50,000 people -- was foisted upon this little town in the Midwest when a dike broke in the Spring of 1997 and flooded 90 percent of the town.
I was rescued from my apartment by the coast guard when a downtown building caught on fire in the middle of a flood. Firemen couldn't put out the fire because they couldn't get to it -- there was six feet of water in the street.
I watched my apartment burn down live on CNN. I was positioned about a half-mile away, so I could see the flames in real time, but I could also glance up at the tv that was beaming it to me from a helicopter that could be seen on the horizon.
Within hours, I was interviewed by Time, NPR, the New York Times, the Star-Tribune, and many of publications I've long forgotten. My story was resonant because I had stayed behind during the flood despite a city-wide decree of mandatory evacuation. There are now three books in print that contain parts of my narrative.
I won a Pulitzer prize. Actually, the Knight-Ridder-owned paper I worked at won the Pulitzer for community service, but I have a very nice certificate because the website that I managed was given "special notation" for using the internet in a unique way. (To this day, no other website has been mentioned in a Pulitzer award.) Even though the press burned down, they never missed an issue of the paper, which was printed out of the Pioneer Press plant.
I received $2,000 from the heiress to the McDonald's fortune. Joan Kroc donated money to the city that was divvied up into $2,000 endowments to nearly every resident.
I did two different video reenactment shows. Late at night on the Discovery channel, you can still occasionally see me recreating my escape from the fiery inferno -- easily the funniest re-enacted tragedy ever put on television.
Soul Asylum played the prom. Of all the strange events that happened, this somehow seemed the most otherworldly.
"Hi, welcome to, uh, the prom," were the first words Dave Pirner gave the teenagers that night almost eight years ago. I remember his intonation perfectly -- it was the line that began my live review for the local alt-weekly at the time.
+++++++++++++++++
This is where this story should end, and I should be banned from talking about any of this ever again. But then (you didn't see this coming?), completely by accident, while dumpster diving the used bin at Cheapo Records in Minneapolis, I happened upon After The Flood: Live From The Grand Forks Prom, June 28, 1997, which I instantly assumed was an obscure bootleg. But apparently Capital released the show earlier this year as a live album. It seems no one really noticed -- including me, and probably you.
There's Pirner again, sounding even more bemused than before: "Hi, welcome to, uh, the prom," just before launching into Alice Cooper's "School's Out," which has never made a group of kids more happy than it did that night at the Grand Forks Air Force Base (the school gymnasium -- and most of the city -- was still in post-flood disrepair). You see, we kids in the hinterlands probably never experienced Soul Asylum quite like you wise city folk. Even though they were beginning their descent from fame by this time, in our minds Soul Asylum was still the band the Village Voice dubbed "the best live band in America." We all knew and repeated this phrase all the time, even though we had nothing to compare this to, other than a guess that they sounded better than the Bad Company show at the Civic Center.
Soul Asylum plays the prom? It seemed an inconceivable fairy tail -- like a story about losing everything you ever owned in a fire that couldn't be extinguished because of too much water.
+++++++++++++++++
Although people like to say that music is best when it evokes certain memories from your life, it's a completely different scenario when a musician is literally attempting to elicit a specific memory out of you. After The Flood is packed with these moments, which is why it's nearly impossible for me to tell you whether this is a good album or not. It's just too strangely historical and personal, at the same time. When the line about "drama queens" in the hit "Misery" is changed to "prom queens," I'm not sure whether to grin or grimace. And in "Black Gold," the lines "This flat land used to be a town" and "This place just makes me feel sad inside" are intoned with such heart-felt anguish that I want to find somebody to shove.
But here's what I'll concede: the album perfectly captures that time and place, both in Grand Forks and where alternative culture was at the moment -- coming off a exhilarating and infuriating high that probably never should have been.
And what would a prom be without covers? There were strange ones: "Tracks Of My Tears" (the Smokey Robinson song about a dealing with a breakup) and "I Know" (the 1995 Dionne Farris hit that you instantly know when you hear it). Throw in Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now," and Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" -- you've got yourself the strangest cover set the prom has ever seen. All of them are on the album.
+++++++++++++++++
Here's the weird thing: this is the only Soul Asylum record I own now. Before the flood, I had all of them. For reasons that seem vaguely unjust, every Replacements record eventually made it back in to the collection after the flood. So did all those little Husker Du's. And you can't live 'round here without the Prince oeuvre.
But Soul Asylum is left as a sad memory of commercialization gone bad -- a big sparkly burst of popularity followed by dismissal and anonymity. Would it be trite for me to say that last sentence is also a fair description of both the entire '90s alt-rock scene and my little college town? Perhaps. But I know two communities who synchronously lived through a burst of fame, and at least one wasn't so sad to see it go.
+++++++++++++++++
Links:
Soul Asylum's After The Flood on Amazon.
Flood Stage And Rising on Amazon.
Red River Rising on Amazon.
Voices from the Flood on Amazon
Archive of the story on CNN.com.
Bill Clinton's Speech.
tuesday
TV
That Out profile of Anderson Cooper.
Oddly fascinating blog of screengrabs of people blinking on TV: Blink O Rama.
TECH
Official note about killing NYT Circuits.
In Dot-Con Job, the Seattle Times dissects the lies behind InfoSpace.com, which PaidContent.org calls "perhaps the most amazing piece of business journalism to come out in years."
MEDIA
Hot girl is the face of democracy in the middle east -- at least on American magazines.
ONLINE
About.com CEO on why NYT spent $410 million to buy the company.
Wonkette dolls.
WASAW (Writers And Artists Snack At Work) is a good spot for junk food reviews. The delish Take 5 (9.3 rating) just showed up at the vending machine at work.
MUSIC
Bono as World Bank Pres?
Get your Google buttons ready... Femminem is a Bosnian trio.
Futureheads video.
LOCAL
I'm not sure what to make of Blogologue, "a live web browsing sketch comedy multi-media stage experience" (in other words, a play) at the Bryant Lake Bowl.
Looks like there are two geek conferences coming to Minneapolis in June: Podcasting World (for Podcasters) and Flashbelt (for Flash developers). And of course there's CONvergence in July.
Popular goals of people in Minneapolis (according to 43 Things). #11: Live in Canada.
Hey look, a Melodious Owl video, directed by Chuck Statler.
CP has a bit of breaking news about the Star Tribune hiring a conservative columnist.
Oooo, music critic fight! (or the closest we come to it), in which The Rake takes issue with Dylan Hicks' review of Kings of Leon in City Pages. And Reimenschneider's name is evoked for some reason or another.
sunday
In the 5+ years that I've been doing this site, I've never run advertising or asked for donations. I'm not quitting my day job or anything that ambitious, but if you feel like dropping me a few dollars of appreciation, you can do so through PayPal or Amazon. That's the beginning and end of this pledge drive.
MUSIC
Oh boy, you simply gotta hear Usher's new single, "Dot Com". "Oh, I love the way you dirty type. Oh, I need your back space in my life.... Oh baby, if you log on, I'll make you dot com... I can't wait to give you megabytes. I got all the memory you need." I would call this a hoax if it weren't on AOL. This is so bad it's post-bad.
Long NYT Mag profile of Beck, which is somewhat boring until half-way through when he starts talking about Scientology and his posse -- he's married to Marissa Ribisi (Giovanni's sister) and hangs with Adam Goldberg and Christina Ricci (who contributed a Japanese-inflected line on the song "Hell Yes").
Mike Skinner talks to the Guardian about starting a label.
Axl is the cover story of the Sunday NYT Arts section.
ONLINE
Fred Durst sues Gawker . (And I can't even think of anything snarky to say. Well, except maybe a pun about having a Limp Bizkit.) See previously: Felix Salmon thought Gawker jumped the shark.
Google adds weather search. Brr, it's cold again this week.
What Happens to Your Online Self When You Die?
TV
NYT previews what the Fox vs. CNBC match will look like.
Exactly 48 hours ago, I was having a beer with Chuck Olsen and he told me about Plum TV (a new tv network for rich people), and I thought, "This would be a good story to pitch to the New York Times." Then the Sunday paper showed up.
Profile of the Korean animation studio that produces The Simpson's.
FILM
McSweeney's: "Who's On First" at the video story.
NYT: Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.?
Amazon.com: Short Film Competition.
PUBLISHING
Issue #2 of Work mag is out.
MEDIA
It looks like Michael Musto is outting Anderson Cooper.
Dan Rather historical interactive at CBSNews.com.
Kurt Andersen on the state of journalism in the age of bloggers.
Interview with Craig "Craigslist" Newmark where he talks about getting into citizen journalism.
GAMES
For New Yorkers, Moving Image Exibition on Digital Play; for San Franciscoans, Start SOMA Video Game Art Show.
Online Iron Chef game.
DESIGN
All of Mediabistro's interviews in the Design Spotlight series.
LOCAL
We've got a local girl on the next America's Next Top Supermodel. ("Favorite movie: Snatch. Favorite TV Show: Poker Championship." Grrrowl.) Anyone know her?
The Current launches an events calendar.
The local right-wing bloggers are officially scaring me. I can already hear the echo chamber that is SwarmingTheStrib.com.
The Rake asks: Will Time Out come to the Twin Cities? (No.)
friday
POLITICS
Another design contest from MoveOn.org: BushIn30Years.com.
DRINK
Adjectives Rarely Used By Wine Tasters.
MUSIC
Sasha Frere-Jones on ringtones in The New Yorker. Contains surprisingly detailed info about the development of polyphonic ringtone and true tone, and some good-to-quote-at-parties information about such topics as the most popular genre (hip-hop -- 56%). My personal ringtone right now is the theme to Cops -- "Bad boys, bad boys, what'chya gonna do?" It's instantly recognizable. My last ringtone was the theme to Six Feet Under, which was also surprisingly recognized by anyone in their 30s.
A strange mashup of The Beatles' Revolver, which includes tracks with Beck, Madonna, Portishead, Coldplay, Genesis, Hendrix, Deeelite, The Who, The Cure, The Monkees, and Goldfrapp. This is what the kids call "good."
Beck is debuting five new songs on The O.C.
Dizzee Rascal arrested (cops found pepper spray and weed).
Rafat at PaidContent.org has started a blog with Billboard on the economics of digital music.
FILM
You've been hearing me complain about movie trailers getting their own releases, and now we have an example of a trailer to a trailer. Madness.
Just noticed the Illegal-Art.org is selling a DVD-R that contains a bunch of good stuff, including that banned Todd Haynes / Karen Carpenter video.
The SXSW Film site has trailers to most of the films. Here are some that jumped out at me: Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic | Childstar | Palindromes.
DESIGN
Amazingly cool visual representation (using Flash) of Coltrane's "Giant Steps."
Google Image Search Montage Maker. Fun.
TV
Lawrence Lessig on CSPAN's Digital Future Series (that link has an archive).
The "I Hate Arrested Development" Contest.
I wonder how many other people (besides me) googled "4 8 15 16 23 42" after this week's episode of Lost. Yep, nothing.
VH1's Best Week Ever has completely revved up their website. Includes lots of video and a new blog.
BLOGGERS
Video to last night's Daily Show segment on bloggers-as-journalists that featured Jay Rosen.
As a run-up to her keynote at SXSW, Wonkette interviewed in the Austin Chronicle.
Kottke interviewed in Newsweek.
MEDIA
Alright, who photoshopped all the real media celebs into the FishbowlNY Launch Party pics? Ariel Kaminer, Ira Silverberg, John Homans, David Carr, Maer Roshan, and whoever-the-fuck else? When the hell did launching a website make you famous enough to dine at Michael's?
Ten unmissable examples of New Games Journalism.
ONLINE
The guy behind GroupHug.us has written a book. Boston Globe interview.
Almost a year-and-a-half ago, I did a post about what Friendster can do to keep its users, and perhaps develop a subscription model. Sixteen months later, some of those features are finally starting to show up. Yesterday, they added a subscription-based blogging tool powered by Typepad. (It kinda sucks.)
MARKETING
Dunkin Donuts is trying to go middlebrow.
LOCAL
Best news since they tore down the plexiglass: First Ave redesigned their website.
Cool! Amusement rides as transportation!
New Patriot is delving into video blogging by interviewing a candidate for Minneapolis Library Board.
Club 331 quietly opened in Northeast this week.
wednesday
LIFESTYLE
Slate.com asks Which Condom Is Best?
ONLINE
Yahoo is 10 years old today. A 10-Year Netrospective. They're giving away ice cream.
TECH
No! It looks like NYT is cancelling Circuits [second item], the Thursday tech section. Actually, the section, which used to be a must-read, has been on the slow downward slide toward irrelevance for the past year.
AIM At Work allows you to synch your AIM Buddy List with Outlook.
TV
NYT has more on the reality tv show about the art world mentioned here a couple weeks ago.
FILM
WSJ reports that Green Cine Daily (which is one of my favorite blogs) "sparked a 20-fold rise in hits" for Green Cine (the rent-by-mail DVD service). See also: Netflix' corporate blogger, The Rocchi Report.
More ridiculous trailer premieres: Star Wars Trailer to Premiere On The O.C..
MARKETING
Slate loves that "All about the 'O'" commercial from Overstock.com.
T-SHIRTS
Some new ones at Non-Zero Change. I like "I'm Somebody's Fetish" and "I'm Not Your Damn Search Engine".
TIVO
Forrester Memo to Steve Jobs: Buy TiVo.
LOCAL
Dylan Hicks does a great job on a suite of stories about 89.3 The Current in CP. Paul Demko talks about the successes (sometimes forced) of the station, Diablo Cody looks at the personalities behind the station, and Dylan critiques the whiteness of the programming. Have you noticed that everyone is talking about radio lately?
I completely missed the story about a screenwriter who took out an advert in City Pages to contact Josh Hartnett about his screenplay. I almost hate to tell the guy that Josh regularly gets orange juice at my neighorhood coffeeshop.
You a nerd? Then MarsCon, which is going on this weekend, is probably for you.
A friend of mine from college has published her book about the Grand Forks disaster of 1997, where I lost my apartment and everything else in a flood and fire. (Previously: Ashley Shelby's book, where I'm a prominent "character.")
I haven't made it over to Creative Electric for the new poster show with Squad19 (CP story), but it looks like Minneapolis has another great design collective to add to the list.
tuesday
The past five days have involved sleeping in a different city every night, in this order: San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toledo, Ithaca, and New York City. I have only one piece of advice from this experience: don't attempt to drive a Uhaul into Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel. Just trust me on this. But I'm home and safe, and here is where we left off:
BLOGS
Ana Marie is back at the helm of Wonkette.
The Guardian has launched a blog.
MARKETING
Burger King's take on Pimp My Ride: PimpMyBurger.com.
TV
Copyright issues are preventing shows like WKRP in Cincinnati from showing up on DVD.
CELEBRITY
In what must be a first, Halle Berry picks up her Razzie in person. (Update: A reader writes in to say that Tom Green showed up for his Freddy Got Fingered Razie.)
A little profile of Portia de Rossi in Paper.
PUBLISHING
For self-publishers: How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon.
ONLINE
Wired mag profiles Yahoo as the UnGoogle. It's a good comparison the strengths of each company.
GADGETS
You'd expect a T-Mobile backlish with the newest Paris Hilton scandal, but the exact opposite happened.
MEDIA
Now Michael Wolff (through a proxy) has told Felix Salmon to take down the speech text. Now it's on Cryptome, therefore guaranteeing its legacy and creating even more controversy. Silly Wolff.
Profile of the Vice empire, which is now multi-million dollars strong.
MUSIC
Gothamist interviews Lou Barlow.
I hate that new Interpol puppet as much as that goddamn Arby's oven mitt. MTV.com has everything you wanted to know about the ugly marionette.
New Fiona Apple tracks.
TECH
While I was out of town, it looks like Odeo launched (NYT story), and then unlaunched.
LOCAL
Lookie! The Walker relaunched the website with a new design. The plans for openening weekend (April 16-17) have been announced too.
Jayhawks: unbroken up.
Buffalo, MN becomes one of the first cities to have a mesh network.
If you read between the lines at this post from 89.3 The Current, it seems as though the station is failing to meet its financial (membership) goals.
wednesday
LOCAL
A day of mixed emotions for me today as I fly back to Minneapolis to say goodbye to my roommate and favorite person in the world. (If you live up north, I hope to see you at the going-away party, which has four of the best local bands performing: Melodious Owl, Friends Like These, Thunder in the Valley, and Revolver Modele.) Melissa is leaving The Cities to work at Spin, where she'll join the rest of the Minnesota Music Mafia. Her final column is a big wet kiss for the Minneapolis music scene. I'll miss ya, kid. I expect drunken phone calls from Brooklyn rooftops.
thursday
MUSIC
It seems Pazz & Jop comes out later every year. Everyone knew Kayne would win, but Brian Wilson and Loretta Lynn coming in next was a surprise. Plus Green Day and U2 in the top 10 makes this the most conservative P&J that I can remember. The ballots.
Lessig on Wilco.
Smoosh, a shockingly good indie rock band consisting of two sisters, ages 10 and 12. Album and samples on Amazon. [via Waxy]
MUSIC VIDEOS
Another Beck video: "Black Tambourine". Is he planning to do a video for every damn song on the new album?
ONLINE
Video from Vloggercon is now available.
Salon.com looks closely at 43 Things, which is funded by Amazon.
Friendster added a chatting service (one-to-one chat, like IM). I have no idea if this will save the company, but I suddenly have a bunch of friends using it.
IPOD
Sirius is trying (and failing) to hook up with the iPod.
GAMES
Alex Garland (28 Days Later) is pegged to do the movie version of Halo 2. Ridley Scott was rumored before. [via greg.org]
TV
Marcia Cross: not gay. And a good thread tracking the rumor.
Onion A/V: Interview with Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development. At the same time, bad news for the show.
Questions Frequently Asked About TiVo, Answered by Someone Who Loves TiVo Too Much. "Is TiVo male or female?"
NY Observer: The SNL Skit That Paris Hilton Wouldn't Do. What's she got against Joey Buttafuoco?
Cory at Lost Remote has some ideas on how to fix tv for our demographic. Includes ideas sampled from Fark, reality tv, and viral marketing.
WORDS
Neal Stephenson in Reason.
ART
A Yahoo Slideshow for a Lucien Freud painting (it's of a pregnant Kate Moss).
MEDIA
After its first profitable quarter ever, Dave Talbot is leaving Salon.
Paris Hilton is on the cover of Playboy, but her publicist says, "I don't even know where they got that photo." Is this a first for Playboy -- throwing a celeb on the cover without having pictures inside? The cover story -- "25 Sexiest Celebrites" -- seems like a shift toward a Maxim audience.
LOCAL
CityPages.com redesigned. What do I think? Well, let's just say I think they're under-playing what people want from a site like this: daily content. Too much "cover story think" for the wrong medium. Editor's note.
I guess MPLS Happy Hour wasn't enough -- we also got Thrifty Hipster.
Ross reports that The Current has started airing "Sounds Eclectic," the KCRW show which everyone cites as "what Minneapolis really needs."
Guess who's #1 on ESPN.com's Top 10 Overpaid Players? Spreeeeeeweelllll!
KARE11 did a long piece (5+ mins) on the power of blogs. They actually use the word "information superhighway" in the video.
sunday
TV
NYT story on upcoming sit-coms set in Iraq, including Spirit of America, "a Fox sitcom about the creation of a Western-style television network in contemporary Baghdad." Oh boy.
McDonald's Israel has done a parody advert [video] of the Pulp Fiction scene about burgers. (I wonder if Tarantino approved this.)
ONLINE
LegalTorrents.com.
Media Lab Europe is shutting down.
The Age of Egocasting. This is a long essay tracking personal choice in media from the remote control to "egocasting." Unfortunately, it ends with one of those doomsday, Postman-esque scenarios envisioned back in the Republic.com days. (That type of argument should be totally debunked by now. TiVo and other personalization devices cause me to experience more media options, not less.)
Blinkx.tv has essentially come out of nowhere to capture a segment of the future that Google should really own: video search. They've signed up BBC, ITV, Sky and Fox.
NYT: Blogs help reform in Iran.
BOOKS
As expected, Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Blink, is getting a lot of attention. If you have any interest in keeping up with Gladwell, here's the NYTBR review, the Salon review, and a Metafilter thread.
Newsweek reviews the new Murakami novel, Kafka on the Shore.
It appears no one has even noticed that Douglas Coupland has a new novel out: Eleanor Rigby: A Novel.
ARCHITECTURE
Amazing photos of Hong Kong: Michael Wolf's Architecture of Density.
MEDIA
The whole blogging/disclosure/activism debate has so many tentacles to it now that I won't bother linking to everything. Instead, if you care, here's a post that does.
LOCAL
Mark your calendars for the Blogumentary screening Feb. 3, which will include the special guest Dan Gillmor, who is the author of We The Media and who made my blogs of the year list.
Chris Butler is doing a movie about the '90s Minneapolis band Walt Mink. Here's the blog and an ILM thread.
Randomly, people are talking about Husker Du on Metafilter.
Alexis says that a Metropark is coming to the Mall of America. Good or bad? You decide: "Metropark is a new breed of lifestyle retailer inspired by the fusion of fashion, music, and art. We stand for seduction, life after midnight, and the constant pursuit of desire." Well, I guess we'll just see about that....
wednesday
I'll be in San Francisco this weekend. If a Bay City Roller out there wants to buy me a drink, drop me a note.
ONLINE
The Atlasphere, a dating service for Ayn Rand freaks. I bet there are many more doms than subs.
Some guy dialed 867-5309 with every area code in America, and posted the results.
Big merger in blog land: Six Apart is buying Live Journal. Two things that interest me about this: 1) It almost seems like it could have been the other way around. 2) The user base for each product represents the complete opposites of the blogging spectrum. (Danah rhasodizing on why this is bad.)
A blog for Vloggercon has launched. (WSJ story on video blogs.)
It could be a mirage, but it looks like TMFML might be back.
IDEAS
The annual Edge Question this year: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"
FILM
I reopened the Year of Lists page again just to add Top 20 Nudes Scenes (NSFW, duh).
TV
Buy the dress that Buffy wore on her first day of school on eBay.
A Daily Show writer makes a joke in New York mag about the show's plans for 2005: "Then we invade the blogosphere, since that's where the money is."
ART
Top 100 Artists.
LOCAL
In a move that everyone in the Cities who knows a shred about radio saw coming, Mary Lucia has joined the new MPR station, 89.3.
Chris Danforth has joined my #1 for Picked To Click this year, The Deaths.
Slanderous Minneapolis is telling its readers to answer the Strib's call for MLK events by emailing fake events.
Dara's Top Dozen Dishes of the Year is out. Delish.
thursday
CELEB
On Gawker today, I played Santa to the celebs of 2004.
TV
Found online: Desperate Housewives T-Shirts. Including I ♥ Bree and Sex in the Suburbs.
ONLINE
Waxy has gathered an amazing collection of first-person videos from the Asian tsunami.
Question posed on Ask.Metafilter: Have you ever dated a Suicide Girl?
Long L.A. Times story on Iraqi bloggers.
FUTURE OF MEDIA
Great Future Tense interview (RealAudio) with Matt Thompson about EPIC, a vision of a personlized media source that aggregates newspapers, blogs, and social networks.
Business Week on vlogs here and here. I think we'll see scads of new video bloggers in 2005, and maybe even a celebrity or two arise out of the movement. There's now also Vloggercon 2005.
Terry Heaton on 2005: A Year of Trouble for Broadcasters.
Business 2.0 predictions.
ACADEMIA
NYT tries to grapple with the age-old newspaper look at MLA by getting all meta about it: Eggheads' Naughty Word Games. Fave paper titles this year: "t.A.T.u. You! The Global Politics of Faux Lesbian Pop" and "'Dude! Your Dress Is So Cute!' Patterns of Semantic Widening in 'Dude'."
Count me (and apparently many others in the media) among those who had no idea Susan Sontag was shacking with Annie Leibovitz for many years.
MUSIC
My pals Ross [Pioneer Press] and Melissa [City Pages] did a great episode of MPR's Midmorning (RealAudio) where they discuss their favorite albums of the year.
Steve Perry Fan Fic. Scary.
LOCAL
This has all sorts of potential: Slanderous Minneapolis, which is basically a "Minneapolis Gawker." The author appears to be anonymous.
In one of those battles you wouldn't mind if everyone dies, Nick Coleman goes after the Power Line guys.
Over at 89.3, it looks like the new station will be doing artist interviews. Could this end up being our own little KCRW?
tuesday
This was supposed to be the year that our past saved us from ourselves. But at least far as popular music is concerned, that wasn't true, as new releases from the Beastie Boys, Courtney Love, REM, Prince, Bjork, and U2 all turned out as noble attempts at pretending not to be boring.
But then, just as the failure of the legacy acts opened the door for newcomers such as Nellie McKay and Arcade Fire, a couple unexpected true legacies came from out of nowhere to surprise us: Loretta Lynn and Brian Wilson. Who saw that coming?
As I saw it, here are the best albums of 2004:
1) The Streets, A Grand Don't Come For Free -- When I was upset about another relationship breakup, when I was getting ready for a party, when I was choosing an album for my alarm clock to wake me up to in the morning -- it was always The Streets on the stereo. Beyond its versatility, it was also completely indescribable. By default, it's called hip-hop, but it seems more like some kind of ancient syncopated storytelling. That's right, Mike Skinner is our Homer. And the craziest part was when people would ask for a description of the album: toward the end of explaining the Pulp Fiction-ish structuring narrative, I had to pause and say, "I can't say any more without ruining how it ends." That's the sign of a good album.
2) Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand -- Idea for us to make millions in Hollywood: let's make a movie set in the summer of '04, and play "Take Me Out" during the party scene. Millions, I tell you! The way I see it, "Take Me Out" starts like a good Strokes (or Beatles?) ditty and segues perfectly into a great White Stripes (or Stones?) romp. Before you can even realize it, you're singing "I know I won't be leaving here... with you" to every girl at the party. And you won't be leaving with her, because she's having too much fun dancing. This was the album for people who wanted to forget in three-and-a-half-minute increments that GW has already taken us through two wars.
3) TV on the Radio, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes -- Just when you thought every possible option for fusion was gone (country electronica? check. indie hip-hop? check. a capella dance? check.), a few dudes in Brooklyn came up with what is essentially doo-wop punk. Yet it sounds nothing like that, as this fusion is probably the most unique sound of the decade so far.
4) DFA, Compilation #2 -- At first, this album -- which sounds approximately like "dancing to a plane crash" -- seemed impenetrably "too New York" for me to "get." In fact, every time I described it to someone, I threw around scare-quotes just like that last frightening sentence. And then somewhere around track five on the second disc, it hit me: this sounds like Minneapolis in 1985, when punk (Husker Du, The Replacements) and funk (Prince, Morris Day) were banging heads with each other. Suddenly, it felt like home.
5) Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose -- Out of the gate, this album was criticized as a forced mash-up. Which of course it is, and that's what it's so gorgeous.
6) Dizzee Rascal, Showtime -- There's something about Dizzee Rascal that reminds me of playing Tetris. Must. Fit. Blocks. In. Holes.
7) Wilco, A Ghost Is Born -- Though immensely frustrating at times, the brilliance of Jeff Tweedy shines through in spurts and whistles and grunts.
8) The Walkmen, Bows and Arrows -- The Walkmen are sort of the Built To Spill of 2004. We always need an indie rock band that turns the guitar fuzz louder than the vox.
9) PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her -- It's probably her second-weakest album, but PJ still makes the most shamefully annihilating recordings of anyone alive.
10) "Rockism" -- Even though Michaelangelo insisted that the debate is at least three years old, 2004 was the year that rockism went, well, mainstream. Kelefa Sanneh's critique of the goofy word led me into more conversations than any album this year, and because of that, it was better than all those boring old-timer albums. I still think it's a straw man concept, but hey, it was nice arguing with all of you about it. For at least a half-second, it actually tricked me into thinking music criticism still matters.
22 runner-ups:
Arcade Fire,
Funeral;
Bloc Party,
Bloc Party;
The Hold Stready,
Almost Killed Me;
Interpol,
Antics;
Air, Talkie
Walkie;
The Fiery Furnaces,
Blueberry Boat;
Morrissey,
You Are The Quarry;
Nellie McKay,
Get Away From Me;
Modest Mouse,
Good News For People Who Love Bad News;
Bjork,
Medulla;
Sonic Youth,
Sonic Nurse;
Madvillian,
Madvillainy;
Big & Rich,
Horses of a Different Color;
Pavement,
Crooked Rain Reissue;
Tom Waits,
Real Gone;
Le Tigre,
This Island;
The Killers,
Hot Fuss;
The Thrills,
Let's Bottle Bohemia;
Bjork,
Medulla;
Har Mar Superstar,
Handler;
Clinic,
Winchester Cathedral;
Eminem,
Encore.
See previously:
23 Best Albums of 2003
16 Best Albums of 2002
20 Best Albums of 2001
See also:
Lists 2004
tuesday
For City Pages this week, I wrote about a topic that I've been poking at for at least a decade: public art.
At first glance, public art seems like such a noble act -- it breaks down the museum walls, it opens up the masses to visual discourse, it creates revolution in the streets!
Or it confuses people.
Which is pretty good too.
The point of entry into the conversation is the new Matthew Barney billboard that you'll find on the corner of Hennepin and 12th in downtown Minneapolis. The billboard advertises nothing -- the Walker has been closed for nearly a year while the renovation finishes up. The work is meant to be interpreted as a solitary piece of art, intermingling with the skyline of vodka ads and local tv personality promos. Let's see what the people think:
City Pages: Medium Cool.
See also:
The Cremaster Cycle. Great site collecting many of the Cremaster images and themes.
Matthew Barney Gets A Brazilian. Greg.org on de Lama Lamina.
Cremaster Fanatic. Contains a bunch of upcoming iconography and tidbits related to Barney's upcoming work.
Art:21. PBS synopsis of Barney.
Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle. The book.
tuesday
ONLINE
eBay has launched eBay Pulse, which includes information such as "Most Popular Searches" and "Largest Stores" and "Highest Priced Items." Sorta like Google Zeitgeist.
MUSIC
Michael Moore directed a new video for Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World." Watch it.
Spin has an excerpt of Chuck's U2 piece on the site. I like the approach -- taking on the simple question, "Is Bono for real, or is this guy full of shit?"
NY Observer somewhat strangely does a profile of Pitchformedia.com. Despite the idiotic NY-centric egoism (Chicago, Pitchfork's home, is described as "far-flung"), it's a good profile of Schreiber (a Minneapolis native) and company. Tidbits: relaunch planned early next year, three people are on the payroll, and reviews only pay around $20.
Times reviews the new Nirvana boxset, With The Lights Out.
David Byrne, blogger.
Free Fiona [Apple] (Dot Com).
INDUSTRY
A lot of us in the office have been talking about CNN's promo Your Command. Wonkette calls it "Subservient Anchor."
Decent piece about the future of television where it's speculated that the real potential loser or winner in the next generation will be the affiliates.
Safran does a write-up on How To Save CNN.
Another Nick Denton profile, this one in the UK Independent.
The big three (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) are getting into video search.
Wikipedia has launched Wikinews. (Wired News story.)
sunday
ONLINE
Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson did a 8-minute faux-documentary imagining online media in the year 2014. EPIC is a cool look at the future of personalized and robotic news. (MetaFilter thread takes some jabs at it.)
16-year-old girl murders her mother and blogs about it.
Nathalie Chicha (she of Cup of Chicha) is newest addition to the MediaBistro blogger set. GalleyCat covers books and publishing.
Spoof of SubservientChicken: Subservient Stickman
MEDIA
Embarrassingly obligatory Frank Rich column link. (This one's about Desperate Housewives and the FCC and such.)
COOL
The 2005 SXSW Conference has been announced. (Music: March 16-20; Film: March 11-19; Interactive: March 11-15.) Price to attend all: $650. Ouch, that's almost $200 more than last year.
House of Flying Daggers trailer.
ONLINE CONSUMPTION
Border's launched a viral personalized web gift-finder, GiftMixer 3000, which bases choice on five personality criteria: Romantic, Adventurous, Brainy, Imaginative and Funny.
Froogle has launched a wishlist feature.
Target.com starts its own strange quasi-film experiment: Wake-Up Call.
SEX
Call the FCC! Boobies on CSPAN.
L.A. Weekly is trying to make the case that the handjob is back. Silly kids, it never left the midwest.
Request a "realistic kidnapping" at ExtremeKidnapping.com.
Women from The Apprentice in Maxim.
SPORTS/ART
The Pistons/Pacers brawl reimagined as Picasso's Guernica.
MUSIC
Trapped in car for 8+ hours this weekend, I listened to the new Gwen Stefani album three times. It sucks, but I bet Kelefa Sanneh would try to convince me it's awesome. (Conclusion also reached in the car: Kelefa's anti-rockism screed reminds me of girls in high school who tried to convince me on the greatness of Richard Marx.)
FOOD
My high school girlfriend is the pastry chef at Django in Midtown Manhattan. New York Daily News asked her to do something cool with cranberries, so she did.
LOCAL
Okay, it's gonna take a second to get to the "LOCAL" angle of this one, but hang on.... Do you remember the rumor from last week that the Bush twins showed up at a downtown Manhattan restaurant and were told they couldn't get a table -- and that the restaurant would be booked for four more years. Har! For reasons that are a bit mystifying, NYT Styles profiles the restaurant's founder, Taavo Somer. If he looks familiar (he does to me), it turns out he was an architect in Minneapolis a few years ago. (He's also the guy behind the "Morally Bankrupt," "Emotionally Unavailable," and "Until Somebody Better Comes Along" t-shirts you may have seen.) In the profile, Somer cites the now-defunct Loring Cafe as his inspiration for the restaurant, Freeman's. "[The Loring] was a bohemian hangout where you had older people, young people, Eurotrash, everything. They had food, drinks and even a ballet company. It was the circus freak show of life." Over two-and-a-half years ago, I described the Loring as "the place in which all the not-quite-ethnic-yet-ethnic hotties converged." Let the Loring nostalgia commence.
Uptown Borders allowed to unionize.
tuesday
Picked To Click, the annual best new local band poll from City Pages, is out. If you're into local (Minneapolis) music, here was my ballot:
- The Deaths
- Melodious Owl
- Spaghetti Western
- Olympic Hopefuls
- Thunder in the Valley
And the winner is: Olympic Hopefuls.
I wrote the blurb for the third-placer, Melodious Owl.
More local voters here, including my pals and yours, Dave Campbell, Marisa Collins, David de Young, Sonia Grover, Melissa Maerz, Steve Marsh, Ross Raihala, Matt Schmidt, Peter Scholtes, Lindsey Thomas, Karrie Vrabel, Gretchen Williams, and a zillion others.
Here's some miscellaneous local music commentary from the vote-casters.
See Also: An Unfortunate Case Of Where Are They Now?
2003 Winners: The Monarques
2002 Winners: The Soviettes
2001 Winners: Faux Jean
2000 Winners: Astronaut Wife
1999 Winners: Mason Jennings Band
1998 Winners: The Odd
1997 Winners: Brother Sun Sister Moon
wednesday
IDEAS
Malcolm Gladwell on Intellectual Property in the New Yorker.
A couple weeks ago, I talked about the troubles I had with Kelefa Sanneh's critique of rockism in the Times. This week, Matthew Wilder writes his own excellent response in City Pages. This whole thing is a great conversation that reminds me of the good parts of '90s rock crit. (And nice work to Missy Miss Roommate for pushing this kind of work into the paper.) See also: ILM Thread.
Boston Globe: How 'Dungeons' changed the world.
Steve Rubel proposes that bloggers should be the "Time People of the Year."
It's almost endearing how the Voice doesn't care that it's always behind on things like this. This week: Derrida obit.
MUSIC
The Gray Video.
Vince Carter banned from using iPod during warmups.
Cool, TV on the Radio wins the Shortlist Music Prize.
FILM
The DVD for Broken Saints is out. A great culmination for Brooke and company.
TIVO
Let the enjoyment cease.
NEW BLOGS
Veiled Conceit, a blog all about New York Times Wedding Announcements. Good.
AdWeek starts a new blog: AdFreak.
You saw the Times story this weekend about dating the blogosphere? To save you the trouble, here's the author's blog, the guy's blog, and the other girl's blog. It's all kinda dumb in soap opera way, yet accurate in pinpointing some new nuances that blogging introduces to dating. (I've got a story or two to tell you too. Someday.)
LOCAL
McSweeney's: On The Utility Of Minneapolis-St. Paul As A Base Of Operations For Various Well-Known Superheroes Or Super Teams.
monday
SEX/CULTURE
Alfred Kinsey: Liberator or Pervert? Includes many luridly details (he self-circumcised himself a year before he died) and a back-story of controversy (Dr. Laura Schlessinger and others tried to put an ad in Variety denouncing the film) surrounding the new Kinsey biopic.
Slate.com (Dahlia Lithwick): Why post-feminist women enjoy Trading Spouses and Wife Swap. I sorta hope this one becomes controversial.
Upcoming on VH1: When Stars Get Scammed.
The Gawker interview guys get recognized at the Hustler Club.
Library Journal: Porn Star(s) in the Library?
Confessional blog post on watching The Weather Channel: Am I Watching The Weather -- Or Porno?
Slate.com: Will male birth control ever become a reality?
Who was the gay Simpsons character? Nope, It Isn't Smithers. It also isn't Cynthia Nixon's lover.
POLITICS
Cool debate word frequency tool.
Saint Clinton Dot Com.
George Soros, blogger.
I missed this one. Jessi Klein of "Best Week Ever" (one of the best pop culture shows on tv) blogged the debate for CNN.com. And so did Douchbag Novak, which was quite possibly the worst blog ever.
PUBLISHING
So the "new" NY Times Book Review came out this week. Its new-ness is questionable, but there is the okay review of Web Sites for People Who Read, which includes some of my current fave blogs such as Bookslut and Maud Newton.
Speaking of new, I believe The Guide is part of the Sunday Times Arts section's attempt to stay ahead of New York and the weeklies. (The rest of the section is full of font changes this week, but I can't find anything else significantly different.) Choire Sicha is the byline, so it's not full of mainstream crap. It's the first thing I've seen in a while that made me want to live in NYC.
Nerve.com: Michaelangelo Matos interviews John Leland, author of the new book Hip: the History. Looks like the book will be good.
EW: Our Favorite Phillip Roth books.
GAMES
Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions ended last week with a Double Jeopardy category called "Blogs." The question to the $2000 answer was Margaret Cho. Other questions included Lawrence Lessig and Howard Dean.
Wired News playing catchup on Video Mods. (One important thing I didn't point out about the new Sims 2: it has the ability to record your gameplay into a video file. This has extraoridinary viral opportunity, such as allowing one to potentially create their own Video Mods. See next entry.)
The same people who made Red Vs. Blue, a machinima series using the Halo rendering engine, have recently started to release The Strangerhood, a new machinima using the Sims 2 engine. [via Slashdot]
DIGITAL MEDIA
Denton is launching three new sites today: Kotaku.com (gaming), Screenhead (entertainment), and Jalopnik (cars).
Smart CEO Alert! PaidContent is doing a series called Context Next, featuring guest blogs by leading industry thinkers. Jeremy Allaire's grabbed my interest, but Don Katz (CEO of Audible.com) has been the hidden diamond. Speaking tech execs, I saw Mark Cuban tell Howard Stern last week that he once slept with seven women at once. Take that Trump! (I feel pure midwestern guilt for saying this, but I like the cheesy gold-laced Trump more than the awwww-shucks Cuban. I have an entire essay in me about these two, but it's basically the dichotomy between camp and faux-earnestness.)
Wired News: Google News Ain't Makin Dough.
T-SHIRTS
You Are So Off My Buddy List.
My Frat Is Cooler Than Your Frat.
GILF.
MUSIC
This week, Subterranean on MTV2 was all about the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. Good stuff by TV on the Radio, Dizzee Rascal, The Streets, Wilco, Nellie McKay, Air, and more.
Times Mag profiles Nonesuch records, home of Wilco, Steve Reich, Emmylou Harris, Laurie Anderson, The Magnetic Fields, and Kronos Quartet.
Mark David Chapman is up for parole.
Dan The Automator to produce next Franz Ferdinand.
FILM
Let's just get it over with and call it the best film of the year. Days of Being Wild trailer is out.
ART
Does anyone read Art Forum anymore? New issue on Pop After Pop might be the first I buy in several years.
Tokion Magazine's Creativity Now conference looks like it would've been fun. Speakers included an eclectic cast like Brian Eno, Kim Gordon, Christopher Doyle, and Joe Trippi.
LOCAL
Yes, I'm glad we talked at Sound Unseen this weekend. You'll be at the rest of the events this week, right? Good. I'll see you there.
Margaret Cho on her appearance in Minneapolis last week.
Chuck is finishing up work on Blogumentary. I can't wait to see the final film, which seems like an impossible task to complete given the unstable nature of its topic.
tuesday
MUSIC
Next month's Wired will come bundled with a CD with 16 songs that can be freely copied, distributed, and remixed by other artists. It will include Beastie Boys, Le Tigre, David Byrne, My Morning Jacket, Paul Westerberg, Cornelius, Matmos, and others.
Last week, intrepid Waxy posted The Kleptones' A Night at the Hip-Hopera, a mashup of Queen and early rappers like Grandmaster Flash. You might have guessed it would get the same controversial attention as Danger Mouse's "Grey Album," and you might be right.
Streaming at VH1: Shatner's new album, with Ben Folds.
You Have Bad Taste In Music Dot Com. Funny vids.
WORDS
McSweeney's: Maxim Does The Classics. (See also, same place: David Brooks parody.)
Gothamist: Interview with a Scrabble Pro.
CELEBRITY
Will Olsen Twins t-shirts ever become passé? No! 'I Went Down on Mary-Kate'. 'I Fucked The Olsen Twins... Before They Were Famous'. Will they suffer a similar fate?
Dolly Parton wants breast reduction. You mean those were fake?
Fleshbot says there's another Paris Hilton video out there.
FILM
Trailer to Bridget Jones sequel.
Low Culture on making the heart for I ? Huckabees.
ONLINE
I guess I can't say for sure if someone stole my comment in the essay to the right about The Sims for this comic. But it surely seems close.
DearJonStewart.com.
Found on eBay: a 300GB harddrive. So? It has 273G of DVD porn. Maybe Best Buy could learn from this tactic.
MEDIA
Interview with James Walcott in Salon.
Some Wonkette party gossip in the Post.
Will The Post buy Slate.com?
LOCAL
Chuck Statler is pretty much the father of the modern rock video. He has worked with Devo, Prince, The Cars, Styx, Graham Parker, Stan Ridgway, and Elvis Costello. He lives in Minneapolis, and there's a retrospective of his work coming up at Sound Unseen. CP profiles him.
Grandpa Coleman gets all grumpy about blogs this week. "Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world."
monday
Today, I want to touch on a few topics related to game culture -- and how it intersects with movies, music, and digital communication. I know, that intro sentence sounds about as fun as an a capella Bjork album (oh wait!). So instead of getting pedantic, let's look at the gaming landscape by pointing out new phenomena in digital entertainment, with a focus on how gaming is influencing all media. This isn't necessarily a cohesive essay with a single objective, but I hope it's more than another "Synergy of The Matrix" piece. Let's just call this a Scrappy Collection of Thoughts About Various Gaming Trends that have been of recent fascination to me:
VIDEO MODS
I won't try to convince you that the mashup of a teen-goth BloodRayne 2 video game and a teen-goth Evanescence music video belongs in the canon of required cultural material for our time. In other words, don't sigh if your TiVo missed Video Mods, a new series on MTV2 in which video game characters and landscapes are used to create music videos. I guess the worst thing that one could say about Video Mods is that Viacom is blatantly ripping off Machinima to attract video game advertising to television.
Even if that's true, it's also much more.
But first: a part of me wants to tell you that the convergence of these mediums is the perfect metaphor for the current state of the music industry. This cynical critique would go something like this: little pac men (consumers) run around a contested maze (Virgin Records) gobbling up indistinguishable dots (songs/albums) and ghosts (musicians). It's a sociological Flatland out there, in which demographics are empty ciphers with unlimited purchasing power -- the same goddamn person buys (or downloads) Outkast, Evanescence, and Creed. À la carte pop culture icons are sculpted with the same care that goes into creating Sims characters -- complete with readymade identities that become obsolete faster than you can blurt "Friendster." Identity is the currency of the music industry, and it's a free market economy of Pokemon cards: I'll trade you a "Britney Reinvented #24" for a "Cleaned Up Christina #9." Virtual video game characters taking over the role of musician is nothing more than the next step in the MilliVanilling of the music industry.
But, like I said, I don't really buy that mojo. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in cynically looking at pop culture icons, but I think it ultimately misses a key point in understanding the attraction of Video Mods. For evidence, take a look at The Sims 2 video mod of the Fountains of Wayne song "Stacy's Mom."
The Sims is the top dog of this medium so far. Not only is it the highest-selling series of all time, but it has come to represent a watershed creative moment in the industry. So why, one might ask, would "Stacy's Mom" score the grand prize of The Sims mod?
I honestly have no idea. But I think you'll see a clue by looking at the storyline behind "Stacy's Mom." You might say the Fountains of Wayne song is just a MILF romp imagined by a horny adolescent. But in reality, it's not even that -- it's actually sung by thirty-somethings who are themselves projecting a tweener dream. Basically, it's a wish fulfillment nostalgia fantasy from guys old enough to be Stacy's Dad.
So now, what is The Sims? That's more complex, but one could say it is an interactive world where players bring to life characters outside their normal demographic makeup. In other words, it's a giant role-playing fantasy.
Starting to see a trend here? Let's move on....
PLAYBOY
In the age of Suicide Girls, it's amazing that Playboy is still around. And it's amazing that I bother to mention the publication in a video game rant. But even as I say this, I realize that for the first time in my life, I bought an issue of Playboy last month, simply because the magazine has done a remarkable job of staying relevant in a digital age. For instance, the Google guys interview and the Washingtonienne spread reminded me that the magazine could still be relevant.
Or maybe these are just the last gasps of breath of a dying Boomer ideology. I'd entertain that argument too.
Anyway, when Playboy announced they would be doing a photo spread of characters from video games, you could instantly picture a digital historian somewhere writing this event into a timeline of important virtual character events (chronologically right after reality TV and right before the holodeck). Hackers modding Lara Croft into a pinup is one thing, but the mainstream culture industry getting sly with virtual sexuality says a lot more about where we are. This single layout might actually become the best indicator of the mainstreaming of a number of (previously) fringe activities and concepts: virtual sexuality, video game culture, user-modified content, reality blurring. And a new video game, Playboy: The Mansion, a Sims-like romp through Hef's mansion, will take this even further.
WAR GAMING
Forget sex, war is where it's at.
A lot has been said recently about the relationship between the industrial war complex and video games (such as in articles in The New York Times and Wired). When the Army created the game America's Army to recruit soldiers, it seemed that Ender's Game truly was going to happen. I'm working on an article for publication about this theme, so let's breeze past this topic for the moment.
SIMS 2
Every night over the last week, I've sat in a room with a computer and TV, playing the recently-released The Sims 2 and watching late night talk shows. Something important changed last night: I turned off the TV and started watching the show that my Sim character was watching on his television.
I don't think I can even articulate how hyper-real this is.
REALITY GAMING
The spurt of ironic glee about Flash Mobs last summer was more than a hipster punchline. It illustrated how gaming was leaking from the pores of society. The products of this spillage have included Big Urban Game (Minneapolis) and PacManhattan (NYC). And the glut of competition-based reality shows (Survivor, The Apprentice, Fear Factor, etc.) are all just extreme versions of reality gaming. (One could also argue that these Reality Games are a sort of tame suburban version of more serious planned events like the Seattle WTO Protests. That's for a different essay though.)
THE VIDEOGAME REVOLUTION
Anyone who has played even five minutes of Zelda will find PBS's new two-hour special The Video Game Revolution a bit tedious. I suppose it serves a valid purpose -- to provide a historical framework of popular video games. Too bad it's as engaging as a two-hour Pong match.
But what interests me is what this documentary represents in this moment in time. It seems we have reached a period in gaming where we can reflect on the past equipped with the gear found in the toolbelt of historical analysis: summary, bricolage, and nostalgia. The Video Game Revolution implicitly declares video games as a real object of pop culture study. Of course, this should not be surprising given the rise of academic programs designed to study gaming. Something about this evolution reminds me of 1990s-era Camille Paglia promoting the notion that universities should start rock music programs. I have mixed feelings about whether turning an academic eye to rock really does anything for musicians or fans or society, but I do worry an accidental effect of academizing a discipline in the past couple decades: studying it is synonymous with taming it. (I know many people in academia who are studying game and play, and they all get sour-faced when I suggest this possibility.)
WATCHING TV AT WORK
Many companies have planned events on Fridays that provides employees a break from work. But what our workplace does is truly unique. The idea started innocently: let's use our in-house online video streaming technology to deliver a movie to employees on Friday.
Thus was born The Friday Matinee.
Here's how it works: every Wednesday, an email goes out to a dist list of programmers, designers, engineers, and editors. It contains a list of movies, and the community votes on which one it will watch. On Friday at 2:00, the intranet streaming servers are fired up and the 'play' button is pushed on the DVD player. This is where it gets interesting.
If you walk around through the darkened cubicles at this time, you will see dozens of programmers donning headphones and staring at their computer monitors. They are simultaneously performing a number of tasks: writing code, watching The Friday Matinee, and IM-ing their colleagues about both. In other words, people are working, being entertained, and communicating all at the same time. There's something about this collapse of mediums and lifestyles that suggests a complicated future of media and entertainment.
CONCLUDING
This last example has nothing explicitly to do with gaming, but it illustrates something that's happening in our times: people are hacking mediums together for their own purposes. The provocative questions are just starting to come out: what happens if you mix film with instant messenger? what would a music/game hybrid look like? how could role-playing influence traditional one-way entertainment?
In an average day, I perform numerous activities which have nothing to do with gaming explicitly, but which feel somehow game-like. These include blogging, creating a playlist for my iPod, programming my TiVo, Googling girls on my cellphone at bars, and learning the hacks behind Yahoo Internet Messenger. If there's one point from all these examples, it's that "gaming" might become so pervasive as to become invisible.
Game on.
tuesday
ONLINE
Choose your pop culture comparison: 1) The best part about Fontgate (© LostRemote) is that it forces publications like the L.A. Times to extensively quote an anonymous blogger named Buckhead. Not quite as cool as Deep Throat, but almost. 2) The best part about Fontgate is that the plot itself is a forgery! The denouement is stolen directly from Jagged Edge, starring Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges.
TV
Slate: A guide to the language of reality TV.
MUSIC
Google search jackpot: "index of /mp3"
The Thrills were the best band that no one listened to last year. Here are a couple MP3s from their new album, Let's Bottle Bohemia.
Stereogum has an MP3 clip of Britney's cover of "My Prerogative," which is coming out soon and might be the make-or-break moment for "new Britney."
Yahoo refuses to learn its lesson (I will forever blame you-hoo for making Mark Cuban rich and famous). The company bought MusicMatch.
POP
How You Might Explain The Olsen Twins To A Martian. I dunno, I laughed.
LOCAL
Minnesota RollerGirls. They're recruiting.
New Yorker has a strange story about a Minneapolis man who donated money to the city of New York and then died.
wednesday
MEDIA/POLITICS
New York Mag: Dubya's nicknames for friends and enemies. Maureen Dowd is apparently "Cobra."
Text of the Bush Twins speech from the RNC last night. And I quote: "But, contrary to what you might read in the papers, our parents are actually kind of cool. They do know the difference between mono and Bono. When we tell them we're going to see Outkast, they know it's a band and not a bunch of misfits. And if we really beg them, they'll even shake it like a Polaroid picture." You couldn't make this shit up if you tried. And woe, woe, woe, I'm so confused: who is the Mono character and are you telling me Dubya listens to The Misfits?
The Best of Still Photojournalism 2004.
TV
Dang, whattup with fast food commercials getting edgy/fetishistic? Here's a Carl's Junior Advert (large wmv file) of a girl sticking her fist in her mouth.
ONLINE
I have purchased exactly one issue of Playboy in my entire life -- last month's issue with the Google guys interview. But this month might be my second, with Washingtonienne making an appearance. (Here's the safe-for-work interview link and here's an archived version of her blog and here's Wonkette's entire coverage.)
This is pretty cool. MoreGoogle seemlessly adds thumbnails to your Google searches.
Those dummies at Friendster fired one of their blogger employees for what appears to be trivial reasons.
FILM
NumberSlate and PeerFlix, two peer-to-peer DVD sharing companies. Interesting, but I suspect they go nowhere.
I missed this one: Sofia Coppola's next movie will be a biopic of Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst.
WORDS
Voice: A legendary editor at Harvard University Press asks, What good are books?
I never read Arthur Phillips' Prague, but I think nearly every one of my friends did. And I never really knew that much about him until a silly Entertainment Weekly piece (about his new book, The Egyptologist) told me he was a five-time Jeopardy champ. Other facts: born in Minneapolis, was a child actor, a failed entrepreneur, and jazz musician.
MUSIC
AC/DShe: all-girl AC/DC cover band. Mandonna: all-male Madonna cover band.
thursday
Fair warning: if Carrie doesn't choose Mr. Big, I'm so killing myself.
WORDS
WordSpy now a book.
It's a fine day for the English language. A semicolon saved gay marriage.
SOCIAL
Can you plagiarize someone's life? If so, The Onion has mine again. Just to be audacious, they even datelined here.
ENTREPRENEURS
The Segway: losing zillions of dollars...
...on the other hand, NutsForTrucks.com is not.
Buy Janet's nipple shield at... Janetsnipperling.biz.
TV
Slate: How Does Sweeps Week Work?
FILM
Perhaps the greatest movie of all time, Blow-Up came out on DVD this week. (If you've been to my house, you've drank Wet Rexxxies under the ostentatiously red poster.) So did The Tibetan Book of the Dead narrated by Leonard Cohen (!?), but I really have no idea how good that is.
Coming not-so-soon: The Simpsons, the movie.
ONLINE
I find myself using Google's "Search by Location" page more and more often lately.
POLITICS
This is not a John Kerry / Jane Fonda photograph.
MUSIC
A very large collection of drum solos.
New video from Michel Gondry is all stop-motion knitting.
Joey Ramone action figure. Vinyl, of course.
LOCAL
The hell? The Times is writing about hip churches in Minneapolis? Hey you kids, get outta my yard!
sunday
Had a strange sensation today paging through The New Yorker. I came across the Howard Dean article and briefly thought to myself, "This is pretty long; I should print it for later." Of course, I was holding the magazine in my nimble fingers. Then, quickly realizing my folly, I thought, "Maybe I can rip the pages out for later." Mind-boggling, isn't it?... how spoiled we've become.
ONLINE
Emily Nussbaum chases around some high school Live Journalers for the Times Mag: My So-Called Blog.
New York Post scribbles something up about belle de jour, the blog of a London call girl. (Locally, we have Pussy Ranch.)
Red Herring interview with the CEO of Netflix.
LIFESTYLE
I'm thrilled to constantly discover myself in a new demographic. This week, it's Quirkyalone. There's a book, a quiz, a website, and way-too-long newspaper stories.
MUSIC
For the price of about $1 per CD, RipDigital will turn your entire CD library into MP3 files.
We deserve our own wretched fate. Silly Saddam as Outkast animation.
WORDS
What is the single worst piece of punctuation? Some might say the exclamation point, but according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the colon is the enemy.
Tina Brown in the Washington Post on Donald Trump: The Real Reality Show: An '80s Survivor. And The Minor Fall, The Major Life translates it.
The Economist: Babel's children.
Bloggers interviewing people is becoming more popular. Zulkey interviews Joel Stein. The Morning News interviews Jonatham Letham.
LOCAL
A super excellent photographic tour of The Replacements' Minneapolis.
tuesday
Surrounded by the cute girls in my posse, I turned into a skanky aloof hipster (note the shifty eyes and cell phone/pda in my pocket). Hey Pete, what night was that, anyway?
WORDS
During that Times interview the other day, I said a ridiculous number of brilliant things about list-making as an attempt to make sense of a fragmented world. And then Louis Menand stole all my ideas and wrote them in The New Yorker. Yep.
The Speech Accent Archive consists of audio files of 295 people reading the exact same 69 words. So? Well, they all speak with different accents. So? Shut up, it's cool.
Looks like Umberto Eco has a new book. The Guardian says it's "inaccessible for its semiotic jargon and graphs," which is a good sign he's back in form.
POLITICS
The 15 finalists in MoveOn.org's Bush In 30 Seconds contest have been announced. Some funny ones, some reactionary ones. Judges for the finals include: Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Jack Black, Janeane Garofalo, Margaret Cho and Gus Van Sant.
TECH
Salon's tech predictions for 2004.
New stuff Apple announced today: GarageBand and iPod Mini. And here's some stuff they didn't announce (Wired).
While getting a couple fillings put in today, my dentist told me he's going to CES. Yes, my fuggin dentist. Rafat from PaidContent.org and Peter Rojas from Gizmodo are there.
MEDIA
Ziff-Davis is going to launch a new tech magazine: Sync. Doomed to suck.
Somewhat interesting that The Guardian reprinted Osama bin Laden's comments in its "Comments and Analysis" section of the paper. (Also interesting that I didn't actually read all of Osama's words, but I read the entire mediocre MeFi thread.)
MUSIC
Ryan Adams leaves a goofy-attempt-at-being-nasty message (mp3) on Jim DeRogatis' (Chicago Sun-Times music columnist) voicemail.
New documentary: Sounds Like Techno.
DESIGN
Adult Movie Posters of the 60s and 70s.
The 2005 Mustang looks totally retro. (Sorry for the car link. I drive a 2000 'stang.)
The "Reflecting Pools" design was chosen for the WTC Memorial.
FASHION
Gimme.
LOCAL
Bye, bye, Flash Mobs; hello Action Squad. Minneapolis urban adventures!
I'm looking for a good Flash Designer/Developer for a big project. If you're all that, find me.
North Dakota Blogs.
monday
IDEAS
Another design-related cover at the NYT Mag: Inspiration. Lots of good stuff, but I like the designer presidential candidates posters slideshow.
Umberto Eco gets all brilliant again in an al-Ahram essay about print versus digital books.
Scientific American: Does Race Exist.
TECH
Fortune has the first deep-analysis backlash story on Google. Interspersed among the stories of internecine conflict are these numbers: 1,000 people apply for jobs at Google every day, 30% of Google workers are contractors, 150,000 advertisers have signed up for Adwords, 5% of Google is owned by Yahoo, and an IPO would probably value the company at $20 billion.
LIFE
Life is so confusing. Last week, the Times Mag told me all about online dating, and this week they diss dating. But then there's the San Fran Chronicle to bolster scamming your friends for dates.
NYT: The Intern as Hipster.
MUSIC
NYC names a street after Joey Ramone.
New Blur video from Shynola: "Good Song".
LOCAL
Did you see the Strib's review of the spate of new spendy downtown clubs? Babalu, Empire, Escape Ultra Lounge, Dakota Jazz Club, Rossi's Blue Star Room, Soul City Supper Club, and Tabu all cropped up this year. This chump hasn't been to any of them yet.
Your moment of bliss: Har Mar Superstar vodka ads. Tidbit: I got my hair cut next to Har Mar at Cost Cutters last week. Take that, Gawker Stalker.
sunday
This site is up to about 3,500 visitors per day. Who are all you people? Please wipe your feet before entering. Linkage:
POP
This month's Wired has a gadget section with this quote from Paris Hilton (who the NYTimes said "looks like what you'd get if you crossed Uma Thurman, a borzoi and Robert Plant circa 1972") printed long before last week's tape scandal: "I can't live without my cell phone. It's the one with the big round dial, and it has a video camera on it." The mind reels with the potential sequels...
Variety.com has started a blog, Outside The Box, about swag -- promotional items for music, film, tv, etc. releases.
Margaret Cho: Courtney Love is the white Whitney Houston.
WORDS
Norman Mailer's 25-year-old son, who has no journalism experience other than writing one piece for Black Book, is the new executive editor of High Times. Profile.
FILM
Guardian: The World's 40 Best Directors. #1: David Lynch.
Cool. The Cameos of Alfred Hitchcock. (That is, the cameos in his own films. I've always wondered where he appears in Rope, and now I finally know.)
The author of The Simpsons and Philosophy and Woody Allen and Philosophy analyzes Tarantino. (Via Greencine.)
I'll call Body Song a cross between Koyaanisqatsi and Kronos Quartet. Cool site by Channel 4, cool music by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead.
"Why can't I preorder a DVD and receive it the day the film is released in theaters? Or buy it on my way out of the theater if I liked what I saw? One thing I learned from the Mavs is that you can watch the game on TV, but you'll still go to the game, because it's a different experience." -- Mark Cuban (the guy who sold Broadcast.com for billions and bought the Dallas Mavericks and -- more importantly -- Landmark Theatres), Wired, December 2003
ART
I'm dizzy. I just downloaded and listened to every track on the Andy Warhol tapes.
TV
All three hours of PBS's NOVA program The Elegant Universe is now available online (QuickTime and RealVideo).
The MPAA is putting out public service announcements on movie piracy. They take a semi-manipulative working class angle.
The Sex Museum in NYC has released a new advertising campaign.
GAMES
There are still Rubik's Cube competitions? And croquet?
LIVING
NYT Mag has a series of articles on smart homes. Here's James Gleick on smart houses, and the others are linked in the sidebar.
POLITICS
Excellent fundraiser maps of America.
DESIGN
Random prediction: David Carson makes a come-back in 2004. New interview.
ONLINE
Waxy has pics of some Japanese magazine, Bloggers.
My Tunes is a program that adds functionality to Apple's iTunes that lets you share mp3 files across a network. C|Net story.
LOCAL
Hey, I'm looking for a roommate. Pass it on.
sunday
For Halloween, I was gonna dress up in a yellow jump suit and call myself "AOL Man!" But now my costume is fucked, because everyone will think I'm Uma from Kill Bill. Today's links:
MEDIA
Compare: Faux CNN t-shirt vs. Faux FOX t-shirt.
So have you seen that new MTV's Spankin' New magazine on the newsstands? Surprise, surprise, like its namesake, it has nothing to do with music. (Story.)
Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker does his bit on Rush.
Ad Age names its Top 10 Mags of the Year, and I don't read a single damn one of them (and I read about 35 magazines/month).
ARCHITECTURE
New world's tallest building in Taiwain (specs).
L.A. Times slideshow of the Gehry Disney Hall Opening.
FILM
As GreenCine says, "If you read only one article, review, blurb or gum wrapper on Kill Bill, make it this interview with Quentin Tarantino." It answers all those "that's a reference to what?" questions. Amazing.
Anthony Lane's New Yorker review and The Chronicle's critique of Sylvia (trailer). (The same issue of the New Yorker has an excellent Don DeLillo essay on ephemeral filmic memory and a very long Tarantino profile.)
WORDS
Brushstroke has a cool post about why McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage is named such (it was a mistake at the printers).
The Guardian did its list of the 100 Greatest Novels Of All Time. Pretty British, eh mate?
David Foster Wallace full of contemptuousness on Talk of the Nation.
LIFESTYLE
I don't really understand what Nike's Keep The Ball Alive is, but it seems to have something to do with playing urban rugby with SMS devices.
Vodka: 500.
You can now shop online at Ikea.
Gothamist's Flirting 101.
Seth Stevenson is spending two weeks in Tokyo and writing about it for Slate under the idea of "One Cliche Per Day" (Wacky Food, Manga, Inane Protocol, Capsule Hotels, Earthquakes). Pretty good.
GAMES
Some of the quotes here are a bit dubious, but the idea of sitting down a group of tweens to play old-school video games (Space Invaders, Pong, etc.) is brilliant.
Video Games Awards to air on Spike TV in December.
Urban Outfitters pulls Ghettopoly.
TV
K Street has raised the ire of Drudge.
Did you know that Miami Vice isn't coming out on DVD because of the prohibitive costs of getting the rights to the music? I blame Phil Collins for everything.
MUSIC
Slatch has an MP3 to Albini's murkier original mix of "All Apologies," which is pretty amazing.
Jon Pareles talks about The Rapture, The Strokes, and the NYC scene (article).
New Strokes Video.
LOCAL
C.J. has an amazing tidbit on Prince. Unbelievable. (Note: I'm just now seeing this cross the wires, so it will likely become a national story soon.)
SEMEN DONORS NEEDED!!! Roseville, $150 per specimen.
Melissa reviews Captured! By Robots and Chuck reviews Junior Senior, two shows I painfully missed last week.
Unfortunately, no one really paid attention when PDPal was being used at the Walker sculpture garden. Now, it's making big news in Times Square.
Social Hygiene Database from the University of Minnesota.
You probably read the Paul Westerberg profile (he looks so young!) in CP, but The Onion A/V Club has one this week too.
Just stumbled across Whither, a blog by a former Minnesotan with a good essay about the Twin Cities urban landscape.
wednesday
WORDS
I've been playing with BookLog's Gender Genie. It uses an algorithm from Moshe Koppel and Shlomo Argamon to predict the gender of a piece of writing. The last few blog entries have been very male. Try it out with your favorite literary passages and song lyrics.
Two random links from the past: Playboy's 1969 Interview With Marshall McLuhan and Mad's 1968 Valley of the Dolls Parody. (You're welcome.)
FILM
Which is funnier? The trailer to the Stephen Glass biopic or the trailer to Tupac Shakur biopic? Answer: neither, cuz their titles are funnier: Shattered Glass and Resurrection, respectively.
MEDIA
Best. Correction. Ever.
TECH SHOPPING
Gimme! Neiman-Marcus: His & Her Robots.
Gizmodo found a USB-powered vibrator.
POLITICS
G.W. Bush: blogging and writing poems. God help us.
MUSIC
R.E.M. Madison Square Garden review. Yawn.
Day-by-day history of Nirvana.
Now on Friendster: Robert Smith. This is getting boring, isn't it?
TV
I think BMW stole the idea for this ad (video link) from The X-Files. See Advertising Age's TV Spots of the Week for more.
INTERNET
Google has added a cookie to high-usage searchers that shows how many searches you've performed in a day. It's apparently only 1% of users, but I see it!
Friendster really took off when Wired News did a story about the site. One has to wonder about the fate of Tribe.net after this rave.
LOCAL
Fox's reality show Full Life Make Over is in town: Casting Call. I really could use some plastic surgery.
monday
I'm so pleased with myself. I made a t-shirt today that reads "REM KOOLHAAS IS MY DELIRIOUS BITCH." Maybe I'll make a bunch to sell online -- perhaps a whole line of them, like "MATTHEW BARNEY MASTERED MY CREAM" and "SPIKE JONZE CAN SUCK MY VIDEO." Ideas welcome.
TV
K Street is better than you've heard. The Times has an article on how it's affecting political and social dymanics in D.C. And Newsweek has an interview with James Carville.
This is oddly cool. MTV International played the surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse to create 16 30-second tv spots that are surprisingly unique. Exquisitemtv.com collects them all, with maps that show how each progressed around the globe.
Emily Nussbaum on tv theme songs.
AdBusters does some experiments in watching tv.
SHOPPING/TRAVEL
Soundwalk creates collage CDs of sounds (movies, music, found sound) of neighborhoods to create something like a sonic version of travelguide.
Flight001 appears to be a store for urban nomads. Compact objects for the digerati jetset.
Sidewinder is a hand-powered cell phone charger.
FILM
Drudge says Disney is ticked at Miramax for the violence in Kill Bill, and predicts a possible split.
Salon interviews Richard Linklater. And Mim Udovitch interviews Tarantino.
MUSIC
Yeah Yeah Yeahs on NPR's All Things Considered (or, actually, Karen O.'s parents).
Here in Minneapolis, we got to see a crazy reinacarnation of Tron with a live soundtrack performed by electronic musicians using Game Boys and other digital devices. The genre of 8-bit music isn't totally new, but it seems to be catching some steam. Even MSNBC.com is writing about it (the audio interactive halfway down the page is pretty cool).
WORDS
Times Review of Books likes the new Stephenson.
ARCHITECTURE
Slideshow tour of VW's Transparent Factory.
ART
Seattle Museum Krishna interactive.
Sylvia Plath: painter. Who knew?
ETC
MacArthur Genius Awards announced.
Top Twenty New Jobs for Rush Limbaugh.
In addition to the previously mentioned Hilton sisters and Olsen twins, I should point out the importance of the Bush sisters. Barbara and Jenna are on Friendster (okay, they're fakester accounts). (Possible update on Friendster/Google: Friendster said no.)
ObeyTheSuit.
LOCAL
I'm not sure what exactly to think about the Strib's scary! hacker! story on 1A of the Sunday paper.
The PiPress is doing First Ave. nostalgia now too. (Some good musician quotes though.)
friday
My PDA/phone has two background desktop themes that I regularly shift between depending on my mood: The Olsen Twins and the Hilton Sisters. Same situation with my IM buddy icon. I like to think of them as the devil and the angel sitting on my opposing shoulders. Or maybe they're just the ying and the yang. Anyway, The Gaurdian profiles the angels and isn't afraid to love them. For the sake of equal time, I demand they also love the Hiltons.
LIFESTYLE
Technology meets Sex meets Politics. Thank you Howard Dean for making it all happen.
Grunge Is Back In Style. Which means it's not.
PETA takes a shot at Donatella Versace.
TV
Yet another cable network coming your way: The Horror Channel.
PUBLISHING
Great idea that just launched: Front Line Voices collects stories from soldiers who fought in Iraq. Expect controversy.
The Morning News interviews Malcolm Gladwell, a person I also like.
Coetzee wins the Nobel. (Official citation.)
Radosh captured a good misplaced ad on nytimes.com. And LostRemote caught one on ESPN.com.
New York Mag launched The Kicker, a blog from Elizabeth Spiers (formerly of Gawker.com, of course).
Guardian story on those online promos for books I've been linking to here. Coupland | Salam Pax | Life of Pi | Atwood.
Everyone seems to be backlashing the new breed of "cool magazines" we've recently seen. I dunno, I'd rather be reading Mass Appeal, The Fader, Tokion, Anthem, WYWS, and sometimes even Vice than whatever else that fucking newsstand throws at me. (Which isn't to say that The Antic Muse's critique shouldn't be shoved down all their throats so they understand their relevance.)
A long time ago, I had an idea to start a lit publication similar to Words Without Borders.
MUSIC
I have written recently about DJs taking over the restaurant scene in town, and it's good to see that New York is, er, finally catching up to this trend.
Tired: The Darkness. Wired: Bling Kong.
The influence of the music blogs.
FILM
I'd love to be in Hollywood and hear a producer pitch the idea of Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., and Penelope Cruz in something called Gothica.
ARCHITECTURE
The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune differ on their appraisals of the new Koolhaus Illinois Institute of Technology building.
TECH
NeoMedia got a little attention today for an application that ties together ISBN codes and Amazon. There are a number of similar devices out there, including the infamous CueCat and the iPilot. And IBM is working on a smart shopping cart that alerts you to deals.
Napster to return as a more boring iTunes.
Circuits this week: software that speeds up audio/video playback and the impact it has on cognition, a review of Microsoft's new media center, and analysis of Foresight Exchange.
mPulse this month: new mobile intiatives out of Hollywood, wireless betting in Hong Kong, and speaking to the father of the cell phone.
LOCAL
Hm, new record label in Minneapolis? They're hiring.
wednesday
Has anyone ever heard statistics on people who sleep less living longer? Or not living longer? I'd really like to know what I'm doing to myself in the long run. Okay, let's kick it:
FILM
EW's Kill Bill cover story this week contains a parenthetical quote from Tarantino about Memento: "Good movie! But there's a hole, okay? And it's this! How, okay, does he remember... his own fuckin' condition?" This is why Tarantino still matters.
Landmark Theaters has a new owner.
A 2000-copy limited edition of the soundtrack to Lost in Translation packaged with a 48-page book of photos taken by Sofia is supposed to come out soon.
FASHION
Alright girls, no more wearing my jeans. (That sounds frivolous, but it has been a problem in the past. Lori, I want my pants back.)
HISTORY
100 Documents That Shaped America. I guess that's vaguely interesting, but frankly I'm more intrigued by the big "sponsored by HP" logo and "HP + Starbucks" ads.
WORDS
[Insert joke here.] Danielle Steel to open art gallery for lesser-knowns.
MUSIC
I guess this is the White Stripes blogging.
Moby: "i'm almost tempted to go onto kazaa and download some of my own music, just to see if the riaa would sue me for having mp3's of my own songs on my hard-drive."
The estate of photographer/videographer Guy Bourdin is suing Madonna for ripping off his visual ideas. There's a side-by-side comparison. Here's a fan site talking about the homage.
The Voice reviews Chuck. I kinda like this line: "As someone who's shared a few drinks with Chuck at informal rock-critic gatherings (real hoo-has, those), I can tell you this is exactly how he holds court and conversation. He's great fun, but obdurate and occasionally too noisy." Dude, the secret is to scream louder than him.
TECH
Bruce Sterling: Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die.
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 Demos.
The Dean Campaign has released a starter kit for building your own community sites.
LOCAL
Well, that's interesting. A Minneapolis Hidden Beach Bare @ss Yahoo Group.
Peter on the M-80 project. I'll see you at the party.
Ventura's MSNBC show finally debuts this weekend.
monday
INTERNET/MEDIA
Interfacing media, democracy, and social software into one important cluster, two big recent publication in my industry that everyone should care about: New Directions for News' We Media | Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Democracy. I spent my weekend devouring these.
Red Herring on social networking software.
OJR's sprawling interview with the principal scientist behind Google News has many good tidbits.
POLITICS
Rolling Stone interviews Wesley Clark.
Steven Johnson took the small idea of the web generating strategies to campaigning and called them mob spots. In praxis, he crated an ad for Clark's campaign.
The Bush Regime Card Deck.
MUSIC
The new Strokes album really is all that. (It's not out until Oct. 28, but if you look around you might find it.)
The Onion interviews Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian.
Did you see the New Yorker anti-RIAA cover this week?
UBER-CELEBRITY
Of course it makes sense that Vice is now appearing in the Style section. The Antic Muse rants.
Is Jack Black as over-exposed as Britney? That's my theory. Long profile in the NY Times Mag. (And a School Of Rock Blog.)
WORDS
Gigantic archive of the writings of Edward Said.
FILM
Yeah, yeah, yeah... the new Matrix trailers are up.
TV
Simpsons: If They Mated.
LOCAL
Former Minneapolitan, David Carr, now at The New York Times, interviewed in Mpls St. Paul Magazine.
The Rake interviews another ex-local, Al Franken.
I'd like to be the CJ of the online world. For instance: I spied Buy-Me-A-Beer and MinneapolisHappyHour in deep conversation at the Sound Unseen opening party. Could there be a merger in the works?
friday
MUSIC
Sophia Coppola directs Kate Moss in the new White Stripes video. It's, uh, hot.
MTV, the magazine.
Guardian: Death of the DJ?
Rock stars and their parents.
WORDS
Kafka's Metamorphosis translated into Flash.... with violin-techno!
UrbanDictionary.com
New short stories from Eggers, Murakami, etc.
FILM
Matrix III (or whatever you wanna call it) trailer.
See now, this will suck, but it has Katie Holmes and Oliver Platt, so it won't.
School of Rock trailer (directed by Richard Linklater, starring Jack Black). The MPAA rating box says it all: "Some Rude Humor And Drug References."
INTERNET
Pretendster.
Looks like the Chicago Tribune is blogging.
I guess this is MTV's contribution to the blog world: VMA blog?
AmItheGovernorOrNot.com
ARCHITECTURE
Times on Gehry's Disney Concert Hall.
UBER
How famous people break up.
Remember the Sex and the City episodes where they go to L.A.? Gawker is there.
Gimme.
LOCAL
Jim Walsh's first column (well, first in a decade) at City Pages. It really is a quintessential "Minneapolis Music Criticism" piece -- full of personal experience and pathos. This line is supernaturally Twin Cities-ish: "I still believe in writing that talks about the conflicts and conquests of the heart." Looking forward to this one....
AP: Minneapolis Elf Has All the Right Answers.
Turns out the guy that does Buy-Me-A-Beer is also the guy who did Dancing Paul.
The Rake on Flash Mobs. Good line: "This particular secret society was so easy to get into, though, that we're wondering now how many journalists are dying to get off the Minneapolis Mob's listserv. This was punishment enough for infiltrating the group: Our inbox was flooded with the social theories of every johnny-come-lately mobster who wanted to argue that Minneapolis is just as cool as San Francisco or New York."
monday
Fimoculous.com: a vast collection of unfair and imbalanced links.
MUSIC/VIDEO
A few weeks ago, I noted here that Matthew Barney was releasing the Cremaster Cycle on DVD. Greg Allen from Greg.org quickly dropped me a note to say that it was not the Cremaster Cycle -- is was excerpt oddities like Barney scaling the Guggenheim. I protested: "But the site says so!" Now, Greg has penned an article in the Sunday Times about Barney and the search for DVD-quality video art, which pretty much clears it up: I'll never own the Cremaster Cycle DVD.
Re: yesterday's Coldplay video link, Waxy pointed out that Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" as a better example of a time-twisting video narrative.
Perhaps our three greatest music video directors -- Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry (who directed the Cibo Matto video above) -- are interviewed. They have DVD retrospectives coming out on Palm Pictures. (Bjork is of course the connecting factor between the three.)
The future: Interactive Porn DVDs.
INTERNET/COMMUNITY
The Onion tackles Internet Social Networks.
Times Flash Mob story surveys the current state of Flashmobs, with an unlinked mention of Flashmugging.com. (I declined an interview for this story.)
You see, blogs aren't just about cute pet stories (1,764 comments!).
The Guardian looks at smart clients such as Macromedia's Central, which I've been beta testing.
Wired has a story (not online) about MIT's OpenCourseWare completely free online classes. This Fall, there will be 500 courses available. If they're as enticing as Media, Education, and the Marketplace (with video lectures!), this could be a very good thing.
Google's new calculator really is powerful: answer to life the universe and everything = 42.
TV
Emily Nussbaum's commentary on TV shows' DVDs is completely accurate for someone like me who uses Netflix almost exclusively to watch tv.
Mary-Kate and Ashley are on the cover of Rolling Stone. Yipe. See also: The Olsen Twins' Countdown To Legality Clock. (Random thought: you think Ashley is pissed she didn't get a hyphenated name? Was she dissed?)
MEDIA
6 MB movie file of The Daily Show on the Al Franken vs. Fox scandal.
Long Times Mag article on CNN's transition from Connie Chung to Paula Zahn, which oddly ends without a conclusion (kinda like that MSNBC Jesse Ventura show that still hasn't happened).
MUSIC
I've watched all the episodes of Cooking With Rock Stars and Jack Black, was the best.
The New Yorker put their Cat Power profile online, but let's be honest, that Avednon photo was really worth a thousand two-dollar words.
NY Times: Weird adoring essay about Steve Perry of Journey.
NewWavePhotos.com
Drag City is publishing the diary of Bonnie Prince Billy (aka Will Oldham) from his tour with Bjork.
Napster 2.0 (and a decent roundup of the other online music services).
The Strokes announce track list. Millions of scenesters search for MP3s. (Ahem, if you find them, please alert me.)
STYLE
The online store for Footprints Architecture Collection appears to be working now. They were getting press in Metropolis and a couple other places a few months ago for designing shoes "inspired" by architecture. (Neat as that might sound, I get alergic reactions thinking about spending $250 on shoes.)
Outlet malls are evil.
We Americans like to read articles about how other cultures consume our pop exports. But here's an article from Japan analyzing how we consume manga.
DESIGN
BBC on the dream desk.
LOCAL
Awesome collection of Minneapolis-themed t-shirts at Papasea. The MOA SUX one is being shipped overnight delivery.
A bunch of personal friends and acquaintances are interviewed in this Strib story about the dying local film scene being supplanted by an indie scene.
Fringe Festival: big jump in attendance this year.
New looks-promising blog: Reshaping Minnesota.
monday
I apologize for being absent all last week. I had a gigantic work project that took about 90 hours to finish. Forgive me?
FILM
Trailer to Sophia Coppola's most recent: Lost In Translation. Looks good.
A long time ago, I wrote a screenplay about a guy who slowly goes mad because of the innocuous mood music he hears everywhere he goes. It was my Doestovskian fable of the industrialization of culture (hey, didn't everyone write one of those?). Title: Face The Mazak. Apparently, muzak theory, which seemed to reach its zenith in the late-80s, is coming back, according to this article about Activaire (Metropolis article), who does music for big-scale boutiques (Prada). Recommended reading for the "spatial music" set.
Craigslist.org is becoming a movie too.
INTERNET
Google News Alerts. Sign up for any keyword and you'll get a daily email with all the articles (from thousands of publications) that contain it.
WORDS
Words that sound dirty, but aren't.
Annoying William Saffire multimedia auto-biographical profile. "I am an iconoclast." Sorry Willy, no one who ever said it was.
I have never, ever, ever had this much fun reading Amazon.com reviews. Henry Raddick is a must-read, if for no other reason he has discovered actual titles like Taxidermy, a Complete Manual and Handbook of Meat Product Technology and Andrew Lloyd Webber Arranged for the Harp and Plastic Surgery - Penis Enhancement Surgery and... I could go on for a while.
Nerve announces their Pickup Line Contest Winners. Not great.
LIFESTYLE
Breaker from The Post: you can order drugs online without seeing a doctor. Way!
MUSIC
Video: the best young white rapper in America. You got a big what? Chilling.
Times Auto section: Putting Hip-Hop on the Highway.
What Dave Eggers is listening to.
PERFORMANCE
Maybe Blast Theory's ideas can reinvent flash mobs.
PHILOSOPHY
According to this article, Derrida and Habermas have co-written an article that is "an unmistakable endorsement of modernist Enlightenment principles." I'm a little suspicious. Here's an interview I haven't gotten to yet.
LOCAL
My pal Melissa, CP's music editor and now official "coup grrrl," lands another big fish. Getting Greil Marcus as a columnist was a whopper, and now Jim Walsh is bailing on the Pioneer Press to write a column for the alt-weekly (as he did a decade ago). You might have gotten the email he was sending around asking for Oct. 25 to be come the official Paul and Sheila Wellston World Music Day. Peter is tracking all the other movements in the Minneapolis music-media mafia.
Deloitte & Touche's list of the Fastest-Growing Technology Companies in Minnesota. My workplace is in there.
wednesday
No MPR this time to judge my threads. The Flash Mob will not be the last time I wear this shirt:
(The reference.)
At the Uptown Bar, I whispered "You will need these to accessorize your mob" while shoving bubblegum into people's hands.
Despite hundreds of people congregating, Flash mobs are fairly anti-social. In some ways, they are anti-Meet-Ups -- you anonymously encounter strangers for 10 minutes and then disperse. But this event was different because the mob converged and the escelator broke. This slowed down the event, and the outcome was spontaneaous scenes of conversation with strangers.
Much less media and police attention than before. KSTP and KARE showed up after realizing WCCO scooped them last time, but I saw no one else. KSTP interviewed me, and I'm very happy they didn't air any of it because I couldn't answer their questions about the history of the mob. (I should've gone into performance art theory. That would've freaked them out.)
Actually, I think the most confused group were the people at the MCAD art gallery, which was holding an opening. I like the idea of confusing art students.
The turnout was both younger and older this time -- even more demographically diverse than Mob #1. I would estimate about 170 people.
Lately I've been thinking about the spectacle aspect of flash mobs. In an age where spectacle is owned by beer companies and shoe manufacturers, flash mobs are like anti-spectacle spectacles. The devils wearing anti-Prada.
More Photos
Previous Mob
wednesday
WORDS
A must-own: Kerouac bobblehead.
SOCIETY
Nerve: Sex in the age of the cellcam phone.
The Smoking Gun: Legal Document of the Year. Fucker, fucker and fucking fag.
Flocksmart steps smart/flash mobs up a notch.
The Onion: Area Man Knows All The Shortcut Keys.
POP
Good god, I could spend a week here: The A List. It's just a list of celebrity personality rumors, but it's magnificent.
GreenCine has a post with dish on Tarantino's Kill Bill and two Buffy-alum Fox shows coming this fall.
MUSIC
Half-hour BBC interview (audio link) with Morrisey that is very, very, very good. He's so articulate. Recommended.
TV
Sex and the City update: First Duchovny now Baryshnikov. (Secret message: Mr. Big, sorry for petty self-involvement.)
MEDIA
The New York tabloids are all over this. The Times' Bob Hope obit was written by someone who has been dead since 2000.
The Antic Muse: What magazine ads say about you.
LOCAL
Minneapolis is in Friendster.
One year ago today, McSweeney's released The Graffiti of Minneapolis.
monday
MEDIA
The Onion: The New New York Times.
ART
Finally, the news I've been waiting for. The Cremaster Cycle will be available on DVD August 26. (A trailer.)
WORDS
NYRB: Comics For Grown-Ups (starring Joe Sacco and Daniel Clowes).
ARCHITECTURE
Times piece on one of my favorite topics: Stadium Architecture. I didn't even know that Peter Eisenman was designing a new Arizona Cardinals stadium (Gizmodo thinks it looks like a cell phone). There's an audio slideshow too. (I have long wanted to do a multimedia piece on the history of the American sports stadium.)
TV
Roseanne Barr is returning to tv with a new reality show, The Real Roseanne Show.
MUSIC
Kinda weird Chicago Tribune piece: Indie Record Stores Surviving. Contains heavy mentions of Amoeba in San Francisco, which has been packed every time I've been there (three times in two years).
FILM
The trailer to the new Bruce Campbell movie, Bubba H-Tep, looks sufficiently funny. The new Crichton historical sci-fi, Timeline, might also be okay.
POLITICS
Crazy, Michael Huffington might run as the GOP candidate for California governer. His ex, Arianna, might run for the Democratic slot.
Voice: My crush on Condoleezza.
POP
VH1's stupid 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons list.
GAMING
Decent Game Studies: Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? See also: Interactive Nude Lara Croft Gallery.
INTERNET/TECH
Blog Change Bot IMs you when your favorite blog is updated.
From MIT Labs: "The Corporate Fallout Detector reads barcodes off of consumer products, and makes a noise similar to a gieger counter of varying intensity based on the social or environmental record of the company that produces the product"
New O'Reilly book: iPod: The Missing Manual.
Amazon.com adds RSS feeds.
LOCAL
Res has a review of the Michael Yonkers album on Sub Pop.
It's always interesting to see your city portrayed by the media. The newest Word (a British music/arts mag) has a profile Grandaddy that is set here (they opened for Pete Yorn at the State a few months ago). Here's the description of our fair city:
Minneapolis is an unusual place. Downtown is a network of shops and office blocks all joined by covered walkways on the first floor of each building. People with jobs walk from office to bank to shop without ever going out onto the planet's surface; meanwhile the streets are fool of poor people, lunatics and drunks. As if in compensations, Bose speakers mounted on lamp posts pipe Motown in the cold air. Bizarrest of all, there is the status of Mary Tyler Moore, whose 1960s sitcom was set here and whose most famous image -- Moore throwing her hat into the air -- is commemorated in bronze. As drunks sway to "Dancing in the Dark," Mary's statue waves stiffly at the sky, looking like a woman with jaw cancer catching a cowpat.
The Strib's Fringe Festival round-up.
thursday
Although I took pictures on the phone/pda (my excuse for their poor quality), the real excitement of Tuesday's Flash Mob was hearing not seeing.
Pre-mob, while hastily searching for a wide-brimmed hat, I was holding micro-debates with myself on the meaning of this type of activity. Historically speaking, I wanted to relate it to Situationist philosophies of performance, but it seemed to absolutely defy any kind of political reading. Then it hit me: the Mall of America -- perhaps humankind's greatest attempt to construct a politically void environment -- was the ideal setting for an event that we might call post-political. After all, the first time I was in the Mall (10+ years ago), it was the sound that I first noticed. If you stand at the top floor and listen over the railing, you'll hear this monotonous hummmmmmm... neither raising nor lowering in pitch. You eventually start to realize it's the sound of consumption, the engines of purchase power.
That sound was punctuated by the voices of confused shoppers on Tuesday. Here are some voices I overheard: "What are they doing?" "A what mob?" "Is someone famous in there?" "Why are they all watching Lord of the Rings in the Bose store?" "Are they actors?" "Are they dancers?" "Should we join them?"
So to all those people who have asked me about the "political" dimensions or the "meaning" of the event, I'll say this: I'm fairly certain there are no overtly ideological aspects to flash mobs -- they probably actually illustrate the erosion of the word "political" itself. But I do know it made a large number of people confused. Confusion is good.
Walking into Player's around 6:00 to hand out scripts, there was already a line of people looking for a wide-brimmed hat. I was proud of my hat -- heck, since I'm talking the talk, I'll be so bold as to call it "post-gangster." But MPR chose to taunt my head gear ("somewhat terry cloth-ish looking") in their piece (audio link). Unfortunately, MPR's report was probably the most clueless analysis of the event that the local press produced. They use the words "trendy" and "hip" and "cool" like they were just coming into style. Unless internet geeks, Target project managers, and lawyers are now the trend-setters (a theory which, come to think of it, isn't ridiculous -- but nonetheless not mainstream enough for an NPR affiliate to report), that's a poor reading of the crowd.
So what were the participants like? Some traits that surprised me: a lot of people in their late-'20s early-'30s, fewer drama nerds then you might expect, at least three guys in ties (two of them lawyers), and almost complete gender equality.
Although the robot scenario got most of the media attention, I think more passers-by noticed the Bose scene. But that might have been the more focused police presence.
Oh yeah, the cops. They weren't very happy with the event, but they stayed sufficiently distanced. Afterwards, they threatened legal action if -- get this! -- pictures of them showed up on the internet. The words "federal offense" were used. If anyone knows any kind of precedent for what sounds like preposterous babble, let me know.
So was it fun? I'd say yes. We were trying to guess beforehand how many people would show up. I was thinking about 100, but it was only about two-thirds of that. But any more would have been dangerous.
Stay tuned for round two.
Press Roundup:
Star Tribune article. Probably the closest to "getting it."
Pioneer Press article. Funny. The quotes from the guy at Bose are priceless.
AP article. The worthless four-graph write-through.
MPR Q&A. Wherein the hat-dissing and class-constructing occurs.
Official Photos. Much better quality than mine.
WCCO story. Didn't see it, and no link on the website.
City Pages. I heard they sent someone, but it doesn't look like there will be a story.
Historical Links:
Wired Story
Manhattan Mob
NPR Story
MSNBC Blogger
wednesday
On a scale of one to ten, I give today's links a 9.5. Get at it:
FILM
I heard this as a rumor first, but I guess it's really true. Tarantino's Kill Bill came into Miramax so long that they're cutting it into two movies. Double the Uma.
The L.A. Times disses UC Santa Barbara's film school for being contemporary.
U.S. News interviews Harry Knowles. Boring. (Why do I link to articles that I call "boring"? Cuz boring is the new black!)
Kiarostami is doing theater. Sounds radical and experimental.
INTERNET
Brooke has launched the final episode to Broken Saints. Great work, man, you're a superhero.
How many people emailed you Google's relations to the WMD 404 Page this week? I'm around a dozen. I linked to it three months ago, but none of my friends apparently noticed. Anyway, The Guardian has a story about the story of the page.
MEDIA
Michael Wolff reviews Steve Brill's new book.
I'm not sure why I bother with Slashdot threads anymore. This one about NYtimes vs. Google made me go insane. When did geeks become morons? Was it always like this? (Don't read it. Stupid is not the new black.)
Interview with Eric Umansky, the guy who does Today's Paper's for Slate.com.
MUSIC
The Sex Pistols want to play Baghdad. A few dozen punchlines come to mind here, but I'm resisting.
Judas Priest reuniting with Rob Halford. (On the right of that page are video links to "Breaking The Law" and "You've Got Another Thing Comin'." Rock out in your cubicle right now.)
Funny A.V. Club interview with Sir Mix-A-Lot. Includes crazy details, including the long-forgotten Metal Church song, the doubly-long-forgotten The Presidents Of The United States Of America song, and questions like "You were one of the first popular entertainers to talk about asses in a sexual way, whereas that happens all the time now. Do you feel validated by the current focus on asses?"
Alex Ross writes a lot about Pop Conference 2003 in The New Yorker, but I don't think he says anything. Or is that rock criticism?
I'm happy that The Washington Post profiled Punk Planet.
Greil on Liz Phair in CP: "it's like watching Barbies fucking."
I'm not sure why I'm linking to it, but here's the entire script to A Hard Day's Night.
WORDS
If for some reason you care, Traci Lords has a book coming out. Here's an interview and a book tour.
Erik Davis fake interviews Phillip K. Dick.
Eggers is the Samuel Richardson of today. (Applause if that reference makes any sense to you, and a million kudos if you actually read Clarissa.) He keeps "expanding" his last novel, now with additional downloadable chapters.
Today in Literature in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was published.
STYLE
Phew, I own nothing on Hipster Bingo.
TV
I'm a little pissed that the Carson Daly roast was almost a little funny. But mostly because of my growing crush on Sarah Silverman.
LOCAL
You already knew this (cuz everyone is talking about it at the water cooler), but Minneapolis is America's most literate city.
monday
All posts today have -- in one way or another -- a local angle, but that doesn't mean you foreigners will be out of place.
Covert weekend gossip item #1: BMW Films (which was masterminded by the mostly-Minneapolis-based Fallon) is considering branching the franchise into other arenas such as comic books.
Covert weekend gossip item #2: Elimidate is filming six episodes here this summer. Settings include Chino, Solera, Ground Zero...
It's a great week for authors in this city. On Tuesday, we have Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) reading and Douglas Coupland (Generation X) reading, and Friday we have Zadie Smith (White Teeth) reading and Candace Bushnell (Sex in the City) reading.
I have this new theory about the thrill of blogging: the strangest aspect is when the blog crosses over into your personal life in concrete, physical ways. Like as I was leaving Chino Latino on Thursday, I waved at Peter Scholtes hustling into the Uptown Theater with a girl on his arm. And in a blurb on his site about Winged Migration, he makes passing reference to "making out through most of the movie." And now I've connected the dots, and know something you don't -- the identity of the girl. Silly internet.
Riemenschneider's best local CDs of the year (so far).
Old friend Catherine has started a music series at Theatre de la Jeune Lune.
Old friend Chuck was a guest on this week's This American Life. His new book is out next month, and you'll see a sneak preview of it here soon.
If you're interested in the Minneapolis Flash Mob (Wired story), drop me a note and I'll dish.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at the Minneapolis theater scene, quoting a line that I always hear but could never verify: "More theaters per capita than anywhere outside New York."
My workplace gets mentioned in this Pioneer Press story about St. Paul Venture Capital: "Another Twin Cities firm backed by St. Paul Venture, Internet Broadcasting Systems, is flourishing. The company, now profitable, has 231 employees including 133 at its home office in Eagan."
The Blur show at First Ave last night was excellent. At first I was a little worried about Damon's, er, sobriety, but he pulled through just fine.
wednesday
Has anyone ever mapped the psychographics of the synchronous ascendency of weblogs and reality tv? I'm serious, these phenomena are totally connected.
MEDIA
Video of what got Michael Savage fired from MSNBC.
FASHION
I like these t-shirts at Lamosca.com, especially the ones that make vague references to The Velvet Underground and The Ramones.
FILM
Dish on new Cassavetes movie.
It seems the "Film" category gets the most "holy shit, I didn't know that was happening" links. Like, there is a new film based on Joyce's Ulysses recently completed? Holy shit, I didn't know that was happening. There's even a trailer.
ART
Wired News on the Illegal Art exhibit at SF MoMA.
No surprise, the Voice didn't like the the Venice Biennale.
INTERNET
Dear Abby takes a letter from a blogger.
If this linkblog had a sideblog (does that make any sense? could this be a new form?), it would point to Clay Shirky's A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, which is only for people interested in the theory of online communities, but is highly recommended for those people.
MUSIC
Will you hate me if I link to that "Britney not a virgin" story? Okay, good.
Sex Pistols lunch box.
As always, Onion A/V breaks the mold and interviews Evan Dando. Good questions, boring answers.
LOCAL
Blogumentary has a collection of Duluth/Minneapolis links today.
I tracked down an invite to the flash mob, but now that the Strib is talking about it, who knows how this could turn out. But I also saw a discussion about it on alt.law-enforcement, which maybe puts the thrill back in it.
tuesday
FILM
Trailer to the new Larry Clark film. (Heavy traffic; might time out.)
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights trailer. Is there a word signifying worse than vile?
And somewhere in between, Mona Lisa Smile trailer, with three women who dominate about 90% of my personal fantasies: Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal (plus some chump named Julia Roberts as their teacher).
MEDIA
Even if you're not a fan, the Tour de France map/app from NYTimes/AFP is cool.
Finally, some good news. The Guardian is coming to America. Oh, and Michael Savage was fired.
WORDS
Someone asked me the other day about my favorite writers, and I stumbled through saying Ron Rosenbaum was my favorite columnist, but only when he does culture instead of politics. His latest dissects the origin of the word dude. In other linguist notes, Geoff Nunberg discusses slippery slope (audio).
MUSIC
Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, and others are spurning Apple's iTunes, some because it contributes to "the demise of the album format." I like how people think they can stop change.
Jewel "sold out" to a razor ad.
The Bangles are back.
INTERNET/COMMUNITY
The comments that Anil generated with his atomic elements of a blog post are really good. A lot of what's said informs my thinking about this blog, which a) has been experimenting categories and b) implicitly posits the "day" as the atomic element rather than the "post."
Times: Blogging in the workplace.
Sneak peak at AOL 9.0.
One of those "candidate selector" applications.
Cool thing to play with: microsimulation of road traffic.
If you have some time, WashingtonPost.com has a massive project interviewing photographers who were in Iraq.
Steven Berlin Johnson has a column in Discover about There.com, which is gonna be an ultra-cool community site.
This story in the Times about multitaskers makes me feel all icky inside. I don't care how many studies tell me having three monitors, two phones, and one PDA is less productive -- go ahead, believe those LIES while you eat my hyperkinetic mental tread.
LOCAL
Yikes! Wired News has a story about moblogs, with this line: "In Minneapolis, a mob is planning to gather at an as-yet-undisclosed location on July 22 at 6:25 p.m., according to the group's organizer, who asked to remain anonymous." Discussion group.
On the newstand rack this weekend, I noticed that Aesthetic Apparatus (more info) has landed features in HOW and ReadyMade. Rumor is they're starting their own magazine too. Good job, fellas.
saturday
TECH
Okay Guardian article on picture messaging. Contains a link to Celebs At Starbucks, a photoblog outta L.A. Also: Waxy has this idea to do a community celeb-photo/mob-blog, which is fine if you like in Cali or Gawker country. But out here in fly-over territory, I can only make so many jokes about Josh Hartnett, Prince, and Garrison Keiler (now wouldn't that be a party). So I'm still pondering the local scenester site, for which I have lots of ideas but feel unable to keep it updated myself. So if you're a localite interested in the concept, drop me a note, and try to talk me into it.
Comic book artist and theoretician Scott McCloud is experimenting with micropayments with his newest comic. He has talked about micropayments before.
COMMUNITY
Buzzmachine talks about being invited to see AOL's new blogging tool. The ability to blog via IM is impressive.
Gothamist has some Friendster protocol questions.
FASHION
Cool new girl stuff at Threadless. If I met that girl at Triple Rock...
I bought some Donald J Pliner shoes today. Did I just land on the set of Sex in the City?
TV
The Times Mag has an okay story about the rise and fall of baby names, but I point it out for this line: "Still, the effect is not as direct as it may seem. Buffy, despite a fanatic cult devotion to the vampire slayer, has not breached the Top 1,000 (although Willow has been climbing modestly since 1998)."
WORDS
MediaBistro interview with the guy who writes Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent for McSweeney's.
Michael Chabon, Jane Smiley and John Edgar Wideman on NPR's Morning Edition.
NEWS
CostOfWar.com.
Doonsbury on the dangers of internet communities.
That Japanese hotdog eater wins another match.
American apology t-shirt.
MUSIC
Snoop Dogg has decided he doesn't like "Girls Gone Wild" anymore. Because it's sleazy? No, because there aren't enough black women.
ART
Art Forum's Venice Biennale weblog.
LOCAL
I saw my first Segway in Minneapolis today. It was a middle-aged woman cruising around downtown in a long skirt. This seemed noteworthy.
thursday
I've started a Fotolog. It will only include illicit photos snapped in Minneapolis clubs and emailed on the new i700 pda/phone. Scenesters, hangers-on, and shysters: beware.
thursday
I just had that unnerving six-degrees moment on Friendster where you realize that a bunch of people you know actually know each other. But absolutely shouldn't. This is all wrong. I blame it all on Har-Mar, who has listed 123 friends. Freak.
FILM
If my French didn't suck so bad nowadays, I might just try to translate this Baudrillard interview about The Matrix, his first public mention of the film that probably wouldn't exist without him. You can try the Babelfish translation. (Thanks greencine.)
TV
Proof that I should read Dissent more often, there's a new column looking at the anti-war subtext of the final episodes of Buffy. (Thanks Mark.)
Wanna be on reality tv? A nice collection of links to all the application websites.
WORDS
Interesting online writing exercise: One Word. You see one word and you have one minute to write about it.
Today in literature, the Pied Piper lured children away from Hamelin. With mention of Jethro Tull.
DeLillo interviewed twice on KCRW's Bookworm. Good stuff.
Slate.com: The Politics of Harry Potter. (Another one of those Slate.com dialogues.)
Gibson writes about Orwell on his 100th birthday in a Times op-ed piece. A quote: "Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society."
MUSIC
Tom Waits interview in Onion A.V.
Pitchfork gives Liz Phair a 0.0 outta 10. Yes, that's even worse than the 0.8 they gave the new Metallica.
Ya know, I just bought that Zeppelin DVD. This is really unlike me. From a taste perspective. I hope I don't like it. Here's a review.
Another Greil Marcus Real Life Rock Top Ten in City Pages.
INTERNET
Gawd I love the internet. DuckHuntingGirls.com. Yes, pictures and videos of... Girls. Hunting. Ducks. No, it's not dirty. It's totally... ducky.
Sure to make you cringe, Time names the 50 Best Websites.
Decent interview with the CEO of IDEO.
Slate.com found an accidentally-released live prototype of Bush's 2004 campaign website.
FASHION
Nike released a new division of skateboard shoes. And they did a whack website to promote them. Macromedia is showcasing it as a cool use of Flash.
Times Style article on those Tommy Bahama shirts. I actually bought one a couple weeks ago. Shut up, I'm not an aging hipster.
LIFE
Milken Institute's new list of 200 Best Performing Cities. Minneapolis: #99.
monday
I'm feelin' categorical, so I'm sticking with the link categories for a while. Shakin up the faculties. Down with Kant, ya dig.
INTERNET/POLITICS
There goes the neighborhood. Ann Coulter: blogger. CoulterGeist, indeed.
Back-to-back stories about Orin Hatch's website that have nothing to do with each other. Wired News (who else?) calls him a software pirate, and Salon.com (who else?) calls him a pornographer. I guess someone should fry his PC.
WORDS
WhichBooks.net provides a unique way to choose a book. Play with the little sliders on the left.
ARCHITECTURE
Photo essay by Hugh Pearman on Zaha Hadid's Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.
MARKETING
Sunday Times Mag has a long but very good story on the marketing (i.e., non-marketing) of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Recomended.
BrandChannel.com.
A condom ad (video).
MUSIC
Smack in the middle of this hilarious Onion article about college DJs is a June Panic reference.
A must. SixDifferentWays has an MP3 of t.A.T.u.'s cover of The Smith's "How Soon Is Now?" I am human and I need to be loved.
NPR's Motley Fool had a good interview with the founder of KaraokeNation.com, who apparently has a book out now too: Karaoke Nation: Or, How I Spent a Year in Search of Glamour, Fulfillment, and a Million Dollars.
Apple's iTunes coming to the indies.
FILM
Let's call it the new Ghost World that was the new Crumb: preview to American Splendor.
Somewhat random L.A. Times Parker Posey profile.
LIFE
Dream job? It's not often you see "an interest in Wheel of Fortune, Q*Bert or Charlie's Angels" in a job description. Pay: $10.00/hour.
Harry, Sabrina, and Buffy Help Paganism Grow.
One year ago today, I must have been smoking crack.
LOCAL
The excellent local juice company, Fresco Juice, has started distributing at Kowalski's. Check it out.
Beck writes about his appearance in Minneapolis, and the chance that maybe Prince would show up.
In the soon-to-be-defunk Lost Cause, people talking about the Lifter Puller show.
monday
Except for two 4-hour Buffy-watching intermissions on the couch, I have been sleeping for the last 48 hours. I'm still a little woozy after Friday's party. Chuck was wise enough to snap some photos -- six pics in the middle of this page. Yeah, that's me, and I only vaguely remember that part of the evening. Thanks to everyone who came, especially that chick from San Francisco. Sorry the booze ran out before sunrise.
NEWS:
Photo of Bush falling off a Segway.
Weird Sunday Times story about gutter punks. Or, as the sociologists say, urban nomads.
INTERNET:
New blog: Amazon World highlights interesting user reviews found on Amazon.com.
Another new one: Tabloid Column, a collection of tabloid and celeb news.
Register: www.la
The elusive Plain Layne is back.
MOVIES:
Jack White just lost every stitch of cred he had.
Kottke made a silent film about the Chirac/Bush summit: Ceci n'est pas une guerre (c'est l'amour). Maybe he should have done it in the style of Woody Allen.
MEDIA:
Metropolis mag story on Nike that starts off quoting No Logo in the first graph.
Interview with Radar's editor-in-chief.
Adweek: 10 Lowest Moments in Advertising in the Last 10 Years.
WORDS:
Apparently Eggers wants to become Madonna. He's dropping his last name from his next novel. Maybe next he'll change his name to a symbol.
Someone's dissertation on the cultural history of the word cunt.
The Believer's Idea Share.
LOCAL:
Argh! StarTribune.com just made me register before reading.
Times story penned by Dylan Hicks on the Minneapolis Children's Theater Company winning a Tony.
Fargo Forum has a decent collections of stories on the Garrison Dam: The Unfinished Dream.
wednesday
The Voice has a story about Friendster.com. (Scanning this week's issue, it occurs to me that The Voice should really buy Gawker.com. I don't know if Nick is selling, and it might be difficult for Gawker to keep its "integrity" [an odd word for what is essentially a gossip blog, but still somehow apropos] with a merger. But The Voice needs something to make it feel more... now. I don't even live in NYC, but my favorite part about Gawker is the daily round-up of local events. It feels so much more fresh than that weekly calendar stuffed in the middle of alt-weeklies and the first 20 "Goings On" pages of the cool-clueless New Yorker. Here in Minneapolis, Babelogue [a collection of writers/editors from the Voice-owned alt-weekly, City Pages] is trying to figure this out. It is a good -- sometimes great -- resource for the community, but it occasionally feels like, well, a cabal of alt-weekly writers [I say that as a former one]. Babelogue excels when it feels like a cross-sectional representation of the city in which I live; it's less than great when it feels like a strip mall of blogs [à la Salon]. It's an experiment of local voices that might just be the key to this global-local puzzle some of the most creative internet minds still haven't figured out yet. Or maybe Anil had an answer, and now we'll never know.) Whew, that was a long parenthetical. Bad Rex, no links today.
thursday
I bought $500 glasses in Haight-Ashbury last weekend. I hate myself and I want to die. You can see them by clicking on the webcam, over there -->
TeeVee.org has a reality tv parody. But, ya know, when Donald Trump is doing reality tv pilots, satire really loses its effect.
Anil has a swell post on the future of self-chronicling technology: A Personal Panopticon. Imagine, if you will, a TiVo of your life.
Interview with Don DeLillo from Inside Border's mag.
Word on the street is that the Radiohead album you've been downloading was actually planted by the record label, and the "official" album has only been given to a few journalists. Also, the label is flooding file-sharing apps with noise. UPDATE: Radiohead says the tracks were stolen, and doesn't blame the kids.
Donald Rumsfeld: poet.
Gary Hart has a blog now too. He wants to run for president again.
Three new coolish new media books published recently by MIT: The New Media Reader | Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia | Improvisational Design. Designers might also like this new Taschen tome.
New decent-looking Philip Seymour Hoffman movie: Owning Mahowny (trailer).
What she said.
I know way too many people who wish they had done this for their senior honors thesis: "Debates of Artistic Value in Rock Music: A Case Study of the Band Weezer, 1994-2001".
New Metropolis mag piece on new Tokyo architecture.
There seems to be a flood of Minnesota news in the blogosphere today. Kuro5hin is talking about Owatonna's Somali Dilemma. Wired News has a story on a Minnesota kid who's making and selling a low-cost, upgradeable Mac called the iBox. And from a New Republic review of a new Kruschev bio: When Hubert Humphrey was dispatched to Moscow to divine the Soviet leader's intentions--good luck!--Khrushchev inquired about the senator's hometown and, hearing the answer, approached a wall-sized map, circled Minneapolis, and said he would spare that city when the rockets started flying.
wednesday
I hope no one in downtown Oakland saw me waving the new laptop around like a couple of rabbit ears looking for a wifi spot. I also hope that you didn't see me wandering down Valencia in San Fran, looking for 826 Valencia, but unable to remember the numbers "826." And I would be pleased if you didn't notice me on the plane watching episode after episode of Six Feet Under on DVD while simultaneously reading Google Hacks. It's good to be home.
I don't even know where to categorize this in my feeble blog mind. The Gannett tv station in Cleveland did a story about a military firefighter who legally changed his named to Optimus Prime. That would warrant a link on Fark.com. But now, the website for that tv station has given him a blog. The hell?
Stop the presses. The Pope published a book of poetry.
Transcript to the interview that got Peter Arnett fired. Maybe he and Geraldo can get a gig together. (Actually, here's his debut column for the Daily Mirror, where he says, "I am still in shock and awe at being fired.")
USA Today thinks education is going to hell because of IM.
Eggers new magazine: Believer. Here's a L.A. Times article.
Iraqometer.
An oddly-detailed but appropriate photo correction from the L.A. Times that led to the photographer's dismissal.
I wonder if Maxim killed Gear.
Oh hell. The Minneapolis International Film Festival started today. I've got absolutely no time for this.
Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart is now out on DVD.
I highly recommend this Terry Gross interview with Joseph Cirincione from the Non-Proliferation Project. And if you don't believe those fuzzy-headed liberals, try this Time piece, which backtracks the Bush agenda to Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz' philosophy. Scary shit.
friday
Sorry to have been away so long (and to have turned this into a dark place that quotes Belle And Sebastian -- Jack Black would knife me if he knew). No, I wasn't at SXSW with all the other miscreants, but here are the web award winners if you somehow missed them. And, oh yeah, those Puma ads were fake. Blame bloggers!
New blogs of note: Marilyn Manson | Fast Food Fever | Kevin Sites (CNN foreign correspondent).
Cool future wearable electronics.
Times on Meetup.com as a political organization tool.
Saw a screener of Phone Booth last night. Structural movies like this can never be great, and can very easily be wretched, so it succeeds in being mediocre.
I need a new laptop, and I'll probably buy a new Sony Z1 (with Centrino, Wifi, six-hour battery, and DVD), unless you talk me out of it.
Cat Power live on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic (audio).
Local retail hipsters rejoice: Ikea To Open Minneapolis Store.
Howard Stern is suing ABC because he thinks they stole his realty tv idea, "Are You Hot?" Uh-huh, you don't find brilliant ideas like that growing on trees. No word yet from the boys at HotOrNot.com.
If you've actually never seen a Mathew Barney movie, there's now a Cremaster website with trailers; here's one that gives a good sense of scope. If you live in NYC, you can see the entire cycle at at Film Forum next month. (It just occurred to me that he should work with Fisherspooner. But why bother collaborating when you live with Bjork?)
sunday
Odd? Norman Mailer in The American Conservative on "why he is a Left-Conservative."
We've tried everything else, so maybe porn can establish peace in the Middle East (don't worry, safe link).
Follow-up: Why I Turned Pepys' Diary Into a Weblog.
One of the geekiest things I've ever seen: Minneapolis Trekies have created an entire episode of Star Trek that looks remarkably like the original series.
Times: New York's Best Traffic Cop.
Advocate: Top 10 Gayest Moments on TV in 2002.
Metafilter has a post about Chuck's Times Mag piece comparing the deaths of Dee Dee Ramone and Robbin Crosby. I got plastered with Chuck three nights in a row last weekend and not once did we argue about the balance of populism and criticism, but he did say Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, his next book, a series of essays about junk culture, will be out this summer.
tuesday
Fimoc Band Name Of The Day: Cash.
I'm not sure what is the weirdest thing about the new Johnny Cash album -- the Nine Inch Nails cover, the "Bridge Over Troubled Water" duet with Fiona Apple, "Desperado" (fucking "Desperado"!), hearing Nick Cave sing "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," or the "Personal Jesus" cover with John Frusciante on guitar. I'll go for the latter, and even give you an MP3.
Edwin Schlossberg got tons of press this year in design and mainstream publications. I've become interested in his work with Reuters in Times Square, especially this "News Index" idea that will rate the news day on a scale of 1 to 10. There's an essay in me somewhere that compares it with Asymptote's 3-D New York Stock Exchange.
Pitchfork finished up their Top 100 Albums of the '80s. I'm totally enthralled by #1: Daydream Nation.
I really want to be a gamer, but I'm not. I read everything I can about about The Sims -- and look forward to the online version next month. I get giddy at the new Xbox Live, and I made a special trip downtown to see the new GameWorks here. Yet I haven't played an actual game in four years. Are there others like me?
For the agitprop designers and anti-globalization crew, feast on spectacle of NikeLab.com. Zowie! Contains design work by RGA, eboy, uncontrol, nosleep.
Waxy has some stellar doomsday MP3s. Can you resist something called "The Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction of Rock Music"?
IHT gives Audible.com a rave review.
Gimme.
thursday
I've finished setting up the wireless network (Wi-Fi) at home, so if you live in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis, you can probably score some from free broadband from me.
For PJ Harvey or Norman architecture fans (and everyone in between!): The Sheela Na Gig Project.
David Sedaris is on tour, and coming to a town near you.
Wired News is covering Howard Reingold's Smart Mobs. frontwheeldrive.com also has an interview with him.
Large collection of gay ads: The Commercial Closet.
Lego Escher.
The Erotics of Type.
You know how people complain that the internet is really turning into stupid flash animations and real content is disapearing? This is what they're talking about.
Rikki Rockett of Poison now decorates toilets for fun.
Scary! When Republicans Use Flash.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off original script.
Conan O'Brien Celebrity Secrets from Slash, Shatner, Gwyneth, Fabio, and Snoop.
Where's Cronenberg when you need him? Exotic car crashes.
I picked up a copy of Res magazine for the first time in forever, and was pleased to see that it's really transformed itself in the last year or two. The camera geekfest that was Res has been turned into a "Film, Music, Art, Design, Culture" rag. Profiles of Godfrey Reggio and Chris Cunningham and the music video player are worthwhile dips into digi-film culture.
thursday
Here's a cool find. In January of 1996, a student at Stanford was asking the comp.lang.java group for advice on setting HTTP headers for a "web robot." That student was Larry Page, who is now president of a very big web robot known as Google. Some guy named Joseph Millar provided an answer on the newsgroup, but, well, he ain't famous now.
Decent Wall Street Journal interview with Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster.
You won't get it unless you're part of the community, but this is the best Metafilter thread of all time.
In college we all loved John Frusciante and hated the Red Hot Chile Peppers. Slate.com gets close to understanding why.
Cleveland Free Times and New Times Los Angeles shut down by Village Voice Media and New Times, respectively.
Tina Brown's debut column in the Times of London.
New Scientist has a good design/usability interview with Donald Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things.
Matos reviews Lifter Puller in Village Voice and nails the Minneapolis aesthetic perfectly at the same time.
Really good new issue of Shift, which contains a BrokenSaints article.
wednesday
Is this becoming a Beck blog? Anyway, he's on Leno tonight.
Slate writes about the new Ikea ad.
I missed Buffy last night. My stupid VCR recorded the History channel instead of UPN. Is it trying to tell me something? Yourish has the blog roundup.
Voice: Haruki Murakami vs. the End of the World
Metafilter has a post on Nawal El Saadawi, which is worth a look if you're unfamiliar with her.
For local yokels, Dara looks at Minneapolis' sweet sushi scene.
Riot grrl nostalgia?
The 2002 MacArthur Fellowships were just announced. If you happen to get one, you get $500,000 over five years. The only names I recognize are Katherine Boo and Colson Whitehead.
Jonathan Franzen interviewed in The New Yorker. Also, long Zacarias Moussaoui piece.
NY Times: Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments
New Nirvana album will actually be released.
Christian hip-hop gets its own magazine: Feed.
saturday
All Local Today:
Tom Stoppard's newest, Hapgood, started yesterday at The Jungle Theater here in Minneapolis.
The Rake has a short piece about Minnesota geocachers. No mention made, however, of the Minnesota Geocaching League.
A few weeks ago, City Pages did a parody piece on Jesse Ventura, which apparently many people didn't understand as a parody. This month, The Rake did a parody piece on Garrison Keillor, which apparently many people didn't understand as a parody of the City Pages. I think.
Minneapolis photo blogger: EricNeely.com.
A guy I work with does this site: CrappyCelebrity.com.
Minnesota Bloggers list is growing.
Sarah Vowell was on Conan a couple nights ago, and mentioned the famous Pitchfork Fondue in Medora, ND. Today, Chuck Haga at The Strib has a story about western North Dakota, which includes a slideshow with the Pitchfork Fondue. (Sidenote: Is Sarah Vowell cute? This is a question that I've been debating with a few friends. I should make a poll.)
thursday
I watched Clinton on Letterman last night. He was great. I think it took a dolt like Bush to make me appreciate Clinton, who now more than ever seems to "get it." When I see Bush speak, I always worry that I know about whatever topic is being discussed. (The Post has a round-up.)
All the critics are talking about The Rise of Anthony Lane today.
Jeremy Allaire, the guy who created ColdFusion and the current CTO of Macromedia (and the guy whose software I use all day), has his own blog.
Jacques Herzog, who designed the new Tate and the Walker expansion here in town, attacks the MoMA and the Gehry Bilbao Guggenheim.
Pulp Simpsons.
Wow. Cup Stacking Champion Video.
Beck and Flaming Lips announce tour dates. The tour opens here in Minneapolis.
Audio: Wallace Steven's "The Snowman" recited into voice-mail from a cell phone while parked at various locations.
SaysGod.com
I don't know if the original 9/11 thread at Metafilter was the largest (492 comments), but the new thread on The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy (which I blogged in friggin March) looks like it could be a contender.
tuesday
Gay Robots? (Includes HAL, C3PO, Rosie, KITT, and Data.)
Life of Numbers is an amazing synthesis of symbolic logic, mathematical design, and interactive technology. It maps the popularity of all integers between zero and one million. "The resulting information exhibits an extraordinary variety of patterns which reflect and refract our culture, our minds, and our bodies." If you dig it, dive into the other works at Turbulence.org.
2002 Hugo Award Winners announced. Neil Gaiman wins.
The other day, I was searching for an ACLU logo. Believe it or not, I don't think there is one, but I did stumble across a funny flash animation from Working Assets, about privacy in a post-9/11 era. Although I'm politically aligned with them, the animation (with sweeping strings and frowning statues) seems a little heavy-handed.
120 Years of Electronic Music: Electronic Musical Instrument 1870-1990.
I just noticed that MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art & Design) has an extra-cool session coming up on anime and manga: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits.
New Flaming Lips video: "Do You Realize?"
China Blocking Google.
"Sorgatz is the 67,680th most popular last name (surname) in the United States."
saturday
I pretty sure I've never said this in my life, so here goes: I need a vacation. So where should I go? I'm leaning toward either Paris or Japan. Yeah, like usual with me: culture or technology?
Barb has a new AJR column, a comparison between tv and newspaper websites. It was the first time she's actually asked me to read it before sending it to the editors. (I've pretened to not be offended by this, but she claims it was because I give critcism that destroys entire tracts.) At this very moment, Barb is somewhere in Kentucky, en route to Minneapolis after leaving her one-year stint at Poynter.org and coming home.
There's been a lot of buzz about the new Tablet PC coming out this Fall. They're expensive, but Anil Dash thinks they'll survive, so I do now too.
Hah, I just caught a flash of a re-run of the MTV Music Video Awards, and they have removed the Eminem-Moby death match.
Holy shit.
monday
It's gonna be a bad week for blogging. Busy working on a big Sept. 11 memorial project.
L.A. New Times on the Geek Squad: "It was amazing," says 101, "we went to club after club. We never paid a cover, we never paid for drinks. We were escorted to the VIP tables. In Minneapolis the Geek Squad has been around for 10 years -- they're treated like rock stars. I mean, when has a computer tech ever been treated like a rock star?"
tuesday
The Alphabet Synthesis Machine is an interactive software artwork which allows its users to breed and explore the abstract and evocative forms of personalized "nonsense alphabets" - coherent sets of abstract, glyphlike forms which might resemble the plausible writing systems of alien civilizations or unfamiliar human societies.
Was Gatsby Black?
The New Yorker has an online-only interview with Dave Eggers on his new book.
New Arthur Miller play debuts right here in Minneapolis.
Roundtable discussion that includes Phillip Glass and DJ Spooky.
Oubapo is to comics what Oulipo is to literature.
Ethan Hawke, author, interview.
Looks like Spin has handed over its website to Yahoo. Here's Chuck's piece from last month about Morrissey-lovers. This month, Chuck practically is the magazine, with about 20 pages of his musings about heavy metal.
It's Like a Movie, but It's Not. This is one of the most culturally-aware pieces I've ever read in the Times. Here's a paragraph about "the illusion of entertainment":
In mathematics there is something called a derivative an expression that stands for another set of expressions. The illusion of entertainment is a kind of cultural derivative. You watch most television sitcoms and, just by the rhythm of the banter and the laugh track, you know how you are supposed to respond, whether the jokes are funny or not. Sitcom writers call this "likeajoke" because it has the form of a joke without the content. Or you go to a big commercial movie, and just by experiencing the rapid cutting and thumping music you know how you are supposed to respond, whether the action engages you or not.
tuesday
Dear god, I'm full of links today. Hang 10:
Steven Soderberg gets Julia Roberts, David Duchovny, Catherine Keener, and David Hyde Pierce to star in his new film, Full Frontal (that website has been getting good reviews in places like Entertainment Weekly), and he doesn't even show their faces in the trailer.
Salman Rushdie has a WTC Memorial idea.
Until it's officially released August 27, Aimee Mann is streaming her entire next album online.
Remember that Adobe vs. Macromedia lawsuit? Well, it's over, but this isn't very revealing.
Forget Google's zeitgeist, I'd much rather know if Adorno is beating Deleuze or Godard is trouncing Truffaut at TextZ's own zeitgeist page.
New Ftrain.com: August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and eBay to the Semantic Web. It's the imagined future of a business magazine published in 2009. I think it's seriously possible that terms like "semantic web" and "RDF" will catch on simply because of this piece of fiction. Stay tuned.
Cool collection of politically-charged 3D/graph art/music: Pleix. I recommend Plaid: Itsu and Beauty Kit.
New Michelle Yeoh flick: The Touch. (Trailer.)
Peter Greenaway: "Cinema is dead." He said this at the opening for his exhibition of paintings. Knuck, knuck.
The guys who wrote Dow 36,000 still think it will happen.
Dan Savage interviewed.
Fascinating video of Philo T. Farnsworth from 1957 game show "I've Got a Secret."
McSweeney's: The Graffiti of Minneapolis. "Eden Prairie Sucks."
monday
I guess it was bound to happen sometime. William Safire on "blog."
I've seen a few sites linking to Behind The Typeface: Cooper Black, an ode to the typeface. I finally watched it today, and found it wonderfully funny. (See also: The Scourge of Arial and Typography Timeline.)
Times Mag profiles a movie trailer director. Additionally, the guy who created Napster is interviewed, with some good questions like "Do you ever buy music?"
Punk Rock Aerobics.
Mouse Pad Couch.
Orrin Hatch, composer.
Jimmy Carter's UFO Sighting
Once a publishing heir apparent, Ziff-Davis might file for bankruptcy.
Part of the miraculously uninspired Block E expansion in downtown Minneapolis will be a Le Meridien Art + Tech hotel. If you're the kind of person who is wowie-zowied by plasma screens, backlit photos, and personalized linen, then this is the place for you. If you're more into public simulated entertainment, Block E will also house GameWorks, an entertainment plex built by Sega. Ho-hum.
thursday
Funniest thing I've read all week: Rush loves Apple, but feels they're having financial problems because of their politics.
Typorganism has created numerous interesting alt-application but Good News / Bad News is my favorite. On the left appears headlines and pictures from CNN, and on the right appears headlines and pictures contributed by users. The juxtaposition creates a dynamic commentary on news composition.
Wow, a gigantic collection of genuine unknown band photos. Compelling in a I-Have-No-Idea-Why sense. The commentary is funny too.
Does anyone remember Plunderphonic? It was a Negativelandish project from cut-and-paste musician John Oswald that sampled Metallica, Dolly Parton, Elvis and everyone else. Of course he got sued, and the CD was recalled, but it's now entirely available as MP3s or a jukebox
Wired News profiles Dack's cell phone movies. Dack is a Minneapolis designer considered one of the people on the forefront of the blogging and design communities. Dack.com made a radical change after 9/11 to become a politically-centered blog. None of this is chronicled in the Wired story, even though it's probably more interesting.
tuesday
I first saw Kronos Quartet live a decade ago, at their experimental peak, when the whacked out Purple Haze covers and avant-pop Elvis take-offs were part of their crazy classical repertoire. Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud was one of the first "rock stars" I had a crush on (not counting Joan Jett, of course). So I was naturally excited to see they have scheduled three shows (1, 2, 3) in Minneapolis in the coming year. And I was naturally disappointed to see the Slate.com absolutely slagged them today.
Caffeine Soap.
Those in the advertising industry (aren't we all?) might enjoy this spoof site: Ad Week.
I kid you not: Britney4Wheelers.com, Britney's own line of skates.
I talk the talk about my new phone, but I don't have a Vertu. You can apparently only buy one "by appointment," and they're in the 5-figure dollar range.
In local news, City Pages publisher Mark Bartel has canned editor Tom Finkel. The reason? "I wanted the editorial to take more chances, to be edgier." That sounds both good and bad. Either CP will become more investigative and irreverent, or it will become more tabloidish. [In other local media news, music critic Jim Walsh has left the Pioneer Press to study at Stanford on a Knight Fellowship.]
sunday
Two interesting tv-internet events last night. First, RuPaul on Kilborn tried to mention his most recent blog posting about his all-time favorite male porn stars. Kilborn wanted no part of it. Second, the Oxygen network was airing my favorite Hitchcock movie, Rope. They presented it in letter-box form, and then ran footnote subtitles in the black space underneath. This area contained information related to the film, such as one note that pointed you toward a URL, PhilosophyPages.com's Nietzsche page. Both examples made me think that interactive tv will eventually become a real medium simply because it seems an obvious conclusion to content producers.
Slate.com collects Corporate Scandal Trading Cards.
Shift magazine, which has sorta become the more practical Mondo 2000 for this decade, interviews Mondo 2000 founder R.U. Sirius.
In other intrepid '90s magazine news, it looks like DJ Spooky is trying to relaunch 21C. The first issue has VR visionary Jaron Lanier critiquing Minority Report.
SF Gate on blogs: Just Another Cultural Co-Op? Conversely, Poynter.org has a piece about using blogs in newsrooms.
Nirvana news. Courtney looks like hell and Grohl is a cry baby. Ok, you're right, old news.
I spent a good amount of time at the Walker yesterday, checking out the new One Planet Under A Groove exhibit. Keith Harris scratches the topic in City Pages this week, with giddy but mixed success. In poo-pooing "Academe's" predictable critique of hip-hop, he seems somehow unconscious of his own predictably alt-press playa-hater language. Nonetheless, it's one of the best hip-hop reads I've seen in a while. The one-two punch of the hip-hop exhibit and the Shirin Neshat retrospective makes this the finest art summer I've had since moving here five years ago.
Minneapolis architect plans world's tallest building in South Korea.
monday
Are you following this personal saga of mine? The fucking Nokia (which I love-hate-love) finally has internet access -- theoretically, through VoiceStream. In the process, I learned the nuances of GPRS versus GSM. Like you care. But now I find out that I need to get a compliant ISP. Argh.
I had an impromptu party on Saturday after the block party. (Don't ask me how Medeski, Martin & Wood were -- I don't remember.) As the dozen of us stumbled into my house, some punk kids standing out front said "damn yuppies." I laughed and cried. Can't we all just get along?
Hilarious. A University student blames teachings of postmodernism on his depression. This is not an Onion article.
The literary establishment in Iraq simply loves Saddam's newest novel.
For webbies: Pixelsurgeon has two somewhat controversial interviews: Todd Purgason | Jakob Nielsen
MEETUP has the potential to revolutionize the way we think of virtual and real spaces. Yes, it's funny I just wrote that sentence, but it's true. The idea is very simple: use the service to arrange groups based upon shared interests. For instance, the Minneapolis Bloggers group is meeting next month.
I'm not sure why I'm comparing it, but this moment of the virtual and real colliding (which causes us to question the dichotomy in the first place) also happens at Fridges & Streets, a site dedicated to the hum of refridgerators around the world.
It's the 30-year anniversary of Watergate. Thing I made for work: Who Was Deep Throat?
friday
Let's call it the alpha and omega of friday frivolity: 100 Best Online Games.
I mentioned linking to the Daniel Pearl video a couple days ago, and now Wired News has a story about the FBI trying to get it offline.
Yahoo Internet Life has posted a story about Web Cam Girls, which seems like a blatant rip-off of Salon.com's somewhat controversial Web Cam Girls story from last year.
Completely Local Stuff:
Minneapolis will have its own women's radio station.
According to the Strib, No Name is a big name.
Loring Cafe closure looks absolute.
The Strib managing editor, Pam Fine, has quit. Although no one has said it, it could be because of the new editor hired a couple weeks ago.
The usual ruckus about the college newspaper's year-ending satire issue.
Vespas are taking over the Cities!
Decoding the Minnesota driver's license.
sunday
Today's theme: The City, Virtual And Real
Build Your Own City.
Stanza's The Central City and The Inner City and Amorphoscapes are interesting digi-art abstract meditations on urbanism.
Fascinating historical maps of Minneapolis. The one from 1935 is amazing. It shows the city broken into districts with names like "Hobohemia" and "Slum" and "Negro Section (Largest In City)". It's like the externalization of the historically repressed. I currently live in what was then called the "Gold Coast."
New at Architectural Record, an interview with Bruce Mau, who has worked with Rem Koolhaus and Frank Gehry.
New at MIT Technology Review, 10 Technology Disasters, many of which are architectural disasters.
MoodStats.com is a piece of software that enables you to track your moods and compare them with others around the globe. You can rate your mood, creativity, alcohol in-take, or anything you like, and it creates graphs that you can use to compare your moods day to day.
MetaPet has finally launched. I'll let the Times describe this crazy game.
I live a few blocks away from the Walker Museum and have been watching the building expansion close up. I've been considering doing an independent display here of the building/engineering process.
thursday
What the hell? My favorite musician is having a baby with my favorite filmmaker? When did this happen? The New Yorker slips in the Bjork / Matthew Barney tryst in this piece about Cremaster 3.
There's a lot of buzz about the Apathy MP3s on the web (Apathy is the band of the kid accused of those pipe bomb attacks). When I downloaded them yesterday, I had the whole office rocking out like it was 1995. Parts of "Conformity" were on MSNBC today. You think a radio hit is in the future?
My adorable little niece loves Blue's Clues. Now Mr. Blue is making an album with The Flaming Lips. I knew me and that kid would find something in common to talk about soon.
Vanity Fair names Chelsea Clinton a sex symbol.
Still dwelling on architecture stuff: How to Build Skyscrapers, from City Journal.
If you haven't seen it yet, the Guerilla News Network is worth a peak. Radical politics served up as white Verdana on a black background. Hmmm....
If anyone knows anything about Vixen Highway, a Russ Meyers-ish flick filmed here in Minneapolis, please let me know. I'm so curious...
Stephen Ambrose finally responds to the plagiarism charges (after telling you he has cancer).
MediaBistro.com interviews Jeannette Walls.
There's a Britney Spears video game coming out for PlayStation. A photo of Britney's Dance Beat. Players audition to be backup singers in Britney's virtual concert tour by maneuvering one of six characters through a series of practices and auditions to perfect their dance moves.
Psst, psst. I think Tina Fey reads this blog. No, no, I'm so serious. I have evidence. Hi, Tina! Write some time, okay?
friday
PETA poll: Sexiest Vegetarians Alive. (And the winners are not Jude Law, Thora Birch, Mos Def, Don Imus, Gavin Rossdale, Pamela Anderson, Thom Yorke, Drew Barrymore, Moby, David Duchovny, Alec Baldwin, Chelsea Clinton, Fiona Apple, or Brigitte Bardot.)
McDonald's is changing its name to Man Foods in Egypt. How... manly.
Wow, Saddam is prolific. He has a second novel out: The Impregnable Fortress.
ReasonablyClever.com: make yourself in Legos.
This weeks winner of "Not An Onion Headline Because It's Real" headline: Monopoly Makers Accused Of Monopoly.
Is it a Qrime? Crazy digi-art that has something to do with violence, I think.
Our mayor (no, not our governor) is calling for a "hole-y war" against Krispy Kreme.
Looks like that in addition to NBC, other networks including CNN, BBC, and PBS all wanted Bill Clinton for a talk show. It doesn't look like he'll take any of the offers.
What am I doing this weekend? Probably reading The City Pages Best of 2002.
tuesday
I walked through the skyway today with Jakob Nielsen.
This week, I've been attending parts of CHI2002, the big annual geekfest for people interested in computer-human interaction -- MIT types who watch Battle Bots for fun. I would never make it a destination conference, but it happens to be in Minneapolis this year. Today, I saw David Birn, who proved himself as the most optimistic SF writer alive with his presentation about how security and freedom aren't to be judged on the same continuum. Just because Kevin Costner makes your book into a movie is no reason to be so damn sanguine.
But that's not the exciting part of my day. Because:
I walked. Through the skyway. With Jakob Nielsen.
For those who aren't geeks, Nielsen basically invented the profession of "Usability Expert." Among other things, he's the reason Google looks the way it does. Some people love him, some think he's an absolute ass, but I just think he walks funny. Because I've been writing a lot about cities, and because I was in the skyway (I still can't get over this), I chatted him up about what he thinks about Minneapolis. This was an excuse to try to steer him toward a conversation about city design -- to see if he had any interest in the topic.
He didn't understand the connection.
I persisted: You know, navigation, information highway. Virtual and real spaces.
I apparently wasn't speaking his language. He eventually got to the Hilton and fled.
More scintillating updates from CHI2002 here through the week, including my first experience of Stelarc, who performs Thursday.
Women's golf suddenly got very phallic.
The Voice's take and Slate's take on EMP's Pop Music Studies Conference, probably the conference I should be attending instead.
How popular is your name? Check out the Name-O-Meter. Pleased to see that "Rex" has been on the decline through the decades.
That's it, time to find a new hobby. Even Howard Kurtz is writing about the blog phenom now.
friday
I have lived in some weird places -- in a crawl space above my office, in an Alaskan fish cannery, in a renovated school classroom -- but nothing beats the year I lived above a mall.
It was the mid-90s, one of those edge-of-existence midwest towns that has always been struggling for name recognition. A couple decades before that, a scary development had begun to encroach upon small cities everywhere: mall culture. Malls were popping up on the fringes of cities, snagging people from downtowns and putting them onto anesthetized shopping streets recognized only as very high numbers -- 54th Street, 98th Avenue. (Today, they don't hide their cul-de-sac lineage, and instead go with names like Shady Lake Lane.)
But it wasn't one of these malls I lived above. Rather, I lived above the mall that fought against those malls. In the early-80s, downtowns began to devise ways to compete against the sprawling menace on the edge of town. It sounds ridiculous now, but many cities in the midwest contemplated this architectural disaster: put a roof on a second or third street and call that a mall. (If you live in Minneapolis, you know Nicollet Street, right? Well, for a while, there was serious consideration to put a roof on it, and call it a "real mall.")
I lived in a city that actually did that.
Walking through this mall had the effect of being trapped in a prism between the future and the past. All the same rustic brick storefronts were there as always, but there was now also shopping lighting. My second-story bedroom window, which decades before overlooked a bustling downtown, now overlooked a food court. My mailbox was in the same place as the entrance to the mall, so every morning I greeted shoppers in my bath robe. Pumped in from the mall, the same exact song woke me up every morning: "Copacabana" by Barry Manillow in fucking orchestrated Muzak. I wrote a screenplay while I lived there called Face The Muzak, a Dostoevskian tale of a guy who starts to go crazy because of the Muzak that surrounds him.
By now, you're wondering where I'm going with this. Well, of course there's a link: DeadMalls.com, a collection of dying retail giants. My mall isn't on there, but it should be, as my mall is really dead: the roof was torn off last year.
monday
When I first moved to Minneapolis, I lived a couple blocks away from The Loring Cafe. I used to describe it as the place in which all the not-quite-ethnic-yet-ethnic hotties converged. (I think I actually described someone who works there like this: "You know, that hottie that looks Asian, yet not Asian; Native-American, yet not; a little Black, but not really.") Dara Moskowitz in this week's City Pages does an even better rendition: "The Loring is the one place in town where arty ballerina vampire girls, simmering bespectacled muscle boys, Czech cable bootleggers, and the people with jobs who want to fuck them (the ad buyers, the graphic designers, the architects) and the people who want to fuck the people who want to fuck them all converge." Ah, yes, I miss that neighborhood.
I know more than a few people who could use IronyPlugIns.com. A screenshot.
Another questionble famous blog: Christopher Walken. I'm not sure if this makes it more or less likely that it's real: "Have you ever wanted to punch someone square in the teeth, just to see how many fall out? I met Ben Affleck today."
Photoshop 7.0 comes out this month. This page has some of the new features, including a movie that explains the new Healing Brush Tool, a replacement for the Air Brush Stamp.
The Periodic Table of Comic Books scans comic books for references to elements.
The director of Memento has a new movie coming out next month with Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hillary Swank: Insomnia.
thursday
The third sentence on the first episode of Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central) tonight was "Welcome to IBS." And a quote from the protaganist: "I've been working in the theater in Minneapolis for the last couple years..." (For those of you new to this game, this show on ABC has a strange mirror-effect going on with my work place.)
Slate: Is Gerhard Richter A Good Painter?
The "If There Were Three Examples We'd Have A Meme" Thread: ScratchRobot is an email-controlled record-scratching robot. SpamRadio is an internet radio broadcast of a robotic voice that reads email spam.
I'm getting really tired of this blog. I want to turn it into something else -- and I don't mean just redesign it. I mean, something else. Maybe something like a cross between this and this.
wednesday
Well, I guess blogs have been compared to everything else, why not grunge? Find it here in another mainstream media article about blogging (Pioneer Press), which, like most post-grungers, cops a style for the sake of style.
Tony Pierce goes to the Oscars.
Those two will be double trouble some day.
Finally, something useful: Guide to Lock Picking.
In the cool new buildings department: Turning Torso.
I'm going to San Fran next week, and I've asked a few natives what I should see. Two said the Musee Mecanique, because it was about to disappear. Well, actually, now it's saved.
But the Loring Cafe (Minneapolis) might be losing its lease.
A review of Stephen Jay Gould's new big book.
tuesday
At the workshop last weekend, I hung out with Brooke Burgess, the creator of Broken Saints (I also dragged him out to Nye's Saturday night -- he loved it). I first heard about the online-only graphic novel quite a while ago, but on first glance found it too time-consuming, and bookmarked it for later engagement. Now, I'm finally diving into it, and it's one of the rare web products worth the time. The pace is slow, so I suggest watching one episode per day -- there are a total of 24 at about 15 minutes each. Watch it now, before Brooke sells out to MTV.
Yahoo! accidentally posted embargoed photos of the next Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover. If you care to see.
Digital artists get their due. From the NYTimes: Getting Tangible Dollars for an Intangible Creation.
Old video from Fela Kuti's burial.
Watch the bouncing yellow ball: Death Metal Karaoke.
The Evil Dead is 20 years old.
One of my fave authors, Victor Pelevin, has a new book out: Homo Zapiens. A review.
I'm listening to the new Lambchop album (available on Friday) and it's kicking my ass. Also, Pitchfork reviews the new Fog, a Minneapolis artist who recently landed on Ninja Tune.
It's somewhat funny to run my site through Malfunctioned, but it's not nearly as good as running it through Pornalize.
Enron/Enrage, the t-shirt.
tuesday
Sorry, I'm back. John, Ross, and Chuck got me too drunk. Oh, an update? One just hated Vanilla Sky, one just turned 30, and one just lived with Ozzy for two days. And there was Lora, the ex who's now a doctor that looks like a supermodel flapper. (Chuck will have to send me pics so that I can prove this.)
Stephen King claims he's done?
FOX is pulling perhaps the worst television I've ever seen: The Chamber.
I've been saying for a long time that what Salon really needs to do is branch out beyond the web. Now, they are considering a magazine.
Compare: Name That Candybar | Name That Beer Bottle.
Crank your speakers for perhaps the worst TV website of all time: WBQP. (Courtesy of LostRemote.)
Oculart scares me.
Something to watch: White Stripes, "Fell In Love With A Girl".
Tom Tomorrow of This Modern World has started his own blog.
A new fusion restaurant has opened in Minneapolis: Sushi Tango. I guess I'll have to go.
Good David Sedaris interview.
More Googlish fun: Googlewhacking is a game by which bloggers try to come up with two-word combinations that force Google to only return one page -- yours. This thread at MeFi has people whacking the hell out of Google.
thursday
I'm so envious of this amazing collection at the Condiment Packet Museum. The lemon juice page is so inviting.
A surfeit of dot-com entertainment? On_Line The Movie ("a story about people watching people," premiering at Sundance) and Downloading Sex ("the TV incarnation of the website," a HBO/Nerve.com co-production) and e-Dreams ("a behind-the-scenes look at.Kozmo.com," now playing in NYC) and Dot Con ("investigates the financial forces behind the unprecedented rise and seemingly overnight fall of the Internet economy," from PBS).
When a new bar/restaurant named The News Room opened in downtown Minneapolis (in one of those nice areas on Nicollet levelled for skyscrapers), of course my friends and I had to investigate. It has accidentally become a regular hang-out, despite the fact we all hate it. (This is very common in the Midwest -- we love to hate more than anyone, I'm sure of it.) City Pages reviewed The News Room this week, and pretty much says all the things we've said. Dara calls the place "completely insane, but strangely inspiring," and the food is "without question the worst food I've had in a restaurant in at least three years."
Every year, I try to make it back to the UND Writer's Conference, which is probably the biggest cultural event in the Red River Valley. The event has given me the opportunity to hang out with some cool writers -- August Wilson, Tim O'Brien, Yusef Komunyakaa, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Skvorecky, Sherman Alexie -- and enjoy the company of college friends. The film festival associated with it is also quite an experience. I just found out that Stephen Ambrose was asked to attend this year's conference. The Grand Forks Herald has the story. (Thanks to Jaimee, who's gonna love that pic and wonder where it came from, for the link.)
In other literary North Dakota news, Dave Barry is paying a visit. (Here's GF trying to be funny.) Of course I have a corporate conspiracy for why Barry is visiting North Dakota: the Grand Forks Herald is Knight-Ridder owned, and Tony Ridder of course pays his checks at the Miami Herald. I'm sure backdoor connections set up this visit.
Wallace and Gromit to return online.
Enron stuff for sale on eBay. Yo-yos!
"America's first reality sitcom," The Osbournes, starring Ozzy Osbourne.
Bill Gates Is Dead.
The FlashForward2002 website has just launched. I went to last year's NYC conference, and haven't decided about this year's San Fran show.
Gimme, gimme, gimme: MiniUSA.
saturday
Did you know that Kandahar is the homosexual capital of south Asia?
A sad day for Minneapolis: The Museum of Questionable Medical Devises, which is one of the first places I take Twin Cities visitors, is closing. The collection is being handed over to the Science Museum of Minnesota. IanWhitney.com has pics.
What the West owes to the people of the Arab and Islamic world: A is for Arabs
I think Bush perjured himself, and had relations with that man.
Make your own joke: Bill Gates dresses up as Harry Potter.
From McSweeney's: On The Implausibility Of The Death Star's Trash Compactor.
Phil is holding Madonnaramma II (at Ralph's in Fargo on Valentine's Day).
What happens when Wittgenstein designs a house.
Google has ended an AIMsearch prank. Search here -- but you had better get to it by Monday, when it will disappear.
saturday
The New York Times Magazine unleashes The Year In Ideas. It's one more link added to the Year In Review page.
The Onion: Who Says Java Programmers Don't Have A Sense Of Humor?
The New York Times: Interface Design Is Trickier Than It Seems
Nice collection of subway maps from around the world.
Damn, wish I would've thought of it: Microscope Webcam. It would have gone perfectly with the theme of this blog.
New Christmas Tenacious D Song: "Things I Want".
The AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts -- the leading designer organization) National Business and Design Conference is here in Minneapolis next year (October). I'm sure it won't be worth 725 frog skins, but I'll probably go. In addition, CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems will also be coming here (April). If you're coming to town for either event, lemme know.
According to this survey, these are the Top 10 places I should live, based upon my city preferences:
- San Francisco
- Boston
- D.C.
- New York
- Long Island
- Oakland
- Los Angeles
- Minneapolis-St. Paul
- Seattle
- Chicago
wednesday
Winter's here, but you wouldn't know it by the non-existent snow in Minneapolis. (I don't even wear a coat to work yet.) Anyway, I made this Winter Poetry application today. If I were really good, you'd be able to save your poems and send them to friends, but, well, that would take days and days of work, which I ain't got right now.
Saddam Hussein is publishing his second romance novel. The first one doesn't appear to have been translated into English. Now, wouldn't this be the ultimate career-starter for a budding Arabic-English translator?
This is the craziest story I've read in a long time. A 28-year-old Japanese woman mysteriously dies trying to find Fargo. (This may be the first and last time I get to link to the Bismarck Tribune.)
In college, we devised our own rules for Scrabble, in which we gave points for words that were completely made up but should probably be words anyway. That reminds me of A Dictionary of Words, a blog where people post fake, imaginary, and invented words and definitions.
Amazon.com buys Egghead.com (and the internet community strains to remember what Egghead.com did).
Nice Year in Review from Shift.
Michael Bloomberg paid $92.60 per vote.
Music scribe Robert Christgau has a website.
And finally, I had no idea that bin Laden is hiding in an MC Escher painting. (An aside: the Art Test tells me that if I were a painting, I'd be Escher's Lizards. Et vous?)
thursday
Big news in my corporate world today. IBS, the company where I spend all my time, has [ahem, finally] announced its partnership with NBC. We will be operating and co-managing all NBC Owned & Operated stations. This includes WNBC in N.Y., NBC4 in D.C., KNBC in L.A., NBC5 in Chicago, NBC5i in Dallas, and NBC10 in Philly. The moral: I will sleep even less.
I'm fascinated by what people choose to cherish and not cherish in the cities they live. Rain Taxi is one of the best literary review publications you can find -- and it's straight outta Minneapolis. Its forte isn't insightful criticism of a New York Review of Books or the Voice Literary Supplement or London Review of Books variety, but it has the best system of choosing books to review of anything I've ever read. (In that way, maybe they're like a good blog.) Anyway... City Pages did an okay write-up about Rain Taxi this week.
Andy and Laura made me a Jack O' Lantern last night. They say it's supposed to look like Barb. What do you think? It's on the webcam. (Ingenuity: they used a tack for the tongue ring.)
Awesome. Simply awesome. In the category of wish-I-thought-of-it-first. Cursor.org (a semi-national semi-local media commmentary site) has launched The Al-Jazeera Resource. It's a blog about the network on everyone's lips lately.
Banner? You call that a banner? I'll give you a banner with a Madonna soundtrack! To coincide with the launch of Windows XP today, check out the gigantic advert on Download.com.
saturday
All local links today. The key:
= Not Scary
= Scary
= Extremely Scary
I had no idea Big Brother lived next door. Visionics is a Twin Cities-based company that is developing face-recognition software being used to match your face against police mugs. Apparently, their software, FaceIt, was going to be used in British Borders Bookstores.
In other freakishly local news, have you seen Let's Bowl on Comedy Central? Kottke has an old picture of the famed south Minneapolis bowling alley where it was filmed. I marvel at the The Stardust when I drive by it on my way to my favorite restaurant, but I've never been inside. The show's theme song kicks ass. It's on Sunday nights, so check it out. (More info about the creators.)
Sursumcorda is the downtown Minneapolis club that went in the place of the lauded Foxfire Lounge. At fist glance the website looks like an interesting place for mixed-media fun, but after you look around a bit, you start to think "middle-aged hipness." I wonder what it says about me that I really want to attend Fray Day next week?
If you live in the area and haven't seen Lileks' Architectural Tour Of Minneapolis, it's a must. The one of 1950s Fargo might even be better.
Mid-west right-wing talk-show [three redundant hyphenated descripters] host Scott Hennen of KCNN/WDAY (GF/Fargo) was a guest on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" last week. Here's the audio. Art Bell was also on, and was much more interesting.
The 50-Pound Butter PDA Sculpture at the Minnesota State Fair (yes, you heard me right), is up for sale on Ebay (current big: $360).
Is your neighbor's house valued at more than yours? Type in the address and find out.
A list of Minnesota blogs.
Wheh! I didn't get arrested.
I love the Star Tribune Weigh-In graphic at Cursor.org
Hmmmm... which should I join: The Minnesota Science Fiction Society or The American Institute of Graphic Artists: Minnesota Chapter or MUFON-MN? Yeah, I'm leaning toward UFOs too.
tuesday
No fair. I put up my wish list, and no one sends me toys that make me feel compromised. Trust me, if you want a shot of me doing something naughty on the webcam, all you have to do is ask.
Late one night, I was hunting around the web for weird links about Barbie dolls. Turns out that an artist named Tom Forsythe went to court today and won in a battle with Mattel over the right to create this very weirdness. (Obviously, Mattel hasn't seen this yet.)
I'm going to Hong Kong the middle of September. Anyone ever been there? Recommendations? Suggestions? I'm reading Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong and re-watching all my Wong Kar-wai films. Email me with more ideas.
Minneapolis browsing:
A story from an indie-weekly in Raleigh about an "effeminate lad from Minnesota" who "rose to the top of the gay porn industry."
Minneapolis cuisine reviewed in the Sunday New York Times.
Esquire's Korey Stringer feature.
friday
Minneapolis' City Pages did a somewhat critical piece on Channel4000's RoboCam last month. Since I work for the parent company of said-cam, I thought it my duty to show my absolute favorite RoboCam picture: TJ Smoking On Roof. (One day, TJ called from his cell and said "quick, go to the Robocam." When I cranked it to the lower-right, I snapped this.) Funny thing is, the City Pages article generated a lot of talk about a voyeuristic society, but I like that we used it to goof-off during work.
sunday
Fargonians: Great video of Fargo celeb John Lamb jumping from an airplane.
Minneapolites: Check out the Minneapolis Sign Project.
The Rest Of You: 1) Isn't it amazing that Microsoft is phasing out the that damn paper clip in their next version of Windows? 2) Isn't it startling that the company has enough sense of irony about it to make a semi-funny-but-not-really-funny Flash movie about it? 3) And, c'mon, isn't it down-right freaky that they used Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of that clip in their animation?
tuesday
Simon gets credit for finding this one:
We all know that Minnesota has a tendency to churn out some kookie politicians. But this guy, who is running for mayor, wins the King Kookie Award. After detailing his racist ("Abolish affirmative action and related anti white male programs") and bigoted ("Promote patriarchal families and give tax breaks to nuclear families with only the husband working") philosophy for the "White Working Mans Party," he concludes with a rousing indictment of Minneapolis' snow removal policy. And then, he tosses in the "Free! Germanic Peoples Dating Service": Question #25: "Would you consider having multiple mates ____Yes ____No."
sunday
Continuing my fascination with HotOrNot.com (nee AmIHotOrNot.com), I see they've added a "Hottest City" indicator. Minneapolis men fair well.
The Smoking Gun today has pissed off letters from tattle-tale vanity plate spies in Wisconsin.
In site-update news, I've finished my Content Management System and my Mailer program. So, the email signup is now working. As is the search engine. The only remaining element to finish is site surveys. And then we launch!
