- With the recent memos NBC news leaked — wow, good on you NBC — I’m getting a little frightened for the future of the USA. The President has taken the War on Terror ball from the last guy and he is running with it without looking back or stopping for nothing. When he hands it off to a more than likely more conservative successor in 2016 I fear we will continue down the rabbit hole to oblivion. Oblivion looking like a mild, subtle, and polite police state.
- 2013 could be one of the best years for science fiction films we’ve seen in some time. The ones I’m most excited for:
Neill Blomkamp‘s second feature film behind the brilliant “District 9″, called Elysium. The overall concept of the film: 2159, overpopulated and most likely trashed Earth, the well-to-do living in a massive glorious orbiting space station society (called “Elysium”), the less than fortunate living on the surface, an ex-Con who has a chance to bring about equality back to the human race. The fact that Jodie Foster is going to be the pseudo villain, in an anti-immigrant authoritarion role aboard the station, is enough to get me to the theater on this one. Throw in the fact that this is Blomkamp we’re talking here, who’s use of CG is so subtle, who’s art direction is so grimy, this film could turn out to be eerily plausible. And I would not be surprised if he throws in some modern day rhetoric to make it feel all the more real.
The highly anticipated (for me at least) Gravity. Alfonso Cuaron‘s first movie since 2006′s “Children of Men“, which is a great flick. The story is quite simple really: two astronauts (Sandra Bullok and George Clooney) get caught-up in the destruction (accidental, most likely) of something similar to our International Space Station, the film depicts their attempts to get back on Earth safely. Now, I think this was scrapped, but rumor had it the movie was going to be one long take. Which would be insane. I have read more recently though — from fairly reputable sources — that it’s looking like the movie will be composed of a select handful of long takes. That alone has my interest peaked, Cuaron’s shot at the end of “Men” was spectacular.
In terms of discussing the influence of film on American society and the alarmingly frequent and horrifically violent acts perpetrated by Americans on other Americans, we have recently heard, AGAIN, two specific films called out and scapegoated, American Psycho and Natural Born Killers; despite the field day that these so-called “film critics” could have had with movies actually from this decade like Killers, from 2010 (oops, that’s an Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl romantic comedy). Taking a closer look at both American Psycho and Natural Born Killers, it becomes clear how weak both movies are when called out as examples of media “aired like propaganda loops on ‘Splatterdays’ and every day.”
- Considering I received an oh-so subtle death threat on Facebook the other day, it’s no surprise many users are taking hiatuses from the service right now, and will continue to in the year 2013 (it’s looking like). It was December 2012 when the data of a PEW survey was taken, finding that 61% of users were backing off from the social networking site. I think election hangover might have something to do with this. Although study subjects’ top two claims were “gave it up for lent” and “too much drama”. I actually do not agree with this idea though that on Facebook we can’t talk about deep philosophical issues. Sure, it gets tedious. But that’s because of the quality of discussion, not the discussion itself. People don’t listen to each other and they don’t think critically. Sure, I generally use Facebook to share music I like with my friends, or keep people updated on the status of my family… but it can be more than that. It’s not as good as the real thing, but it could be the 21st Century town square. Where someone presents an idea, then the rest of the public comments on it, likes or dislikes it. But no one is civil anymore. In fact, mostly what you get is 20-somethings lashing out against their family about how terrible they’ve been to them publicly. I know, this happened on my feed (not surprisingly) around December 2012.
We’ve written a few times about a patent trolling operation called Personal Audio. Like so many patent trolling companies, whose actually behind it is something of a mystery, but it does have an empty office in East Texas that no one ever goes to. It sued Apple and others claiming that it held patents on the concept of “playlists” and actually scored some victories. Amazingly, it sued Apple multiple times over the same patent, arguing that small changes to its products were new violations.
- This was a while ago but I forgot to share it and would like to now:
Papa John’s PR Firm Targets Bloggers. So remember when Papa John’s founder John Schnatter said that because of the “Affordable Care Act” said pizzas would have to go up in price 10-15 cents and that stores would have to close down and that people’s job’s would be cut? Well… a PR firm called Sitrick and Co. is now claiming Schnatter never said anything about the closures or lost jobs, and that the price thing was a mischaracterization of a quote from an investor call Schnatter made. Here’s the Politico article. I would never presume to tell anyone what to think about anything, especially this bill cause it is massively complicated. That’s not what this is about. This is about that ongoing struggle of power vs. freedom of information. A struggle that has been happening for a long, long time, though the internet has certainly amplified it like never before.
Aaron Swartz believed in the freedom of information.
“To call someone “deranged” or “mad” is to marginalize them, to declare that they are “not one of us.” Indeed, it is to say that he or she is not really human at all. As an adult with Asperger’s syndrome who has been marginalized all her life, I feel very uncomfortable when anyone, even someone unsavory, is summarily written out of the human race. I wonder if these sanctimonious pundits realize that the most devastating instances of mass carnage (a.k.a. “wars”) have been planned and executed by neurotypicals just like themselves who were perfectly sane—unless you consider “drunk with power” a cognizable mental disorder.
Recently it was reported that Adam Lanza, the shooter in the Connecticut elementary school massacre, may have had Asperger’s syndrome. Now it is the autism community’s turn to recoil in horror and declare that no, he could not have possibly been one of us; the Autism Society has issued a press release stating that “it is imperative to remove autism from this tragic story.”
- The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historiais, shockingly, the number one book on Amazon right now. It’s also number one on Barnes & Noble’s website, and something called Indigo. Here’s the BleedingCool post about it. I remember reading about this when it was announced, being that Dark Horse put it out and I’m pretty in-tune with what’s happening with the mainstream comic book publishers. Here’s the book’s official website.
- The classic P.O.S. album “Audition” turned seven years old yesterday. Just to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here:
-Apparently Facebook, which as you know went public (in a much hyped disaster), made 2 cents per user last month. There’s of course a lot going on there with all sorts of complexities to a social networking giant like FB… but it does not seem like a viable business model.
- Quick Warren Ellis brain dump on the current state of social media, and where it might be heading in the immediate future. The recent Instagram ordeal (probably a mostly imagined ordeal) and the applied changes to Facebook seem to be the first steps in a new paradigm for social networking. One that Uncle Warren describes as the entire network “calcifying into Big Media”. Which is kind of a problem and counter-intuitive. It feels good to read that the interest in blogs continues to grow, even if the active number continues to decline. Blogging is the constant, it has always been there and always will. Even after the major news media outlets (print, online, and everything in between) declared it dead more than a couple years ago. Less blogs, more blog interest, good for me. Even if I suck at it.
- I’m hearing really bad things about The Hobbit. Often times I get more of an idea of whether I’ll like or not like a movie based on its BAD reviews. Rotten, if we’re talking RT lingo. The Rotten reviews of The Hobbit could be easily summed up as: “long, overstuffed, and tedious”. Which really makes sense when you think about the fact that it’s a relatively short children’s/young adult novel stretched into a 3 motion picture trilogy, the first of which clocks in at nearly 3 hours. And everyone that enjoyed it keeps saying “it isn’t fair to expect another Lord of the Rings”, while a bunch of critics who think it’s terrible keep saying “it seems Jackson is less interested in telling the story of The Hobbit and more interested in making another Lord of the Rings”.
- Speaking of Smaug the Dragon, I’M ADDICTED TO SKYRIM. Alduin’s way cooler anyways. World eater.
- When it comes to movies, Ethan Anderton of SlashFilm posted his 5 biggest disappointments of the year. I can’t say I agree or disagree because I have not seen literally any of those movies.
- On Thanksgiving I wrote quite a long piece about the infamous comic strip “Huxley was right; Orwell was wrong”. It very poorly tied the idea that Huxley was right to Black Friday now spilling over into Thanksgiving now, the day of the year we’re supposed to be thankful for what we have. The only day of the year in this country where we aren’t supposed to be consumers. It also compared and contrasted 21st Century living to what Brave New World and 1984 predicted would happen to our societies. I wrote it, edited it, and published it. For some reason the published version wiped about 3/4 of the thing clean. Probably a good thing as it was terribly written.
“In June, director Martin Scorsese tried to show his 1993 film The Age of Innocence at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese’s editor for the past 40 years and a three-time Oscar winner, called Grover Crisp, the senior VP of asset management at Sony, for a 35mm print. But Sony not only didn’t have a print, it couldn’t even make one.
“He told me that they can’t print it anymore because Technicolor in Los Angeles no longer prints film,” Schoonmaker recalled. “Which means a film we made 20 years ago can no longer be printed, unless we move it to another lab—one of the few labs still making prints.”
- A swath of Nordic countries (all of them?) are telling Facebook to stop unsolicited advertising of users in their countries or face legal action. Good for them. Not only did they cite the current EU on “privacy and electronic communication” in their threat, they also are looking into amending the law to uniquely tackle the topic. “It is prohibited to send electronic advertisements to consumers who haven’t given their consent, either by email or SMS… We think that some of the advertising that Facebook calls ‘sponsored stories’ is beginning to look like unsolicited electronic messages.”
- The Independent: “The Future of War Is LookingBleak“. What a spectacular title for a news article! Now we’re talking! Havard Hegre, a professor at the University of Oslo, developed a model for predicting future events and trends on a global scale this past year, his work has just been published. In it Hegre discovered that the amount of “wars” (defined as a conflict between countries in which at least 25 people die) has dropped dramatically in recent history, and the extended model shows a continuation of decline in the next 40 years. “War has become less acceptable,” Hegre said, “just like duelling, torture and the death penalty.”
- Last night I made the mistake of beginning to watch the Lance Bangs Pavement documentary “Slow Century”. A mistake because I should have known it would’ve been too fascinating to turn off, no matter how late the hours got. If you’ve got the time, here it is:
- Sage Francis has resurrected the Tumblr Hello There, Racists after an apparent shut down. I think it’s outrageous to say it isn’t fair to publicly chastise these people, knowing full well that Twitter and Facebook are publicly viewed domains (they’re basically the 21st Century “public square”). It also serves to remind us of some very important things, two of which: you’re not invisible on the Internet, and if you want to say outrageous shit you’d better damn well be posting anonymously (then again anyone with half a brain can trace an IP address), and yes… racism definitely still exists. Some of this shit is just disgusting.
- Very interesting article, that very well might go over your head a little (went over mine at least), on the nature of dark energy. Is it static or dynamic in its existence. If it’s dynamic… yeesh, the philosophical implications of such a thing are astronomical; a form of matter whose density and composition and structure changes as it shifts though space time??
While hypothesized dark energy can explain observations of the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, the specific properties of dark energy are still an enigma. Scientists think that dark energy could take one of two forms: a static cosmological constant that is homogenous over time and space, or a dynamical entity whose energy density changes in time and space. By examining data from a variety of experiments, scientists in a new study have developed a model that provides tantalizing hints that dark energy may be dynamic.
The results are still far from conclusive, but the scientists hope that future data might narrow down the models with greater accuracy. They hope that observations by the Planck spacecraft (launched in 2009; first data available in April 2013) and the Euclid spacecraft (launch date is 2019) could help pinpoint the dark energy models that most closely describe our expanding universe.
- Great piece of street art (graffiti, if you prefer that term; I really could care less what it’s called) from GOIN, who I believe works out of the UK:
Ah the joys of social networking. Late last night El-Pwrote:
i have finished recording cancer for cure. now its getting mixed.
To many, this probably isn’t that big of a deal. But for me — and if the reaction is any indication, lots of other people too — this is a huge deal, and probably one of my most anticipated albums of the past 5 years. I’ll Sleep When You’re Deadopened my eyes, to a lot of things. In my opinion, that album epitomizes the post-9/11 life in America theme we’ve seen in so many different forms of media and art since the early 2000s. It is a perfect album. The production itself is mind-blowing, with melodies weaving in and out and popping up here and there throughout the entire disc. Plus it features samples ranging from Kill Bill to Anchorman and Twin Peaks; and performances from Trent Reznor to Mars Volta, with the omnipresent cuts of Mr. Dibbs. If you haven’t heard it I suggest getting it ASAP and listening to it straight through when you have the time (it’s about an hour long).
[Speaking of Mr. Dibbs, he's going through some medical complications and his insurance isn't covering the necessary surgeries he needs. He has a Facebook page setup: Pay It Forward 2 Mr. Dibbs. And for people who don't use Paypal, anyone who wants to give to him can mail a check to (payable to Kristin Rose):
Brad Forste
4830 Poplar St
Cincinati, OH 45212
Dibbs, for those who don't know, essentially re-revolutionized turntablism. He'll go down as a legend.]
El-P’s next album should be a treat. Throughout last year, he’d been updating a blog for the making of the album, with some very eyebrow-raising pics and statuses popping up now and again. In a good way. Here’s to hoping he’ll be playing Soundset this year.
I found this list at HipHopSite.com (great name guys!) detailing 60 reasons “to live another year” in 2011. It’s a list of albums that were slated for release that year. Problem is, not all of them came out in 2011, like Cancer For Cure. Which means we (or… I) have the pleasure of getting these hip-hop albums into our greedy hands in 2012:
El-P – Cancer For Cure
Slaughterhouse – Welcome To: OUR HOUSE
Dr. Dre – Detox
Madlib & DOOM – Madvillian 2
Q-Tip – The Last Zulu
Cage – ???
Aesop Rock – ???
Ghostface – Supreme Clientele 2
Ghostface & DOOM – Swift and Changeable
Talib Kweli & Mos Def – Blackstar 2
Brother Ali & Jake One – Mourning In America, Dreaming In Color
Freeway - Diamond In The Ruff
Busdriver – Beau$Eros
Kristoff Krane – ???
Kill The Vultures – ???
I Self Devine – The Sounds of Low Class America
J Dilla – Rebirth of Detroit
Tyler, The Creator – Wolf
Wu-Tang – ???
Public Enemy – Most Of My Heroes Don’t Appear On No Stamp/The Evil Empire of Everything
- The social-networking feeds, blogosphere, and internet media outlets of the world are fluttering alight right now with memories of 9/11. Everyone seems to be saying something, but the hard truth is no one is really saying anything. All these “We will never forget”s aren’t necessarily accurate, as it seems to me we cannot forget what we never learned. Sadly, 9/11 could have been one of those rare, transcendent moments for a group of people (perhaps, even, all people) that forever alters their very existence. One of those once-in-a-few-hundred-years moments. Where an event is so mind-bendingly huge, so utterly foreign yet so familiar, and so deeply personal that we take a step back to examine where we’ve been and where we’re going; not out of curiosity, out of necessity.
Myspace – with all its horrible functionality and viruses and attempts to ripoff Facebook — is a pile of shit. That’s nothing new. That being said, I have a huge problem on my hands: a Google search of “mild maynyrd” will bring you plenty of links on me, the fourth down the list being my outdated and ancient Myspace artist page. The options were as obvious as they were limited: update the damn thing, leave as is, or close permanently. Number 2 didn’t seem like much of an option at all. I had songs on the player that were from before I finished this album… Songs that may have reflected who I was as a producer at the time (and, I suppose, a person), but they don’t anymore. Not even close. So I opted to wipe the slate clean and upload two tracks of the last thing I made, and one off each of my previous EPs. Yes, I very reluctantly chose option number one. Why? Well… because I have no reason to not use every single option I have to share my music with other people. That includes mentioning it when it’s released on things like Facebook and this site and message boards, keeping a Bandcamp page as neat and clean as possible, or handing out free CDs to people around town. I don’t make money, I just want to share what I do. Because hey, I’m fucking proud of it. Myspace, even for how terrible of a place it is, is one of those alleyways. Then again, I probably wouldn’t even touch the thing if it wasn’t number four down on the Google search. Tom Anders, you miserable grinning bastard.
Anyways, here’s the updated page. *(Click at your own risk. Myspace has been glitchy as hell in the past.)
Well this was quite the treat this morning. El-Pthrew a snippet off his next album on Soundcloud (which I saw via Facebook; see, sometimes it does pay to be on “the social network”). He titled it “This happens somewhere on my new album.” Hmm. I’m digging the guitar on this, and hoping that this dude, whoever is playing this, appears more on the record. I believe it is still tentatively called “Cancer For the Cure“, but don’t quote me on that. Here’s the stream:
[*EDIT: He must have just taken it down, I guess. The page doesn't even exist anymore.]
[*EDIT#2: El just posted on Facebook, "poof. you snoo-zed, you lose-ed". There you have it. Bummer, cause this was tasty.]
I regard his last album, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, as one of the best albums of the 2000′s, one of my personal favorites, and the quintessential post-9/11 big city/New Yorker paranoia LP. If you’ve never heard it you should get your hands on a copy sometime today.
And here’s a pretty cool performance of him doing “How To Serve Man” live in Philly (earplugsss):
I’m extremely pleased with how the cover to my CD came out. It’s grimy, dark, but somehow hopeful (stenciled people running towards the light, rather than away from it). This is what it looks like:
Meanwhile, the brilliant Dan Hipp has been doing some mash-up pop-cultural fuckary over on his page. I always catch this stuff on Facebook, he posts every single thing he draws (it seems). Here’s his FB page. This first one combines Indiana Jones and Captain America perfectly. Hey, they did fictionally exist in the exact same era… plausible:
And what if Bruce Wayne doubled as James Bond and was sent on assignment to the Middle East to investigate a terrorist organization called “The League of Assassins“? It would look something like this:
