Tag: pop culture

  • Social Networking Wars

    im going to poke your funwall

    When Facebook gets as spammy as MySpace, are people gonna migrate elsewhere? Is there an eternal greener pasture, free of clutter, amazing deals and soft porn? Could such a social network grow large and resist the urge to ad widgetry and apps? If so, it will reflect the growing trend of “more might not equal better”.

    While waiting, watch this video. It might make you start rolling on the floor, laughing [your] ass off.

    bkSaNToDbW8
    thx sctt
    UPDATE
    5/31 Facebook Addiction Disorder

  • ODB Lives

    ODB Lives

    Best selection of nips in the Bean.

    Intentional cultural poaching or no, ODB Liquors on Mission Hill in Boston might be the most keenly named individual business I’ve come across. I can think of no better tribute to the man and his work.

    b2-5GSjZvW8

    The name has to be intentional, right?

    [1] I’ve just spent the past half-hour recapping ODB’s career on youtube. If NSFW street language isn’t a problem, you might want to check out the linked Pryor-esque clip of Ol’ Dirty monologizing onstage. Among many Barron’s-level gems, we hear the nearly-quotable aphorism, “Before drugs was illegal, b----, it was LEGAL!”
    [2] Hip-hop’s cultural fluidity as spoiler of youth reigns as ever (vocal lines on the song sampled from ODB). Stunner shades for all.

  • Too Well Connected

    Too Well Connected

    What up son? I'm good. How you?

    Is there a chance that our rapid rate of discovery on the web is simply too fast to be useful? The so-called web 2.0 has created many bursts of useful or at least nominally cool applications that we in turn ogle and rush to begin using. Muxtape being the flickr of the month this time around. And a damn good one at that. But is the rapid adaption of new processes something that inherently improves our quality of life or ability to navigate our virtual lives? Or is it chatter — a sustaining churn of new that fails to deliver on the Jetsons premise we all eagerly await?

    In the world of agencies and brands, Second Life stands as a recent cautionary tale in the cultish urge to embrace what is new online. The blogosphere, on the other hand, serves as a compelling, and profitable for some, reminder that people are in search of the adequate medium to interact and express themselves. As ever there seems to be a vital disconnect between the apps that can actually make life easier or more fun, and the ones being made that (whether through clunky design, poor concept, or muddled purpose) needlessly clutter our online lives with more links to click. Are we hamstrung?

    Tied up by links.

    Often when returning from vacation or otherwise less-wired times I find that the number of blogs I actually want to read, or the applications that I actually wish to use is diminished by a fraction of half or more. The process is both liberating and confusing — all of it being stuff that I’ve chosen to make life richer. But when Gizmodo trots out new phones with the same wary voice it uses to play up the latest batch of iPhone parodies, shouldn’t it as easily remind us that a snazzy phone is among the last things that will transform our ability to process the information machine that swirls around us? What is missing is the step that perfects the process of using each added contraption or assesses its value beyond cool.

    Without this vital step, we have techniques to navigate data, but no way forward, toys and exercise without endgame.

  • Chocolate Haas

    to melt with youIf Cadbury didn’t move you, artist Sander Plug has some Dutch chocolate on tap. Honestly don’t know what anthro to add to this, but I’ve been watching it on repeat. It’s an artfully rendered execution of what many a lad did to their GI Joes, or a Barbie Doll, if vexed with sis.

    T-SZYZLfZ7E
    —-
    shout to Josh S for the OG report and Josh K for sending it our way.

  • Cadbury, Airport Trucks, WTF***?

    Art can have no clear endingFallon’s new Cadbury ad fails in every way that Gorilla succeeds. No whimsy. No personal touch. It ain’t going viral.

    The premise of the spot is that a fleet of airport vehicles has “pimped themselves to show their unique character, ready for the race of their lives.”[1] So, like Pixar’s Cars, we’re expecting cheeky and anthropomorphized characters.
    Cool, let’s roll.

    lf0hOxFzSLI

    Now it feels like the truck we’re supposed to root for is the small orange underdog we follow from last place. But just as it gets toward the front, the spot cuts to a Dukes of Hazzard shot of the large blue truck. So is that now our hero? Dunno. In closing the camera pulls up, Queen sings “no stopping” and the trucks keep trucking. So not only am I still sans hero, I don’t know who wins the great race.

    Well, maybe the spot is not about one truck in particular, but about their collective joy at an illicit runway race. Yet throughout the ad, we keep seeing bits and pieces of humans, prepping and driving the vehicles. This furthers our narrative dissonance: Are our heros the trucks or the drivers? We never meet the drivers, so can’t pick a fave, but care less about the trucks, cause they haven’t truly “pimped themselves”.

    I’m lost and lonely on the tarmac.

    Now dear reader I love abstraction. Some of my favourite movies have no clear arc or heroic payoff – Lost in Translation, I’m Not There, Hiroshima Mon Amour, etc… Great adverts and art empower themselves to tweak narrative conventions. Fallon’s Gorilla is one of those greats, a 90 second window into the world of a hirsute drummer. I love that spot like a fat kid loves cake. But Airport Trucks? Similac.

    TApA1fyoSdk
    —-
    [1]Cadbury’s Tony Bilsborough

  • PSFK: Postcards From Yo Momma

    Kathryn Hunt. With RayBans. Before You.smrtgrl Kat Hunt and I were talking about the newnew blog Postcards From Yo Momma – could it be the next
    Stuff White People Like? Maybe so, maybe not, as a friend of Kat’s declared Momma passe….after two days, an ohso New York thing to do. We might be the fastest moving creatures on earth, but does this always lead to innovation?my baby's got a secret
    Pre-2.0, part of being a New Yorker was about knowing secrets. In the era of Flavorpill, Thrillist, etc.. anyone can paratroop into town and dial into what was once clandestine. The counterpunch to this is a spike in secret clubs/bars – Milk+Honey, The Back Room, Old Rabbit Club – and guerilla dining units. Yet their currency is one of quick cool, not really innovative culture. Is our fairtown flatlining or just us types? Or is this question passe?

    Like the artworld moving from Paris to NYC in the 1950’s, I wonder if BRIC will come to the cultural fore. TATA buying luxury while making the $2500 car. Baile Funk influencing Diplo then to Wburg. Moscow’s billionaires. China PWNing the web. In 2058, is there gonna be a new New York?
    2009

    *my spies now tell me Momma’s got a book deal

  • Rock Thee Well

    Rock Thee Well

    Bernanke could use some Rockwell mojo right now.
    the next big holiday gift

    Ed. note: corrections appended below.

    One doubts that the home of the Whopper would have much client base in common with the paper of record’s Sunday magazine. Yet as a matter of course both Burger King and the New York Times Magazine stand behind the same face. Let me clarify. My first mentor in design once explained to me that a typeface was called such because, like a face, each one is unique. Of course, one could reliably say the same about snowflakes or tigers and still not be able to tell the difference between them even while having one’s arm gnawed off in Siberia, but the point stands. In the case of typefaces, a small subset of creative people cares very deeply about differences that most others would ignore. And in the eyes of today’s font gazers one of the movers in many circles goes by the name Rockwell.
    (more…)