Blakroc: Some Dirty Ol' Souls

I rarely write about music, or promote it. Why? I don't really know. I barely care for music reviews is all I know. They boil down to two or three sentences at all relevant to what I want to know, and the rest is filler (Can't the same be said of all writing? SHUT UP).

Anyways, this is unique: Blakroc was released the end of last month. What is Blakroc? Listen for yourself you lazy bastard. Or you could check out a music video for one of their tracks below:

In essence, the Black Keys, my favorite gritty garage blues throwback band, decided to make a hip hop album, of course with help from some icons like Mos Def, Damon Dash, and RZA. Read this article from New York Magazine for more details.

Yes, it seems the early '90s are quickly becoming the new '80s.

Salman Rushdie is the Worst Recluse Ever

I wasn't aware Salman Rushdie was making public appearances again. But hell, if Craig Ferguson is one of the few people he grants interviews to, he's still okay in my book.

Aside from being pretty funny (granted Craig Ferguson makes just about anything or anyone funny), they talk about what might be the increasing trivialness of the novel toward the end of the interview...

In case you're an ass and didn't feel like watching the entire thing, here's what I'm talking about:

"But everybody's a novelist, haven't you noticed?" Sir Rushdie quips. "Probably Paris Hilton is writing a novel."

"Writing used to be the preserve of the Educated Class," said Ferguson,"it used to be monks and priests and, um, you know, schoolteachers I guess, and that was it. And so the written word was given a great deal of merit because you had to have some kind of education in order to write. Now, pretty much anybody can write."

Rushdie then spoke about going to the bookseller's conference and meeting Don Henley of The Eagles who had written a book (which Craig said must've been called Hotel California), and then of a woman who wrote how to improve orgasms (at which Craig of course made a nasty joke involving a Cockatoo).

Oh, man. That's harsh stuff when a Nobel-prize winning a brilliant and famous writer sees the current crop of published material to be such a bleak, vapid, frivolous wasteland. Granted I'm embellishing, but the sentiment remains, and this does go back to some things I touched on in the first of my "The Future Was Yesterday" posts: When everyone is a coincidental writer, of what value are the intentional writers?

You know what, scratch that question. I don't like grouping people into categories and especially not either/or categories.

I can't deny that the novel isn't the same feat as it once appeared to be, at least according to what all my Lit professors told me. But it feels wrong and presumptuous and elitist and fucking immature to say it's because the increase in literacy has over-saturated the market.

I feel like it's only the BUSINESS of media and publishing that's changing things. Media is technological advancement, which we all know never stands still, is always growing, always accumulating, always expanding outward and reaching further. I feel like media is doing the same thing it's been doing all along: growing new arms, while the ones that have already matured are simply more in touch with the masses.

Business, on the other hand, which is what most often drives the many arms of media to the masses, is more about containment. Make as much money off of one arm as possible, always keep it above the reach of the others, and when another arm grows bigger snare that one too, maybe ditching the other one or sewing them together.

I think there will always be this balance between media itself and the business of media, always struggling between containment and new arms that break free of the bindings. I guess we're just in that phase where the bindings have come loose.

I now have a giant, amorphous, pink fleshy blob with many human arms rolling about in my head. I have thoroughly creeped myself out with my own metaphor in the spirit of Salman Rushdie's magic realism (see! I tied it all together!).

The Future is on Two Wheels

Why is the human race obsessed with taking anything that works and shoving a clock radio, GPS, or iPod in it? Not me, no sir, I've seen The Brave Little Toaster. I don't want computers in anything that can help defend myself from the inevitable wrath of computers.

And now these devils of the electronics industry, these merchants of death, have encroached their greasy hands upon my most favorite of modern inventions: The Bicycle. Just look at what they've done:

Yep, some moronic, short-sighted eggheads at MIT have created the Bike 2.0 with the Smartwheel. A wheel that STORES KINETIC ENERGY FROM BRAKING and SAVES IT FOR ACCELERATING BOOSTS. Oh, and it also works in par with an iPod that snaps onto the handlebar/headset to provide a GPS, physiological information, and of course music.

Those bastards! They took the perfect vehicle and befouled it with the cunning devilry of Steve Jobs! Damn them all!

Actually, it's pretty friggin' cool. Looks sharp too (have I been hypnotized like I wrote about in The Future is iCandy?).

But from what I've observed most people can barely operate a GPS and drive at the same time. Imagine how accident-prone people will be with an alluring and hypnotizing iPod attached to their bike... The horror... the horror...

By the way, did you know that The Brave Little Toaster was actually a propaganda film produced by General Electric? It's true*.

*Might actually be false. I didn't feel like doing the research.

The Future is Claustrophobic

[no point denying it, my recent obsession with new media has birthed a continuing series about how stupid the future will be. enjoy.]



There's a J.G. Ballard short story called "The Concentration City" about a future Earth consumed by a city that is the world entire. The concept of "open space" is a myth, people pay high prices to live in glorified closets, and travel is considered pointless. Hell, there ain't even any air-travel because there's no room to fly!

This scares the crap out of me. Living in a closet in an endless city with almost zero sky would drive me crazy.

I don't consider myself claustrophobic, but I am very spatially conscious and aware it affects my psyche and ability to play nicely with others. It's mainly a visual thing--I don't like staring at the same place for too long and I like seeing everything spread out. Having things piled up in a mess makes me fidgety. Having too many windows open on my desktop makes me smash my mouse against a co-worker's face.

And this, my friends, is why an iPhone, iTouch, smartphone, Kindle, et cetera, would drive me fucking bonkers. Too much time spent staring at a tiny ass screen. My eyes would go south so quick, get all reddened, itchy, and everything will look fuzzy. People will think I'm on "the crank."

BUT WAIT! There's hope after all. From the far-off forgotten reaches of Thomas Edison's kingly nerd-i-ness, the projector is making a comeback, a Cinderella story that breathes hope into an otherwise teensy-weensy bite-size window of the future. Take a look:



That's right. Our tiny, hand-held, mobile devices can now PROJECT. Suddenly that tiny screen ain't so limiting, ain't so claustrophobic, because like a ray of sunbeam it can shine onto any surface. This is straight outta Star Wars and Futurama.

These devices, called pico projectors, aren't like the energy gluttons of movie projectors or even the digital projectors you might see lying around the office. They're LED. What that means and how it works, I still don't really understand, nor do I really care. If you wanna read more about it, check out this article from Fast Company (one of my new favorite websites).

Some smart-thinking German scienticians did a study about how vital and important the ability to project from a smartphone is, specifically for maps and geography. Instead of carrying a paper map around with you, or having to squint to look at the Google Maps App on your iPhone, you'd be able to project the damn thing onto a wall or someone's back and more comfortably read it.

Holy crap, just think of what this could do for literary mediums. Forget the Kindle, forget electronic paper, forget the fact that only nerds read anymore, because BAM! now you can read that Foucault essay or Hemingway short story on the damn wall of your room! Suddenly everything is a printable/projectable surface! Suddenly claustrophobia becomes agoraphobia!

This reminds me of when I used to develop photography in a darkroom and discovered a fun thing called "liquid light," which allows you to develop a photograph on any surface coated with a light-sensitive goo. I developed photos on tiles, canvas, my arm, and even a soccer ball (which still hangs in my parents' house).

Honestly, I've been wanting to take advantage of projectors for a while. In particular for that damned hyper-photo-fiction project I did, One Way. It is slow, bulky, and clumsy when done on a computer screen. But I can see it really coming to life if projected, if it is allowed to appear in a larger context that doesn't make it feel so damn cramped.

It's fun to think about this as a writer, really. The thought of the written word not being limited to a solidified, self-contained surface. What else could be done with this? Oh my imagination can run wild, and perhaps even lead me to hope the future will not be claustrophobic like J.G. Ballard's "The Concentration City." But, it probably will be, and projectors might be the only computer screen we ever get (they kinda are space-savers).

So when that cramped, cluttered, sky-scraper dominated landscape comes to fruition, ya'll better keep outta my business or I might freak.

A Bigger, Hotter, Wetter, More Productive Earth (on anti-biotics)

Yep, our best scienticians have finally discovered a worthwhile planet (took 'em long enough, not like the universe is THAT big). It's ginormous, it has water, it's warm.

Sounds like the movie Waterworld. I LOVE that movie. Really. No joke.

The one thing though is that the name for it is stupid: GJ 1214b. How lame! But if you go to this article from Wired you can help come up with a better name!

I suggested PLANET SHAM-WOW! Because, dude, that sham-wow thing is amazing.

The Future is iCandy

I like Google News. It makes me laugh. Especially when articles like this one are recommended to me: "iPhone Users are Delusional..." by Chris Matyszczyk.

That's right. It's an article about how iPhones are hypnotizing , how people become stricken by the sleek, shiny body, or the finger-gliding smoothness of the touch-screen.... Ahem, uh, sorry I was drooling a bit there....

"'When we examine the iPhone users' arguments defending the iPhone, it reminds us of the famous Stockholm Syndrome--a term invented by psychologists after a hostage drama in Stockholm. Here, hostages reacted to the psychological pressure they were experiencing by defending the people that had held them hostage for six days,'" Strand declared."

Conspiracy? Or just good marketing? Or... BOTH?

This gives me an idea for a short film: European Art Thieves pull off the biggest heist of modern art when they give everyone in New York's Museum of Modern Art an iPhone. All the hipster/yuppie art-patrons are too distracted to notice the thieves are casually strolling out the front door with the priceless "Dumpster Diving" installation!

[UPDATE 12.19.09: Just got a chance to play with Google's Droid. It does come with more freedom and some smarter functions than the iPhone/iTouch (e.g., a keyboard in addition to the touchscreen typing, ability to download additional software for free through Google's open source library).

BUT, I still find myself eerily much more attracted to the iPhone/iTouch, though I acknowledge Droid is superior.... Which must only mean THE CONSPIRACY IS REAL.]

Introducing IGNATIUS

Zach sent me some more hilarious sketches for THEY ARE IDIOTS. Take a look at IGNATIUS:



Ignatius is a centuries-old vampire of lore. A celebrity among the damned, but a tortured and lonely soulless being. He befriends Daisy in hope that a young, innocent child can help him find his way again.

The Future Was Yesterday

Just read "The Fall and Rise of Media," a New York Times article by David Carr. As the title suggests, Carr is writing about how the publishing and media strong-hold in Manhattan is crumbling--quickly--and how it will rise again with a new look by a different generation that values new and a-traditional forms of media.

Yawn...

"That feeling of age, of a coming sunset, is tough to avoid in all corners of traditional publishing. Earlier in November, the New York comptroller said that employment in communications in New York had lost 60,000 jobs since 2000, a year when the media industry here seemed at the height of its powers."

And later on...

"For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that."

Yes, things are changing. Yes, the medium makes the difference. Yes, new-fangled gizmos and re-written business models are altering the landscape.

But, really, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Consumers are still inherently the same. Wade through all the micro-cosmic muck of new and old fads and you'll see a pattern. We all want something quickly, comfy, pretty, and new. Plus, the whole two-sided desire to have what everyone else has, and at the same time have what no one else has.

Media, advertisement, consumerism. It's all the business of desire. And god damn, what we want is fucking fickle.

Someone once wrote (Heidegger maybe?) that when mediums are combined and mixed and become so accessible to the masses those mediums become trivialized. Perhaps. But then again, the increase in social networking, internet, new technologies, new mediums is resulting in the over-abundant and daily use of literacy and writing for people who otherwise might not call themselves writers. For example, check out this recent article from the BBC about how kids who use twitter and facebook and the internet and blogging are better writers.

Maybe the pro-generation of new mediums does make the core ones more trivial. Perhaps. But writing is always at the core of it, even if no body sees a damn written word. It's there.

So with the way media is changing, with more and more people becoming writers without intending to, then is intentionally becoming a writer becoming trivial?

Perhaps. But I don't think so. I think it would make you a king among men.

Or that's just a delusion of grandeur....