Social-Creature

This morning I was on WBEZ Chicago, talking on Eight Forty-Eight about the ways our ancient, social instincts play out in contemporary culture. Thanks to host, Tony Sarabia, and fellow guest, Rabbi Adam Chalom, for a great discussion! (My part starts at 12:20)   Like this? Share it: Tweet

Like this? Share it:

• 

A musician friend of mine was once seeing the best friend of a famous heiress and he told me this story: “I had been dating her for a month and one night she invited me out to go meet her whole crew for the first time. I was SUPER nervous. Meeting the group of friends [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

I’ll start by stating for the record that I LOVED Josh Trank’s Chronicle. I’d been excited to see it ever since I first saw the the trailer, below, which is basically structured unlike any other I’d ever seen. And the movie was, indeed, awesome. I wholly agree with assessments like Entertainment Weekly’s that “the movie [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

From the producer of Alice in Wonderland,” reads the poster for Snow White & The Huntsman, and the birds scream, evidently not too far from the visual style of Russian director, Timur Bekmambetov. Exhibit A: The trailer for 2012′s, Snow White & the Huntsman: Exhibit B: The trailer for Bekmambetov’s 2004 film, Night Watch: Filed [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

According to the Mayan calendar — as translated by new-age hippies I used to know, and depicted by Roland Emmerich — the year 2012 is alleged to herald the apocalypse. Perhaps this collective unconscious sense of mass destruction is what’s driving the popularity of turn-of-the-millennium musings about the end of the world. In June 2008, [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

SocialCreature, I haven’t forgotten about you! I still love you and think of things I want to tell you all the time, (like what Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous says about “the intersection of art and politics and role of the artist in society”, or the similarities between the Snow White & the Huntsman trailer and the [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

Boston Latin School, my alma mater, is the oldest (and longest existing) public school in the country. 141 years older than the country, in fact. Ben Franklin went there before he moved to Philly. Alumni include Sam Adams, John Hancock, Joseph Kennedy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Bullfinch, you get the idea. There’s an admission test, [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

On September 8,2011, Nike announced they would be releasing a limited number of pairs of a new product. As the shoe’s official site explains: In 1989, Nike designer Tinker Hatfield was asked to design a shoe for the second chapter in the Back to the Future series. He created the power-lacing, self-illuminating, Nike MAG. Riding [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

A few months ago I started noticing a proliferation of editorial content using data as the narrative foundation. The first place it occurred to me was on the OkTrends blog, which publishes research compiled from hundreds of millions of OkCupid user interactions. Their insight opuses on “The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like,’” and, “Gay Sex [...]

Like this? Share it:

• 

In 2007 I wrote a post titled, Stop Saying The Word ‘Viral’, (“Seriously, just stop. It’s not hip; it just makes you sound antiquated. This is not the 90′s. It’s over. Deal with it.”) Last year I co-authored a presentation titled, The Ugly Truth About Viral Marketing (“Stop trying to spread viruses. In fact, go [...]

Like this? Share it:

•