social-creature

In Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter explain that really, there was never any conflict between the two to begin with. Counterculture hinges on, and consumer culture consists of, the expression of your lifestyle/identity. Whether you’re choosing to wear Nikes, Doc Martens, or some crazy obscure Japanese […]

“THIS TRACK JUST MADE ME PREGNANT” - Sasha Frere-Jones, pop music critic at the New Yorker, waxes poetic about the Glitch “Lazer-Bass” Scene. Read more…

…to thine own self be true.”
- William Shakespeare as Polonius

YOU MUST READ THIS STORY FROM THE NEW YORKER:
Something in me had snapped, was broken beyond repair. My taste had been central to my identity. I’d cultivated it, kept it fed and watered like an exotic flowering plant. Now I realized that what I thought […]

“The idea that whoever appeared onstage would play not me but a character was central to imagining how to make the narrative: I would need to see myself from outside.”
~ Joan Didion

In the midst of the quicksand hazard posed by every single episode of Lost available online, and in high def, I saw an ad […]

“We read to know we are not alone.”
- C.S. Lewis

in retrospect, it’s not so surprising that while i was studying film in college i was also producing art and music events as an extra-curricular activity. i joke that producing a movie and producing an event are pretty much exactly the same process, except with […]

you know, i didn’t even used to care about the music industry. i could vibe on its culturally-relevant aspects, but the industry of the music industry was never all that interesting to me. it was always just this thing…over there. somewhere else. the concert industry, which i have been involved with for a while, is […]

If you ain’t never been to the ghetto
Don’t ever come to the ghetto
‘Cause you wouldn’t understand the ghetto
~ Naughty By Nature, “Ghetto Bastard”

used to be that if you were a musician the only way you could get ANY kind of significant distribution for your music was through a record label. cassettes and cds made […]

tiffa novoa 1975 - 2007

heavy shit today.
tiffa (née tiffany ann snead) was not just a fashion designer, she invented an entire aesthetic style. she was not just one of the founding members of a notorious performance troupe, she helped to create an entire subculture. she wasn’t just a visionary artist, she was a force […]

first, you need to watch the trailer for sony pictures’ across the universe: here. if you cannot be trusted to come back here afterwards, however, you can just watch the shittier-quality youtube version:

ok then. now that you have been adequately briefed, we can begin.
i first saw the trailer for across the universe on quicktime.com in […]

The goal of all human activity can’t be reduced to the leaving of descendants. Once human culture was firmly in place it acquired new goals.
- Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee

right as i was in the process of rereading the third chimpanzee (i had to read it in college for sociobiology, and recently realized i’d forgotten […]