Social-Creature

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, [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Been quiet on SocialCreature the past month as I’ve been head-deep down the MirrorLAnd rabbit-hole. Surfacing for a quick nod to the remix contest that just launched with the release of Chapter 2. If you or someone you know are a knob-fiddler type person, and you’d be interested in having your music become the soundtrack [...]

A year ago I wrote a piece called “Your Lifestyle Is An Alternate Reality Game.” An ARG, for short, is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions. Lifestyle, I suggested, with [...]

While trying to track down a quote from Bret Easton Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction, I came across a LinkedIn profile for Sean Bateman. In case you’re not acquainted with Sean Bateman, one of the main protagonists of the Rules of Attraction, here’s his LinkedIn profile: Sean Bateman Student at Bennington College Albany, New York [...]

A quick little break in the travelling silence just to mention that Post-War Trade, the “democratic future of merchandising” dreamed up by Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls, and produced by Katie Kay–indisputably two of the savviest, sassiest lasses I know, whom it was my pleasure to introduce a few years back–is now, finally, up [...]

Downtown and upscale meet underground–not figuratively, I mean, the actual venue itself is below ground level. Lucent nights at the Edison made the LA Times Guide section: Berlin in the 1920s. London in the swinging ’60s. Los Angeles in 2008? Believe it: seductive and wild nights are right here in L.A., if you know where [...]

In Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between Who We Are and What We Buy, Rob Walker talks about “underground brands”–lifestyle symbols created by independent entrepreneurs. In fact, I actually think it’s easier to think of underground brands as “independent brands,” (cuz what does “underground” really mean, anyway?) much like independent music: In popular music, independent [...]