Sidewalk Life

Experience Consumption

 

According to this Times article, people are dong more and buying less thanks to the recession. Or, as this Florida teenager figured out, you can have it both ways - pay to ride waves at the local mall.

Last Years Model

I really like the idea of going against throwaway gadget culture. 

I'm not sure I like the idea of trying to make it cool.  Seems slightly hypocritical. 

Against Realtime

Great post about Realtime from Gawker today.  It starts out like this: 

"The future is now, more so than ever. Silicon Valley, filled with worshipers of the new, has embraced "realtime" as the latest trend. If it didn't happen in the last 10 minutes, it doesn't matter."

Why is everyone on steroids?

"There's something simply un-American about this" scolded Senator Joe Biden during the Major League Baseball hearings on the use and abuse of steroids in the sport.  But as the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster explains, being on steroids, and the 'win at all cost' attitude is as American as it gets.

The movie is often funny and insightful, but ultimately depressing if you like sports and want to believe it's fair.  Worth watching if you missed it theaters earlier this year.

Optimism For Sale

There's a quote in Bruce Mau's book LifeStyle that kind of makes you feel good about being a producer of advertising (Yes, it is an eight year old book.  I just happened to be looking though it again).

"The image industry splits broadly into two sectors: the Utopian (advertising + Hollywood) and the Dystopian (media + Hollywood)."

Commerce produces utopia.  Their line is:  "There will be a future.  It will be good.  You will be there."

Newsmakers produce violent dystopia.  Their line:  "If there is a future, it will be violent and brutish and you will be there."

So, what we sell is hope.  What they sell is fear.  Sounds vaguely similar to the differences in the Presidential campaigns.

8 oz. Jar of Optimism: Project Optimism

Peace is Controversy

Ogilvy New York is showing some of the artwork curated by artist John Carr in an exhibit called yo! what happened to peace?    Over 200 visual artists contributed to the show as a response to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.  Evidently, it has caused quite a bit of controversy between the pro and anti-war forces inside the agency. 

I'm no political science major, but just when did peace become controversial in America and what does it say about us that it is?

Here is some of the work.  Apologies for the quality of photos.  I took them with my iPhone.

Youth Culture is Dead

Adbusters Magazine declares an end to youth culture in Hipster: The Dead end of Western Civilization

"An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society."

"An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over."

Bread and Soccer

I thought this would be good.  It wasn't. 

There were only a few installations, nothing much to do with Austria (other than being held in the Austrian cultural forum on E. 52nd Street) and the only real connection to the reference about how the Romans quelled the masses with bread and sport spectacle was in the accompanying book. 

Slightly funny video watching people on the street copy the Zidane head butt from the last world cup though.

Is Bill Gates George Washington?

Saw these magazines side by side at the airport.  Coincidence?  Or is Bill Gates the George Washington of our times? 

Both led a revolution, became king of the new world, then walked away at the height of power to start a new life.   

Modern Celebrity

According to the NY Times, Tila Tequila is famous for no reason other than that's the way celebrity works today.   Here's a caption form the article.

Joshua Gamson, the author of “Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America” calls “a shift from top-down manufactured celebrity to a kind of lateral, hyper-democratic celebrity.”

That is if you don't consider the accelerators of Ms. Tequila's celebrity, MTV and its owner Viacom, part of the manufactured top-down celebrity industry.

A better analysis of today's media/celebrity culture might be...if you're willing to do crazy stuff on camera, someone will be there to put you on.